BOOK REVIEW Post-Ottoman Topologies: The Presence of the Past in the Era of the Nation-State (original) (raw)
CHIODI LUISA, Bad Memories. Sites, symbols and narrations of the wars in the Balkans
2008
For decades, World War II has been commemorated throughout Europe so as to prevent the return of war, and the European integration process was launched to ensure a lasting peace. After the collapse of communist regimes, this political project suffered a dramatic setback with the dissolution of Yugoslavia. Wiping out the illusion that war, and genocide could never happen again in Europe, the breakup of Yugoslavia showed how the very memory of violence can be used to prepare the ground for a new carnage. This volume collects the speakers’ contributions to the conference organised by Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso to reflect upon memory politics moving from the paradigmatic case of today’s Balkans.
Colloquia Humanistica 11, 2021
This presentation reviews a recent volume in the field of memory studies, focusing on Balkan historical experiences and perspectives, edited by Naum Trajanovski (PhD in sociology), Petar Todorov (PhD in history, Institute of National History in Skopje), Biljana Volchevska (NGO programme coordinator and PhD candidate in philosophy) and Ljupčo S. Risteski (professor at the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology in Skopje). The volume was published in 2021 by the civil peace organisation Forum Ziviler Friedensdienst, Skopje branch, and researched within the framework of a project aimed at creating a platform for the collaboration of academic workers during the pandemic, in 2020. In 12 texts, the authors explore regional and local conflicts and reconciliation processes in Southeast Europe. The common characteristic of all the texts in the publication is the prevailing and almost didactically positioned awareness of epistemic problems in memory studies and historiography – a cohesive aspect of the volume that continuously attracted my attention...
Linguistic Landscape. An international journal
The Burden of Traumascapes is a powerful testimony of suffering for those affected by the inter-ethnic tensions which intensified after the breakup of Yugoslavia (1991-1992) and the Bosnian War (1992-1995). It is a beautifully written yet daunting interdisciplinary study about the persistence of war through discourses of remembering, which find expression in physical, virtual, and personal spaces as they are materialized and experienced both in contemporary landscapes of Bosnia-Herzegovina and beyond. The book persuasively illuminates the burdens piercing the traumascapes and reminds us that once war commences, it becomes impossible to bring it to a halt. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, once the language of hate has been released, no side could ever claim victory despite the signed peace accords. As of today, the side-effects and consequences of violence belong to everyday affairs: children of victims and perpetrators befriend modes of hatred against the ethnic 'Other'; the deceased risk never finding a dignified burial; peace never reigns among families of the dead and disappeared. Firmly locating the discussion on memory, remembering, and trauma in (critical) discourse studies and semiotic landscapes, Kosatica sets the scene of the book with a photographic essay bringing to life sites of trauma. One of these sites is represented by a sculpture called Nermin Come Back in Sarajevo, dedicated to a story of a father and son buried in a mass grave near Srebrenica. The sculpture is one among many examples in which discourses of remembering find expression. By asking what we are left with when war is (officially) over, Kosatica unpacks the ways in which trauma travels in the landscapes of Bosnia-Herzegovina, shattered by centuries of strife and bloodshed. For this, she shifts from individual experiences of war memories to explorations of trauma streaming into collective remembrance. She deploys a broad range of analytical techniques to explore how the inter-ethnic struggles among three major ethnic groups in the Balkans lead to competing ideologies and relations of power and find expression in graffscapes, hateful online comments in digital sites, living memorials, and life stories of the Bosnian diaspora in Switzerland. Altogether, offering insights into a multidimensional nature of discourses of remembering, the chapters provide a strong argument as to how what is said
"Bosnia and Herzegovina and XXI century"_Sabahudin Hadzialic._2014.pdf
Džemal Sokolović, Norway November, 2014 Cry of the human Once, not so long ago, we were taught that the nation is a historical creation occurred at a certain stage of social development and that at a certain stage will disappear. It was a sort of some kind of Marxist definition of the nation that were our teachers held into as sacred, while today, however, the greatest sacrilege is to try to mention that there is any opinion of that kind. If you're wondering WHY it happened, and the answer you have at accursed Marx who said that people's consciousness does not determine social being, but conversely, that the circumstances in which we live determines our consciousness. It is quite clear to Sabahudin Hadžialić, but he asks himself in his essays HOW IT HAPPENED – OR HOW IT HAPPENS? Of course, any at all serious man, the one within the intellectual mission, should have to ask himself that. But the question is when and who will ask that publicly? Sabahudin Hadžialić dared to ask himself, i.e. us, at the beginning of the third millennium, or the 21st century. Due to the size and selection of topics those are still reviews, but in a form of the treatment and the style of writing, his reviews take on characteristics of mini essays, and the essays are publications between journalism and science, closest to the art world. Mini-essays published in Eurasia review have genuine author's signature, a personality which is particularly reflected in the fact that these essays with an unusual inner dramaturgy. There are two characters in most of the essays presented: Student and Professor. Author somehow himself, his artistic position, identifies more with the student - because the student is the one who asks questions. A professor, who had taught him one thing and doing nowadays something totally differently, is trying to justify that within his professor’s kind of manner. The professor is actually the author's alter ego, student’s loyal friend or assistant, which should help him to realize that from he moved from one “I” to a different “I” or “Me”. In an article titled" BEGGARS OF THE MIND, WE, BY OURSELVES" his calls his professor "the alter ego of my suicide" and in that way introduces a question of identity, ie, that he, as the same person, is not identical to himself (people forget that they are getting old and becoming even wiser), or how we are all (or the vast majority) overnight took diametrically opposed views. How can the same teacher who taught us one thing, today is teaching our children something else, quite the opposite thing. The author does not hide his nostalgia. But his nostalgia is not the so-called "Yugoslavia nostalgia" which has been used to disqualify all the critics of society organized anarchy (author’s Bosnia and Herzegovina's patriotism cannot put not in one moment in question at all), but the nostalgia of middle-class social groups that should be, in any developed society, a measure of social maturity and balance. He, in short essay referred to as "I AM GOING INTO THE NIGHT" compares his father (a teacher/professor) when he was forty and himself when he turned forty years old. His father could go on holiday to France, made a house by the sea and always had a rich table of food. He can now go to France only if he is invited him and pay him everything, at the sea he goes into his father's house a food table is "poor rich with basic vitamins." Namely, through the detailed analysis of content of Sabahudin’s essays it may find the idea of such weight that can change the entire contemporary sociological science. He does not develop those ideas, but over them we all should imagine/think about. I would particularly emphasize the following thought from the essay "COLLECTIVENESS OF DIVERSITY or Love thy neighbor." He says: "Today is the scene of the killing of the society and creation of interest groups and not just of any kind, but creation of a group which, closing into its own shell of insanity creates conditions for their own disappearance.” This is a phenomenon with which will soon face our society and our sociology, and God help us, the ethics, and philosophy, theology, economics, political science, and psychology, and so on. Hadžialić, perhaps unconsciously, but with too much right, cries, demands, requires intellectual awakening of social consciousness, and how there is not any, then there's nothing but, then, challenge the premise of the need for "additional amount of time" for ripening. Bosnia at this time simply do not have! And he loves Bosnia and Herzegovina! With the fact of lack of time, and this, his love, everything else falls into the water... Using one aorist as a past continuous time, Hadžialić regurarly, possesses subtle wire coined to convey the same type of thinking, analytical intersections and, as well as the resultant, obtaining the fifth angle of perception of reality. ...So, after all, stands the pain within Hadžialić’s observations and calculations. All he writes is diagnosing the condition of Bosnia and Herzegovina, its more or less conscious man, the establishment of the disease of impotence from its intellectuals, but also criticism of unwillingness for incurring of preliminary conceptual leadership just through mind bodybuilder zoo politikon. This writer does not to accept with such a situation, his critique is sharp and principled, but the blade is always set to the image of thoughts which I often like to spin on the fact that “you do not like the state - you love the country”. Bosnia, as a country, probably nothing ask more than to be loved. The pure love. To, through that, for its inhabitants, and therefore her, be any better ... Boyish naive, full of wormwood bitterness over the fate of Bosnia and Herzegovina, confident in his reasonable, even to such a need, turning, towards cultural community in a broader, geopolitical - world - meaning, with the flagrant call to awakening and awareness, Hadžialić by himself is talking about the manipulation of human souls. Is that too naive? It's not! He is aware of the long past ago, or a missed moment of cult-cultural and intellectual awakening, if you will, even a confrontation with pseudo intellectualism. Does the writer lost and forgot origins? No way! Although it has not been written anywhere, his awareness radiates that this country tips behind the history at least a hundred or so years. Specifically, it is in 1848, in the shadow, of then growing industrial revolution. And, does not have industry. Neither labor nor his awakening, not even labor consciousness. How than will enter with new feudalism in the cultural consciousness of capitalism? Especially without of the mentioned leaders. A phrase did not die that in the revolutionary turmoil intellectuals are the leaders of machines which move forward, and becoming the social ballast after upgrading of the established system. Knows Hadžialić that and on this fact, and should not be, in vain, exhausted in that. But he cries, and offers himself, for the beginning of the start-up. This is his sharp critic of sleeping, of dead or death, without a fight, left aside mind... ... Worth a read, and that means to publish in the name - of despair. Not Hadžialić for no reason wrote: " ANIVOGEZREH DNA AINSOB". And secondly, upside down. But even that does not help. Maybe I am relentless, but it is like this. But, in the whole, good. You see everything, the weakness and the strength and validity, through the innocence and naiveté, with belief in self-protection, just in the passage of his art-work: „Carefree plunging into dreams, dreaming of everyday nightmare of the cruel awakening. In this way it cannot work anymore. Simply put, it cannot … I do not know the answer to the question HOW to overcome this. Maybe you know, dear brave reader? Although, …fragile if the knowledge …. of The Balkan … If this the only thing valuable throughout the book, which of course, is not the only valuable thing, the effort invested in its publishing, is justified. The book is full of incentives, conciliatory, thoughtful texts, with authentic writing style. Even when presenting classic stories, reportages, interviews and reviews about the books of other authors, in the form of his reflection in front of us raise the questions directed towards classical understanding that he always asks questions. What about the answers? They are also in us, in addition to responses emphasized in his writing.