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Lecture
Balkan perspectives
On ?? February, the French Cultural Center organized a lecture held by the editors-in-chief of “Courier de Balkans”, Jean Arnos Derains and Lorain Geislain at the Faculty of Law premises in Skopje on “The Balkans: new disintegrations or European integration?”. Direct occasion for organizing the lecture was the publication of the book called “Let us understand the history, the society and the perspectives on the Balkans”, which Arnos Derains and Lorain Geislain published in French. Geislain stated several reasons for publishing the book, among which are their several-year presence on the Balkans, the problems that the Balkans faces and the ignorance of the large number of EU citizens regarding that region, for whom it is a synonym of violence. The main goal for publishing the book is to elaborate on the current political and social conditions on the Balkans, with recommendations that cover the historic, the social and the cultural aspects of the Balkan conditions. At the lecture, the authors of the book said that the Balkans is more an ideological than geographical term and that the term “Balkanization” has been used for the first time when the Ottoman Empery was falling apart. In a modern context, Derains emphasized the paradox of the general omnipresence of the past in these territories and that the ideology based on the past will always cause conflicts in the region.
“Courier de Balkans” is an electronic newspaper on the current events on the Balkans. Its founder and editor-in-chief, Jean Arno Derains, is a graduated historian who lives in the relation Paris – Belgrade; he is also a correspondent for several European media and has so far published the books “To Understand the Balkans”, “Kosovo Year Zero”, “The Balkan Crisis” and “Yugoslav Conflicts from A to Z” (the last one with the co-author Katrin Samari).
T.D.
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