Anti-Fascism Under Siege: Liberal Revisionism in Cultural Debates in Post-War Bosnia and Herzegovina

• In Event: Yugoslav (Re)Visions I: Comparative anti-Yugoslavism

Abstract

The starting point of my talk is the 2002 anonymous defamatory "in memoriam" published in BH magazine Dani upon the death of Izet Sarajlić, the renowned Bosnian poet known for his internationalist and anti-fascist commitments. The controversial text sparked a heated debate within Bosnia and Herzegovina's cultural sphere, revealing the attack on Sarajlić's legacy as symptomatic of the devaluing of anti-fascist solidarity. My analysis focuses on how this text and the ensuing debates between 2003 and 2007 outline a broader revisionist tendency within Bosnia’s liberal anti-nationalist camp, whose centrist politics have been rooted in historical revisionism, recasting, as they did, "brotherhood and unity" as "the darkest historical illusion" and devaluing ZAVNOBIH as a "coin with limited use-value today."

Author

• Damir Arsenijevic, U of Tuzla (Bosnia and Herzegovina)