Reflections of the Anti-Occidentalism Idea in Serbian Cultural Texts of the 20th Century
Reflections of the Anti-Occidentalism Idea in Serbian Cultural Texts of the 20th Century

Summary/Abstract: The article presents the most representative cultural texts and opinions of Serbian intellectuals of the 20th century that formed the anti-Occidentalism trend (and which were partly based on earlier foundations). The article focuses on the mid-war period and the opinions that strengthen the antithesis of Serbia – (Slavia) – Europe, which were mostly rooted in a version of Russian Slavophile thought. It juxtaposes the basic topos of Europe (the messianic and missionary version of Europe) as “the rotten West” with the concepts of Serbian organicists. Clear anti-European and anti-Western reflections can be found in many contemporary attempts to redefine the native tradition, as well as in the more modern, updated opinions of Serbian intellectuals active at the end of the 1990s. In many of these debates, this tradition is seen as “un-European”, as being a synthesis of cultural motifs of the East and the West, or as emanating from the Pan-Slavonic idea.

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