Cultural Identity Politics in the (Post-)Transitional Societies

More documents

Recommendations

Info

Cultural Identity Politics in the (Post-)Transitional Societies politics of memory and identity is where culture becomes the main arena of governance and resistance. Inseparable from these matrices is the “post-politics”, through its depoliticization of the questions of freedom and equality and its over-celebration of difference and over-insistence on identitarian issues through rather performative techniques of bestowing “order” to societies in transition, after loss, atrocity and so forth. However, the vectors of dissensus, resistance and radical truth in the face of abjection/ affect, introduce doubt and controversy, situating art in the field of experience, politics and capitalism. It is in the marginalized fields of cultural production, arts and activism that new collective words and deeds are produced so as to assume bare life, our radical relationality and contingency as a starting point, towards new re-imaginations of the political. We see this in feminist production and art in the region where an affirmative politics of witnessing to trauma does offer ways of identification and participation that are an authentic challenge to the populist/right-wing/fascist mobilization of affect and passion on the one hand, and the aseptic liberal management of effect in white gloves and in the name of human rights, on the other (see more in Husanović, 2007). When witnessing the legacies of atrocity, ethical social relationships must be instituted anew, based on critical reflection on the origins and methods of violence, where mass atrocity is only the culmination of everyday biopolitical control over life and death. This battle is also the battle over the monument. Instead of the over-authorization of victims as “secular saints” and the monopolization of experience where the politics of affectivity is based on the sacralization of horror in a desacralizing world, there is a political act of traumatic remembering, the attempt to speak communally and publicly about justice and equality in the face of abject politics that resurrects the dead to serve the governance of (inter)nationalized ghettoes sinking into a triple bind of poverty, banality and corruption. 6 We must analyse precisely such instances and acts of the politics of witnessing to trauma in search of new coordinates of universal politics, from the field of cultural and knowledge production and public activism, where experiences are turned into critical insights and actions, collectively. This often occurs in particular forms of social activism, movements based on the politics of solidarity and equality (workers, students, women and other “others”), as well as in cultural and artistic production. It also occurs in specific forms of knowledge production that are tied to transformative action in various spaces of publicity. 7 Examples abound and we have to weave them together, in critical solidarity. 6 For more on this triple bind, see Sullivan, 2002: 136. 7 I have explored these elsewhere, especially in Chapters 6 and 7 of the monograph Između traume, nade i imaginacije (Husanović, 2010a). See also Husanović, 2009 and 2011c. 66
References Culture of trauma and identity politics - critical frames and emancipatory lenses of cultural... Bourdieu, Pierre (1986) Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, London: Routledge. Bourdieu, Pierre (1990a) Logic of Practice, translated by Richard Nice, Cambridge: Polity Press. Bourdieu, Pierre (1990b) In Other Words: Essays towards a Reflexive Sociology, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Bourdieu, Pierre (1998) Acts of Resistance: Against the New Myths of Our Time, Cambridge: Polity Press. Buden, Boris (2005) “The Pit of Babel or: The Society that Mistook Culture for Politics”, 14 December 2005, Beyond Culture: The Politics of Translation (translate.eipcp.net), accessed on http://translate.eipcp.net/strands/01/buden-strands01en#redir Dragićević-Šešić, Milena (2011) “Cultural policies, cultural identities and monument building – new memory policies of Balkan countries”, draft paper, international conference Questioning Transitional Dynamics in Re-defining Cultural Identities in SEE Ljubljana, 14-16 January 2011, accessed on http://rci.mirovni-institut.si/Docs/ASO%20 2010%20Sesic.pdf Husanović, Jasmina (2007) “Etičko-politička zaviještanja lica i ožiljaka: bosanske priče i traume kao imenice ženskog roda u množini”, Treća, Vol. 9, No. 1/2007. Husanović, Jasmina (2009) “The politics of gender, witnessing, postcoloniality and trauma. Bosnian feminist trajectories”, Feminist Theory, Vol. 10, No. 1/2009, pp. 99-119. Husanović, Jasmina (2010a) Između traume, nade i imaginacije: Kritički ogledi o kulturnoj produkciji i emancipativnoj politici, Beograd: Fabrika knjiga. Husanović, Jasmina (2010b) “Ka emancipativnoj politici svjedocenja: politika nestalih kao vladanje traumom kroz kodifikaciju, matematizaciju i depolitizaciju”, Matemi reasocijacija, newspapers, 2010. (Transcript of public lecture and discussion, 28 August 2008, Oktobarski salon, Kuća legata Beograd). Husanović, Jasmina (2011a) “Governance of life through biopolitical/thanatopolitical regimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Traversing the dea(r)th of emancipatory politics”, forthcoming in Construction of national and ethnic identities among youth in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Banja Luka: Centar za kulturni i socijalni popravak (CKSP). Husanović, Jasmina (2011b) “Recasting transitions after the Fall: Global governance of trauma and the politics of life in Bosnia and Herzegovina”, forthcoming in Twenty Years After the Breakdown of Communism in CEE: Promises, Meanings and Implications of 1989, University of Fribourg. Husanović, Jasmina (2011c) “Feminističke ekskurzije, transverzalnosti, traverzije: O puno ljetnim iskustvima solidarnosti i zajedništva u proizvodnji znanja i emancipativnoj politici”, forthcoming in ProFemina, Belgrade. Milohnić, Aldo (2011) “Performing identities: national theatres and re-construction of identities in Slovenia and SFR Yugoslavia” draft paper, international conference Questioning 67
Page 1 and 2:
Cultural Transitions in Southeaster
Page 3 and 4:
Page 5 and 6:
Page 7 and 8:
C o n t e n t s Foreword . . . . .
Page 9:
FOREWORD
Page 12 and 13:
Cultural Identity Politics in the (
Page 14 and 15:
Page 17:
PART ONE Histories, memories and na
Page 20 and 21:
Page 22 and 23:
Page 24 and 25: Cultural Identity Politics in the (
Page 69 and 70: Culture of trauma and identity poli
Page 71 and 72: Culture of trauma and identity poli
Page 73: Culture of trauma and identity poli
Page 77: PART TWO Communication, media and c
Page 109 and 110: How modern technology shape-shifts
Page 121 and 122: Cultural identities in Southeastern
Page 123 and 124: Cultural identities in Southeastern
Page 125 and 126:
Cultural identities in Southeastern
Page 127 and 128:
Page 129 and 130:
Page 131:
Page 135 and 136:
Cultural identities from the bottom
Page 137 and 138:
Page 139 and 140:
Page 141 and 142:
Page 143 and 144:
Page 145 and 146:
Page 147 and 148:
Page 149 and 150:
From productivity to creativity - t
Page 151 and 152:
Page 153 and 154:
Page 155:
Page 158 and 159:
Page 160 and 161:
Page 162 and 163:
Page 164 and 165:
Page 166 and 167:
Page 168 and 169:
Page 171 and 172:
Repetition of difference - the sear
Page 173 and 174:
Repetition of difference - the sear
Page 175 and 176:
Report on the conference “Questio
Page 177 and 178:
Report on the conference Peace Inst
Page 179:
Report on the conference of ‘inde
Page 183 and 184:
Notes on the authors PAŠKO BILIĆ
Page 185 and 186:
Notes on the authors ANDREA KOMLOSY
Page 187 and 188:
Culturelink Joint Publications Seri
show all

Cultural Identity Politics in the (Post-)Transitional Societies

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?