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Hailing the Serbian “People” HAILING THE SERBIAN “PEOPLE”: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE CENTRAL ROLE OF THE KOSOVO MYTH IN THE CONSTITUTION OF SERBIAN ETHNO-NATIONAL IDENTITY AND THE NORMALIZATION OF VIOLENCE IN THE FORMER YUGOSLAVIA by CHRISTINA M. MORUS (Under the Direction of Kevin DeLuca) ABSTRACT Throughout the fifty years in which Josip Broz Tito was the leader of Yugoslavia, ethnic tensions had been nearly non-existent. Throughout the region, Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks had shared the same schools, places of employment and residences, and had a common language. For the most part, people’s ethnic and religious identities were subordinate to their identity as Yugoslavs. Yet, by the end of the 1980s, ethno-national consciousness became a part of the daily lives of many Yugoslav people. For this to be possible, peoples’ Yugoslav identity had to become tertiary. This project examines the role of rhetoric in discounting the pan-Slavic identity among Serbs and in constituting an exclusive, racialized, and highly politicized Serbian people in its place. I critique the rhetorical strategies of Serbian cultural elites and analyze the public discourse of Slobodan Milosevic with an eye to the ways in which politics and culture worked in conjunction toward a common end. In doing so I posit the effects of constitutive discourses on the polarizing national identities that rapidly replaced the largely unified Yugoslav identity, thereby legitimizing the mass violence that characterized the break-up of the Yugoslav Federation. Through essential discourses of historic victimization, the way in which Serb identity was situated in relation to Yugoslavia and the rest of the world at large was increasingly polarizing. Discourses of historic persecution and Serbian “racial” superiority led to the rhetorical constitution of a Serbian people for which ethnic division was normalized and war was justified in the name of a mytho-historic righting of wrongs. Narratives surrounding the mythic 1389 Battle of Kosovo and a mythologized version of WWII worked in conjunction with a slanted version of Yugoslavian history to constitute a modern Serbian people, while also creating a threatening other. This type of polarization was used to politically charge Serbian ethnic identity. INDEX WORDS: constitutive rhetoric, identity, myth, racialization, reconciliation, ethnic violence, Yugoslavia, Milosevic, Kosovo HAILING THE SERBIAN “PEOPLE”: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE CENTRAL ROLE OF THE KOSOVO MYTH IN THE CONSTITUTION OF SERBIAN ETHNO-NATIONAL IDENTITY AND THE NORMALIZATION OF VIOLENCE IN THE FORMER YUGOSLAVIA by CHRISTINA M. MORUS B.S., Eastern Michigan University, 1998 M.A., Eastern Michigan University, 2000 A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY ATHENS, GEORGIA 2004 © 2004 Christina M. Morus All Rights Reserved HAILING THE SERBIAN “PEOPLE”: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE CENTRAL ROLE OF THE KOSOVO MYTH IN THE CONSTITUTION OF SERBIAN ETHNO-NATIONAL IDENTITY AND THE NORMALIZATION OF VIOLENCE IN THE FORMER YUGOSLAVIA by CHRISTINA M. MORUS Major Professor: Kevin DeLuca Committee: Celeste Condit John Murphy Ed Panetta Amy Ross Electronic Version Approved: Maureen Grasso Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia December 2004 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This research and writing of this project has been an experience that has enriched me in innumerable ways. I have grown tremendously as a scholar, and more importantly as a person through the people I have met and adventures I have had while working on it. While I am still “only an egg” with regard to my intellectual development, the completion of this project represents the beginnings of my hatching. For this I have so many people to acknowledge. I would first like to acknowledge my funding sources for this project. I thank the National Security Education Program for funding my research and language study in 2002-3. I would also like to thank the Women in Defense initiative and the University of Georgia’s Center for Humanities for their supplemental funding on this project. In the same vain, I express my sincerest gratitude to my cousin, Robert Morus, without whose generous contributions this project may never have gotten “off the ground.” I thank the members of my dissertation committee for all the time and attention they have afforded me throughout my thinking and writing process. I am especially grateful to Amy Ross who has been the best possible mentor, friend and role model that I could have ever imagined. From the time I began my graduate program at Georgia as a fledgling scholar, Amy has recognized my strengths and has stoked the fire in me. She introduced me to The Hague and taught me how to negotiate my research situations. Thanks to Amy for numerous thought provoking discussions about violence, and for bringing my thought process out of the classroom and into the world. Further, Amy Ross has encouraged me to reach higher than I thought I could, and to meet and surpass the goals I set for myself. I thank her for everything she has done for me, and more importantly, for everything she has taught me to do for myself. I thank my advisor, iv Kevin DeLuca, for the time and energy he has spent molding me and also for letting me mold myself, even when I didn’t think I was able to. Thanks to Kevin for believing in my vision and for encouraging my pursuits. Thanks to John Murphy for being my anchor and for not letting me float too far away from practicality. He has been a solid presence for me and has been a special inspiration for me when I have lost sight of my raison d’etre. I also thank Celeste Condit for her honesty and her patience with my sometimes-crooked learning curve, as well as for her insights into my scholarly character and my work at large. Thank you for your rigorous evaluation of my work throughout my graduate career, and for your support of all my unique endeavors. Thanks also to Ed Panetta who, besides serving as a calming and reassuring presence for me, has added essential insights to my research and writing. I would also like to thank Christine Harold and Jen Monahan. While they are not on my graduate committee, they have each contributed to my growth as a scholar and an intellectual in immeasurable ways. No graduate student is an island, even though in the throws of solitary writing one can loose sight of this fact. In my graduate career I have been so lucky to have the best and most supportive colleagues. I thank our wonderful class…Ashli Quesinberry, Ken Rufo, “Tex” Poirot and Mike Davis, not only for much needed social outlets, but for the intellectual challenges and the moral support they provided. It is such a privilege to have come through all of this with all of you. I also thank, with all my heart, Rob Yarbrough, the best roommate, friend, and intellectual sparring partner a girl could ever ask for. Your contributions alone to this project and to my intellectual development at large could fill a book. I also thank Davi Johnson, Carson Martin, Ann Miller, Matt Reilly, Ben Bates, Tasha Dubriwny, and…of course…Josh Bettenhausen, each who have stimulated me, inspired me and encouraged me throughout this process. v There have also been a score of people who need to be acknowledged for their role in my actual research. First and foremost, I thank Ana Petrovic who became my best friend, confidant, sister, language teacher and overall inspiration throughout the last five years. Thank you for your honesty and your willingness to help with this project, and thank you for your generosity and your friendship. Thanks also to her mother, Danica Petrovic for treating me like family and making me feel welcome. I also thank John MacDonald for so many Yugo conversations and translation questions. Thanks also to the people at the ICTY who have been so much help in these years, especially the Office of Public Information and my friend in the Office of the Prosecutor. I also want to acknowledge the help of the many people I spoke with in The Hague and in the former Yugoslavia without whose openness and generosity of spirit I could never have come to understand this topic in nearly as much depth. I would also like to thank Michael Tew and Dennis Grady-Patrick for their support and inspiration. Thank you for believing in me, and encouraging me to pursue an academic career and to keep going with my studies. And thanks also to Dr. Robert Citino for showing me early on that there is a living to be made in the study of mass atrocity. There are further some friends and family who deserve acknowledgement for sticking with me, inspiring me and loving me without fail. Thanks to my mother and father, Jim and Dianne, and my sister Pam. Thanks also to my “Gramma Gramma” whom I love so very much, and to my Grandma Anne who would have been so proud. You are all a source of great strength and joy for me, and your support has meant so much to me. I also thank Debbie Juncaj, Lana Parker, Renee Richardson, Kim Cook- Mosey, Mattie Kinsey, Shedeh Tavakoli and Damyon Collins. It is good to know who your friends are, and you all are truly my lifelong friends. vi Finally, and possibly most importantly, I acknowledge the people who have suffered in the shadow of the atrocities in the former Yugoslavia. For all those people I have talked to in the process of this project, and even more for all the voices that have gone unheard or have been silenced, for those who have suffered loss, indignity, poverty, humiliation, disappointment, injury and poverty beyond anything I can ever imagine.
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