Naming/Taming the Enemy: Balkan Oral Tradition and the Formation of ‘the Turk’ as the Political Enemy

Abstract

The article approaches the question of political views promoted by oral tradition through Carl Schmitt’s notion of politics as the distinction between friend and enemy. It focuses on four versions of “Perović Batrić”, a comparatively short Montenegrin song with a typical subject of blood revenge, documented during the first half of the nineteenth century in Serbia, Montenegro and Herzegovina. It is demonstated that the only version documented without any impact of the ruling Montenegrin Petrović family from Cetinje displays explicit antagonism between the Montenegrin and Herzegovinian Orthodox Christian tribes and has no explicit antiturkish sentiment. In addition, two other versions written down from Montenegrin singers influenced by Cetinje as the political centre show the consolidation of political perspective and emphasize the hostilities between the Montenegrins and the local Turks. True political character of the enemy in the Schmittian sense, it is argued, is finally recognized only in the version of “Perović Batrić” edited by the Montenegrin bishop-prince Petar Petrović Njegoš II. In this song, the hostility towards Batrić’s adversary Osman follows not from his tribal conformity or his distinctive personality, but from his “Turkishness” as such. It is therefore argued that this recognition of the specifically political character of the enemy occurred under the increasing influence of Cetinje (as the political centre) on the representation of the oral tradition and that nationalistic elements in oral tradition mainly became associated with it, and inserted into it, during the process of publication and canonization of the oral tradition in the first half of the nineteenth century