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Forgotten Future: The Politics of Poetry in Bosnia and Herzegovina, by Damir Arsenijevic (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft | Southeast European Integration Perspectives, vol. 4, 2010), 214 pp.
The book documents and critically evaluates contemporary poetry within the dynamic field of cultural production in Bosnia and Herzegovina since the late 1980s. Its context spans three historico-political phases: firstly, the cusp on which socialism was already losing its primacy and ethno-nationalism was gaining dominance; secondly, the subsequent collapse of Yugoslavia and the ensuing war led by ethno-nationalist elites; and thirdly, the period of the aftermath of war—the so-called “post-war transition”.
This new approach to thinking about poetry in Bosnia and Herzegovina focuses on alternative cultural practices, which have articulated a more equitable organisation of Bosnian society. Such practices have the capacity not only to tell us how un-free we are, but also to shift the criteria of possibility of our freedom towards a more hopeful politics.
Dr. Arsenijevic’s knowledge of and passion for his research in cultural and literary studies and his art-theory political interventions shed scholarly light on the terror of inequality, the solidarity of unbribable life, relevant knowledge production, and material memories of war and genocide. He works throughout former Yugoslavia.
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Damir Arsenijevic confronts Adorno: poetry MUST be written after wars, as it fixes a form of memories, which, in the standardised discourse of historiography, is deliberately distorted. Through its unique language (always different from any mother tongue), poetry discovers mechanisms of memory and remembrance, perhaps coming closest to neuroscience. Bosnian poetry about war, examined in the light of contemporary literary theories, thus becomes the language of the concerned and conscious citizen of the world.
Professor Svetlana Slapšak, Dean of the Institutum Studiorum Humanitatis, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Damir Arsenijevic’s book is a crucial addition to two fields: post-Yugoslav studies, and literary theory. It gives a passionately engaged but incisively argued analysis of Bosnian poetry over the last two decades. The author shows how this poetry was tightly intertwined with political and cultural debate, as Bosnia emerged via the trauma of ethnonationalist war into an age of multiple, post-socialist, globalized identities. He also reflects on how literature can both reflect and shape debates of identity, and on literature’s ethical and social responsibility. This responsibility, as Arsenijevic argues through this inspiring and intellectually exciting book, lies in an emancipatory poetics and politics that reflects otherness and the subtle interweavings of difference.
Dr. Francis R. Jones, Senior Lecturer in Applied Linguistics, Newcastle University, U.K.
Arsenijevic takes us on a journey into the very heart of Bosnian darkness, to that cursed place where history and poetry intersect. It is precisely here, where reality turns into mythic tragedy and words start to kill, that we should look for the politic.
Boris Buden, Author, European Institute for Progressive Cultural Policy
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