New Dawn

On Trump's likely impact in the Balkans, and why I'll be writing about the region a bit differently from now on

I was recently commissioned to write two pieces about Serbia by two of my favorite editors at two of my favorite publications (one for which I’ve not yet written). These are places where every writer in the world wants to see their writing published, the kind that run consistently excellent work, confer immediate status and opportunities upon their contributors, and pay well in the process. So without thinking about it much, I agreed to write both pieces. But once I sat down to work on them, I realized I couldn’t do it. This wasn’t writer’s block; it was a different kind of gut-level refusal. I knew exactly what it was about: both pieces would have required that I mine my personal life in Serbia, and specifically, the relationship I had with Balkanist’s co-founder, a once-prominent activist and political operator. Both pieces would have required that I draw on that relationship and write about some details of our life together, and how that life intersected with dramatic political changes in the country. And I found that I simply could not do it. I wish that I could tell you (and my editors) that my inability to write these pieces was rooted in some ethical objection, i.e. that I had decided that it was wrong for me, as a Westerner, to “center myself” in a story about the Balkans. But I no longer subscribe to that line of thinking, which flourishes among the mediocre and insecure; I have read far too much diaspora slop literature (this probably deserves a separate post) and subtle nationalist propaganda repackaged to appeal to clueless Western liberals.