Cultural Identity Politics in the (Post-)Transitional Societies

Cultural Identity Politics in the (Post-)Transitional Societies
socialization practices. They are a joint venture of national political and cultural elites
neglecting the real interest of communities. As in the case of Macedonia where political
elites wish to prove continuity with ancient Macedonia, an atmosphere was created in
which local city elites show their willingness to share common efforts in creating a “lost”
collective cultural memory as part of a newly constructed national identity.
In periods of nation-building, inventing the traditions demands high symbolic, cultural
but also financial investment. The national elites prefer to take history events and leaders
from far away (Alexander the Great, or Skenderbeg in Skopje) re-appropriating them for
today’s use (Croatia is an exception in this sense).
National identity (memory) policies through monument policies aim to achieve
continuity of the present with a past, symbolic representation of the country’s identity or
collective narrative, mediation of the values and the ethos of collective cultural identity,
but also to control social behaviour. Thus, cultural policies were “asked” to contribute by
defining key “formative” events in the construction of the community and to find ways
for their memorialization.
The new European cultural policy “standards” demand that multicultural society has
to develop new policies of memories and, consequently, new monument policies, policies
which are not divisive, but inform communities, fostering and stabilizing intercultural
dialogue. These policies have not yet been implemented in Southeastern Europe.
However, some new trends in monument policies are appearing: preparations are in
process to build monuments to the coming of the Slovak community to Southeastern
Europe or to the exodus of the German population. These monuments should not
be constructed to divide, but to mutually inform communities and to start sharing
group histories as common histories. Still, a monument which aimed to be a “bridging
monument” (to the forgotten German minority in Vršac, Serbia), provoked new
divisions, as the Jewish minority considered the statements linked to the erection of
the monument as inappropriate (“life in Vršac was calm and mutual relations good till
1945”, the statement which ignored the genocide of the Jewish population in 1942).
This shows that there is still a need for “joint histories”, and that the responsibility of the
EU should be to debate neglected issues such as the exodus of the Slavic Macedonian
population during the Greek civil war (politics of oblivion in Greece) which still
nourishes Macedonian nationalism.
The fact that there are no monuments and memorials devoted to the Roma
communities who suffered genocide in the Second World War shows double standards
throughout Southeastern Europe (and Europe) about policies of memorializing.
Democratic cultural policies should develop platforms for enabling private memories
to enter the public sphere, especially those coming from marginal groups in societies.
This research has shown that to a formalism of ritual language (Connerton, 2002:
83), corresponds a formalism of visual language for monument use (expressions).
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