Victims and Heroes

Victims and Heroes Between Ethnic Va lues and Construction of Identity Dunja Rihtman-Augu.stin Riht. man-Au!{ustin, Dunja 199fi:Vic tims and Heroes: Between Ethnic Va lues and Cunstrudiun of ldent.it.y. - Et.hnologiaE urupea 25: 61-67. The ant.hropolo!{ica l concept.H ment.alit.y and nat. ion:d charader are brielly cl iH CliHHt'd. l{eHearch ol' n at i ona l charader in Sout. h Slavic ethnologies is preHent.ed along wit.h the cont.rast.ing models produced by the Serbian and Croat. et.hno ant. h ropologists in the fi rst. part. of this century. Consequent.ly heroism as t.lw dominant. value and it. s role in contemporary national politics and in the construc tion ol' ident.it.y has been questioned. D1: Dunja Rihtnlan-1\.ugu.�lin, Tn stilu.l za elno/ogi,iu i fu lhlorislilw (In stitute of' Ethnology and Fo/11/orP RPsearrh), Kmf:ja. Zunnimim 17, 70000 ZagrPh, Cmatia. My aim is to discuss th o dominant val ues and have boon confused and shared tho same or mentality on two levels: with respect to previ even greater difficultiesas we, the natives have, ous studios of those phenomena and regarding when discerning between fa cts and political their role in everyday life and politics. The propaganda of the parts in conflict. location is: contemporary Croatia. Actual discourse (political, by the media or the academic one) about character and reasons or causes ofthe war in former Yu goslavia often A preliminary remark begins and/orends with the conclusion that the I have doubts whether it would be indispensa conflict and the ways it was dealt with should be ble to start with a polite 'apology', in the fa shion ascribed to the Balkan mentality. To many of postmodern ethnography. I should namely European andAmerican politicians, and to some 'confess' that I am writing as a native anthro political scientists, philosophers as well as an pologist, an elderly Croat lady who has had thropologists, we, the inharmonious nations in living experiences in two wars (1941-1944 and this historically notorious turbulent area - are 1991-1992) and that my information and my the others, ethnicities with: a. an ugly value views necessarily are biased. orientation turning us into warriors, resulting Skepticism is due to my recent reading of in ethnic cleansing, although; b. we used to texts published in the special issue of The have a beautiful folklore from the times ofVuk Anthropology of East Europe Review (1993) on Karadzic to the folklore ensembles of the fo rmer "War among the Yugoslavs" (as if ever Yugo communist state ... Unfortunately the two in slavs have been a nation.1 The papers have terpretations seldom meet. been written by non-Yu goslavs, mostly Ameri can anthropologists who did considerable re What is mentality? search in former Yu goslavia. Some of those writings have been partial (not to say preju A contemporary definition refers to mentality diced). What is common to all ofthem is the lack in this way (Mucchielli 1985:5): of the presumption that their authors, non native anthropologists, might be biased too. "Une mentalite est le systeme de reference Reading some of those texts the native anthro implicite d'un groupe social, homogene du point pologist has an impression that the authors de vue de cet etat d'esprit commun, ce systeme 61 de reference lui permet de voir les choses cl'une in fixed sections of time. Research is usually certuine lllUniCre et clone cl'avoir doH reactionS founded in historical and archival material, et condu ites en accord avec cette perception du which is ethnographic by its nature: everyday monde." life, fa mily, ritual and cw;toms, fe stivals, popu lar piety, death . Accordi ng to the above author mentality is In different areas offormerYugoslavia there shaped by education and by experiences ac exist quite a long tradition of mental ity studies qu i red durin g the life of individuals in their accompanied by perhaps an even longer tradi social environment. Jn complex societies there tion of non-academic thinking and writing on may exist v arious, contradictory and conflict this topic. Here a question may be raised. Name ing m entalities . ly, should para-scientific writing be ignored by Anthropological approach to the research of the academic discourse or should it be taken mentality was strongly influenced by the theo into consideration? I will try to answer this ry of culture and personality. Culture as a later. complex whole, cultural values and transmis The first and for a long time the most influ sion of tradition as well as Gestalt psychology ential theory on Balkan mentality was promo have been milestones in the study of mentality ted by Jovan Cv�jic (1865-1927), anthropoge and national character immediately before and ographer, founder of the Serbian ethnology and during the Second World War. Mentality and sociology and an influential Serbian political national character studies in the 1940s and 50s personality and statesman before and after the usually resulted in the construction of more or foundation ofYugoslavia in 1918. less ingenious patterns of national character.� CvijiC's argumentation ofSouth-Slav cultur It is significant to have in m ind that those al patterns starts with a geographic configura studies did appear in specificpolitical circum tion of the Balkan peninsula, where he distin stances. For example Margaret Mead opens her guishes two dominant cultural areas: a) a patri text on National character in A. Kroeber'sA n archal regime from Albania to Braila and the thropology To day (1953) explaining that this Danube river mouth in the Black Sea in the kind of study has been an answer to the needs" East and to Istria, Gorizia and Klagenfurt in of the world political situation after 1939. the West, b) a modification of Byzantine civili Another type of approach to mentality has zation spreading in Greece and Bulgaria. been developed by French historians. According to Cvijic, fr om Braila to Gorizia the population belongs to one nation - the "C'est un probleme qui ne peut se traiter que Serbian, and they share a dominant patriar dans une perspective historique", chal culture. The most important psychological type by which the Balkan patriarchal culture writes Michel Vovelle (1982:12). In his words, and mentality are defined is the 'Dinaric' per mentality as a concept combines motivations on sonality.4 Cvijic describes 'Dinaric' people as the unconscious level: what has not been fo rmu violent and intrepid. Their dominant values are lated and what appears as insignificant. In his heroism, soldier's morality code (cojstuo ijunas rethinking of relationship between ideologies tuo), national pride, the idea of(Great) Serbian and mentalities in a historical perspective Vo statehood. The above mentioned mentality orig velle suggests that mentalities might be treat inates in wars against the Turks. The Serbian ed as former ideologies, dead ideologies of the people, according to Cvijic, cannot fo rget the past which have been remembered due to the Kosovo battle in 1389, where Serbian military powerful inertia of mental structures ("la fo rce forces had been defeated; they still lament over d'inertie des structures mentales"). this downfall, memory of which has been main Contrary to previous anthropological con tained by Serbian fo lk poetry. struction of national character patterns mod Notwithstanding the population in the Di ern historical study meticulously describes and naric area was mixed (Serbian-Orthodox, Croat reconstructs mentality of specific populations Catholics, Moslems of Croat and Serbian de- 62 scent), Cv ij ic did not distingu ish Croats and Dinaric cultural pattern, the main values in the Serbs neither u::; two different nation::; nor as Zagor:icfam ily organ i zati on arc individuali::;m specific cultures or language::;. In the best of and lack of dominant, strong authority. cases he wa::;addr e::;::;ing Croat::;as Serbo- Croat::; . To masic treated both patterns (Cvijits and His model of' cultural pattern and personality his own) as intermingling. He also suggested type has been partly modified by the introduc that continuous wars in the Balkan area were tion of various 'in fluences ' lacking ethnic char steadily bringing to the fo re personalities and acter. groups which share authoritarian (heroic) val I will not discuss his political concepts and ues, gain economic profit in war and successive aspirations here. 1 am intrigued by his descrip ly political promotion. tion of the Dinaric mentality which is patri In this connection let me report his definition archal, violent but heroic. His source for the of the Ustasa Croatian state 1941-1945 which explanation of the heroic cultural pattern and is purely anthropological (Tomasic 1942:76): personality type is Serbian heroic oral poetry, collected, edited and sometimes rewritten by "The Ustasa state is conceived as an enlarged Vuk Karadzic.r' Heroism as a value and patri fa mily of the patriarchal type in which the archalism have been confirmed by CvijiC's own whole authority is vested in the hand of the field research. His undiscussed reputation as patriarch and in which all members are sup field researcher still fu nctions as a definite posed to work under his direction for the benefit verification of his accounts, although indubita of the whole. On the other hand everybody is bly they have been created in the frame of his responsible for the physical and moral well political statements. being of each one of its members. The leaders A modern anthropological opposition to and the ideologists ofthe U stasa state of Croatia CvijiC's pattern was expressed by the first themselves come mostly fr om villages in the Croatian cultural anthropologist, Dinko To masic Dinaric parts of Croatia, where peasants still (1902-75).

Load more