Forgotten Future: The Politics of Poetry in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Dr. Damir Arsenijevic

doi:10.5771/9783845225647

Summary

The book documents and critically evaluates contemporary poetry within the dynamic field of cultural production in Bosnia and Herzegovina since the late 1980s. Its context spans three historico-political phases: firstly, the cusp on which socialism was already losing its primacy and ethno-nationalism was gaining dominance; secondly, the subsequent collapse of Yugoslavia and the ensuing war led by ethno-nationalist elites; and thirdly, the period of the aftermath of war — the so-called “post-war transition”.

This new approach to thinking about poetry in Bosnia and Herzegovina focuses on alternative cultural practices, which have articulated a more equitable organisation of Bosnian society. Such practices have the capacity not only to tell us how unfree we are, but also to shift the criteria of possibility of our freedom towards a more hopeful politics.

Dr. Arsenijeviæ’s knowledge of and passion for his research in cultural and literary studies and his art-theory political interventions shed scholarly light on the terror of inequality, the solidarity of unbribable life, relevant knowledge production, and material memories of war and genocide. He works throughout former Yugoslavia.

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Bibliographic data

Copyright year: 2010
ISBN-Print: 978-3-8329-5700-1
ISBN-Online: 978-3-8452-2564-7
Publisher: Nomos, Baden-Baden
Series: Southeast European Integration Perspectives
Volume: 4
Language: English
Pages: 214
Product type: Book Titles

Titelei/Inhaltsverzeichnis No access Pages 2 - 8
Acknowledgments No access Pages 9 - 10
Introduction No access Pages 11 - 18
1. Principle of Collection and Selection of Poetry No access Pages 19 - 23
2. Translation and Ideology No access Pages 23 - 28
1. Introduction No access Pages 29 - 30
2. Cultural Materialism and Ideology No access Pages 30 - 33
3. Cultural Materialism and the Real No access Pages 33 - 34
4. Cultural Materialism and the Subject No access Pages 34 - 37
5. Imagining the “art of the Impossible”: Dissidence and the Political Act in the Conceptualisation of Cultural Practices No access Pages 37 - 44
6. “Embracing the Act”: Re-articulating the Conditions of Practice in the Literary Historiographies of Bosnia and Herzegovina since the Late 1980s No access Pages 44 - 46
7. Prewar Bosnian Literary Historiographies No access Pages 46 - 53
8. Bosnian Literary Historiographies of the War No access Pages 53 - 60
9. Postwar Bosnian Literary Historiographies No access Pages 60 - 67
10. Conclusions No access Pages 67 - 70
1. Contextualising the debates and voices No access Pages 71 - 82
2. The poetry of re-ethnicization and the poetry of false universalization in the period of crisis and the collapse of Yugoslav socialism No access Pages 82 - 93
3. “These sudden shifts”: the poetry of differences and the crisis and the collapse of Yugoslav socialism No access Pages 93 - 94
4. Writing-as-personal-as-political: transformation of identity in the poetry of differences No access Pages 94 - 98
5. “I know that I, too, exist at last”: gendered identity in the poetry of differences No access Pages 98 - 104
6. Inscribing the mute word: the collapse of the socialist narrative in poetry of differences No access Pages 104 - 109
7. Conclusions No access Pages 109 - 112
1. Contextualising the debates and voices No access Pages 113 - 117
2. “And remove the darkness from their eyes”: poetry of re-ethnicization during the war No access Pages 117 - 118
3. Heroes and leaders of the past: beacons for war killings No access Pages 118 - 120
4. Words from eternity: re-writing cultural memory as a warning to ethnic identity No access Pages 120 - 122
5. The flocking of the Volk: homogenizing into People No access Pages 122 - 125
6. On God’s path: the illumination and promise of the second death No access Pages 125 - 128
7. “In war, reality is diluted in details”: poetry of false universalization during the war No access Pages 128 - 133
8. Constructing the language of the pharmakos: the poetry of differences during the war No access Pages 133 - 134
9. When “fidgeting” means life: re-inscribing and re-affirming symptomatic Otherness in the poetry of differences No access Pages 134 - 139
10. “Look here, that’s the right way to look History in the face, not like you”: regendering the war in the poetry of differences No access Pages 139 - 146
11. Bodies that count: re-politicising corporeal limit experiences in the poetry of differences No access Pages 146 - 152
12. Conclusions No access Pages 152 - 156
1. Contextualising the debates and voices No access Pages 157 - 166
2. The poetry of re-ethnicization and the poetry of false universalization in the postwar period No access Pages 166 - 175
3. In no-man’s land: poetry of differences and the postwar period No access Pages 175 - 175
4. “At the gunpoint of the past”: the traumatic past and transition in the poetry of differences No access Pages 175 - 182
5. “No-man’s women”: negotiating the traps of transition through the new community in the poetry of differences No access Pages 182 - 182
6. “The woman with the knife”: women and the traps of transition No access Pages 182 - 186
7. “A different idea of happiness”: the transition and the new community in poetry of differences No access Pages 186 - 193
8. Conclusions No access Pages 193 - 194
Afterword No access Pages 195 - 200
1. Primary sources No access Pages 201 - 203
2. Secondary sources No access Pages 203 - 214