Review article
Tradition and Cultural In stitutions in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Jaws of Ethno-nationalism and Neoliberalism
Senadin Musabegović
Abstract
Having deposed communism, the neoliberal policy inaugurated a new type of invisible violence, which is no longer expressed through the unidirectional strategy of state politics, which would control cultural policy with ideological omnipotence and centralism. Instead, it has cunningly, with overall indifference and indolence, which is manifested in the politics of spectacle and entertainment, gain and profit, destroyed all awareness of the common good. Its disastrous consequence is a systematic demise of cultural institutions in Bosnia and Herzegovina, crucial for its existence, such as National Art Gallery, Regional Museum, Cinemateque, National Library, etc. Thus, the fall of the Berlin Wall marked not only the end of the Cold War and the fall of communism, but also the disappearance of states with a focused public policy, which had not allowed, despite their planned and centralised cultural policies, any decrease in awareness about the common cultural good, or the ruin of cultural institutions of universal public importance. Contrary to that, the post-communist state has become a symbol or synonym for a repressive mechanism of power, which limits creativity in individuals and implicitly proclaims all that represents the general cultural good in a community to be obsolete and unnecessary. The process of normalization or transition in the post-communist countries has been defined by two essentially opposed mechanisms: the principle of collective identity, based on ethnic imagination, and another based on liberated economy and freedom of the market. These should allegedly, in free exchange and by pacification of centuries-long ethnic conflicts, connect all people in “our Region.” And even though these two principles are mutually incompatible, they are juxtaposed like a pair of schizoid twins and jointly determine the fate of institutions that have a crucial importance for the tradition and future of Bosnia and Herzegovina. One tendency leads to their separation according to different ethnic territories, and another to their restructuring as self-financing institutions that are forced to serve the populist culture of entertainment and spectacle. The ethno-nationalist fantasies, which proclaim a return to the golden era of heroic past, thus destroy the tradition rather than cultivating it; and the tendency of destroying the tradition can also be recognized as a global process which museums throughout the world are facing today, pushed into the background for the sake of festival culture of entertainment and spectacle.
Keywords
museums; galleries; tradition; transition; ethnonationalism
Hrčak ID:
185612
URI
Publication date:
1.12.2013.
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