Yugoslav anti-war contention has remained an under-theorised topic almost twenty years after the end of the wars of Yugoslav succession. Rather than focusing on the?ontogenesis? of individual pacifist enterprises, this paper examines the reasons for which Yugoslav anti-war activisms have been marginalised in recent East European sociological scholarship. I argue that a thorough appreciation of these phenomena requires a Yugoslav/regional approach which has not been favoured by post-Yugoslav social science scholars. This article also offers (...) a critical reading of the existing attempts to theorise Yugoslav anti-war activisms. It criticises their failure to draw upon the rich conceptual ap?paratus of social movement theories developed within Western political sociology over the last couple of decades. In spite of the fact that the concept of?social movement? may be contested in the context of post-Yugoslav anti-war engagement on the basis of its quantitative marginality, this should not deter Yugoslav social scientists from applying and refining Anglo-Saxon social movement theories in a culturally sensitive manner. Specific dynamics of anti-war activism occurring within an armed conflict has not been sufficiently studied. This is an important knowledge lacuna where regional sociologists could offer a substantive contribution. jugoslovenski antiratni angazman je ostao nedovoljno teorijski obradjena tema i posle skoro dvadeset godina od kraja ratova za jugoslovensko nasledje. U ovom radu se ne fokusiram na?ontogenezu? individualnih mirovnih poduhvata, vec ispitujem razloge zbog kojih su jugoslovenski antiratni aktivizmi marginalizovani u skorasnjoj istocnoevropskoj socioloskoj literaturi. Tvrdim da razumevanje ovih fenomena zahteva jugoslovenski/regionalni pristup kojem do sada nije bila posvecena adekvatna paznja. Ovaj rad takodje donosi i jedno kriticko citanje postojecih napora da se teorijski pristupi jugoslovenskim antiratnim aktivizmima. Kritikujem propust istrazivaca da se posluze bogatim konceptualnim aparatom razvijenim u proteklih nekoliko decenija u okviru zapadne politicke sociologije. Iako koncept?drustvenog pokreta? moze biti diskutabilan u kontekstu jugoslovenskog antiratnog angazmana u smislu njegove kvantitativne marginalnosti, to ne bi trebalo da spreci primenu anglosaksonskih teorija drustvenih pokreta na kulturoloski senzitivan nacin. Specificna dinamika antiratnog organizovanja za vreme i na prostoru ratnog konflikta nije u dovoljnoj meri istrazena, pa bi ovdasnji istrazivaci na tom polju mogli dati bitan doprinos. (shrink)

This book comprises a selection of William McBride's essays on theory and practice in the former Yugoslavia, 1989 - 1999. It continues the critical assessment of neoliberal globalization from the vantage point of its effects on East-Central and Southern Europe that McBride presented in Philosophical Reflections. Unlike the earlier book, it situates discussions of globalization and neonationalist wars against the backdrop of the history, development, and demise of Praxis Philosophy — the one-time bridge between the progressive forces of former (...) Yugoslavia and various East-West initiatives. (shrink)

The foundations of the narrative about the partisan war in socialist Yugoslavia drew from the familiar tradition of folktales and prompted the moulding of a group of characters who, as a rule, followed a pre-established sequence of events, offering a rather polished image of the People’s Liberation Struggle. This paper will focus on one archetype that found its place in the war myth–the partisan mother. The aim of the paper is to illustrate how the women who experienced the armed conflict (...) in Yugoslavia described women’s wartime engagement. More specifically, it shows the extent of their participation in the promotion of the officially established image of the partisan mother and the aspects in which their narrative reimagined, enriched and challenged the heritage of the People’s Liberation Struggle. (shrink)

After the end of World War II, Yugoslavia and Albania continued the cooperation that had been established during the war. The economic cooperation between the two countries began after the signing of the Friendship and Assistance Agreement in mid-1946. Part of the cooperation were joint ventures between the two countries and one of them was a railway company. The first Albanian railway, Drač-Elbasan, represented the result of Yugoslav-Albanian reconciliation. Its construction began in early 1947 and completed in November the (...) same year. A plan for the Drač-Tirana railway also existed and was to be implemented as a joint project, but due to the crisis of the relations between the two countries, it never materialised. Yugoslavia and Albania discontinued their cooperation after Albania’s acceptance of the Informbureau Resolution in mid-1948. (shrink)

The purpose of the article is to present the outlines of the reception and the influence of Heidegger’s philosophy on the territory of former Yugoslavia. This reception and influence were in their essence co-conditioned by specific political, social and cultural circumstances in the region, which were throughout accompanied by “the syndrome of dehumanization”. The confrontation with Heidegger’s philosophy is therefore co-defined by the profoundly experienced crisis of European humanity. During both world wars the attempt of an overcoming of this (...) crisis of humanity by the means of phenomenological and existentialist philosophy was the main focus of attention. The period after the Second World War is denoted by the linking of Marxism with Heidegger’s attempt to surpass philosophy as metaphysics through the perspective of the history of being; in this context we specifically discuss the Praxis philosophical school and the original philosophical thought of Vanja Sutlić. During the disintegration of Yugoslavia and in the period thereafter, besides the intensive appropriation of Heidegger’s thought through translations and interpretations, which also led to the thorough study of Slavic philosophical terminologies, post-Heideggerian ways of thinking came to the fore, together with the possibility for a new humanization within the wider European and global social framework. (shrink)

One of the most significant shifts in current thinking on war and gender is the recognition that rape in wartime is not a simple by-product of war, but often a planned and targeted policy. For many feminists ‘rape as a weapon of war’ provides a way to articulate the systematic, pervasive, and orchestrated nature of wartime sexual violence that marks it as integral rather than incidental to war. This recognition of rape as a weapon of war has taken on legal (...) significance at the Rwandan and Yugoslav Tribunals where rape has been prosecuted as a crime against humanity and genocide. In this paper, I examine how the Rwanda Tribunal’s record of judgments conceives of rape enacted as an instrument of the genocide. I consider in particular how the Tribunal’s conception of ‘rape as a weapon of war’ shapes what can be known about sexual violence and gender in the Rwandan genocide and what cannot, the categories of victims legally recognised and those that are not, and the questions pursued, and those foreclosed, about the patterns of violence before and during the genocide. (shrink)

In this essay, the author reviews and critically assesses the book Yugoslavia: Peace, War, and Dissolution, authored by Noam Chomsky and edited by Davor Džalto. The author also points to the importance and value of the book for the field of political theory, international relations and Yugoslav studies, examining at the same time particular concepts within the broader context of legal theory and international law.

This paper addresses the representation of violence in the film In the Land of Blood and Honey, which was directed by Angelina Jolie (2011). Internationally hailed, awarded but also hugely criticized, the film purports to be about rape camps where Muslim women were held and assaulted by Bosnian Serb forces during the Bosnian war. However, the film merges the story of rape camps with a story about a (sexual) relationship between an incarcerated Muslim woman and a Serb camp commander. Our (...) paper analyzes the cinematic tools used to tell these two stories, focusing on what is referred to as borrowing, and suggests that Jolie borrowed liberally to tell her story. The article focuses on three types of borrowing, cinematic, literary and experiential, and looks at three visual cinematic tropes obtained from Holocaust movies, Cold War movies, and ex-Yugoslav cinematic productions. It is concluded that the film recycles an already largely discarded narrative of “a history of ethnic hatred” as prime cause of war in the former Yugoslavia. The film’s director thus misses an opportunity to challenge the ethnicization of the region – something many local film directors have already successfully achieved. (shrink)

This paper offers a tentative analysis of some problematic "post-totalitarian" elements that can be found in the processes of establishment of the post-Yugoslav nation-states and have their origin in the time before, during, and after the period of wars and collective crimes. "With a little help" from Arendt, it asks questions about some features of the new post-war communities and their nation-states, such as the following: Why are they based on ideologies of non-responsibility for the past and on (...) some very unpleasant features of the newly established "citizenship" and national identity - producing new exclusions and inventing new techniques of tribal nationalist and racist dehumanization within the framework of a new nation-state's "demographic policies? The analysis is paying special attention to the phenomenon described as an "organized innocence syndrome " - while alluding to Arendt's portrayal of German "organized guilt" under the Nazi-regime and elaborating on her notion of responsibility - a problematic "identity" basis for a nascent state, its citizenship and political institutions in general. To illustrate the phenomenon of organized innocence as a conditioning commonality of all the newly established states, special attention is paid to the post-war case of those called the "erased people" in Slovenia.". (shrink)

The concept of apocalypse is well established in all the major religions of the world, be they Semitic religions or Hinduism. The underlying idea behind the concept in all the religions remains the same, that is, the world will come to an end. The end itself, which has been called the Judgment Day, Day of Resurrection, or the Day of Retribution or Reckoning will be preceded by some signs. It has also been called the day of Apocalypse, the day when (...) the whole world will be destroyed. One of the distinct forms of it is Muslim Apocalypse about which a lot has been written. However, the argument of the present research paper shall be to examine the concept of the Mahdi primarily from the Shi’te Muslim point of view. The premise of the argument is that Shi’te argument or concept of the Mahdi is far more substantial having a solid theoretical foundation than the other perspectives about it. No wonder, therefore, the concept of the Mahdi has manifested itself in literature across cultures and ages. There are so many poets, primarily, Muslim poets who have highlighted this concept in their poetry and thus the research paper shall make an attempt to look at some of those poets and their understanding of it. (shrink)

An absorbing introductory treatment of logic, ranging from classic philosophy to the fundamental building blocks of modern electronics.

One of the important determinants of development during the transition to adulthood is the undertaking of social roles characteristic of adults, also in the area of finishing formal education, which usually coincides with beginning fulltime employment. In the study discussed in this paper, it has been hypothesized that continuing full-time education above the age of 26, a phenomenon rarely observed in Poland, can be considered as an unpunctual event that may be connected with difficulties in the process of identity formation. (...) Relationships between identity dimensions and identity statuses, and age and educational context were analyzed. 693 individuals aged 19-35 took part in the study. The participants attended three types of educational institutions: full-time university studies, part-time university studies, and full-time post-secondary school. Among the students of full-time university studies predictable dependencies, also in respect of highlevels of indicators of identity crisis and a high frequency of diffused identity occurrence, were observed. Such dependencies were not found in the group of full-time post-secondary school students. (shrink)

The Yugoslav war crimes tribunal convictedthree men for their role in the mass rape ofMuslim women during the conflict inBosnia-Hercegovina. That decision is a landmarkin many respects, but primarily for itsdetermination that the rape of Muslim womenamounted to a crime against humanity. Thiscomment provides an overview of the decision,exploring the significance of recognising rapeas a crime against humanity within the contextof other developments in the area of wartimerape and sexual violence. The comment alsoprovides a brief review of the decision (...) inlight of the author's previous scepticism aboutthe capacity for the Tribunal meaningfully toaddress violence against women. The commentconcludes that while many aspects of thedecision are promising, the war crimes trialitself may offer a limiting arena within whichto address wartime rape. (shrink)

The experience of the Yugoslav war and the rise of "irrational" violence in contemporary societies provides the theoretical and political context of this book, ...

Literatura e filosofia, filosofia e literatura, há tensionamentos e algumas vezesressonâncias, outras vezes um movimento de completa crítica e tentativas de separação radical. Pensa-se nos possíveis toques desses saberes e como os mesmos podem se enriquecer com seus limites. As perguntas que movem esse ensaio são: A filosofia passa pela obra de Clarice Lispector? De que forma Clarice promove uma experiência filosófica? Os argumentos são tangenciados pela filosofia francesa de Gilles Deleuze. Clarice Lispector, escritora, contudo, configura em sua obra fabulatória (...) um laboratório imaginativo para o pensamento, e se não pensa pelo conceito, faz filosofia por sua atitude, por expressar, pela literatura, a pergunta filosófica. (shrink)

The series of wars and civil wars in Yugoslavia, thereby dismembered, are seen in this paper as basically European wars, wars through which Europe is constructed and questionned in its very being. Contemporary history has alas confirmed this approach, since the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st centuries have seen right-wing populisms and nationalisms spread throughout the European subcontinent, the partition of Yugoslavia being the pattern repeated. In this sense, the Yugoslav (...) wars are foundational for Europe which is regularly being reconstructed and (re)founded by the reshuffling of its borders to the east. (shrink)

The tradition of international criminal tribunals which started with the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals was returned with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. As a result of the bloody wars in the territory of the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, the Security Council of the United Nations decided to establish the ICTY as an ad hoc tribunal, that was approved by the resolutions 808 and 827. The main purpose of the paper is to highlight the features of (...) the ICTY during its mandate from 1993 to 2017. For the realization of this research are used qualitative methods, based on the bibliography that is related with international criminal law, with special emphasis with the activities of international criminal tribunals. Furthermore, some data are also collected from the credible internet sources, which have valuable information about the procedures of the ICTY and for the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals. The results of the study demonstrate that during its mandate, the ICTY was accompanied with a lot of successes which distinguish it from the other international criminal tribunals. At the same time, the ICTY has also a lot of failures, which have come as a result of various political influences within it. The conclusions of this paper aim to increase knowledge about the activity of the ICTY, by offering important information for its establishment and organs, and for its main successes and failures. (shrink)

Razmatranje problema drzavljanstva i gradjanstva u Srbiji izlozeno u ovom radu, oslanja se na ideju da rezimi drzavljanstva i modeli upravljanja politickim zajednicama reflektuju nacine na koje se konceptualizuju nacija i korpus gradjana. U pitanju je perspektiva iz koje se drzavljanstvo posmatra kao sredstvo kojim se polazna ideja o kongruenciji izmedju drzave i nacije smesta u legalni okvir. Tvrdnja ovog rada je da su razliciti politicki projekti definisanja odnosa izmedju drzave i nacije, u sirem kontekstu jugoslovenskih sukoba i postkonfliktnih razvoja (...) u regionu, proizveli nekonsolidovan rezim drzavljanstva u Srbiji, s nejasnim resenjima u pogledu uspostavljanja zeljene kongruencije izmedju drzave, teritorije i nacije. PR Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 43007 i br. 41004. (shrink)

Drawing on a range of philosophical, anthropological and political theories, Athena Athanasiou offers a new way of thinking about agonistic performativity with its critical connections to national and gender politics and alongside the political intricacies of affectivity, courage and justice. Through an ethnographic account of the urban feminist and antinationalist movement Women in Black of Belgrade during the Yugoslav wars, she shows that we might understand their dissident politics of mourning as a means to refigure political life beyond (...) sovereign accounts of subjectivity and agency. (shrink)

This paper examines self-fashioning in Aleksandar Hemon’s “Everything,” a story about a Sarajevo teenager’s journey through ex-Yugoslavia to the Slovenian town of Murska Sobota. His aim? “[T]o buy a freezer chest for my family” (39). While in transit, the first-person narrator imagines himself a rogue of sorts; the fictional journey he takes, meanwhile, is clearly within the quest tradition. The paper argues that “Everything” is an unruly text because by the end of the story the reader must jettison the conventional (...) reading traditions the quest narrative evokes. What begins as a comic tale about a minor journey opens out, in the story’s final lines, into a story about larger historical concerns, namely, the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. By introducing contemporary history, Hemon points beyond the closed world of his short story, while rejecting the quest pattern he has established. (shrink)

A common theme from certain circles during the Yugoslav wars was that the seceding republics lacked a right to secede, but that if a right were accorded them by the EC or international community, it would have to be granted to the Serbian minorities in these republics, especially in Bosnia and Herzegovina, on pain of inconsistency. This microcosm argument is in fact unsound. On a reasonable conception of a right of self-determination and secession elaborated here, the Republic of (...) Bosnia and Herzegovina enjoyed a right of secession, while Bosnian Serbs did not. Nor did Bosnian Serbs restrict their claim to such a right to territories in which they held a majority; rather, they demanded "secession" for a whole swathe of lands which lacked even a Serb plurality before their brutal "ethnic cleansing". Either voluntarist or ethnicist conceptions of a right of secession might have been construed as supporting the microcosm argument, but both of those are terrible conceptions of the right of self-determination and secession. (shrink)

Twenty years ago, Slobodan Milosevic uttered a sentence which was afterwards repeated in the literature about the Yugoslav tragedy innummerable times. The sentence "Niko ne sme da vas bije" was directed to the Serb demonstrators in Kosovo. In this text, the author analyzes the ways this sentence was translated in factional literature and shows that different versions, apart from being different lexically and semantically, influence the political interpretation and understanding of the Yugoslav conflict. This text poses another, maybe (...) even more important question: are unprecise and wrong translations of Milosevic's words a proof of what Georg Johannesen claimed - that faction is fiction.. Pre dvadeset godina Slobodan Milosevic je izgovorio jednu recenicu koja je ponavljana nebrojeno puta u literaturi o jugoslovenskoj tragediji. Ta recenica je izgovorena u neposrednom kontaktu sa demonstrantima srpske nacionalnosti na Kosovu i glasi "Niko ne sme da vas bije". U ovom tekstu autor istrazuje nacine na koje je ova recenica prevodjena u strucnoj literaturi i/ili faktivnoj prozi i pokazuje kako njene razlicite verzije, osim sto se odlikuju velikim jezickim i semantickim razlikama, usmeravaju politicko tumacenje i razumevanje jugoslovenskog konflikta. Ovim tekstom postavlja se jos jedno, mozda i vaznije pitanje: da li je neprecizno i pogresno navodjenje Milosevicevog iskaza potvrda onoga sto je o faktivnoj prozi i/ili strucnoj literaturi govorio Georg Johanesen - da se radi o izmisljanju - fikciji sklopljenoj od reci.. (shrink)

The article discusses the reasons for the construction, in the 1960s, of memorial to the victims of the former camp in Jasenovac in Yugoslavia, although no such memorial was built at the Sajmiste site. How should we explain and understand this difference and what do these two sites stand for in Yugoslav discourses about the past? I will argue that the memorial project for Jasenovac was, due to certain developments, seen as a substitute for similar plans at nearly all (...) the former camp locations in Yugoslavia. Because of this substitution, after the mid 1960s none of the other concentration camp sites in the country benefited from federal financing and thus all of them were excluded from having a real chance at being made into a proper memorial site. Tekst razmatra razloge za izgradnju spomen-podrucja posvecenog zrtvama logora Jasenovac u Jugoslaviji tokom sezdesetih godina XX veka, iako takav spomenik nije podignut na mestu logora na Sajmistu. Kako da objasnimo i razumemo tu razliku i koje je mesto ta dva logora u jugoslovenskim diskursima o proslosti? Tvrdim da je, zahvaljujuci odredjenim kretanjima, projekat za Jasenovac bio sagledavan kao zamena za slicne planove za bezmalo sva mesta gde su se nalazili logori u Jugoslaviji. Zbog te zamene, nakon sredine sezdesetih godina XX veka nijedno podrucje gde su se nalazili koncentracioni logori u zemlji nije dobilo saveznu finansijsku potporu, pa je svima njima uskracena mogucnost da budu pretvorena u odgovarajuce mesto secanja. (shrink)

Previous accounts of psychiatry within Communist Europe have emphasized the dominance of biological approaches to mental health treatment. Psychotherapy was thus framed as a taboo or marginal component of East European psychiatric care. In more recent years, this interpretation has been re-examined as historians are beginning to delve deeper into the diversity of mental healthcare within the Communist world, noting many instances in which psychotherapeutic techniques and theory entered into clinical practice. Despite their excellent work uncovering these hitherto neglected histories, (...) however, historians of the psy-disciplines in Eastern Europe have neglected to fully consider the ways that post-World War II psychotherapeutic developments were not simply continuations of pre-war psychoanalytic traditions, but rather products of emerging transnational networks and knowledge exchanges in the post-war period. This article highlights how psychotherapy became a leading form of treatment within Communist Yugoslavia. Inspired by theorists in France and the United Kingdom, among other places, Yugoslav practitioners became well versed in a number of psychotherapeutic techniques, especially ‘brief psychotherapy’ and group-based treatment. These developments were not accidents of ideology, whereby group psychotherapy might be accepted by authorities as a nod to some idea of ‘the collective’, but were rather products of economic limitations and strong links with international networks of practitioners, especially in the domains of social psychiatry and group analysis. The Yugoslav example underscores the need for more historical attention to transnational connections among psychotherapists and within the psy-disciplines more broadly. (shrink)

Through a selection of primary sources, this article demonstrates the political and legal languages which articulated monarchist ideas in interwar Yugoslavia. Variations on the theme emerged in different periods. First, the national and so democratic character of the monarch and monarchy was a prevalent image at the end of the First World War and in the first decade of the Yugoslav state’s existence. During the domestic political crises in the second half of the 1920s, the language of monarchism shifted (...) toward discourses of stability and public order. After the declaration of the royal dictatorship in January 1929, the language of monarchism became fully invested in expressing the monarch’s absolute political authority, legally inviolable character, and the resulting ‘unity of state and nation’. For the political Right, the king embodied the spirit of integral Yugoslavism. While the language of monarchism could serve disparate political ideologies – as in the liberal monarchist emigration after spring 1941 – it was rather primarily linked to the political visions of the Right in the final decade of interwar Yugoslavia. (shrink)

The paper aims to analyse the state of inter-ethnic relations in Kosovo between ethnic Albanians and ethnic Serbs, with special focus on the period after unilateral declaration of independence of Kosovo in 2008. Inter-ethnic conflict in Kosovo has exclusively been over its territory since both Serbs and Albanians have made claims about history and ethno-demography to justify their alleged exclusive right to this ethnically mixed region. Consequently, inter-ethnic relations between Albanians and Serbs in Kosovo have been rather problematic throughout the (...) most of the 20th century. During this period Albanians in Kosovo have been subjected to discrimination, intimidation and even mass expulsion by Yugoslav/Serb authorities. In late 1990s, these relations between Albanians and Serbs in Kosovo have progressively worsened and finally escalated in an armed warfare in 1999. Immediately after the war, Serbs in Kosovo were occasionally exposed to acts of inter-ethnic and retaliatory violence. Inter-ethnic relations between the two major ethnicities continued to be tense and fragile after independence of Kosovo in 2008. Dramatic changes of ethnic composition structure, atrocities and huge number of refugees due to the war, have left a legacy of deep mistrust and animosities between Albanians and Serbs in the newly created state. Consequently, Serbs in Kosovo have from the beginning refused to recognize Kosovo’s independence and have rigorously refused any governance by Kosovo authorities. Serbian community, especially in the North, claims stronger territorial autonomy, even separatism and unification with Serbia. The paper claims that in Kosovo inter-ethnic and interstate relations are basically the components of the same equation. Therefore, paper concludes that only overall improvement of relations between Kosovo and Serbia could contribute to overall relaxation of inter-ethnic relations between Albanians and Serbs in Kosovo. Unfortunately, the latest incidents between Kosovo and Serbia have increased the tensions between the two sides to alarming levels. (shrink)

Twenty years since the onset of the traumatic wars of Yugoslav secession, the countries of the Western Balkans continue to nurture narratives of the past that are mutually exclusive, contradictory, and irreconcilable. The troubling ways in which states in the region remember their pasts provide continuing obstacles in the search for acknowledgment and justice. In this essay, I develop an argument for understanding the relationship between justice and remembrance of the past. To illustrate this relationship, I explore ways (...) in which education and memorialization projects contribute to justice efforts. I critically analyze a few ongoing education and memory projects in the region, and then present alternative ideas on mechanisms of public memory that would be more conducive to building the foundational blocks of justice based on trust, respect, and dignity. (shrink)

That Kosovo exploded with genocidal violence in 1999 and ultimately prompted outside intervention surprised few—it was a long-festering hotspot but one that fell low on the world politics priority lists, despite the brutal “wars of Yugoslav” succession that engulfed Serbia, Bosnia, and Croatia. But for a relatively small scale conflict in a rather unknown corner of the world, Kosovo’s crisis of 1998–1999 brought with it a host of complex issues that challenge the international community to this day. As (...) with any issue or case in the area of genocide studies, attention and understanding must first go to the dramatic human suffering inflicted upon one group by another. The macro-level political, legal, and ethical discussion and debates swirling about Kosovo should not and must not obscure the powerful and provocative human element at play. First and foremost, the Kosovo issue revolves around how best to save lives following an explosion of genocidal violence. Simultaneously, however, Kosovo in 1999 exploded with ramifications for the future of state sovereignty, the United Nations, and understanding the causes of genocide, nation building, and humanitarianism in the twenty-first century. (shrink)