Многуимените други: Македонија како пресечна точка на другоста на средновековниот Балкан

Stojkov, Stojko (2021) Многуимените други: Македонија како пресечна точка на другоста на средновековниот Балкан. In: Прилози за историјата на Македонија и македонската култура. Македонска академија на науките и уметностите, Skopje, pp. 147-165. ISBN 978-608-203-316-7

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Abstract

The Others with Many Names: Macedonia as an Intersection Point of Otherness in the Medieval Balkans
This paper examines the phenomenon of Otherness in the Medieval Balkan region of Macedonia. We analyze the terms used to designate and label ‘otherness’ in respect of their origin, character, use, and their (non)acceptance by the population categorized as the Other. Оtherness is a key aspect in understanding the ethnicities of the past: which populations were regarded as their Other and by whom. Today, by the combination of these data from various (often opposed) political and cultural centers, we may identify the ‘zones of Otherness’, which often remained undefined and even unidentified in the sources. We may determine that certain geographical areas did not have their own elites to legitimize their separate identity, yet, that identity differed and refused to be identified with the imposed identity structures. Their Otherness could refer to a specific ethnicity, but not necessarily. The population in these zones did not necessarily have to be unified (by self-awareness, language, name, etc.), but they could. These zones were variable and often changed in both time and space.
However, some of the labeling terms used to designate this Otherness in the past are in use even today. More often than not, this use is aimed at different populations and geographical areas that are not related to the ones from the past, usually in a new national sense that does not correspond to their use in the Middle Ages. This phenomenon creates serious confusion in understanding history as it transfers contemporary pretensions and realities to the past (Fine 2006: 9–11).
Thereby, the author calls for careful studying of the terms and zones of Otherness within the context of their time and place. The region of Macedonia was definitely a zone of Otherness in Medieval times.
The Otherness was expressed by different names at different times, but the perception of many people in Macedonia as ‘others’ is constant throughout almost the entire Middle Ages. Those people were seen as ‘other’ and different from the Medieval Balkan centers of power: Constantinople, Pliska, Preslav, Trnovo, Ras. That Otherness was not strictly fixed to the borders of the region of Macedonia: sometimes it was spreading wider, other times it referenced only a part of Macedonia.
In the period between the 7–10th centuries, the Otherness was designating all the Slavs, expressed by the general term Slavs (but also Scythians, barbarians), used for the population of most of the Balkans, but also in Eastern Europe. Later on, between the 11–12th centuries, most of the region of Macedonia (without its southeastern part) was designated to an area of Otherness together with the territory of present-day Serbia, Kosovo, and some neighboring regions (Serdika, Southern Albania, part of Thessaly). This Otherness was designated by the term Vulgars/ Bulgars and was closely related to the Ohrid Archbishopric, its title, and the Slavic language nurtured in the churches of this area. At that time, the Balkan was not the only zone of Otherness in the perceptions of the Romans. There were two more: one in Dalmatia, designated with the terms Slavs, Illyrians, Serbs, and Croats; and another in Moesia, designated by terms such as mixed barbarians, Scythians, and local people. Contemporary Byzantine and other authors do not mix these three Othernesses and define them on different grounds: Dalmatia by its political autonomy, the Ohrid Archbishopric by the distinctiveness of its church and liturgy, and Moesia by multiethnicity, non-Romanism, and barbarism. During this period, in the terminology of some Byzantine authors, equivalence and mutual identification appeared between the terms ‘Bulgaria’ (Ohrid
Archbishopric) and ‘Slavic language/people’ (the liturgical language and the basic population in the archiepiscopate). It was a synonymous equation, not an idea. It meant that there are more Slavic peoples and Bulgarian is one of them, i.e. the Slavs are the Bulgarians and vice versa. In the Slavic sources of this time, this equivalence was not observed.
Between the 13th–14th centuries, Macedonia together with Thracia formed a new group of Otherness in the eyes of the elites of Bulgaria and Serbia, denoted by the terms Romania, Greek lands, and Greeks. At the same time, in Byzantium, a large part of that population was also seen as foreign, expressed in terms such as Myzi (Μυσοί), barbarians, Bulgarians, tribal people. During that time, in Greek sources from the Ohrid Archpiscopate, the term Bulgarianswill be redefined as a collective name for several Slavic nations. While in Bulgaria, the same term will be interpreted as an alternative to Romaioi—a supra-ethnic imperial name for the population in the northern Balkans (north of the line of Stara Planina-Skopje-Dyrrachium)—which includes Slavs, Vlachs (Aromanians), Serbs, and Cumans.
Namely, in this period, the equivalence between the terms Bulgarians and Slavs passes from the Byzantine in some Slavic sources. On the other hand, in other periods, for the Slavic authors in Macedonia, terms like Greeks and Bulgarians are clearly understood as foreign and those that express Otherness.
The author concludes that the region of Macedonia constantly belonged to some zone of Otherness during the Middle Ages: in a ‘vertical zone’, together with the region of today’s Serbia (11–12th century); or in a ‘horizontal zone’, together with Thracia (13–14th century). This territorial variability means that the Otherness was not assigned to known ethnically formed communities. Rather, the terms were being used to express the meaning of disloyalty, peripherality, marginality, cultural difference, cultural inferiority, and/or unknown foreign language. Most of these terms—Slavs, Bulgars/Bulgarians, barbarians, Myzi, Greeks, Scythians, and others—were used for designating the population in these zones, not as self-designation. Of all the names that were used to denote Otherness in Macedonia, only the term Slavs was used by the population itself as their own name and in an ethnic sense. After some time, the people who were designated as Others also developed terms for their Othernesses.

Item Type:	Book Section
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Otherness, zones of Otherness, ethnicity, Macedonia, Medieval Balkans, Slavs, barbarians, Scythians, Moesians, Bulgars, Bulgarians.
Subjects:	Humanities > History and archaeology
Divisions:	Faculty of Educational Science
Depositing User:	Stojko Stojkov
Date Deposited:	31 May 2021 08:46
Last Modified:	31 May 2021 08:46
URI:	https://eprints.ugd.edu.mk/id/eprint/28125

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