Tenth International Conference on Religion & Spirituality in Society

Abstract

Normalizing subjectivities of “Europeanness” has effects on the interpretation and consumption of cultural heritage sites in non-Western contexts. Here we examine the liminal space of the “post-Ottoman” West Balkans, a European region with significant built heritage and contemporary social legacy reflecting the c.500 year rule of the Muslim Ottoman dynasty and its legal toleration and recognition of Christianity and Judaism. Bosnia and Herzegovina (BH), Republic of North Macedonia (Macedonia) and Albania are selected for contextual study given that their social complexion is perhaps most obviously a representation of that syncretic legacy, and because of their concentration of extant Ottoman heritage sites. We note first that these countries’ heritage and tourism sectors anticipate and to some extent modify their interpretation to accommodate ‘Western’ consumers affectation of “surprise” and “delight” at the region’s religious diversity, constructing it in binary terms as a “remarkable” crossroads between “West/East” or “Christendom/Islam.” To understand why Ottoman heritage is often understood to be in but not of Europe, our analysis brings together and develops recent “Post-Saidian” scholarship which interrogates “Europe’s” discursive erasure of its Ottoman-Islamic-Oriental “self” as well as recent work on the particularities of the syncretic Ottoman mode of social organisation in Europe and its legacy.