Balkan - teror kulture
The Balkans – The terror of Culture

Essays in Political Anthropology, 2

Author(s): Ivan Čolović
Subject(s): Politics / Political Sciences, Anthropology, Social Sciences, Political Theory, Sociology, Political behavior, Cultural Anthropology / Ethnology, Culture and social structure , Nationalism Studies
Published by: Biblioteka XX vek
Summary/Abstract: Ivan Čolović is an ethnologist, an essayist, and the founder of The 20th Century Library (1971). He has published thirteen books and numerous articles on issues and problems of literature, urban ethnology, ethno-linguistics, and political anthropology. In the thirteen essays of which tis book consists the author speaks of culure as a detonator of hatred and wars in the Balkans. ”I had seen it at work over the years of crisis and war in former Yugoslavia, then I saw it come out of that cisis and those wars more or less intact and ready, to serve – if need be – the same purpose – that of detonating. This prompted me to pay particular attention to the post-war ”patriotic” discourse about culture in Serbia and other Balkan countries in order to determine in which manner, thanks to these retorical strategies, it manages to preserve its explosive potential. Thus, I became interested in myths of the so called ”national spiritual and cultural space” or those of ostensible organic oneness between the Balkan nations and the soil on which they live, and to which they lay exclusive claim. My attention was focused on cults of the national tongue, of poets and their tombs and monuments, of the epic tradition and its main symbol ”the gusle”.(From the Foreword).

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