On Names and Power
Imagining Macedonia
by Christopher Deliso
January 4, 2002

IT DOESN'T MATTER WHO IS BEARING THE GIFTS – JUST BEWARE

The longest unresolved diplomatic dispute in the South Balkans, that over the name "Macedonia," has recently returned to the spotlight. Since the final province to break away from Yugoslavia announced itself as the "Republic of Macedonia" ten years ago, the Greeks have been adamant in refusing to recognize this name; the northern province of their country, after all, is also known as Macedonia. Greek economic boycotts and political influence were enough to force the UN to name the new country officially as FYROM – the "Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia." This solution has never enjoyed much support on either side of the border, and various initiatives to resolve the name issue have been sporadic and unsuccessful. Now, however, there is a potential "breakthrough" in the works – yet one which is dangerous on theoretical grounds, and also comes packed full of dubious "bonus offers" for Greece's northern neighbor.

On 11 December, the International Crisis Group (ICG) reported enthusiastically on a proposal for resolving the dispute. The world, according to the ICG, should just recognize the country for what it calls itself- the Republika Makedonija. In other words, the "Republic of Macedonia," in Macedonian transliteration. Lest we forget that this is a Big Idea (unveiled at a press conference, no less), consider the following remarks about the ICG, from a Czech news source:

"Although the ICG is a nongovernmental body and its recommendations carry no legal weight, the institution's board is a list of international heavyweights, including former diplomats, presidents, and prime ministers, and its findings reverberate in official corridors, including in Macedonia."

In other words, the international braintrust went to work, and after untold hours of rumination and cogitation, came up with a "compromise" name – Republika Makedonija. I am actual quite grateful to the ICG for this suggestion. It illustrates perfectly something I have been trying to argue against for a long time; until now I lacked the right example.

THE PROBLEM BEING...

At first, there would seem to be no problem with naming others as they would have themselves be named. After all, isn't this the very essence of cultural tolerance and the rights of national self-determination? In fact, using this principle, I'm sure that the Greeks would be extremely thankful if we were to refer to them as "Hellenes," and their nation as "Hellas" – wouldn't they?

NOMINAL RELATIVISM VS. PRAGMATISM

The answer, of course, is no. While it is undoubtedly more accurate linguistically, and the Greeks take pride in being Hellenes first and foremost, they aren't going to just throw away the name on which all of their tourism, marketing, and export – in short, all of their relations with the rest of the world – depends. The name "Greek" was foisted on them from without (it derives from the Latin graecus), and is therefore a misnomer, a lexical relic of a specific period in the history of European civilization. It is also somewhat derogatory, and not very accurate. Yet this accident of history has endured to become the accepted term for English-speakers (and therefore, for the world). As with human life and history, the life of languages is often messy, violent, and utterly random. Yet the twin histories are inextricably intertwined, propelling and limiting each other at every turn.

THE END OF FREEDOM IN LANGUAGES

Before we get into this, let's explore the type of "solution" offered by the ICG. To follow their logic would mean to, in effect, rename the entire world – in the process violating the sovereignty and rules of every language on the planet. Would we English-speakers be prepared to rename Germany as "Deutschland"? How about "Kartveli" instead of "Georgia"? Indeed, would it not be the utmost sign of respect, to call these peoples as they call themselves?

Cornered, the ICG's apologists will inevitably moan, "oh no, that's taking things too far! Of course it would be ludicrous to rename every country in the world according to its own language – just Macedonia, since it's a special case."

What they would be forced to argue is that Macedonia has such a unique problem that it must require a very novel solution. The underlying assumption here is that the Slavic Macedonians are naοve and childish, since they would eagerly jump at accepting a "winning" proposal, no matter how much it grates against reason. Yet it seems to be working. Initial reactions to the "Republika Makedonija" idea have been largely favorable, with President Trajkovski himself allegedly leaning towards it. The Bush administration also is allegedly pressuring Greek PM Simitis to negotiate.

For all this, no one has yet seen this "solution" for what it is – a clear insult to the intelligence of everyone involved. It is offensive to the Greeks, because transliteration does not rectify their fundamental problem with the name "Republic of Macedonia." It is an insult to the Slavic Macedonians, because it presupposes that they want the name so bad that they will allow not only logic to be trampled, but also themselves to be baby-sat by NATO (more on that later). And it irritates me, even though I have no stake in the matter. Why?

THE DEATH OF LANGUAGE, AND THE DREAM-WORLD OF HISTORY

Calling everyone in the world as they call themselves would mean, first of all, the utter violation of the structure and freedom of every language under the sun. It is also, however, a disavowal of the human history that is inextricably intertwined with each of those languages – and this means the conceptual universe surrounding each name. It would mean forgetting the received history – that messy, disorderly and oftentimes bloody account of how certain proper nouns were forged on the anvil of power. In the case of Macedonia, if the Slavic Macedonians were to receive their language's name (Republika Makedonija), and the Greeks theirs (Makedonia), then who would lay claim to the Macedonia conjured up by history books, artworks and archaeological museums? Because that, my friends, is what is really at stake here. Not territory, but an ethereal and elusive sense of spirit, haunting the land like a baleful yet irresistible ghost.

POWER-SHARING OF NAMES

Partisans on both sides of the Macedonia issue, however, will find they have some unexpected bedfellows. For this Macedonia – the Macedonia of poetry and conquest, of heroism and gold – is just as much the product of the Western intellectual tradition, from the Renaissance to the present day, as it is the property of those who live there today. To the extent that it is a conceptual object, and not just a piece of territory, Macedonia (as it is recognized and imagined) has been partially created, sculpted and shaped by the literary and scholarly works of British, French, German and other thinkers.

This resolves even so far down as a single letter. For though both Greeks and Slavs pronounce the word "Macedonia" with a hard "k," in the English transliteration it is pronounced with a soft "c." Built into the public awareness over a period of hundreds of years, this incorrect pronunciation is ironically today proliferated by both Greeks and Slavs. Most of them use the English-standard pronunciation when speaking with foreigners – out of a desire to not confuse them with too much accuracy.

This is doubly ironic when we consider that those foreigners most likely to use the received (but incorrect) pronunciation are usually the better educated ones. When corrected, they inevitably launch into a response like this: "Makedonia? Isn't it called Macedonia? As in, 'Philip of Macedon?'"

Even at the level of the name, this association is enough to take them back to whatever education they received on the topic – an education that certainly was informed by the post-Renaissance rise of classical scholarship in Western Europe. Macedonia, whatever it may be, has long been in the public domain.

THE SPOKEN WORD: GREEK PARADIGMS

A related example is that of the English adoption of Greek words, a process which began at least 450 years ago, and which has been influenced by two things: phonetic changes in the evolving English language, and academic innovations and trends. I'm using Greek as an example here not so much because of its relation with the Macedonia question, but because it is the foreign language with which I'm most familiar.

Leaving aside the phonetic changes from Middle English to Modern, let's consider one of the academic innovations that fundamentally changed the pronunciation of Greek words in the West. Just think of any of those familiar Greek words – like eureka, Eucharist, Uranus, Zeus, paradigm or psychology – and chances are you wouldn't recognize it if a Greek were to say it today.

The reasons for this divergence transcend merely the natural differences of tongues; they go way back to the 16^th century, and the historical accident of Erasmus, the Dutch scholar who attempted to reconstruct the accents and cadences of the Ancient Greek language. Despite his industry and influence, Erasmus' conjectures have not been definitively proven, and his system is almost completely at odds with the way Greek has been spoken for at least the past 1,500 years. This is not the place, of course, to delve into the intricacies of the Erasmian pronunciation – just to say that we tend to take the words we speak for granted. Yet every language has a very specific "history" in terms of the existence, reason and rationale of its linguistic forms. And this is intimately involved with human history, politics and rhetoric. We cannot investigate the one without stumbling across the other.

YET IS THE PROPOSAL ALREADY JUST AN ARTIFACT?

The "Republika Makedonija" proposal will most likely remain just that, since Greek diplomats are doubtful that the name will fly with their constituents. Yet even if it doesn't go forward, the ICG initiative will go down in history as a sign of the times – that is, as an idea symbolic of the rather antiseptic and superficially rational way in which Western diplomacy is conducted at the turn of the 21^st century. The tacit assumptions inherent to the proposal (some of which we have already pointed out), are unique to our currently predominating worldview, an unblinking, Americanized one, and one that always professes to be seeking parity and justice.

Yet all people, and not just thinktanks and governments, play a part in the greater human drama that decides the fate of language – the most important locus of power. In this light, the ICG has boldly taken the initiative by attempting to forcibly alter the history of the word "Macedonia"; in doing so, the ICG also becomes another of those historical accidents, like Erasmus or Amerigo Vespucci, the influence of which cannot be understood outside of the context of its own time. If not a chapter, the ICG has earned itself at least a sizable footnote in the long and unfinished history of the word "Macedonia."

TILTING AT WINDMILLS

The partisan quality of the debate over the word "Macedonia" has left both sides incapable of addressing the issue, beyond the limitations of "us versus them." Scholars of both Greek and Slavic persuasions construct grand empires of scholarship, attempting to "prove" that the heritage of Macedonia belongs exclusively to their own side. Yet in their zeal to capture a distant past Macedonia for the service of the present one, they let the Macedonia of the future slip away.

What I'm getting at has been succinctly stated in a different medium by Jorge Luis Borges, in his story "Pierre Menard, author of Don Quixote." A master of brevity, notoriously well-read, Borges made the lucid illustration of philosophical themes central to his short stories. In this particular one, the Argentine writer details the efforts of a fictitious writer, Pierre Menard, who attempts to re-imagine Cervantes' masterpiece.

Menard utilizes the novel technique of "deliberate anachronism," by rewriting a central text of a distant era, incompletely, but verbatim. The remarkable nature of this undertaking (and its folly) is at bottom a challenge to the imagination: to rationalize the semantic gulf between Cervantes and Menard, between the 17^th and 20^th century, as seen through the prism of a novel. Menard comes out with a text that is word-for-word the same as the original – a result that invites much wonder and confusion. Borges states:

"To compose Don Quixote at the beginning of the seventeenth century was a reasonable, necessary and perhaps inevitable undertaking; at the beginning of the twentieth century it is almost impossible. It is not in vain that three hundred years have passed, charged with the most complex happenings – among them, to mention only one, that same Don Quixote."

In its very absurdity, Menard's quest is useful for Borges, as a tool for re-imaging literature; he ponders, "this technique would fill the dullest books with adventure. Would not the attributing of The Imitation of Christ to Louis Ferdinand Celine or James Joyce be a sufficient renovation of its tedious spiritual counsels?"

'DELIBERATE ANACHRONISM,' APPLIED TO NATION-STATES

For a successful resolution of the Macedonia crisis, all parties will have to seek out other ways of re-imagining their past, present and future. The difficulty derives not so much from their specific case, but from the fact that all names are by nature poetic, allusive, and vague. Names stir the emotions; they invoke both nostalgia and rancor. And the names of nations, like their flags, serve to rally the population to a common cause – even if (as in Nazi Germany) the cause leads straight over a cliff.

For the names of countries, therefore, there can be no neat and antiseptic solution, no one name that is both descriptive and accurate, rational and concise. And though national names are never expressive of fact, they also cannot avoid being totally saturated with significance, weighed down with the burden of a specific but confused human history, with all its vivid connotations.

And this is why the Macedonia that everyone wants is the Macedonia that no one can have. These groups can claim Makedonia, and perhaps even Republika Makedonija too, but Macedonia is beyond all of them. It is a reality of a different order than any one piece of territory. Yet I doubt this will stop the bureaucrats.

Attempting to find a rational solution for an emotional phenomena, however, invariably satisfies only those paper-strewn bodies (like the UN and EU) that have fled reality for the anonymous safety of an acronym. As for the many civilians of both ethnicities who will go on thinking in their heads that they are Macedonians and nothing else, no ceremonial exchange of names will change their basic orientation, nor challenge them towards the toleration of one another. The solution would be purely cosmetic.

IN ANY CASE...

It is more than ironic that people so allegedly fired up with patriotism and nationalistic pride are arguing not over what they call themselves, but over the what the rest of the world calls them. Why the need for external validation? Because at the end of the day, for those making the highest decisions, nationalistic fervor is just another cynical pretense with which to manipulate the people; a famous name with a tortured and complex history is, after all, most useful as an economic commodity. Which may, in the end, work out as a greater benefit to the prosperity of the Macedonian peoples.

POSTSCRIPT: BONUS OFFERS WITH THE ICG'S PROPOSAL

While this truly deserves a separate article, we cannot leave off without at least a mention of the other hidden surprises Slavic Macedonians would get along with the Republika Makedonija name. First of all, they'd win halfhearted recognition from Greece, which would still be free to use its own preferred name, Ano Makedonia ("Upper Macedonia"). Second of all, they'd get the enforced blessing of a NATO presence through September 2002 – if not longer. Third, they would have to rewrite their elementary school textbooks to give a lot more credit to the Greeks, as regards the history of ancient Macedonia. Finally, they would have the honor of being listed in the UN register under the "R" section, rather than the "M" section. It is left to the reader to judge the relative merits of the deal.