Politika i filozofija proizvođenja smrti na Balkanu
Politics and Philosophy of Death Production in the Balkans

Summary/Abstract: This essay uses the area of former Yugoslavia (especially Serbia) as an example, in order to reexamine the moral optimism according to which, of necessity, evil becomes a basic issue of postwar intellectual life – as predicted by Hannah Arendt. However, “intellectual nationalism”, which defines itself as “good nationalism”, does everything to hinder that process. The author cites some of the slogans used before and during the war to incite the population's »collective instinct« to correct “the terrible injustices of the past”; she gives examples of misuse of myth, falisification of the mother tongue, the role of media propaganda and kitsch, and of the destruction of the city (polis) as an oasis of multiculturality. From multicultural, the region of former Yugoslavia was transformed into a multinational area. In the process of regression into feudal enclaves (surrounded today by the European Union as its own opposite) the main role was played by intellectuals who claimed to be the only true “interpreters of European values”. The most tragic result of that spiritual, territorial, institutional and cultural nationalism is the degradation of value of human life, with the justification that every death is a collateral damage, compared to the ideal of »the Holy Territory«. The battle for transformation of citizens into nationalists was fought on several fronts, so it is not possible to reinstate the idea of citizens only through political, sociological, and economic change. The moral and aesthetic “rejuvenation ” is necessary as well.

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