NARCISSUS TAKING A SELFIE – POST-SOCIALIST LITERARY REPRESENTATIONS OF “WHITENESS” IN THE BALKANS

The novel Dangete, duša koja se smeje (Dangete, the smiling soul, 2011) by Tijana Ašić is partially an autobiographical story presented as an encounter with East-African cultural norm. On the other hand, the novel Ta i (Thai, 2013) by Goran Gocić was set in Thailand and presented as a story, or rather as a project, “of a self-aware man [...] who seeks to protect a woman”, but also “as a lesson given to a complacent Westerner, with the intention of curing his haughty ego by succumbing to the East”. Both novels correspond to the formal features of travel narratives, and their common point of reference is the paralyzing fixation on the images their protagonists are pressured to negotiate with – those of the South Eastern Europe caught between dichotomy of the Occident and the Orient.