Kiš (who was of Jewish descent) was piled on by people in the Communist intelligentsia who were ostensibly criticizing him and his literature for being exactly that term and stirring up "fake accusations of nationalism", but when the masks came off in 1988-91 turned out to be exactly the sort of nationalists they called him (and ended up praising people like Milorad Pavić who really were what they seemed on the tin). Kiš's essay has to be situated in that context. When he talks about the "national key" he is calling out the Communist party policy of ethnic parity via rotation as being an eyewash because the apparatchiks are closet people "who see themselves only in others"
The connection with your posts is tenuous and based on pedantry. When I objected to @tptacek's assertion that the meaning of the expression you used is globally unambiguous, I did so on the grounds that not everyone comes from the same cultural milieu and I used my own as an example, mentioning that I'm originally from Yugoslavia.
This provided @selimthegrim with the opportunity to use Danilo Kiš as an alleged example of how the expression was also used in Yugoslavia, not that I can find anything to verify that claim.
Suffice it to say that I don't know anyone from my generation who has even heard this expression, much less used it, and it's certainly not part of the cultural milieu in which my generation grew up.
Like I said, it's just pedantry, and not of the good, informative kind we can see in sibling threads, where the interesting background and nuances of the expression are highlighted for purposes of enlightening the readers. Rather, it's terse, opaque kind of pedantry whose purpose I fail to understand, unless it's to stubbornly double down on the claim that the expression you used is universally unambiguous and instantly recognizable to everyone.
Oh no, sorry, I think I got you wrong. It was actually some "Thomas" who accused me of something. You actually understood my first intention very well. So a little bit confused. But be that as it may, this thread has been taken too far anyway. I apologize for not following the whole thread and accusing you of something false.
