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The proposed article reveals how the very deportation of Jews from Macedonia in March 1943 is intertwined and strongly depends on the ideas and memory in the two neighboring countries - the Republic of Bulgaria and the Republic of North Macedonia - for the period of 1941-1944, the Holocaust itself, the subsequent time of communist rule, and the transition period after late 1980s and the beginning of 1990s. It shows how a peculiar beginning of the entry of the problem of the deportation of the Jews into the diplomatic quarrel along the Sofia-Skopje axis appeared in 1998. The following first decade of the new 21st century was distinguished by the strong and tangible presence of various Jewish worlds and narratives about the Jews of Macedonia and the old borders of Bulgaria during the Second World War. As a result the narratives about the deportation of Macedonian Jews and the salvation of Bulgarian ones fight each other. In recent years the international Jewish community, more often indirectly than directly, has played an important role in rounding, smoothing and refining both positions - the Bulgarian and the Macedonian one – with necessary corrections in both narratives. Author(s): Stefan Detchev Title (English): Deportations from Macedonia and their Place in Bulgarian-Macedonian Relationships Journal Reference: Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture, Vol. 20, No. 1-2 (2023). Publisher: Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities - Skopje Page Range: 92-103 Page Count: 12 Citation (English): Stefan Detchev, "Deportations from Macedonia and their Place in Bulgarian-Macedonian Relationships,” Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture, Vol. 20, No. 1-2 (2023): 92-103.

In the context of the philosophical literature on multiculturalism, I argue in this article that models of cultural identity based entirely on the nonvoluntary possession of a set of cultural characteristics are seriously incomplete. In particular, such models cannot address the need, among some groups, to reconstruct, invent and imagine alternative positive identities as a result of historical injustice, and to fill in the content of ‘culture’ accordingly. As an illustrative case, I survey processes of identity construction among ‘Dalits’, members of former ‘untouchable’ and other lower caste communities in India, with a focus on the role of historical consciousness and existing power relations in the imagination of Dalit culture. Dalit strategies of identity negotiation reveal the understandable need, on the part of the members of this community in progress, to produce a cultural identity that makes sense, psychologically and politically, given who they cannot imagine themselves to be, due to the fact of historical oppression. My analysis does not merely target essentialism, nor is it meant to be deconstructive of identity claims. Rather, I highlight select elements within the negotiation of Dalit identity to illustrate (1) the relevance of real historical relations of discrimination and inequality to the construction of culture; (2) the equivocal character of ‘choice’ within this process; and (3) the emancipatory possibilities provided by imagined narratives of cultural selfhood. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]