Abstract

Power has given the West the 'legitimate right' to define the Other as 'savage' or 'backward', and therefore bring the enlightment of its 'civilisation' by either exterminating or 'taming' the 'savages' of Africa, Australia and India, or by 'civilising' 'rogue nations' by bombs, which was the common practice throughout the XX century, and is bound to continue into the future. The process by which the West imposes various complexes upon non-western nations has to a great degree been effective. However, these attempts would have been futile without the help of the people who are only too willing to accept the Western notion of the backwardness of their own culture and tradition, and the dire need of having them replaced by 'progressive' Western models and ideas. Cultural colonisation is grounded in the belief that one culture is inferior and has to be annihilated and completely written over by another. When cultural domination is seen as the ultimate power the superior nation can have over another, there is no talk of reciprocal influences between cultures. There are only 'winner cultures' and 'loser cultures'. The same stands true of the current events in the Balkans, which have for decades been described and invented. When the silenced Other finally decides to speak and retell its own experience, it is with a distinct foreign accent