4th Annual Socrates Kokkalis Graduate Student Workshop 8 - 9 February 2002
KOKKALIS PROGRAM on Southeastern and East-Central Europe
PAPER TITLE: Balkan Language ‘Games’ and Poststructural Agency in Ethnic Identification
Anthony London University College London, School of Slavonic and East European Studies
Introduction There is a general consensus in Balkan literature that ethnicity has become the dominant mode of identification – a belief historically determined, retroactively rooted and prominently re-invoked in light of the internecine conflict the past decade. This is reflected in the process of international post-conflict intervention in the Balkans, which is failing towards a comprehensive understanding of the source of ethnic identity-claims in the region of the former Yugoslavia. The seemingly innate discrimination and therefore inexplicable source of ethnically based identity need be understood to engender comprehensive justice systems. Consequently, the core theme of this paper is to chart how ethnicity has become the focal point, indeed, how it epitomises identity politics, and to interrogate this foundation as the sole legitimate representation of ethnic identity-claims. It pursuit of this aim, this paper will examine how ethnic identification has come to embody identity and political community in the former Yugoslav context, implicitly by deconstructing positivist understandings, extrapolated within a poststructuralist milieu. If one is to overcome ethnic chauvinism, its fundamental and core components must first be understood. This paper examines the performative processes that represent identity at a given moment, and in so doing, seeks to interpret human behaviour to acknowledge the paradoxes evident in modern ethnic identity. The central argument of this paper consists of interrogating a poststructuralist explanation by way of linguistic ‘games’ to supplement the formative nature of ethnic membership. It is premised upon the notion that ethno-communal associations become ethno-chauvinist through the manipulation of power representations latent in linguistic structure – how the process performed and continues to perform. Pursuant to this endeavour, a number of questions arise when consideration of language is applied to ethnic identification. First, is language simply a means of communication, or does it function in a more profound manner? Second, if language is fused with meaning and value, in what manner is this established? Third, how does this meaning play a role in shaping social objects – does it function as a source of identity or should identity be implicitly understood as the performative use of language? In this last undertaking, a selected and specific example in the Croatian context, by no means comprehensive of the spectrum available, will be provided to illustrate the language ‘games’ that facilitate its manipulation in an ethnic identity context. All these issues feature prominently in how social identity is determined. It will interrogate how language is politicised in three senses: first, how it functions as an onto-epistemic source in identity formulation; second, how its
1 Anthony London BalkanBalkan LanguageLanguage ‘Games’‘Games’ andand PosPoststructuraltstructural AgencyAgency inin EthnicEthnic IdentificationIdentification 4th Annual Socrates Kokkalis Graduate Student Workshop manipulation performs on the subject in an ethnically chauvinistic context to shape and homogenise ethnic identity; third, to elaborate more fully the symbolic linguistic exchanges, in conjunction with a final examination of the power of performative legitimisation, in invoking objective and homogenised identities.
‘Situating the Self’ James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin talk of ‘identity politics,’ as the social valuation of members in categories within rules of membership, indicated by sets of characteristics or behaviours thought to be inclusive of members of said categories relative to others, and the method by which this socialisation occurs and is contested.1 For this paper, it is the overtly social and contested elements that touch the ontological contingency of ‘identity politics,’ as situated in one basic premise: as language is political, identity is political. At the risk of being overly pedantic, it is worth summarising how positivist international narratives versus ‘postmodern’ are incomplete in determining the alluring quality of ethnocommunalism. The former easy to grasp, stemming from the ethos of western cultural and legal traditions, from the naturalised “pre-texts of apprehension.”2 Whereas a ‘postmodern’ interpretation would suggest, “the meaning and value imposed on the world is structured not by one’s immediate consciousness but by the various reality-making scripts one inherits or acquires from one’s surrounding cultural linguistic condition.”3 To explicate how this performs in ethnic identity formation, the postmodern rendition encapsulates the inherent contradictions of identity formation. In the postmodern subject is found “no fixed, essential, or permanent identity. Subjectivity is formed and transformed in a continuous process that takes place in relation to the ways we are represented or addressed and alongside the production or reproduction of the social.”4 This fundamental poststructuralist reading of identity is noteworthy for its unintrinsic, unstable and fluid nature. As is constitutive of the social world, like it, identities ‘oscillate’ within a “medium of identity,”5 in an indeterminate social reality and in fluctuating status; yet bound to a structured social world, implying some type of determinate ‘core.’ Identity is thus operative and identifiable, if not entirely arbitrary, in a substantive or normative founding
2 Anthony London BalkanBalkan LanguageLanguage ‘Games’‘Games’ andand PosPoststructuraltstructural AgencyAgency inin EthnicEthnic IdentificationIdentification 4th Annual Socrates Kokkalis Graduate Student Workshop fashion. Peggy Kamuf’s “Violence, Identity, Self-Determination, and the Question of Justice: on Spectres of Marx” identifies Jacques Derrida’s conception of identity and further captures this postmodern subject:
In practically everything Derrida has written over the last thirty years, this figure of circular appropriation of the self to itself without difference shown to submit to the implacable work of deconstruction, by which is meant a transforming historical inscription that allows us to indicate with the term of identity only a relatively stabilized and never thoroughly stable state of being. 6
Far from a simply a negation, apartness, or otherness of social identity, poststructuralist subjectivity facilitates both what is and what is not in identity formation – not in a reductive sense, but in an inclusive, constructive manner, contrary to the positivist assertion that identity is something which dictates by negation what one is not per se. Poststructuralism, it is argued here, positions identity within the relatively extensive grounds of an ethos, such that identity reflects what is in prominence at a given moment of manifestation, bound by a particular community. Curiously, because poststructural identity is unfixed, is this a multiplicity of identities or one which varies? The reply is moot. What is, and all that need be clear, is that one’s identity is not exclusively determined by juxtaposition, but by recognition of difference as constitutive of self. In this sense, ‘change’ or ‘alteration’ in identity is a perversion of this counter-subject, and, by extension, the self. It can appear as undue admiration or idolatry on the one hand, or disproportionate loathing and degradation on the other, punctuated by corresponding degree of intensity as instances dictate. Indeed, it is this interpretation which accommodates the paradoxes of modernity – how individuals may incorporate an array of cultures, languages, and positions within society. In this light, identity relies on situational and contextual referents and highly politicised modes of understanding. It is malleable as a situation necessitates, easing individuals into adopting appropriate behaviour patterns in accordance with subjective social constructs. Within this orbit of characteristics, given (the right) determinative circumstances, one can display any number of ‘selves’ at a moment of manifestation. Within each ‘expression’ of identity, at a given moment, a plethora of forces are
3 Anthony London BalkanBalkan LanguageLanguage ‘Games’‘Games’ andand PosPoststructuraltstructural AgencyAgency inin EthnicEthnic IdentificationIdentification 4th Annual Socrates Kokkalis Graduate Student Workshop simultaneously acting upon the individual identity, bearing in mind the reflexivity of each individual to the situation, each other, and above all else, to situating the self. The implication of this characterisation is explicatory of the multiplicity of identifications and behaviours found in modern cultures. Such an account of identity is not designed to obfuscate or deceive, or through this rendition imply there to be a measure of unencumbered choice, for in poststructuralist analysis, the force of social subjectivity and power relations ultimately inscribes roles.
Symbolic Language ‘Games,’ Beyond Deconstruction If poststructuralists are determined to defend deconstruction, a partial but incomplete constructivist turn is requisite in the multifarious aspects of social identity. Foremost among these concepts is the language ‘games’ which permeate poststructuralist thought. If poststructuralism is resolved to confront its detractors, the step from interpretation to edification is necessitated if one is to liberate justice-claims in the Balkan context. Radical poststructuralists may well maintain that this is contrary to the deconstructionist spirit; however, the implements poststructuralists fashion – albeit unwittingly and even uncomfortably – imbue an alternative approach to homogenisation of peoples and culture, concurrently revealing and extracting invaluable space for emancipatory identity politics, from “[n]ormative restraints derived from a cultural homogeneity.”7 Nowhere is this more deservedly than in the Balkan context. Principal among these forces is language. It is apparent that language and its usage are not neutral devices for the transference of ideas. As Michael J. Shapiro contends, language is not simply “transparent communication.”8 The performative use of language is immediately invocatory and charged with power. It is infused with symbolic currency, temporal contingency, value, and ultimately what is constituted as truth. That is, the language humans’ use directly adjusts the meaning held in and of the social world. Viewing language as not simply a medium of exchange – “an unobtrusive conduit”9 – but as the vehicle through which this exchange is interpreted, valued, and understood, consequently launches ‘language’ into an unprecedented realm of human interpretation. If we utilise Shapiro’s characterisation of ‘discourse,’ as a preferred mode of poststructuralist analysis over positivist conceptions of language as transparent, it is
4 Anthony London BalkanBalkan LanguageLanguage ‘Games’‘Games’ andand PosPoststructuraltstructural AgencyAgency inin EthnicEthnic IdentificationIdentification 4th Annual Socrates Kokkalis Graduate Student Workshop “because the concept of discourse implies a concern with the meaning- and value- producing practices in language rather than simply the relationship between utterances and their referents.”10 Acknowledging the hierarchical relationship innate in language usage informs the role of political agents, and hence any claims to the ‘good’ or ‘justice’. The structure and use of language, in turn, sequesters a particular milieu, which impacts on human identity. Through an exploration of poststructural understanding of language, in its epistemological, symbolic, hierarchical and political realms, the gist in the first section of this paper is to establish language and its utilisation as a tool of identification in an ethnic (namely Balkan) context. It will describe how language functions as a fundamental and nascent source of identity formation, touching on the latent symbolic use of language in defining meaning, which, in turn, in the second section of the paper, pries open language to ethnic identity manipulation through what will be designated poststructural agency.
Domination and Poststructural Agency If language is to function as a formative basis of identity, the next immediate question to address is who reproduces the language governing symbolic exchange? In order to more profoundly excavate the structures that constitute and shape identity, at this juncture, a turn to Jenny Edkins’s notion of ‘the political’ is a worthwhile endeavour. Edkins alludes to an undeniable element of agency in shaping social practices.11 For Edkins, ‘the political’ falls in a milieu pertaining to “the establishment of that very social order which sets out a particular, historically specific account of what counts as politics and defines other areas of social life not as politics.”12 It is a performative state which both frames and constitutes the process of legitimisation in the social order. Her claim that ‘politics,’ as distinct from ‘the political’ – or more broadly interpreted, the arena in which the order established by ‘the political’ is represented and executed – is ever increasingly depoliticised; an express operation is afoot to ‘technologise politics,’ reductive of the social world and the social sciences by extrapolation, to an intense determinable calculability.13 An abstraction of discursive practices in the name of a particular vision of society – qua the textualising of discourse.
5 Anthony London BalkanBalkan LanguageLanguage ‘Games’‘Games’ andand PosPoststructuraltstructural AgencyAgency inin EthnicEthnic IdentificationIdentification 4th Annual Socrates Kokkalis Graduate Student Workshop The technologisation, or bureaucratisation, of ‘politics’ is striking in connection to Pierre Bourdieu’s conception of the role of amalgamated education in shaping linguistic communities. Here language is presented as of the utmost import in depoliticising identity. Homogenisation of identity via state sponsored education systems – the most prominent of institutions, but not the sole – serves the dual purpose as a form of technologisation and de-contestation. Technologisation depends on education as the first avenue to inscribe legitimate language recognition and usage.14 Education is an agency employed to make society more alike – to provide its members with skills to ‘compete’ in ever-homogenising cultures. Drawing its recipients into a specific linguistic and educational system not only incorporates values and competence reflective of the dominant hierarchy, but also presents the essential illusion that individuals act and choose completely independent of external constraints. Particularly a in liberal western society, which is the hegemonic world template for educational services, both in provision and replication, pupils are measured at how well they excel in a socio-linguistic system that exalts individualism, but ultimately rewards conformity. Proper usage of grammar and language, and the exploitation of the techniques of knowledge acquisition – formulae, deductive reasoning, logic and methodology, for example, are the measure of aptitude and proficiency, reciprocally operating as an onto-epistemic foundation. Proponents of universal education are correct in asserting education can emancipate – is the emancipatory ideal, yet not for the reasons one instinctually suspects. The adage that ‘knowledge is power’, in this analysis, has never been more true. Education is considered the panacea because it is the conduit to indoctrinate roles and responses; it both inscribes and teaches behaviour – in short, how to know. That which emancipates does so through inculcation and uniformity of systems of knowledge; it is the ascription of doctrines rather than the liberation of the rational mind that assures incisive perpetuators of the hegemonic system. The hegemonic socio-linguistic system and its instrumental education system are summarily and heavily reliant upon the mechanisms of bureaucratisation to justify its legitimacy. In fully explicating the dispossession of society from politics, as Bourdieu notes, “dispossession is inseparable from the existence of a body of professionals, objectively invested with the monopoly of the legitimate use of the legitimate language,
6 Anthony London BalkanBalkan LanguageLanguage ‘Games’‘Games’ andand PosPoststructuraltstructural AgencyAgency inin EthnicEthnic IdentificationIdentification 4th Annual Socrates Kokkalis Graduate Student Workshop who produce for their own use a special language predisposed to fulfil, as a by-product, a social function of distinction.”15 More explicit, yet equally insistent, agents perform in this realm of ‘by-product’ in reshaping identity by
… the way legitimate representation is built up, to the ecclesial mode of production, in which the proposals are … immediately subjected to the approval of a group and thus can be imposed only by professionals capable of manipulating ideas and groups at one and the same time, of producing ideas capable of producing groups by manipulating ideas in such as way as to ensure that they gain the support of a group.16
The hegemonic language, and its structuring and supporting corollaries, is in this way, profoundly dependent on the purveyors of technologisation: the effects deployed by professionals, religious figures, bureaucrats, educators and technocrats, among others, function within both formal and informal educative capacities to unwittingly or otherwise maintain the system. In this light, poststructuralism provides the parameters with which to mediate local conceptions of identity and power. As it allows for an accounting of identity politics via the power of language and the manner in which knowledge is constituted, it provides a better framework for framing the ethno-communal ethos. Because this endeavour is reflective of more than simply a ‘political,’ or ‘decontested elites’ struggle on a particular politicised level for ‘language rights,’ poststructuralism is the appropriate methodology to reveal how ethnic identity is constituted. It facilitates an exploration into the holistic nature of the symbolic order of the former Yugoslavia, elucidating the insinuating performative power of substratum subjectivity, wrought by and enabled through an explicit poststructuralist reading of identity formation – in short, the encapsulation of poststructural agency. 17
Naturalising Language, Establishing the Norm To adequately explicate this level of analysis, the work of Bourdieu bridges the gap between language and symbolic transfer, the mode of transfer through which language is infused with meaning. Bourdieu’s Language and Symbolic Power articulates how language operates as a defining aspect of symbolic transfer and identity.
7 Anthony London BalkanBalkan LanguageLanguage ‘Games’‘Games’ andand PosPoststructuraltstructural AgencyAgency inin EthnicEthnic IdentificationIdentification 4th Annual Socrates Kokkalis Graduate Student Workshop Key to this exchange is first, the language deployed, and second, the ‘message’ conveyed by the trappings of usage, station, legitimacy, and authority. Firstly, for Bourdieu, a linguistic community does not end at the boundary of synchronic or semiological interpretation of terms. Its entire structure is not only self-sustaining, but also fulfils the manner in which social order is interpreted, perpetuated, and reified. As much wrought through self-delimiting counter-narrativising, power is only legitimated through social symbolic transference. Poststructuralism operates in this level of inter- subjectivity to elucidate how power is a reflexive phenomenon, as much reciprocated as imposed. It is a perspective that neatly supports the deconstruction of homogenising positivist meta-narratives, although running the risk in so doing, for Bourdieu, of paying “a higher price for truth while accepting a lower profit of distinction.”18 The performative aspect of language, for Bourdieu, occurs in how language is located in a ‘linguistic habitus’, a nexus of structures defined as
… systems of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is, as principles which generate and organize practices and representations that can be objectively adapted to their outcomes without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an express mastery of the operations necessary in order to attain them. 19
This concept is important in demonstrating that structure is a reflexive process attained not by any necessary intent, but by discursive social practice. In similar fashion to which social customs determine the configurations of social structure, the linguistic habitus “instils durable dispositions governing our linguistic practices”20 that “lie at the intersection of social structures and practical activity.”21 The crux of the linguistic habitus is familial to a poststructuralist reading of the social world, that is, steeped in an economy of power relations and symbolic transfer.22 As one may imagine, the ‘linguistic habitus’ operates within a ‘social field’, succinctly defined as “a structured space of social positions which is also a structure of power relations.”23 Together they form the nexus where the ‘durable dispositions’ become incorporated, and in which the ‘linguistic habitus’ structures and configures the ‘social field’.24 Bourdieu’s initial contribution is therefore in disclosing, beyond the sheer grammatical properties of language, as parcel and apparent whole of the linguistic
8 Anthony London BalkanBalkan LanguageLanguage ‘Games’‘Games’ andand PosPoststructuraltstructural AgencyAgency inin EthnicEthnic IdentificationIdentification 4th Annual Socrates Kokkalis Graduate Student Workshop system, that meaning is produced in the exchange of the message. On a profound level, an exchange is marked by a “… paradox of communication … that presupposes a common medium, but one which works … only by eliciting and reviving singular, and therefore socially marked, experiences.”25 It is thus silently drawing on the latency ever- present in the linguistic habitus that locates meaning. All the more revealing from Bourdieu, in contrast to simple communicative interpretations, is the symbolic or ideological affect produced in the transfer of messages. Bourdieu observes, par excellence that, “[r]eligion and politics achieve their most successful ideological effects by exploiting the possibilities contained in the polysemy inherent in the social ubiquity of the legitimate language.”26 This point is central to poststructural agency. Secondly, pivotal to the transference of power is determining the mode through which this transfer occurs. Bourdieu integrates the dominant status of the language of a ‘linguistic habitus,’ as it simultaneously governs social practice, and infuses these established norms with value and recognition in the ‘social field’. This movement is completed by engendering the widespread usage of an ‘official’ language; the ‘official’ language as the standard of social conduct. Accordingly, any indiscriminate reference to such language tacitly refers to recognition of the authority sanctioning its position as dominant. This textualisation is irreducibly linked to the prevailing hegemonic discourse, by officialising a language such that: “it has benefited from the institutional conditions necessary for its generalized codification and imposition. Thus known and recognized (more or less completely) throughout the whole jurisdiction of a certain political authority, it helps in turn to reinforce the authority which is the source of its dominance.”27 It is therefore “bound up with the state, both in its genesis and in its social uses” and becomes the official language of a particular political unit.28
Legitimating the Official Language In narrowing the state-centric linguistic habitus, the hegemony of an official language is a feature in determining where power lies. As Bourdieu notes, it is not uncommon, the capacity to speak, “but rather the competence necessary in order to speak the legitimate language which, depending on social heritance, re-translates social distinctions into the specifically symbolic logic of differential deviations, or, in short,
9 Anthony London BalkanBalkan LanguageLanguage ‘Games’‘Games’ andand PosPoststructuraltstructural AgencyAgency inin EthnicEthnic IdentificationIdentification 4th Annual Socrates Kokkalis Graduate Student Workshop distinction.”29 This capacity to formulate distinction is essential to receive and transcribe symbolic values. It is also what cultivates the opportunity for manipulation. Predicated upon a discernment to distinguish inconsistency, refracted in human agency, “legitimate competence can function as linguistic capital, producing a ‘profit of distinction’ on the occasion of each social exchange”30; indeed, only through inculcation, and enabled by the capacity to recognise discrepancy does it become possible that “[s]peakers lacking the legitimate competence are de facto excluded from the social domains in which this competence is required, or are condemned to silence.”31 Thus any modification of language assumes intensified significance in that it actualises distinction as difference, and through symbolic transference, produces hierarchical classification. Bourdieu invokes the notion of latency in completing this transfer; a hierarchically ordered universe of deviations performs in seconding the power of suggestion for full transmission. In the capacity to discern difference is the latency in hierarchy that concedes the power of intimidation and suggestion. Although Bourdieu prefers Marxist terminology of ‘capital’ and ‘profit’ to express the notion of advantageous usage, the root of manipulative practices generates from the same source – one in whom is contained the potential and capacity to generate or impose distinction, is duly permeated with latent symbolic power at a nascent stage in transference. A legitimated authority is able to exploit this profit of distinction to usurp, envelope and monopolise the symbolic connotations available and evocative in its exchange. As Bourdieu maintains, when discussing the manipulation of language by the French revolutionary intelligentsia, if language is a code arising out of the “struggle for symbolic power … what was [and is] at stake was the formation and re-formation of mental structures,”32 and equally vital, “mental representations.”33 Although manifesting as organically produced in language, there is, in fact, a competition for ‘cultural goods’ and most importantly, for a “profit of distinction“ to be made of this contestation. 34 Language endorsement by the hegemonic and, accordingly, appropriate authority, and proper usage, including “prosodic and articulating or lexical or syntactic variants,”35 become identifying characteristics of the hegemonic and inclusive grouping. And those lacking distinguishing characteristics are respectively excluded.
10 Anthony London BalkanBalkan LanguageLanguage ‘Games’‘Games’ andand PosPoststructuraltstructural AgencyAgency inin EthnicEthnic IdentificationIdentification 4th Annual Socrates Kokkalis Graduate Student Workshop Subsequently, centralising legitimate linguistic practices furthermore constrains legitimate social practices, therein dispossessing communities of alternatives. Bourdieu epitomises this view in the following passage:
However great the proportion of the functioning of a language that is not subject to variation, there exists, in the area of pronunciation, diction and even grammar, a whole set of differences significantly associated with social differences which, though negligible in the eyes of the linguist, are pertinent from the sociologist’s standpoint because they belong to a system of linguistic oppositions which is the re-translation of a system of social differences. A structural sociology of language, inspired by Saussure but constructed in opposition to the abstraction he imposes, must take as its object the relationship between the structured systems of sociologically pertinent linguistic differences and the equally structured systems of social differences.36
What one receives in the symbolic transference is not just an idea or message but an entire ascribing and structurating power arrangement, enunciating one’s corresponding response, and appropriate deference or impertinence to the authoritative or unauthoritative speaker, contingent upon station. As linguistic terms owe their value “solely to usage within the system that is generally accepted by the community,”37 particular language usage undergoes, in such a social context, a “systematic devaluation”; the resultant affect that a “system of sociologically pertinent linguistic oppositions tends to be constituted, which has nothing in common with the system of linguistically pertinent linguistic oppositions.”38 The marginal differences discernible in language usage and the positioning of the authoritative transmitter and recipient are converted in discourse, and infused with symbolic significance such that it functions as a social structuring principle – placing individuals and groups alike in relation one to another. The essential point of consolidating official language is therefore found in its structuring dynamic. The pre-eminence of an official language, in turn, underpins the authority and domination which is the source of legitimacy, and in which rests the potentiality of exclusionary practices. In other words, the social values imbued in language “tend to be organized in systems of differences … which reproduce, in the symbolic order of differential deviations, the system of social differences,”39 making “all social agents the carriers of distinctive signs, of which the signs of distinction are but a
11 Anthony London BalkanBalkan LanguageLanguage ‘Games’‘Games’ andand PosPoststructuraltstructural AgencyAgency inin EthnicEthnic IdentificationIdentification 4th Annual Socrates Kokkalis Graduate Student Workshop sub-class, capable of uniting and separating people as surely as explicit prohibitions or barriers.”40 As Bourdieu notes, “[i]ntegration into a single ‘linguistic community’, which is a product of the political domination that is endlessly reproduced by institutions capable of imposing universal recognition of the dominant language, is the condition for the establishment of relations of linguistic domination.”41 Consequently, the drive for homogenisation found in institutions and language is, in fact, an heterogeneous identity- obfuscating device – operating through social representations of who may or may not be constitutive of the group or state. Conspicuously, this process culminates in the badge of citizenship, particularly pertinent in the West. However, in a Balkan context, more frequently this is represented in intangible ethnocommunal configurations before state emblems. The transition of identity from ‘ethnos’ to ‘demos’ – from ethnic to civil – is revealed as somewhat less than a smooth process. Therefore, the manner in which ‘statism,’ or another form of political community, transpires, enmeshed in the hegemonic discourse to produce a predominant peoples’ vision, is the concomitant to language ‘games.’ Establishing an overarching language structure is therefore vital to enable particular discourse, facilitate manipulation, and secure benefits from identities embedded in its structure. In this context, Bourdieu is correct in espousing, “intimidation, a symbolic violence which is not aware of what it is … can only be exerted on a person predisposed (in his habitus) to feel it, whereas others will ignore it.”42 This observation has palpable implications for identity formation; the power to ‘construct’ identity is in being able to exclude, yet marginalisation can only be effective among those predisposed to it, namely those in whom a trace of the exclusionists identities lie and rely upon. Equally formidable, though nonetheless subtler than ostensive intimidation, is the faculty of suggestion evident in Bourdieu. The power expressed in suggestion is symbolically charged as “invisible, silent violence,”43 all the more intense and authoritative owing to its unregistered “insidious, insistent and insinuating” manner.44 Quite simply, suggestion works to simultaneously inscribe responses and destabilise understandings; it functions to define practice, both social and linguistic, without ever having to ‘show’ or ‘present’ itself in plenitude. It is the agency of instability itself, the unceasing requirement to assign and assume form, pertinence, and presence, yielded from
12 Anthony London BalkanBalkan LanguageLanguage ‘Games’‘Games’ andand PosPoststructuraltstructural AgencyAgency inin EthnicEthnic IdentificationIdentification 4th Annual Socrates Kokkalis Graduate Student Workshop the potentiality of symbolic acts. What is enveloped inside the capacity of suggestion is transferred without verbalisation, such as in political, religious, or cultural rituals, and is often more efficacious that that which must be deliberate. In this light, destabilising language is utilised, in an identity framework, to subvert pre-held social meanings, which functions to differentiate language and groups – to make ‘our’ language different from ‘theirs’, ‘us’ different from ‘them’.
The Croatian Linguistic Example The drive for ethnically pure statehood, specifically in a Balkan context, functions in tandem with formulating identity configurations. For example, writing on Croatia, Dubravko Škiljan states, “[a]lthough a linguistic community and its spaces could be constituted ‘around’ any idiom … the linguistic community often relates to the language, particularly in its standardized form, as well as to the nation.”45 Indeed, he contends, “it should be supposed that there is substantial interaction between nation and language: the language is the very essence of ethnic or national belonging, so that it furnishes the nation with an identity, while receiving its own identity from the nation.”46 Political domination is subsequently and intrinsically linked to defining the parameters of its existence via the ethos of the state: its language, history, and culture, among other naturalised, objectified, and determinate factors. Drawing on the implications of this link for identity politics, Škiljan promulgates a damaging appraisal of Croatian corpus language planning as a spurious attempt at identity formulations through linguistic engineering. Škiljan clearly elucidates the failure of Croatian nationalists in articulating a vision of ‘Croatia’, in strictly linguistic terms, through evaluation of a popular approach entitled axiological. Developed by Radoslav Katièiæ, in addition to typological and genealogical elements in situating a language, the axiological theory observes that language is the “bearer of some values that appertain to a particular society, as a symbol of human ‘spiritual essence and belonging’ … that the linguistic system was related to its social and historical context and that a language’s identity might depend on the attitudes of the linguistic community and on its consciousness.“47 Since the 1991 conflict began, Croatian linguists have engaged this approach, promulgating it as the unique and decisive factor in determining language
13 Anthony London BalkanBalkan LanguageLanguage ‘Games’‘Games’ andand PosPoststructuraltstructural AgencyAgency inin EthnicEthnic IdentificationIdentification 4th Annual Socrates Kokkalis Graduate Student Workshop identity. 48 As Škiljan and Bourdieu both contend, language is co-opted by identity determiners to finalise an equation: “equalization of the state and the language, in order to obtain the famous Romantic formula according to which state = nation = language.”49 Upon closer scrutiny, however, the symbolic currency available reveals the fallaciousness of the axiological approach. For the internal logic of the axiological disposition, as applied to the Croatian language, is that which is also its undoing:
If it is the language community that assures the identity of a language, it means in principle this community on any level, infranational as well as supranational: one can conceive a situation in which a group of speakers of a sociolect or dialect within the framework of one diasystem constructs its own axiology that corresponds to a specific language identity … but it is also possible that a community consisting of more than one nation develops an axiological dimension orientated towards the symbolic and communicative space of one language (as was exactly the case, at least in some periods, with the Serbo-Croatian community).50
Furthermore, if the language is the symbolic embodiment of the nation, “the language identity – because it would pretend to result from the very relationship between nation and language – should have an inherent a priori character too, and it would be quite unnecessary to influence its formation or to differentiate it from another national language identity.”51 The Croatian interlude clearly demonstrates, naturalising a sanitised version of language is considered concomitant to the statehood project. The homogenistic impulse, whilst certainly advantageous to the hegemonic perpetrator, is indeed fallacious in a Balkan context in withstanding the test of linguistic purity – yet not the goal of identity or statehood, in which it is resoundingly successful. Language in itself, plays a crucial role in amalgamating diverse peoples into a ‘people.’ As Škiljan evinces, Croatian politics employ antithetical posturing in
… stereotypical ‘identifying’ procedures that accentuate the difference between Us and Them and emphasize both the content of one’s own ethnic identity and the boundaries towards the Other. Applying these general rules to the domain of language policy, it tends to symbolically assemble all of Us, i.e., all the Croats, and – at the same time – to exclude from the symbolic space all the Others, i.e., above all, the Serbs.52
14 Anthony London BalkanBalkan LanguageLanguage ‘Games’‘Games’ andand PosPoststructuraltstructural AgencyAgency inin EthnicEthnic IdentificationIdentification 4th Annual Socrates Kokkalis Graduate Student Workshop Consequently, those who will not or cannot meet the Croatian linguistic competence, are cast as the excluded other. Such manoeuvres furthermore function to destabilise identity. Destabilising the original meaning of a term – by substituting the new, rendering the old unstable – thereby not only differentiates the new term, but also undermines the old, and thus the peoples who still regard the original as ‘existent’ and to whom the original term is still attached and has resonance. Thus modifying language has as its political aim, to destabilise the cultural foundation associated with a particular language; a foundation in which language is the crux, and that necessitates transformation in the symbolic space, through the politics of symbolic capital, to accrue benefit. The axiological approach is in this sense inviting. Aside from being demonstrated as unsustainable, its allure is that Croatian language policy need “not deal with the intentional differentiation from the Serbian standard form: a differentiation in the symbolic domain performed on the level of linguistic consciousness is sufficient to institute the identity.”53 The culmination of instituting an exclusionist Croatian language identity, presently in Croatia, has prompted minority Serbs of Croatia,
who have always apparently spoken the same language as the Croats, [to] insist today upon translations of school textbooks from Croatian to Serbian (although they understand the Croatian texts) and consent, therefore, to the exclusion from the symbolic Croatian space, having [accepted] as a perspective integration into Serbian space.54
Furthermore, to this end, Croatian linguistic exclusionists have (re)introduced numerous “neologisms and archaisms, while various kinds of ‘differential dictionaries’ between Croatian and Serbian have been produced.”55 Closely aligned and most symbolically charged of all is,
language policy on the lexical level, where the selection [by Croatian linguists] often affects the units that are supposed to be unacceptable to Serbian speakers for various, mostly ideological, reasons, as in cases when the ‘renewed’ word was originally invented or at least frequently used by the collaborationist Croatian regime during World War II.56
All these actions, it must be borne in mind, are bolstered by the ‘retroactive’ and ‘conservative’ properties of language systems, the illusion that they are ever-present,
15 Anthony London BalkanBalkan LanguageLanguage ‘Games’‘Games’ andand PosPoststructuraltstructural AgencyAgency inin EthnicEthnic IdentificationIdentification 4th Annual Socrates Kokkalis Graduate Student Workshop apparently static and unchanging. Demonstrating the insidious power of symbolic violence and poststructural agency, enacting change that is capable of operating both on practical and symbolic levels to exclude and marginalize. Finally, by way of illustration, a component of Croatian linguistic ‘games,’ and an ethnic chauvinist device is, as aforementioned, to actively destabilise language (although it is already unstable). A quintessential example in a Balkan context is the traditional greeting ‘Zdravo’: the best-approximated translation is, ‘to your health.’ Events, both real and imagined, over the past decade have diminished its use in Croatia. There (with perhaps the exception of the Dubrovnik region where ‘adio’ is common), its usage has been widely replaced with ‘Bog,’ which literally means ‘God,’ but should be interpreted as the shortened version of ‘ajde Bog’: ‘go with God’ or even ‘God be with you.’57 The symbolic transference of this highly politicised – somewhat unrecognised – and euphemised ethnic motif contests acceptable usage of the ‘Croatian’ language and further legitimates the contentious origins of the distinctiveness of ‘Croatian,’ as opposed to the ‘Serbian,’ and most recently, ‘Bosnian’ language. Its employment is therefore charged with symbolic violence and power, and establishes how language is engaged in attempts to express overtly ethnic values and identity. Individuals or groups, who do not engage in the proper usage of the Croatian language, are summarily rejected as part of the Croatia national corpus. Indeed, in regard to ‘acceptable’ usage, Škiljan comments that transformation of language necessitates corrective factors, “it is only the bon usage of the best authors, verified by the authority of the court’s elite, that should be taken into consideration”; and cites Dalibor Brozoviæ as recommending in Croatia, “the use of the language of the President of the Republic as a linguistic model”58 – at the time, none other than President Franjo Tuðman, who was once documented on public record as thankful his wife was neither a ‘Serb nor a Jew.’ Not only does the widespread unofficial adoption of ‘Bog’ as the ‘national’ greeting vitiate ‘Zdravo,’ but also it homogenises acceptable terminology nation-wide and makes the use of ‘Zdravo,’ owing to inference and connotation, inimical to being Croat and hence its axiological and territorial integrity. In fact, in no uncertain terms, Katièiæ says: “The acceptance of the new state of language policy there corresponds strictly to the acceptance of the independent Republic of Croatia… Only the small
16 Anthony London BalkanBalkan LanguageLanguage ‘Games’‘Games’ andand PosPoststructuraltstructural AgencyAgency inin EthnicEthnic IdentificationIdentification 4th Annual Socrates Kokkalis Graduate Student Workshop minority of the population who do not accept the Croatian state also refuse to accept its language policy.”59 Thus ‘Bog,’ as just one example, is infused with symbolic and iconic status as a linguistic, religious and cultural indicator for all that distinguishes the Croat people and their ethnic identity. The ‘Croat’ language is transformed into a national metaphor, consolidated as either ‘organic,’ as emanating from the people, or spontaneously fashioned and maintained by means of distinctly Croatian linguistic practice.
Conclusion In closing, ethnocommunal associations become ethno-chauvinist through exclusionary practices latent and available in the manipulation of power and symbolic violence: by monopolising culture, language, meaning and ‘truth’, ultimately destabilising and reformulating identity in the process. Once these monopolies are established – at the expense of any competing notion – as ‘the political’ explicates, they are forgotten and naturalised, and additionally, by the use of poststructural interpretation, misrecognised as authentic. This is the power of presence manifest in symbolically violent founding acts; in other words, “[t]o institute, to give a social definition, an identity, is also to impose boundaries.”60 As much as it is counter-intuitive to the rational post-Cartesian subject, language affects the ‘message’ by structuring the structure. Or, in other words, recognising the structure is defined by its instruments, and that its instruments cannot exceed the structure. Extrapolated in an epistemic sense, that which fixes demarcation of the limits of knowledge in turn shapes its constitution. The trick of this dialectic is to apply this concept of language embedded in a context, as ‘already always’ present, conservative and therefore resistance to change, but functioning on many, multifarious levels, structuring social practices. Language is thus also the foundation of symbolic exchange. As Bourdieu articulates in fomenting poststructuralist analysis, structurating structure is therefore constitutive of political representation and identity. The value of poststructural analysis is it effectively rejects a single interpretation of events, and inasmuch, helps delegitimise ethnic chauvinist narratives based on homogenised identities. Its emphasis also crucially relies upon unmasking the power
17 Anthony London BalkanBalkan LanguageLanguage ‘Games’‘Games’ andand PosPoststructuraltstructural AgencyAgency inin EthnicEthnic IdentificationIdentification 4th Annual Socrates Kokkalis Graduate Student Workshop structures that serve as the formulators of legitimacy, which is so essential to homogenising ethnic identity. No where is this more relevant than in Balkan language ‘games.’ Poststructural interpretation is therefore imperative to foster genuine and substantive peace, lest international interventions continue to succumb to acceptance of specious power explanations discernible in cyclical history and ancient rivalries.
1 James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin (Autumn 2000). “Violence and the Social Construction of Ethnic Identity”, International Organization, Vol. 54, No. 4, pp. 848. 2 Michael J. Shapiro (1989). “Textualizing Global Politics”, in James Der Derian and Michael J. Shapiro, eds., International/Intertextual Relations: Postmodern Readings of World Politics, New York: Lexington Books, pp. 11. 3 Shapiro, “Textualizing Global Politics”, pp. 11. 4 Jenny Edkins (1999). Poststructuralism & International Relations: Bringing the Political Back In, Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers.Edkins, pp. 22. 5 William E. Connolly (1991). Identity\Difference: Democratic Negotiations of Political Paradox, Ithica: Cornell University Press, pp. 46. 6 Peggy Kamuf (1998). “Violence, Identity, Self-Determination, and the Question of Justice: on Specters of Marx”, Violence, Identity, and Self-Determination, Hent de Vries and Samuel Weber, eds., Stanford: Stanford University Press, pp. 271. 7 James Der Derian, “The Boundaries of Knowledge and Power in International Relations”, International/Intertextual Relations: Postmodern Readings of World Politics, pp. 5. 8 Shapiro, “Textualizing Global Politics”, pp. 14. 9 Shapiro, “Textualizing Global Politics”, pp. 14. 10 Shapiro, “Textualizing Global Politics”, pp. 14. 11 Many poststructuralists would contest the notion of agency as by design or intent. Here it is contended that agency is not necessarily a premeditated action – one can have ‘unbeknownst’ or serendipitous agency, which is largely the intended unintended consequence of action. That is, an action carried out intentionally, but its consequences cannot be absolutely determined beforehand. Like the famous Foucauldian conclusion that a he can only know with certainty that a concentration camp was not a nice place; action has consequence, but the form it takes cannot be unequivocally predetermined with any definite certainty. In short, ‘unintentional’ agency counts. 12 Edkins, Poststructuralism, pp. 2. 13 Edkins, Poststructuralism, pp. 1. 14 Education is the primary source for Pierre Bourdieu (1991). Language and Symbolic Power, Gino Raymond and Matthew Adamson, trans., Cambridge: Polity Press, (see predominantly pp.
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46 – 61) and the institution most associated with what can be regarded as a direct form of agency, but other levels of linguistic indoctrination exist: the family, legal systems, media and formal politics to name but a few. Furthermore, social practices, themselves inculcated by a self- sustaining ‘linguistic habitus’, play a central role in homogenisation of the linguistic population. Bourdieu writes, “There is every reason to think that the factors which are most influential in the formation of the habitus are transmitted without passing through language and consciousness, but through suggestions inscribed in the most apparently insignificant aspects of the things, situations and practices of everyday life. Thus the modalities of practices, the ways of looking, sitting, standing, keeping silent, or even of speaking (‘reproachful looks’ or ‘tones’, ‘disapproving glances’ and so on) are full of injunctions that are powerful and hard to resist precisely because they are silent and insidious, insistent and insinuating”, pp. 51. The contention in this paper does not operate in disjunction with the subliminal power described herein, it operates under the premise that these powers are a constitutive part of the linguistic habitus, simply lending credence to its performative vigour. 15 Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, pp. 59. 16 Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, pp. 181 – 182. 17 Bourdieu encapsulates poststructural agency in the following as it pertains to the agents of language production: “It is not a question of the symbolic power which writers, grammarians or teachers may exert over the language in their personal capacity, and which is no doubt much more limited than the power they can exert over culture (for example, by imposing a new definition of legitimate literature which may transform the ‘market situation’). Rather, it is a question of the contribution they make, independently of any individual pursuit of distinction, to the production, consecration and imposition of a distinct and distinctive language.” Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, pp. 58. In this sense, it is not the individual or personal acts, as such, but the sustenance such acts contribute to upholding and preserving the structure as a whole. 18 Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, pp. 34. 19 Pierre Bourdieu (1990). The Logic of Practice, trans. Richard Nice, Stanford: Stanford University Press, pp. 53. 20 Topper, “Not So Trifling Nuances”, pp. 45 21 Topper, “Not So Trifling Nuances”, pp. 38. 22 Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, pp. 37. 23 Topper, “Not So Trifling Nuances”, pp. 39. 24 Topper, “Not So Trifling Nuances”, pp. 39. 25 Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, pp. 39. 26 Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, pp. 39. 27 Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, pp. 45. 28 Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, pp. 45. 29 Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, pp. 55. 30 Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, pp. 55. 31 Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, pp. 55. Emphasis is the author’s. 32 Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, pp. 48. 33 Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, pp. 220. 34 Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, pp. 51 – 55. Indeed, Bourdieu contends, “despite the anathema that is poured upon them, these negated meanings still fulfil a philosophical function, since they act at least as a negative referent in relation to which a philosophical distance is established, the ‘ontological difference’. “ Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, pp. 145. 35 Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, pp. 54. 36 Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, pp. 54. 37 Edkins, Poststructuralism, pp. 24. 38 Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, pp. 54. 39 Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, pp. 54. 40 Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, pp. 123. 41 Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, pp. 46.
19 Anthony London BalkanBalkan LanguageLanguage ‘Games’‘Games’ andand PosPoststructuraltstructural AgencyAgency inin EthnicEthnic IdentificationIdentification 4th Annual Socrates Kokkalis Graduate Student Workshop
42 Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, pp. 51. 43 Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, pp. 52. 44 Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, pp. 51. 45 Dubravko Škiljan (2000). “From Croato-Serbian to Croatian: Croatian linguistic identity”, Multilingua, vol. 19, no. 1/2, pp. 9. 46 Škiljan, “From Croato-Serbian to Croatian”, pp. 16. 47 Škiljan, “From Croato-Serbian to Croatian”, pp. 15. 48 Škiljan, “From Croato-Serbian to Croatian”, pp. 15. Italics author’s. Škiljan lists Radoslav Katièiæ (1995). “Serbokroatische Sprache – Serbisch-kroatischer Sprachstreit”, in Reinhard Laver und Werner Lehfeldt, eds. Das jugoslawische Desaster (Historische, sprachliche und ideologische Hintergründe). Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz, pp. 23 – 79; Katièiæ (1997). “Undoing a ‘unified language’: Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian”, in Michael Clyne, ed. Undoing and Redoing Corpus Planning. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 165 – 191; and Dalibor Brozoviæ (1995). “Stanje i zadatci jezikoslovne kroatistike [The status and tasks of linguistic Croatian studies.]. Jezik . Vol. 43, No. 1, pp. 23 – 34. Škiljan makes an interesting observation in this regard. He remarks that “today in Croatia official interpreters from Croatian to Serbian and vice versa exist, but their job is primarily symbolic in nature.”, pp. 14. Elsewhere he makes note of former and recent linguistic policy, highlighting the close proximity of a standard language: “[i]n the former Yugoslavia, linguists as well as politicians usually considered the Montenegrin form of the standard language [Serbo-Croatian/Croato-Serbian] as a variation of Serbian, while the language of public communication in Bosnia and Herzegovina was comprehended as having a ‘transitional’ character between Croatian and Serbian … At the moment when ex-Yugoslavia split, the four varieties, with more or less instance, depending on political and war circumstances, began to be regarded as separate languages, and this tendency added a linguistic dimension to all the other conflicts.” Škiljan, “From Croato-Serbian to Croatian”, pp. 8. Škiljan also references Sinan Gudževiæ (1996) “Der serbo-kroatische Sprachkrieg”, Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik, 8, pp. 980 – 985. Later Škiljan notes: “The case is interesting because of the fact that there were at the beginning two, afterwards three and finally four nations that claim to ‘borrow’ basically one language (or one diasystem) from the linguistic community and to transform that language into their own symbol.” Škiljan, “From Croato-Serbian to Croatian”, pp. 9. For a comprehensive summary of the politicised nature of the language question in the former Yugoslavia, see chapter 5 by Albina Neèak Luk (1995). “The Linguistic Aspect of Ethnic Conflict in Yugoslavia”, Yugoslavia, the Former and Future: Reflections by Scholars from the Region, Payam Akhavan and Robert Howse, eds., Washington, The Brookings Institution. 49 Škiljan, “From Croato-Serbian to Croatian”, pp. 11. This notion is further evidenced in the Croatian context. Marcus Tanner (1997). Croatia: A Nation Forged in War, New Haven: Yale University Press, pp. ix, claims these words were uttered by then Croatian President Franjo Tuðman, in 1992, that statehood was the culmination of a “thousand year-old dream of independence.” In fact, at President Tuðman’s State of the Nation address at the joint session of the Croatian National Parliament (Sabor) on January 27th, 1998, following the reintegration of the UNTAES region (eastern Slavonia), he stated “[t]he centuries -old dream of the Croatian people has thereby been completely fulfilled.” Croatian Information Centre, Zagreb, 28 January, 1998. This attitude is exemplified in the preamble of the Croatian Constitution, which recounts the naturalised version of the historical course towards statehood. A sample of section one of the constitution reads:
I. HISTORICAL FOUNDATIONS The millennial identity of the Croatian nation and the continuity of its statehood, confirmed by the course of its entire historical experience in different statal [sic] forms and by the perpetuation and growth of the idea of a national state, based on the Croatian nation's historical right to full sovereignty, manifested itself: - in the formation of Croatian principalities in the seventh century; - in the independent mediaeval state of Croatia founded in the ninth century; - in the Kingdom of Croats established in the tenth century;
20 Anthony London BalkanBalkan LanguageLanguage ‘Games’‘Games’ andand PosPoststructuraltstructural AgencyAgency inin EthnicEthnic IdentificationIdentification 4th Annual Socrates Kokkalis Graduate Student Workshop
- in the preservation of the identity of the Croatian state in the Croatian-Hungarian personal union; - in the autonomous and sovereign decision of the Croatian Sabor (Parliament) of 1527 to elect a king from the Hapsburg dynasty; - in the autonomous and sovereign decision of the Croatian Sabor to sign the Pragmatic Sanction of 1712; - in the conclusions of the Croatian Sabor of 1848 regarding the restoration of the integrity of the Triune Kingdom of Croatia under the power of the Ban, on the basis of the historical statal [sic] and natural right of the Croatian nation; - in the Croato-Hungarian Settlement Agreement of 1868 regulating the relations between the Kingdom of Dalmatia, Croatia and Slavonia and the Kingdom of Hungary, on the basis of the legal traditions of both states and the Pragmatic Sanction of 1712 …
Source: (17 January 2002), http://www.vlada.hr/english/docs-constitution.html. Elsewhere, the status of languages is defined. Article 12 states:
- The Croatian language and Latin script shall be in official use in the Republic of Croatia. In individual local units another language and the Cyrillic or some other script may be introduced into official use along with the Croatian language and the Latin script, under conditions specified by law.
And Article 15: - Members of all nations and minorities shall have equal rights in the Republic of Croatia. Members of all nations and minorities shall be guaranteed freedom to express their nationality, freedom to use their language and script, and cultural autonomy.
Source: (17 January 2002), http://www.vlada.hr/english/docs-constitution.html. Clearly Articles 12 and 15 are designed to create a distinct differentiation between the ‘national’ language and other minority languages and, in context, officialise acceptable usage in accordance with the appropriate history of the Croat nation. In support of this, Škiljan also notes, “As regards language planning, the status of Croatian is regulated by the Constitution and other legal acts: since the proclamation of the independence of Croatia, Croatian is the country’s official language and the language of general public communication, while Serbian is declared to be a minority language with restricted areas of use that should be the object of a special law concerning minority languages.” Škiljan, “From Croato-Serbian to Croatian”, pp. 12. 50 Škiljan, “From Croato-Serbian to Croatian”, pp. 16. 51 Škiljan, “From Croato-Serbian to Croatian”, pp. 17. 52 Škiljan, “From Croato-Serbian to Croatian”, pp. 11. 53 Škiljan, “From Croato-Serbian to Croatian”, pp. 16. For example, a selected but surely incomplete list of terms altered since 1990 includes: Before Now (English) arhiva pismohrana (archive) aerodrom zraèna luka (airport) avion zrakoplov (airplane) rodbina svojta (relatives) presuda pravorijek (verdict) uviðjaj oèevid (investigation) kasarna vojarna (barracks) telegram brzojav (telegram) glasanje glasovanje (voting) zbog glede (as for)
21 Anthony London BalkanBalkan LanguageLanguage ‘Games’‘Games’ andand PosPoststructuraltstructural AgencyAgency inin EthnicEthnic IdentificationIdentification 4th Annual Socrates Kokkalis Graduate Student Workshop
54 Škiljan, “From Croato-Serbian to Croatian”, pp. 11 – 12. It is notable that even as late as 1999, language was still politicised and pains were undertaken to contest and destabilise language, as evidenced by the first Serbian film to be screened in Croatia since 1990. The Yugoslavian film Rane (Wounds), was presented in the Croatian capital Zagreb with Latin script subtitles, to distinguish the Croatian language from its Serbian ‘cousin’ which employs a Cyrillic alphabet, although audibly, little distinguishes the two. 55 Škiljan, “From Croato-Serbian to Croatian”, pp. 12. Worth noting is Škiljan’s reference to a corpus ‘Croatian’ language project, in its purest form, undertaken by Bulcsu Laszlo (1996). “Opæitbena bilježitost pri odredbi srbštine i hrvatštine (Communicative markedness in defining Serbianisms and Croatianisms)”, in Marin Andrijaševiæ and Lovorka Zergollern-Miletiæ, eds., Jezik i kommunikacija. Zagreb: Hrvatsko društvo za primijenjenu lingvistiku, pp. 430 – 451, who “showed that the complete modification of the standard language is conceivable, when he constructed a particular form of standard Croatian choosing from its entire literary tradition the forms (at all linguistic levels) that were the most distant from the actual Serbian norm: the result was an idiolectal construction with an extremely low communicative value but with high symbolic power.” In a state that has spared little expense in matters pertaining to promoting distinguishing symbolic and ethnically based ideological projects, its usefulness has been marginal, Škiljan argues, because is adoption would “interrupt the communicative and symbolic link with at least one and a half centuries of important linguistic, especially literary, tradition. This tradition could hardly be restored: it would manifest itself only in an altered, non-original form.” Škiljan, “From Croato-Serbian to Croatian”, pp. 13. Such a break would disavow or diminish, among others, Croatian authors such as, Marko Maruliæ, Ivan Gunduliæ, and Matija Antun Relkoviæ. 56 Škiljan, “From Croato-Serbian to Croatian”, pp. 13. Škiljan’s reference is to the Ustaše regime, in collaboration with the German and Italian fascists. 57 Usage of the term is as a form of greeting and farewell. ‘Bog’ originates in the Zagorje region, just north of Zagreb. 58 Dalibor Brozoviæ (1994). “Programska stajališta HDZ-a o hrvatskome jeziku [The programmatic standpoints of HDZ (the Croatian Democratic Union) on the Croatian Language]”, Jezik. No. 41/3, pp. 84, in Škiljan, “From Croato-Serbian to Croatian”, pp. 17. 59 Katièiæ, “Undoing a ‘unified language’: Bosnian, Croatian Serbian”, pp. 188, in Škiljan, “From Croato-Serbian to Croatian”, pp. 11. 60 Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, pp. 120.
22 Anthony London BalkanBalkan LanguageLanguage ‘Games’‘Games’ andand PosPoststructuraltstructural AgencyAgency inin EthnicEthnic IdentificationIdentification 4th Annual Socrates Kokkalis Graduate Student Workshop
Selected Sources
Akhavan, Payam and Robert Howse, Eds. (1995). Yugoslavia, the Former and the Future: Reflections by Scholars from the Region. Washington, The Brookings Institution.
Bourdieu, Pierre (1991). Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge, Polity Press.
Bourdieu, Pierre (1990). The Logic of Practice, trans. Richard Nice, Stanford, Stanford University Press.
Campbell, David (1998). National Deconstruction: Violence, Identity, and Justice in Bosnia. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press.
Connolly, William E. (1991). Identity\Difference: Democratic Negotiations of Political Paradox. Ithica, Cornell University Press.
Der Derian, James and Michael J. Shapiro, Eds. (1989). International/Intertextual Relations: Postmodern Readings of World Politics. New York, Lexington Books.
Edkins, Jenny (1999). Poststructuralism & International Relations: Bringing the Political Back In. Boulder, Lynne Rienner Publishers.
Škiljan, Dubravko (2000). “From Croato-Serbian to Croatian: Croatian linguistic identity.” Multilingua 19(1/2): 3 - 20.
23 Anthony London BalkanBalkan LanguageLanguage ‘Games’‘Games’ andand PosPoststructuraltstructural AgencyAgency inin EthnicEthnic IdentificationIdentification 4th Annual Socrates Kokkalis Graduate Student Workshop
Tanner, Marcus (1997). Croatia: A Nation Forged in War. New Haven, Yale University Press.
Topper, Keith (2001). “Not So Trifling Nuances: Pierre Bourdieu, Symbolic Violence, and the Perversions of Democracy.” Constellations 8(1): 30 - 56.
Vries, Hent de and Samuel Weber, Eds. (1998). Violence, Identity and Self- determination. Stanford, Stanford University Press.
24 Anthony London BalkanBalkan LanguageLanguage ‘Games’‘Games’ andand PosPoststructuraltstructural AgencyAgency inin EthnicEthnic IdentificationIdentification 4th Annual Socrates Kokkalis Graduate Student Workshop