The post-Yugoslav Bosnia-Herzegovina is a barely functioning entity that is only nominally a state. Walking the streets of Bosnia's capital Sarajevo I am always amazed at how ethnically unmarked the city has become. The only symbol of Bosnia-Herzegovina as a state is a bland flag (blue background with a yellow triangle framed by EU stars) whose symbols have no resonance among the local population since the flag was imposed by the European Union's High Representative due to the inability of the local politicians to agree on a common symbol. Unlike nation-state capitals--whose landscapes are usually peppered with numerous historical monuments that retell the national narrative--Sarajevo has no such prominent monuments. Besides the Communist-era monuments (such as the Eternal Flame commemorating the Partisan liberation of Sarajevo from the Germans) and white gravestones that appear intermittently throughout the city and serve as silent reminders of the recent war, the capital has no imposing monuments that retell a Bosnian national narrative. This is because, there is no Bosnian national narrative, and consequently, no Bosnian nation-state.
49% of Bosnia's territory is taken up by Republika Srpska (trans: Serb Republic), an entity that has almost all the trappings of an independent state: its own police force, parliament and prime minister. The entity is a fossil from the war as it represents the territorial gains (gains forever legitimized by ethnic cleansing) of the Bosnian Serb army during the war. Even though it is nominally participating in the functioning of the Bosnian state, Republika Srpska does not recognize the legitimacy of the Bosnian state, arguing that the referendum for independence of Bosnia in 1992 was boycotted by the Serb population and as such its admission into the UN was illegitimate. The remaining 51% of the territory is composed of the so-called Bosnjak (read: Muslim)/Croat Federation, which, like Republika Srpska, has all the trappings of an independent state, but whose territory is further divided among the Croats and Muslims. Thus, there is a silent agreement among the nationalist politicians that Croat inhabited parts of the Federation (such as Western Herzegovina and the Herzegovinian capital Mostar) are Croat while non-Croats are minorities in these areas. On the other hand, Muslim inhabited parts of Federation (including Sarajevo) are silently accepted as "Muslim." Thus, the administrative division of the country reflects the ethnic division which, rather than being resolved, was fossilized and cemented by the Dayton Peace Accords.
As a results of this ethnic polarization and a lack of any unified national narrative, individuals are reduced daily to their "ethnic identity." Any interaction they have with "the state", their local authorities, or the outside world, reminds them that they are Serb, or Croat or Bosnjak. Their access to the most basic societal resources--such as jobs, pensions, etc--is channeled through their ethnic belonging, whether they voluntarily identify themselves as such or not. In being reminded of their identity, the individuals are also reminded of what the other side has done to them in the recent war. Daily news are full of announcements of events commemorating battles, genocides, massacres, etc. These local monuments and commemorations, all of which narrate mutually exclusive versions of the recent war, make it impossible to have any unified national narrative which would be visible on the streets of Sarajevo.
To understand how these irreconcilable versions of the past strand individuals into narratives from which they cannot escape and which influence their everyday choices, you just need to talk to individuals whose ethnic identity has been deemed "ambiguous" or "abnormal" by the predominance of the three official ethnic identities. My cousin in Mostar is a Croat who was a member of the Croatian army (HVO) battling the Muslims on the East side, but who also, in the midst of the war married a Muslim woman whom he had started seeing before the war. Being from a very Catholic Western Herzegovinian family, my cousin's relationship threatened to sever his ties to his family. His girlfriend's parents, a traditional Muslim family, also protested their "abnormal" relationship. In the midst of the war, my cousin--as an HVO soldier--hid his future father in law from HVO raids on West side of the city, and helped his girlfriend escape to safety of Germany. They are married now and have two wonderful children. It is interesting that as soon as I asked him about his wife, he went on to tell me that he is a mixed marriage, emphasizing that he was one of the few "normal" people left in the city. "I have stayed normal," he told me over coffee leaning over, "it is the city that has become abnormal." This was his response to the overwhelming power of nationalism--as it is entrenched in Bosnia's institutions and daily life--to hush what it sees as different, branding it abnormal, something that needs to be cleansed from the societal body. The hushing power of nationalism became once more evident to me after I asked my cousin to record our interview: "No, I am not sure. I don't know how it will be used," he said, leaning across the table, whispering in my ear.
The story of my cousin is just one of many stories of my unsuccessful attempts to get "mixed" marriage couples to talk to me. Their reactions to my requests--despite my promise to safeguard their anonymity--reveal a fear of being outed as "abnormal" as unacceptable. This realization has been one of the most depressing conclusions of my research as it shows the overwhelming power of nationalism to silence any alternative which it sees as a threat to its proselytizing mission. The white graves that pepper Sarajevo's main promenade, its parks, and its surrounding hills, are reminders that the silencing power of nationalism is often murderous.
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11 comments:
I think problems is that people in Mostar and other regions of ex-Yugoslavia in general, have too much time on their hands to think about shit like that. Everyone is talking about some conspiracy theories and think someone is ought to get them or some crazy shit like that.
What they should be focusing on is to start rebuilding of what's little left of Bosnia and Herzegovina so they wouldn't have time to think about trivial stuff like that.
After the WWII we had mandatory and voluntary "work actions" (radne akcije) which help moral and infrastructure of Yugoslavia tremendously. This time we have bunch of paranoid, lazy people that got too much time on their hands.
This is an excellent post. I know my citations seem tiresome and pretentious (especially since I am not an intellectual like you) but Chaterjee has an excellent chapter on the manner in which the modern state enforced static, unchanging ethnic identities through its disciplinary institutions and their tendancies toward categorization.
Unfortunatley, I think this way of thinking isn't going out of style any time soon. Lets face it, despite all of this talk of how identities are being subverted, ect. its obvious people are still incredibly married to their identities. Even if nationalism fades away, it will be something else. Very few people really believe in cosmopolitan world in which national, religious differences become irrelevant.
Even a large portion of the left is guilty of this, I'd hate to say. "Multiculturalism" is very often not defined as the exchange between cultures, or the sharing of space or society but precisely its opposite - multiculturalism is the right to a seperate, hermetic, culture or life-world. There is less emphasis upon being what your cousin refferred to as "normal" - taken as immune to national and religious sentiment - to doing away with secularism and pluralism as the standard, that which is "normal," and that which other communities deviate. Thus you have Western leftists supporting nonsense such as the implementation of Sha'ria law for Muslim communities in Europe.
What we so often refer to as "cosmopolitan" others believe to be just another example of liberal, enlightenment discourse and its norms. In Eastern and Western Europe, I think everyone is less interested in sharing a society, or engaging in the construction of an ideal society as they are, as Hanif Kureishi put it (paraphrasing), getting society to change according to your community.
Pug
This is a great post, and it reminds me yet again that the historians and others who think we've entered a "post-national" age are insanely deluded. (Meaning that Antoinette Burton ought to read this.)
first, of all, in response to moody's comment, how trivial is your identity after a conflict in which it became the utmost of importance? i agree that if people had less time to think about it, it would help, but that goes in to re-establishing the economic opportunities that could allow for people here to have jobs and opportunities that many people elsewhere take for granted. but it is most definitely not trivial.
and fedja, you and your narratives hehehe. really liked that post, one thing; you suggest that a national narrative would help bring people together and create a space for people who do not fit in these restricting constructs. but in order to arrive at any sense of a national narrative without, in this situation, would mean minimizing the pluralism of the narratives present, so whose story would that actually be, and who would buy into that because what may then arise is a narrative that is disjointed with the entire population.
Whether you feel like it's ultimately successful or not, at least your work matters, a statement that I'm becoming less and less convinced applies to my own.
keep fighting the good fight,
j
what is the art scene's response to the feeling of dysnationalism? it seems like a statue, or monument, representing the "normal" identity of which your cousin speaks is in order. art (and literature- who's writing about this?) has a way of preceding greater social change. how about you do another dissertation on the side about this?
Ms. Shley,
In all seriousness there was a bronze statue of Bruce Lee in Mostar (is it still there, Fedja?), and I think part of the reasoning for erecting it was that it would be uncontraversial to all ethnicities.
Here is a link:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4474316.stm
"We will always be Muslims, Serbs, and Croats... But one thing we will have in common is Bruce Lee."
brilliant!
anonymous: having a national narrative does not necessarily mean ignoring the plurality of the narratives present. Look at the United States. The South (and pug you can back me up on this) still has a very vibrant narrative of what the North did to it during the Reconstruction era (not necessarily a false one, but one that diverges sharply from many history textbooks). But in the US, all Americans--regardless of their political affiliation, or their regional belonging--have reached a basic consensus: that the United States of America should EXIST. And American nationalism is vague enough and crafty enough to include many seemingly divergent strands of its past into one unifying narrative ("to disagree is to be American" narrative). In Bosnia, we don't have this basic consensus because none of the sides were militarily defeated and the status quo was perserved by the accords. Contrast this with the complete annihilation of the Confederate idea by the Union.
And pug and shley: the statue of Bruce Lee has regrettably been removed from the park due to vandalism. It turns out that the day after his statue was put up, someone broke off his famous nunchucks. But they say he is being "repaired" and will be brought back and will have security protection 24/7 in the park!
An interesting sidenote to the Bruce Lee thing is that it is a very generational memory. It belongs to my brother's generation, and maybe a bit to mine, but I may have been too young. I remember us going to the cinemas on Sundays to watch Bruce Lee films and then walking through the park (the same park where the statue was erected) and replaying some of the scenes of the movie. It is interesting that the statue was put up with people from Mostar all of whom are roughly my brother's age. For them, Bruce Lee is one of the last positive experiences prior to the war. The last residue of the life before.
fedja, you made an interesting contradiction. first you wrote: "The South still has a very vibrant narrative of what the North did to it during the Reconstruction era," then you referred to, "the complete annihilation of the Confederate idea by the Union."
true, the confederates were militarily squashed, but the confederate idea was preserved like pig's feet. complete annihilation, as you call it, was really more like a surrender out of necessity, followed by over a hundred years of identity crises, poverty, civil rights successes and defeats, etc. i would say that the narrative of how reconstruction effected the south (and north, midwest, west, etc.) is a direct descendent of both confederate and union ideas. the confederacy ceased to exist, but it's idea lived on, transformed into one of victimhood, injustice, white supremacy, southern pride, etc.
it's not to say that the south would or could rise again, but that initial act of secession sure did set a tone for how america would define itself. today our regionalism is played out in professional sports, branded on our driver's licenses, and scrutinized when making a decision about the presidential candidate. the fact that obama wishes to unify the states once again is evidence of their prolonged disunity, of which the effects of the Secession are but one element, albeit complex.
Ashley, you are absolutely right in that the Southern idea was preserved, lived on, and transformed the very identity of America. I meant to say that it was military defeated. Bosnia's problems is not that it has many narratives, but that these cannot be reconciled into even a semblance of unifying narrative, or at least that their polarizing effect can be neutralized by some kind of overarching nationalism.
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