Dr Diana MISHKOVA UDK 316.75(4:497) Centre for Advanced Study Sofia 930.85(4:497) IN QUEST OF BALKAN OCCIDENTALISM APSTRAKT: The article seeks to revise the current mainstream interpre- tation of the relations between the Balkans and the West as it has emer- ged from the mirror reading of the Balkanism paradigm. It interrogates the grounds for interpreting the Western discourse about the Balkans in terms of Said's Orientalism and the Balkan visions of Europe in terms of the hegemonic Western discourse. By way of introduction, or Balkan Studies as „Oriental” Studies Taking up the subject of Balkan perspectives on Europe, I was fully aware of the necessity to think of it in the light of the criteria by which a region is defined, mapped, theorized and explained. As long as the available analyses of the relations between Europe and the Balkans had sought to draw upon broa- der tendencies or theoretical models, these models had no local origin or purpo- ses. They were designed at other places and for other purposes, as a result of which the Balkans have been assessed in terms of their resemblance to or devi- ation from Western Europe. 1 This is the common drawback with the Balkan application of all theories that had emerged since the end of the 18 th century under the roof of the two grand paradigms – the modernization (or evolutionist) and the neo-Marxist (drawing upon the opposition between center and periphe- ry). Over the last few years, Orientalist, post-colonial and post-structuralist criti- cism have succeeded in challenging the very core of these frameworks by shift- ing the focus to a deconstruction of the conventional Western image of the Bal- kans. Critical effort has been invested in demystifying the „Balkan construct”, 29 1 For a critical reading of the so called „mental maps” of the Balkans, see more specifically Bracewell and Drace-Francis, 1999; Todorova, 2002; Todorova, 2005.