The idea on vampire as a warning to the alive

• Main Author: Pavlović Aleksandar
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Institute of Serbian Culture Priština, Leposavić 2010-01-01
• Series: Baština
• Online Access: https://scindeks-clanci.ceon.rs/data/pdf/0353-9008/2010/0353-90081028251P.pdf

The theme of the author's paper is the phenomenon of vampires, which was written down either with Serbs or with the whole population in the area of former Yugoslavia. The author takes as an initial step the ethnographic material which is connected with the beliefs in vampires gathered in the area of Kosovo and Metohia, and takes into consideration the material brought by Tatomir Vukanovic and Mina Darmanovic. He gives the overview to the researches of vampirism in the Serbian ethnology and states that up to the several last decades of the 20th century, this field is being dominated by the papers not exceeding the level of description and trying in them to discover the origin and roots of beliefs in vampires hypothetically. Such state lasts to the end of the 70-ties and beginning of the 80-ties of the 20th century, when in the Serbian and Yugoslav ethnology enters the structuralism thanks to the influence of anthropological ideas. This influence managed to express itself very soon also in the field of study of the belief in vampires on account of which there is a study of Dusan Bandic from 1980, in which the phenomenon of approaching to vampirism has been explained in a completely innovative way. Beginning with the basic concepts of structuralistic theory, according to which each myth or belief are nothing but a system of messages by which, as the author says, some of socially important ones are being transferred from generation to generation, and Bandic reveals the unperceived functions and significance beliefs in vampires up to that time. Bandic perceives such beliefs appear as a religious form through which the members of social community are communicating among themselves informing to each other an important message, this is a warning that each individual who deviates from the socially accepted norms of behavior will end up in such a way he will become a vampire after death in a way that he will be killed by his near relatives in a most brutal way as a vampire. Observed by the aspect of ethnographic material being brought by T. Vukanovic and M. Darmanovic, it is shown that Bandic's communicative approach is completely relevant with the belief in vampires in Kosovo and Metohia, either with Serbs or with Albanians. It is possible to say the vampirism is appearing there as a medium which, in the absence of the institutional mechanisms, serves as a so called instrument by which the collectivity regulates its relation toward socially 'dangerous' that is, aberrant individuals who are threatening to damage a normal functioning of the community by their behaviour. .