engleski

When the Island Fails to Perceive Its Own East…

Due to its geographic specificities, the island perspective of space is different from the mainland one. It presents a double challenge due to island’s geographic specificity and perception of territoriality, which has always been questioned and inconsistent. Hvar is frequently described as "the sunniest Croatian island", "the heart of the Mediterranean" and "the Croatian Madeira", but these statements only refer to the western part of the island. Its eastern, rocky part is not considered as “Mediterranean” and its inhabitants are stereotyped as island highlanders, often as non-islanders. It carries the historical administrative name Plame and no permanent settlements existed here before the 14th century. From the 15th to the 18th century, when the settlers from the existing island towns and from the inland formed settlements under direction of the Republic of Venice and its political and legal systems that offered different privileges to settlers and old inhabitants, it became a space for the construction of Otherness. A set of assumptions about Others and space of the Other was created that can be traced back 500 years in time. A complex system of boundaries was constructed, imaginary, rather than physical. Laying of boundaries was based on the mental division of one’s own space and the space of the Other (Said, 1979) drawn from the point of view of the settlement and its differentiation from Others and their space, and on avoiding immediate neighborhood. Plame, established and defined by the Statute of the Hvar Medieval commune, ceased to exist in administrative and legal terms, but remains very alive in the island imagery, stereotypes and cartography of Otherness.

island/mainland; territoriality; Hvar; space of the Other; imaginary; boundaries

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