The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was created in the wave of post-Cold War transitional justice discourses. The underlying presumption in otherwise heterogeneous transitional justice literature maintains that establishing, disclosing, and acknowledging past crimes delegitimizes the past regime and reaffirms the rule of law, which is deemed crucial for rebuilding social cohesion and strengthening democratic values. The relation between the ICTY and democratization of the region have remained locked within a paradox – it was expected to change the minds and hearts of the local population, but, by the very nature of its activity, the Tribunal was condemned to achieve unpopularity in the region. These limitations were successfully countered in the first half of Tribunal’s activity through intensive leaning on a conditionality policy based on the desire of post-Yugoslav states to integrate in Western political structures. During the second decade, however, attempts to improve the image and stature of the Tribunal mostly crumbled in the face of various inconsistencies, diminishing its transformative potentials.
COBISS.SI-ID: 41865517
In this paper, we examine the ways in which WWII events were adopted, transformed, and manipulated by political elites in order to spread propaganda for the present conflict, in history textbooks across three of the former Yugoslav republics: Serbia, Bosnia and Croatia. We examine the discursive strategies used to paint a continuous narrative from WWII to 1990, in an attempt to equate the actors and perpetrators of WWII and current enemies, either by re-writing and re-labeling WWII events and actors, removing historical events from the official curriculum, or creating entirely new versions of how the past should be remembered. History textbooks allow us to track the transformation of these narratives across time and space: beginning with a common Yugoslav narrative through the 1980s, history textbooks in the former Yugoslavia were re-written practically every year between 1987 and 1996, with each version (in each country) offering a new and adapted recounting of WWII events. The paper tracks the rhetorical ways in which the memory of the past becomes gradually dismantled and recycled to fit the propaganda needs of the present.
COBISS.SI-ID: 41569837
Transcription of the proceedings at the seminar with prof. Rogers Brubaker (University of California, Los Angeles), organised at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Thoery, University of Belgrade on 25 September 2016, during which invited scholars commented on Brubaker's new book Grounds for Difference (Harvard University Press, 2015) and discussed with the author.
COBISS.SI-ID: 42729261
When we talk about academic mobility, we usually talk about those who are leaving the domestic academic community, and much less about those who are coming into it from abroad, or about academic mobility as a form of international scientific exchange. Public and media discourses on academic mobility in Slovenia are dominated by the conception of »brain drain«, particularly since the outburst of economic crisis. Framed as a tragic fact, this phrase overshadows an entire range of other issues that academic mobility raises in the careers and lives of academics, especially in early stages of their careers. On the basis of an analysis of dominant discourses and ongoing public debates, as well as the comparative analysis conducted within the GARCIA project, this chapter offers reflections on structural factors that condition advantages and disadvantages of mobility for academics in early stages of their careers. In this context, the chapter especially examines the construct of »national science« and structural self-reproduction of the academic community (so called »academic inbreeding«) in Slovenia. Within the construct of »national science«, Slovenian academia is perceived as supposed to be serving the development of Slovene language and building national identity. Hence, language serves not only as a mechanism of communication, but also as a mechanism of selection and »gatekeeping« in hiring academic staff. What further makes Slovenian academia a closed system is the mechanism of recruitment, which is based on informal personal connections and record of previous cooperation between the candidate and the hiring institution. In such a system, foreign academics and foreign-educated academics of Slovenian origin are discriminated against and/or prevented from entering the Slovenian academic community.
COBISS.SI-ID: 40908333