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Cultural Identity Politics in the (Post-)Transitional Societies Th is text discusses some aspects of cultural identifi cation in Southeastern Europe in a post-transitional perspective. Post-transition provides a context that may be roughly described as a context of multiculturality, cultural diversity, human rights observance and political and economic liberalism. Th e present analysis is concentrated on the structural elements of cultural spaces, aspects of regional cultural communication and the establishment of a new cultural context that coincides with the cultural diversity framework largely infl uenced by globalization and Europeanization processes. In this respect the Southeast European societies and cultures appear to be ever closer to cultural identifi cations that are diverse and individualized, while the nationally and ethnically structured cultures experience processes of reconstruction and reidentifi cation. Th e structure of cultural space Th e concept of space, in the sense of location or geographical place, has been largely reinterpreted in discussions on cultures and cultural globalization. Arjun Appadurai argues that “the processes of globalization have radically altered the relations between subjectivity, location, political identifi cation and the social imagination” (Baldauf and Hoeller, 2008). However, these changes have by now contributed to the production of new content and symbols that infl uence the interpretation of cultures and their role in wider social and political frameworks, be they global or local. New cultural spaces have emerged. Th ey are defi ned by fl exible borders (linguistic, artistic, creative) that provide for cultural (re)identifi cation and that may be subjected to the (re)established ethnic, national or professional delimitations. Diff erent cultural spaces have become accessible and present in the daily life of many through deterritorialization that makes globality or locality irrelevant and through ever easier technological mediation that enables entrance into the virtual world. Being omnipresent, they are subjected to various interpretations which may turn spaces into “territories, fl ows, hierarchies” (Storper, 1997: 19-44), or into intellectual concepts open to creative eff orts and to imagination. Th e meaning of cultural spaces becomes linked to interpretative communities, such as Anderson’s “imagined communities” (Anderson, 1983). Cultural spaces represent a context in which cultural content is produced and expressed through symbolic signs. David Harvey (1990: 205, 306) argues that: “Th e social theory privileges time over space”, assuming that “temporal processes” operate within “some pre-existing spatial order”. Th us the space may be interpreted as a kind of general background for any human activity, including the establishment of cultures and cultural identifi cation. According to Harvey, “time is always a memory of the experienced space” (Harvey, 1990: 216), and therefore aesthetic theories are primarily concerned with time, although space provides a general basis for all experiences, subsumed in a concentrated and rationalized “collapsed sense of time and space” (Harvey, 1990: 61). Th is would be the situation that we are facing in the present day globalized world: a collapsed sense of space and time 114
Cultural identities in Southeastern Europe - a post-transitional perspective that has already allowed for the changes in the experiences of both space and time, for their compression and for new interpretations of such experiences. Perhaps this is what we are talking about when we discuss cultural identities in Southeastern Europe today. Cultural spaces in Southeastern Europe have been usually structured as national (or ethnic) (national language, cultural values, memories, etc.) and territorially defi ned (containing a majority national culture and in most cases a number of minority ethnic cultures). Such a structure of cultural space has been rather typical of all countries in Southeastern Europe, and as all of them except Greece entered the systemic transition from socialism to capitalism, this structural characteristic became the starting point for the changes that occurred. Th e same structure provided the context for cultural policies that have been thought of as national and strongly culture specifi c. With the infl uences of globalization the (imagined) borders between Southeast European cultures and their cultural spaces have become blurred, particularly within the former Yugoslavia where intercultural contacts were encouraged and sometimes even enforced (for example through language policies, mediatization of cultures, common projects, etc.). Th e systemic transition, clearly marked by the dissolution of Yugoslavia, oriented all cultures to memories and prompted cultural ethnicization. At the same time, the internal cultural diff erentiations within the national cultures and national states have been increasing. Th e relationships between majority and minority cultures have been gradually reinterpreted (not to say problematized) so as to incite confl icts or, on the contrary, to support acceptance of others and enhance tolerance of cultural diversity and multiculturalism. Cultures have never correlated completely with the sovereign states, but cultural spaces have been divided following the visible diff erences among cultures: languages, customs and traditions, geographical settings, ethnic roots, and so forth. However, as the globalized, deterritorialized and a-territorial contents gradually enter all cultures and cultural spaces, the existing cultural spaces imbued by cultural communication and mediatization of cultures open up to some common values, common cultural behaviour and common traditions. In a way, the concept of cultural space has been gradually substituted by the concept of (deterritorialized) culture itself. 1 However, as we still speak diff erent languages (even at the age of technologically defi ned communication), and live in diff erent cultural settings defi ned by diff erent cultural values, the need to defi ne and redefi ne cultural identities has been increasingly accepted as a justifi ed request. In this respect, some structural elements of the particular (national) cultural space have been reinvented and are surviving. Th ese are not evident in the established 1 Terry Eagleton (2005: 31) thinks that the development of cultural theory might be a response to the realities of the 1960s. Th e name of theory has been given to “the critical self-refl ection”, which has widened the concept of culture: comfort, passion, arts, language, media, body, gender, ethnicity – all this is expressed in one word – the culture (2005: 40). 115
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C o n t e n t s Foreword . . . . .
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FOREWORD
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Cultural Identity Politics in the (
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PART ONE Histories, memories and na
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Culture of trauma and identity poli
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Repetition of diff erence - the sea
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Report on the conference “Questio
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Report on the conference Peace Inst
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Report on the conference of ‘inde
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Notes on the authors PAŠKO BILIĆ
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Notes on the authors ANDREA KOMLOSY
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Culturelink Joint Publications Seri
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