The Balkans, Europe’s Distant Back Yard: Identity – Alterity, Necessity – Arbitrariness

In this paper we are trying to re-examine the importance of role of the Balkans in the imagery of (Western) Europe. We want to shed light on three points. Necessity of Europe’s through the Otherness, peculiarities of Europe’s perception of the Balkans and influence of this allegedly unitary outside identity construction of the Balkans on self-perception of peoples from the peninsula. In the paper an effort is made, to point out how internal complexity of the European identity directly and inevitably affected of other, not only Balkanic cultural Others, and how specificity of the Balkans is that they are not recognized as sufficiently different Otherness