I am beginning to believe that it was the idea of a Greater Serbia which contributed to the destruction of the former Yugoslavia.
Slobodan Milosevic's Greater Serbian vision was derived, seemingly, from the medieval Serbian Empire but with its boundaries re-drawn in a 'creative' way to swallow up as much of modern-day Croatia and Bosnia as possible, as well as all of Montenegro and all of (of course) Kosovo.
The Serbian Empire, meanwhile, began to dissolve after the loss of the Battle of Kosovo Polje to the Ottomans inside a single day in 1389; and hence its reconciliation with Serbia is an important part of that country's national identity. Indeed, on the 600th anniversary of the battle, Milosevic made a speech at its site in which he invoked the spirit of the defeated Serbs, inferring that their qualities as fighters would most likely be needed in the future.
Your author isn't particularly able to comment upon the political reasons for this speech, but I'm interested in how internalised ideas or wishes can accumulate, with the resulting aggregation being what we call 'national consciousness.' That is: in the case of Milosevic, and the ensuing meme which he spread, a Serb is a lesser Serb until and unless Kosovo is returned to Serbian hands.
I have lived in England all my life, but have never felt particularly English. The great symbols which form the national consciousness in this country have always felt alien, and I have been forced to cast the net wider, to other places, in order to find an imaginary land to which I can attach roots; which I can call home. The Queen is a redundant figurehead, whose only purpose is to parrot platitudes to incoming Prime Ministers, the dead of our wars, and to her subjects on Christmas Day.
At school, details of the history which shaped us - Bosworth Field, Hastings, Flanders - left me cold. I could think of nothing worse than having to recite lists of dates of ancient conflicts.
It is the case, then, that I am an ahistorical creature, for whom there is no such thing as England. The narrative which trickles down through the generations is unendingly tedious, and I struggle to be gripped by it, no matter how hard I try.
Furthermore, since August, I've done everything possible to jettison the objects from my own past. They at once sicken me, and shock me, these psychological trinkets whose circularity leads inevitably back to the self who originated them - these photographs, this memory, this heirloom. They appal me with their ordinariness, and I discard them.
It is not so much an effort to ignore history - my own, my country's - but instead there is an urge to rip it from its moorings and let it float or sink as it chooses, for it is not mine. What happened in the Balkans a couple of hundred years ago is fascinating, because I can append to it a narrative which I have never lived through. From Black George to Milosevic, it seems through my 21st-century eyes that the schisms of conflict could never have been any other way. The narrative, of course, is an imaginary one, and far more appealing it is for that.
Yet I, here in England, am detached from everything. Devoid of nationality, and a willing iconoclast of the treasured pointers which could give at least some bearings on an earth which has so many arrows saying 'you are here' that we are at once everywhere and nowhere, I turn about the little filament of the self, and ask why nothing seems to matter any more.
