ABSTRACT
The Bulgarian historical experience in imagining and self-evaluating national space serves as the basis for the formulation of a model of the spatial layers of the imagined space. Both ‘high’ and ‘low’ spheres of critical geopolitics have been attributed to four types of engagement concerning separate spatial layers and sublayers: strong, moderate, insignificant, and, in some cases, a complete lack of engagement.
The model encompasses three conditionally separated layers of the national spatial consciousness, which are further internally divided. However, discrete and rigid boundaries do not exist between them. The point of reference for the model is the territory of the modern Bulgarian state, defined as the possessed space. The second layer concerns the ethnogeopolitical neighbourhood, which is highly variable over time. For the most part, it covers the lost (in the physical and political sense) lands, perceived in a way which is determined by the prevailing ethnocentric discourse. Here, there are also territories claimed as Bulgarian by some stakeholders from domestic public life. Towards others (those designated as the lost lands of external autochthonic communities), the Bulgarian state applies a specific policy which focuses mainly on ethnic diasporas and cultural heritage. In the third spatial layer of imagined national space, two subtypes are distinguished. The first is represented by the relict spaces of remote ancestors, which, among others, consists of (proto-)Bulgarian traces in Eastern Europe, the Volga-Ural region, and Italy. The second delineated subtype is more fluid and has (almost) unlimited geographic boundaries. It covers the parahistorical Bulgarian spaces and places which became the subject of active interest in popular geopolitics after the fall of communism.
