Lilla Balint, Djordje Popović
The opening scene in Saša Stanišić's latest work, Where You Come From, places the reader back in Višegrad, a storied town in today's Bosnia and Herzegovina and the site where his first semi-autobiographical novel, How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone, ended. We see the narrator's grandmother Kristina as an elderly lady, shouting from the balcony down to her younger self on the street: ‘I'll come get you. Don’t move!’1 Living up to her promise, Kristina drags herself down three flights of stairs, without shoes, her feet covered by thin black stockings only. Cars hit the brakes. Traffic comes to an abrupt halt. In her effort to rescue her adolescent self, Kristina succeeds at stopping the steady flow of the world for a moment. The evocative opening places Kristina front and centre in the text while introducing a split in time: we are simultaneously in the years 2018 and 1943, as well as in some Yugoslav moment in-between, when the street on which the impossible encounter was to play out still bore the name of Josip Broz Tito.2 The formidable storyteller Stanišić tempts his audience in this vignette-like opening with a reassurance of sorts: where you come from – Herkunft (‘origin’) – can, indeed, be found at some mythic confluence of time and place. Origins are not only localisable; they can also be projected back in time, with kinship serving as a well-established narrative and ideological ploy for staking out historical claims to belonging. The very first scene thus appears to preempt the text that follows by giving a rather firm answer to the question that the book's title vividly raises. The answer – the Romantic idea of origins – seems to be reinforced when Stanišić takes his readers from Višegrad to the village of Oskoruša, and with that, deeper into the past. At Oskoruša's cemetery, many of the tombstones bear the narrator's last name: Stanišić. What could possibly be more affirming in a tale of origins than a mountain village, where even the ground is inscribed with proof of one's ancestry?3 Stanišić proves to be a formidable storyteller because he involves his readership in something like a theatre of origins, presenting us with the essential trappings of a ‘filiative’ form of belonging – a term we borrow from Edward Said and Timothy Brennan to designate communities predicated on inheritance, descent, and circumstances of birth – only to then reject the premise and ontological primacy ascribed to these ‘natural’ social bonds.4 Expressed in the well-known terms of National Socialist ideology, Blut (‘blood’) and Boden (‘soil’) not only merge here but become inseparable, with their union counteracting – that is, stabilising – the purportedly modern volatility of origins.5 From the perspective that this special issue of Critical Quarterly adopts, a striking moment comes to the fore: Stanišić's spectacle of origins plays out in what is commonly considered part of Europe's periphery, a tiny village ‘in the Bosnian mountains, in the farthest eastern regions of this perpetually tragic land’ (Where 27; 31). The opening is, of course, an ideological trap expertly set to ensnare the reader committed to the Romantic idea of unmediated belonging and unable to recognise the idea's kinship with the age-old stereotype of bellicose Balkan tribes. For both the yearning for pristine origins and the attribution of irreconcilable feuds to peripheral spaces share the presumption of filiative bonds and also of backwardness – a mode of existence caught outside of historical time and thus seemingly beyond the reach of the historical subject. But who exactly is the audience for Stanišić's demonstration of origins, one that is deeply informed by and that appears to reinforce West European stereotypes of the Balkans as Europe's backward periphery? For whom does this spectacle, in fact, take place? And just as importantly, what happens to the notion of origins over the course of the narrative? We begin with these questions because in the works of German-Bosnian author Saša Stanišić we find a particularly dynamic expression of the core-periphery mapping. We take Stanišić's oeuvre as exemplary for the writer whose critical and political affinities generate an aesthetic intervention that goes beyond the work of demystification (of categories such as core and periphery), summoning at the same time an active historical subject capable of changing the laws of history that are often mistaken for second nature. More specifically, examining Stanišić's latest novel, Where You Come From, we argue that Stanišić's intervention lies in subverting centre and periphery as stable entities and revealing how these categories are produced, employed, and exploited – in writing. His earlier work How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone extends this critical work to the seemingly unalterable laws of history, reintroducing a force that could halt the process of peripheralisation and the endless proliferation of crises. The first critical move points to an alternative in a world in which we are told there are none. The second shows what it takes to actually change the world. Thus, while the first intervention targets discursive conventions, the terrain on which the second intervention plays out is not discursive. Born in Višegrad, Stanišić fled to Germany as a teenager during the Bosnian war. His first novel, How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone (2008) (Wie der Soldat das Grammofon repariert, 2006), turned him into one of Germany's most celebrated authors overnight. And while this semi-autobiographical tale of migration from war-stricken Yugoslavia did not make it past the short list for the 2006 German Book Prize, it paved the way for Stanišić's success in the German literary markets, leading Boris Previšić to wonder if a “Yugoslavian Turn” was on the horizon of German-language literature and its largely orientalising depiction of the Balkans.6 In his second novel, Before the Feast (2016) (Vor dem Fest, 2014), Stanišić turned to a peripheral place within Germany. His peculiar spin on the German genre of the Heimatroman – most frequently translated as ‘regional novel’ – is set in the imaginary village of Fürstenfelde, in the former East German province of the Uckermark.7 Stanišić tells the story of a single night in Fürstenfelde, but what comes to life is the village's history in an assemblage of legends, family stories, and tales. The book continued Stanišić's critical acclaim, winning both the Alfred Döblin Prize in 2013 and the 2014 Leipzig Book Fair Prize. In Where You Come From (2021) (Herkunft, 2019), Stanišić revisits the Balkans to scrutinise this mythical place of the European imagination through the themes of origins, memory, and their disappearance. Where You Come From draws on a long Western European tradition of ‘inventing’, ‘imagining’, or ‘constructing’ Eastern Europe and the Balkans.8 In her now-classic monograph, Imagining the Balkans (1997), Maria Todorova traced the emergence of ‘Balkan’ and ‘balkanization’ as derogatory terms around the turn of the twentieth century and then drew attention to their resurgence in this denigratory capacity at the time the former Yugoslav state fell apart. ‘The persistent use of “Balkan” for the Yugoslav war has by now rekindled old stereotypes and licensed indiscriminate generalizations about the region’, Todorova writes.9 Even a cursory glance at the clichés that Todorova foregrounds reveals intriguing parallels with the inaugural moments in Where You Come From. Mountainous regions, extended clans and tribes, age-old feuds over land – these are common ahistorical staples in explaining the fall of Yugoslavia.10 If the similarities are not immediately visible, it might be due to the fact that Stanišić modifies the war scenario and appears to offer at first a reversal of established valorisations. While the location remains unchanged, what plays out against the background of Bosnian mountains is not violence but the alleged recovery of origins. No syllable you can cling to, zero rhythm, a bizarre sequence of sounds. From the very beginning: Osko – what's that supposed to be? who talks like that? – and then the plummet to the hissed end, -rusha. Hard and Slavic, the way things end in the Balkans. I could leave that in, people would probably accept it from me, seeing as I'm from the Balkans myself. Hard Slavic endings? (26; 30; italics in original) But for whom does this masterful juggling of firmly established clichés take place? Often a question that allows only for speculative answers regarding intended readership finds an explicit one in Where You Come From: the title of its second section and the phrase repeated throughout make it clear that the text is addressed ‘To the [German] Alien Registration Office’ (2; 6). Stanišić builds the authority responsible for granting German citizenship into the narrative world of Where You Come From as the text's intended reader: ‘Thirty years later, in March 2008, I was applying for German citizenship and had to submit at the Alien Registration Office a handwritten chronology of my life [Lebenslauf], among other things’, the narrator declares (2–3; 6–7).11 The entire section reads like the narrator's demonstrative attempt to find a form for his story – or, even a story itself – that proves adequate for his readership and the stated purpose of obtaining German citizenship. The text thus stages itself not solely as a work of literature belonging to the realm of aesthetics, but rather as one whose particular purpose (also) lies in achieving naturalisation. While the humorous tone that frequently tips over into irony unmistakably pokes at the text's the narrative the question of belonging at the of Where You Come What does a text to in to become be What are the narrative of grandmother Kristina the on the former Josip Broz in Višegrad, the section of Stanišić's work in the mode of was on March in Višegrad, on the (Where The also the moment in which of begin to as the of the with the same a my first the I to down on was that I was on March of some of which are the the narrator's and Where You Come From even more For the narrator that he the Alien Registration such as a narrative without I in the of the in which Where You Come From not with an of but with the story of the and his in the story of out a story beginning: what to – – I the story of the of my first which is, indeed, the of a section that comes in Where You Come From and to which we italics in What we in to the narrator's with the text of Where You Come From is also an on the process of a or that the reader that the to of Stanišić's The on and to a of the narrator to – in a as demonstrative as it is – that his German text is not only to the intended reader but also in the of the of the narrator's with Where You Come From and the that are these become at that the Alien Registration Office as the of the former also the intended reader of the is to Stanišić's ploy of that Where You Come From, itself to the German is not to of course, that the book's readers are to or are by the narrative the intended reader as to the question of belonging not in but with an to the particular historical and political At the same time, the that the text that the narrator Saša from Where You Come From, of reveals that the narrator is in the very of his tale of origins. The on the process of not only that this story is and into but that its takes place in to its The Alien Registration Office is not the only authority that on the of origins in questions of belonging. The whom the narrator in Bosnia the same question – you come – and the same to the primacy of (Where 30; come from one at the cemetery, with his what remains of their in this is supposed to to the of origins among the tombstones and on one's Even if to a place of one is to in some by and discursive The to a the to recognise his place of in the the narrator is at first by the he is from the of the family if in a a is to his is then to a family well – ‘in fact, to the of – and a of that from his ground (Where If the is a place where into the then the that in the the same from this back into the the imaginary of comes here – on the And for a from his well and the of his the narrator seems to that he can what he could see his place of the Romantic of he that was and like the to origins in the at the And while he from the of as he declares not to down over a does Stanišić his readers to their out to be a that the of by with if Where You Come From is firmly against the idea of the Balkans as a place for origins in the form of filiative it in Germany. often to be an – a that the of what the in German – is as just as the to the text for Stanišić's readers Oskoruša's like in a is not some place that for the modern to but a The on in the name and comes to the in his the Bosnian the the German about the and not about what the or how italics in takes in to what Stanišić to In an he the as is a and because it is by an you from an as to be an expression for an and to to their and from belonging. a and thus the of against the of the of and Stanišić's text revisits of belonging that are commonly to the author whose to in form in the German literary such as often of their both on belonging itself and the to places that the also The author with as the German has frequently a that for the of by way of that, the of Germany's these in these terms allows for the of the periphery as a place of does he his readers with a migration tale that the centre as a place of we can that in in Stanišić's by the narrative of the narrator's story for the Alien Registration Stanišić targets the of origins. In fact, the is in the origins a story that is with a audience and in both of which how they are and how of belonging are and the that the of the periphery plays in their Stanišić also targets of origins, the of the periphery and its to If Where You Come From the discursive of origins and the of the periphery that goes in with How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone the core-periphery dynamic from the perspective of the historical subject. In other Stanišić's to beyond the seemingly stable categories of and in to a question of even what – and by whom – might the historical of peripheralisation be At first this that the fall of Yugoslavia and the of and are through the seemingly perspective of its storyteller from by what Boris Previšić a for his readers into a world of and stories, in which one can a depiction of the periphery as a place where still not giving way to the of the war through can it even in the reader to a war But beyond the and it can the narrator – particularly one on the of – also to life a historical subject capable of in its How can in and an historical subject be The in with the the within Stanišić's The Gramophone in a seemingly the narrator's he a and to his The of the is told that with this he become most in the to of things just as long as they are in with and the of the of we argue the to the of the of the former historical subject who was to change the laws of history and who at the of the the that the he is has its In fact, the of a that of what is told in the and that play with Balkan while the and at the same and his to the first into the only to into a within the by And while the appears to of – and thus the of the – a narrator to to the of his in Bosnia and to up on the in the of The last of the shows the through the narrative of appears to be for the of his old for some of his younger self was to earlier in the or had to the and this of would a the and of the a for the narrative of the world to the war. it would also an to the Stanišić's narrator is an that does not the of The narrative and even the of this of course, from a long list of authors who in what has in The of the narrative and only the of The that was to of to the that it has in the at the site where the war for the The finds at the of – or story that is not by the – to that could the world that has in that one can in some of while the are – would be at And in of this of the in the of Stanišić is not to up on its political of in the that both its existence and to the perspective of its narrator short of explaining the aesthetic and political that are at play in The In fact, we argue that – or what appears as a of things – the of the aesthetic and political The aesthetic intervention lies in with the of and the narrator's perspective as to in the political and of the historical subject by the war. And as a political an of the of this historical subject to the seemingly course of history and to change its In other from the of to the war in fact the former historical subject of its it to a life of to the over which it has The Gramophone this process of by which history into a mythical state of nature. is the that and the world of not the other way the by the war does not the narrator to in the the he a of a in a story of rather peculiar turn of phrase that Stanišić in the of his a answer to this of and its in peripheral of the in the – an the of in the Bosnian – takes place at a location Stanišić as The expression as in the German text – – as it does in is because the in both is a of an expression in Stanišić's first the as is often in the to a location and that even an make it In one could such a place as ‘in the of or, and most for as a – a peripheral site if there was The common of the is one a location to on and to a place that is the same as a that also appears in Stanišić's is attention because they how The Gramophone the periphery and this peripheral with the of a of one that to a rather than its or The is both a for and an of to in the – in the in which the narrator is told about the – about Stanišić's of the expression into Stanišić what the of the expression in a place outside of The is to be to its end on the that lies the back of who is to the of the is thus in this German and in the that the phrase the and critical it had in the which the is – more the which Višegrad is and impossible to – are by the of is a world in which it is to the of or in a world in which one can of a force capable of Stanišić's is on the that in this peripheral is to his and that these the to For this is, in fact, the only of in the and its not from but from very a historical – the of Yugoslavia and its during is thus not only to the particular political of but the existence of this political is the of for it to it is that, in of the of Yugoslavia and the political to the alleged he from the of his in the I a who could make things – – one reads throughout the Stanišić's of the is as it to its not solely the but also the which thus into and of in the past the of for are is the moment of that as an for writing. While this Stanišić's with the of of the the of Stanišić's is exactly to be more than an expression of to use The Gramophone, in fact, the question of how to the of which the form is to be an Stanišić to through in seemingly and the lies in the of a political and historical that to the narrator's even capable of in a and in that this the same at Thus, in to the first moment of the – which appears to a particular to as a political intervention – the second moment is a with the very of to or the is in this that Stanišić's of the More specifically, he not only the work of but also the work that some or political within in The Gramophone, is to work like a in the that the of a a in which the of the political work is not to giving in to the laws of historical – in the this giving in to the as the stereotype has it – or for an outside it be of or aesthetic nature. where does one turn to these the back of a to the of the out to its in the Stanišić plays on well-known of and German on the Western in the years of to these from both would in land during an and and play an The of this and is the of when are to in turn out The that the Bosnian in the course of the with the that the to be are when the declares the and Bosnian from the – by Before the Bosnian is to play a one which they The appears the their and play the of the to a In the of this is a that to a more the of these is the Bosnian and who this story with the narrator and and a Bosnian his the name of the of the in of a in which they to play and on which the of their and Bosnian – feet – something rather the of the or in other they the who the of the to this the site that is peripheral in some place as the at the core in an alternative of – one on the of some state of rather than on some mythic to what we had in The to the only it a of not by inheritance, descent, or circumstances of birth but by and for the – an and an active historical subject to itself from at the appears as the laws of