Cultural Intimacy and Subversive Disorder: The Politics of Romance in the Republic of Macedonia (Critical ENGAGEMENTS WITH CULTURAL Intimacy) (Report‪)‬

In his seminal 1985 ethnographic work, The Poetics of Manhood: Contest and Identity in a Cretan Mountain Village, Michael Herzfeld describes how shepherds who steal sheep on the Greek island of Crete tackle state officials. In particular, Cretan shepherds invite policemen over, treat them to a meal of the stolen meat, and inform them afterwards that they have consumed what would have been evidence of the shepherds' lawbreaking. For their part, policemen are happy to be treated to some of the stolen meat and find it convenient not to probe further into the matter. By eating all the evidence, they cannot hold anyone accountable for the crime of stealing, and can eagerly excuse themselves from their duties as law enforcement officials. This is how policemen connive at sheep theft, letting the violation of state law unpunished and leaving room for disorder, namely the perpetuation of the practice of raiding sheep flocks, on Crete. Such disorder is premised on an implicit understanding between the sheep thieves and the policemen that overlooking the violation of legal norms is beneficial to both parties involved: the former can go about their business of raiding while the latter can enjoy home-cooked meat dishes. At the same time, and to the detriment of state law enforcement, connivance at sheep theft is an expression of loyalty to national ideals, such as pride and defiance of authority, and also contributes to the promotion of an image of harmony to non-Greek outsiders who might take interest in the workings of the Greek nation-state. To throw light on the affectations of state order, Herzfeld in later work (1997) develops the notion of "cultural intimacy," or the "collective space" (1997:x), "the recognition of those aspects of a cultural identity that are considered a source of external embarrassment but that nevertheless provide insiders with their assurance of common sociality, the familiarity with the bases of power that may at one moment assure the disenfranchised a degree of creative irreverence and at the next moment reinforce the effectiveness of intimidation" (1997:3). In this article, I use the notion of "cultural intimacy" as an analytical tool to examine and build on the argument Herzfeld makes about the state in The Poetics of Manhood. In particular, I am interested in the proposed theoretical understanding of the state as the product of a dialectical relationship between state officials, who can secretly undermine the rules of the state (and, paradoxically, present an image of order to non-Greek outsiders) on the one hand, and the citizens with whom officials interact on the other. For Herzfeld, an understanding of the state as a field of knowledge needs to account not only for instances when state actors enforce official rules, but also for instances when state actors secretly allow the violation of official rules and accept disorder, thus leaving room for cultural intimacy (also see Herzfeld 2005).