A Materialist Critique of Critical Balkanologies
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A MATERIALIST CRITIQUE OF CRITICAL BALKANOLOGIES RADE ZINAIC A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTORATE OF PHILOSOPHY GRADUATE PROGRAMME IN SOCIAL AND POLITICAL THOUGHT YORK UNIVERSITY TORONTO, ONTARIO MAY 2015 © Rade Zinaic, 2015 ABSTRACT The post-Cold War era from 1991 to the present is defined by two interrelated processes: (a) the political, social, and economic consequences of neoliberalization; and (b) a settled and universalizing cultural response to the materialities of this process. The institutional entrenchment of post-structuralist reading techniques provided a generation of critical balkanologists with the tools to successfully undo essentialist readings of the region; readings that define an era of denigrative balkanism where the causes of neoliberal war in the post- Yugoslav milieu are seen as problems of cultural invariance. Drawing on a Marxist theoretical tradition that centres the work of Teresa Ebert, I discover that these techniques are limited by an epistemology that fetishizes the “commodity” of the sign and an ontology that assumes the existence of little more than single individuals in civil society. Thus emergent and oppositional solidarities are incapable of being granted their experience. Critical balkanologies nonetheless marginalize and balkanize the physics of neoliberalism at precisely the moment of their violent ubiquity through dystopic worlds of ethereal imaginariums, impossibly complex Others or sentimental cyber-utopias – all in the place of class consciousness. Balkanism cannot be abolished via the scholastic unsettling of signs, but through intellectual accompaniment in protracted class struggles by (sub)proletarians against a capitalist mode of production that exploits and atomizes them, thus leaving them materially susceptible to nefarious conceptions of what it means to be human. This requires a total critique; abstracting from concrete texts, bodies and events to the historical mediations that might explain their becoming and limitations and identify alternative possibilities. ii DEDICATION To Stojan, Milka and Milan. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thank you… To my comrades for their rich friendship, manifold conversations, illuminating insights and unhinged humour: Manuel Marques Bonilla and Gary Romanuk, Ivan Stoljikovic, Elleni Centime Zeleke, Noa Ashkenazi, Mohan Mishra, Bojana Videkanic, Berislav Sabolic, Robert Tod Duncan, Craig Meadows, Neil Braganza and Karen Ruddy. To my PhD committee members: supervisor Elizabeth Dauphinee for her remarkable professionalism and support; professors Nicholas Rogers and David McNally for coming on board and providing guidance and stability when things were at a standstill; my external examiner Natasa Kovacevic for her thought-provoking questions; and internal examiner Heather McRae and Dean’s rep Shannon Bell for their engagement with my project and insightful comments. To SPT Programme Secretary Judith Hawley for her tireless labour, knowledge of all things FGS and patience with my often ubiquitous presence and semi-regular favour-asking. To Professor Ralph Bogert for his keen insights and extensive knowledge of Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian culture. To the eminently supportive, generous and ever expanding Brophy clan: Dianne, Owen, Ryan, Erin and six rough and tumble nephews – Finnian, Ronan, Eamon, Darby, Rhys and new edition Cael – for whom I am affectionately referred to as “Uncle Roddy”. Boys, we have more basements to wreck. To my brother Milan for his deep sense of social justice, honesty and toughness. You lead by example – and a fine example it is. Samo napred. To my parents, Stojan and Milka, for their unconditional love, unequivocal support and reminder to never forget my class and ethnic roots. Their immigrant struggle was infinitely more obstacle- laden than mine, and their perseverance, strong emphasis on the importance of an education and sobering realism kept me inspired and focused. I owe them everything. And, finally, to my spouse Susan Dianne Brophy with whom I shared this journey and whose uncannily sharp intellect, love, comradeship and humour made the completion of this project possible. Language cannot capture the importance of your presence in my life. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT..................................................................................................................................................ii DEDICATION.............................................................................................................................................iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.........................................................................................................................iv TABLE OF CONTENTS..............................................................................................................................v INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................................1 Balkanology ..............................................................................................................................................3 Ethnicized Balkanology ............................................................................................................................4 Critical Balkanology .................................................................................................................................6 Materialist Balkanology............................................................................................................................8 Proletarian Realism.................................................................................................................................10 Challenging the Hegemonic Sensus Imperium .......................................................................................16 Methodological Praxis: Contrapuntal Analysis and Immanent Critique ................................................21 The Thesis and its Tributaries.................................................................................................................25 A Personal Note ......................................................................................................................................29 CHAPTER 1: LIBERAL EXCEPTIONALISM IN A NEOLIBERAL ERA.............................................31 Structural Adjustment and Accumulation by Disposession....................................................................33 Liberal Exceptionalism ...........................................................................................................................34 Textures of “Social Incoherence” ...........................................................................................................39 CHAPTER 2: THE PITFALLS OF ETHNICIZED BALKANOLOGIES: MESTROVIC, ANZULOVIC, MACKINNON, ZIZEK ..............................................................................................................................57 ‘the serbs’ and the Sensus Imperium .......................................................................................................58 Branimir Anzulovic: Genocidal Culture.................................................................................................73 Catharine MacKinnon and the Ethnicization of Rape.............................................................................80 v The Ethnicized Idealism of Slavoj Zizek..............................................................................................100 CHAPTER 3: THE PRODUCTIVE CONTRADICTIONS OF MARIA TODOROVA .........................114 Balkanism contra Orientalism...............................................................................................................115 Culture and Individualism.....................................................................................................................125 The Materialist Import of “Historical Legacy”.....................................................................................131 Distorting Capitalism and Class............................................................................................................135 CHAPTER 4: SERBIA IN THE WAKE OF NEOLIBERALIZATION..................................................148 Bourgeois Europeanization...................................................................................................................151 Belgrade’s Others..................................................................................................................................153 Serbian Refugees ..............................................................................................................................153 Roma.................................................................................................................................................156 Chinese..............................................................................................................................................163 LGBT ................................................................................................................................................166 Revisiting Todorova..............................................................................................................................169 CHAPTER 5: TOMISLAV LONGINOVIC AND THE PERSISTENCE OF LIBERAL EXCEPTIONALISM................................................................................................................................172