Manjinski identiteti i autostereotipi: srpska karikatura u Hrvatskoj 1896.-1902.
Minority identity and auto-stereotypes: Serb caricatures in Croatia, 1896-1902

Summary/Abstract: Propagandistic political caricatures in Croatian at the end of the 19th century appeared in two collective (Serb and Croat) identities and in one urban (Zagreb) provenance. The opportunity to evaluate these identities' social function comes into play during several anti-Magyar street demonstrations in Zagreb from 1895 to 1902, when Croats and Serbs clashed over their inability to confront the most dangerous ''enemy'' - the Magyar ruling class. Although it is often difficult to determine whether the caricatures in Vrač pogađač have a progressive and positive or conservative and negative social meaning, it is certain that they are dominated by ethnic and national auto-(stereotypes). With their immanent animation of aggressive practical action they in large part constitute reality. Yet it is necessary to emphasize that at the end of the 19th century the use of dogmatic images of the enemy among majority and minority collectivities in central and south eastern Europe was socially acceptable, and not criminal, as an instrument of national selfidentification. The hyperproduction of external and internal enemies of the Serbs in the caricatures of radical Serb opposition points to the fact that the Serb minority in Croatia at the end of the 19th century had yet to be cosolidated as stable community a with a modern national identity. Consequently, the creation of enemies in an equal measure contributed to the stabilization and destabilization, assimilation and dissimulation of members of the Serbian collectivity.

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