Revolucija
29th November 2007, 17:22
The Other Serbia in Discrepancy
The Elements of Neoliberal and Orientalist Ideologies Incorporated in the Process of the Development of a Civil Society in the Balkans
Summary
This paper deals with certain elements of the ideology of the organization/movement Otpor (Resistance) that sprang from student movements and was among the most active counter-Miloević civic forces in the Serbian society. Such ideological issues have been, to this day, relevant to the processes of establishing the identity of the Serbian civil society. Among these the influences of a neoliberal ideology and of the Orientalist discourse have been crucial. The paper criticizes the indiscriminate attitudes that Otpor's ideologists adopted towards Serbian historical and cultural traditions; towards the legacy of Ottoman rule for example. It also points to the limitations present in the process of the development of an authentic identitiy of a Balkan society.
Keywords: civil society, Otpor's ideology, Miloević's Serbia, neoliberalism, Orientalism
Author: Vladimir Marković
University of Belgrade, Serbia and Montenegro
Faculty of Philosophy
Department of Sociology
Translation from Croatian: Hana Golubovac
In the course of the social production of their lives during the last ten years, people in Serbia have established certain ties. Whether this has happened against their will or not remains a question. These ties are actually the relationships within the cultural production of identity and correspond to the late capitalist phase of the development of ideas.
Most political protagonists in Miloevićs Serbia were in favour of the pro-war politics that were being used for the ethno-nationalist mobilization of the population. The identity produced by the political sphere could not, in the long run, satisfy the specific interests based on the social reality. Thus, the collapse of the hegemonic project was inevitable. The significant roles in the collapse were played by the international community, the forces of the political opposition and the forces of the emerging civil society. It is worth mentioning that none of these influences was unambiguous.
The former social situation in Serbia, shaped in many parts by isolation and self-isolation, proves the assumption that the phenomena such as Miloevićs regime are not opposed to the new world order, they are rather its symptom and also that the choice between the new world order and the neoracist nationalists opposed to it is nonexistent: these are two sides of a coin - the new world order itself creates the monstrosities it fights against (iek, 1999: 42).
Both the prodemocratic opposition and the institutions of civil society in Serbia have been dependant conceptually, even more than financially, on the leading factors in the developed West. They were also oriented towards the remnant urges of ethnic particularism. Hence we should not be amazed that it has come to a number of inconsistencies in the attempts to articulate a valid alternative to the undemocratic government and its imperialistic politics, and also that it took so long for the regime to be overturned. NGOs and other civic initiatives played a major role in these processes because they were less prone to come under the influence of the weaknesses that the official political opposition was exposed to. This segment of the Serbian society was mainly shaped by a relatively vast mass of young people and students. At that, in 1995 already a number of the former student leaders had contributed, with their experience and charisma, to the civil sector and the party opposition.
The student movement, more precisely the student actions, was one of the best articulated oppositions to the official state politics of diffuse fascistization in Serbia during the nineties. This movement was marked by a strong democratic impulse which was shadowed by the student leaders inclination to narcissistically identify with the role of the vanguard and morally unquestionable arbiters of all social and political issues. The myth about the intact moral integrity, which is in the core of each student motion, had long been a commonplace of the political jargon of both the students who were protesting and of those who perceived student protests as either threatening or facilitating their purposes. The feigned wide support to the student protests of 1992 and 1996/1997 went hand in hand with the aspirations of the majority of leaders and participants in the protests not to form a counterculture but to articulate the claims of the moral majority of the population, even if that was to be done in the national-romantic manner. This is the origin of the need to require the support to protesters antiregime claims from the Serbian Orthodox Church, the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences, from the army and other national institutions. Obviously, the 1968, the year of the student riots, had long been gone, so conservatism and counter-counterculturalism had poignantly marked the different forms of the Serbian student movement confined by traditionalism and the lack of solidarity.
Otpor was on outgrowth of such tendencies among the socially active students. Because of the initial dilemma about Otpor being a student action, a youth group, a student organization or a national movement or just a widely accepted slogan the only consistent publicity Otpor had was a fist sign. As all the media appealing tension on the colleges had already been released the coordinations of college action teams were pushed back by the dominant visual identity and marketing. Otpor was created as a reaction against the implementation of the law aboutuniversities but after a time it started aiming at its real target, Slobodan Miloević, the personification of all the frustrations of the Serbian youth.
In this way Otpor was established as an illegal organization seeking to mobilize a significant part of the young population. This mobilization was based upon the romantic idea of rebellion and an almost revolutionary struggle against the unhealthy and corrupt system. Declaring such radical standing points helped to lessen the impact of certain opposition parties on the emerging organisation. Thus Otpor also became an alternative to the petrified and incompetent opposition parties that did not succeed in ousting the communists i.e. the Red from power. Otpor followed social movements patterns of action i.e. they did not consider negotiation, compromise, gradual improvement and reform, realized by the pressure groups, to be possible ways of communication with their opponents and other political protagonists but rather that radical binary oppositions are the only possible way of communication (we/they, victory/betrayal). For these reasons Otpor received support from the general public that had already had enough of the hopeless prospects of significant changes happening in Serbia.
This explains why Otpor became the crucial factor, or in Gramscis terminology the hegemonic force (Gramsci, 1980: 81), within the civil society in Miloevićs Serbia. Such importance of Otpor will surely affect the Serbian society even in post-Miloević era. Hence this paper deals with certain elements of Otpors ideology which could play an important role for the constitution of the identity of the Serbian civil society even if Otpor ceases to exist.
Offe claims that what was known as the new social movements typically lacked a meaningful system of ideological principles and interpretations of the world that would serve as a basis for the creation of the image of a desirable social system (Offe, 1987: 134). In contrast to the new social movements Otpor gave prominence to a system that was constructed by the politically-best-informed leaders of the organization, the experienced opinion makers and the political-marketing consultants. Ideologists of Otpor gave a number of statements and created several important documents from which stemmed the ideological image of Otpor as a rebel movement.
Creation of a specific Balkan self-image is an ambiguous, and in this case amateurish, project that is facilitated by a familiar labelling process known as Orientalism or Orientalist discourse. Such a search for political identity is marked by a sense of insecurity which can easily be overcome by positioning ones own identity as opposed to the Oriental Other. The Other is stigmatized in various ways and even some parts of societys own history could be Orientalised, Ottoman era and its legacy very often are (Todorova, 1999: 44). Exactly such a clich is used by the creators of an Otpors document when they write:
in the Balkans and in Serbia we find two fundamentally opposed tendencies, two trees stemming from two completely disparate historical and cultural roots. We will term the first root Asiatic not because of the continent it originated from but because of the mentality it inherited from Ottoman sultanate and Islamic Jamahiriya. In Serbia this root originated in almost 500 years of Ottoman occupation and in the prevailing ideology of pseudo socialism.
This thought later transforms into an assumption about the authentic basis of the Serbian culture, and forms a bricolage together with some traditionalist and neoliberal patterns:
The other root, embodied in the Reformation visions of St. Sava and Dositej Obradović, has in these territories long been stifled by the dominant Asiatic root. This European root, which had almost been destroyed and was renewed in the 19th and early 20th century by our compatriots who came home after studying in Europe, is primarily grounded in the belief that social prosperity comes from individual initiative and personal motivation. The European model rests on the idea that a rich and satisfied individual will create a rich and prosperous society. In this model the value system is exact, its laws are the laws of personal motivation and free market in all the spheres of active life; both material (work and prosperity) and spiritual (ideas, culture, education). Obviously this social model rests on the idea of individual initiative and the individual, his/hers wishes, flaws, fears, ideas and actions are in the centre of the system of social values.
The Asiatic model, which is still dominant, has been trying its best to destroy the European root, but in the long run, there are no chances for such a thing to happen. Thus, it is futile to try to transform Serbia into a leper colony which is surrounded by a barb wired fence in order to prevent the ideas that endanger the regime from coming in. Only in small societies forgotten by everybody, such as Cuba, it is possible to preserve such a model but in the heart of Europe where all the roads meet (in Serbia) this is impossible. (Memorandum, 2000)
This kind of rhetoric not only distorts the perception of ones own identity but it also discredits the whole culture of the other; be they Turks, women, Libyans, socialists, lepers or Cubans. This is done incidentally in a frenzied crusade against the roots of despotism in a narcissistic harangue that is reflected in the statement that Otpors main ideaposes danger to all regimes of Asian sultanate.
When it comes to such ideological talk it is especially hard to match the deeds with the words, but Otpors action Converts- to- Islam Investigation taken on February 20, 2000 in front of the Castle of Ni proved it possible. The aim of this demonstration was to incite people to speak their minds in favour of an Asiatic Serbia, modelled on Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon, and proposed by the government, or in favour of a European, democratic Serbia modelled on the developed Western countries, the one we will all have to fight for. At the end of the demonstration it was noted that the result of the investigation was: some 500 in favour of the European Serbia and only one in favour of the Asiatic Serbia.
The discourse in question is a postmodernist one, consistently post-ideological- nomadic-political discourse (Janković and Ristić, 2000: 46) that got involved with the black spots of Orientalism and thus, in a highly specific manner, proved that even in the postmodern era Orientalism continues to misrepresent and silence, ideologically, the Asian civilizations (Sardar, 1999:107). If we now turn to the other element of the end of grand narratives we should pay attention precisely to the end of history. Neoliberal ideology arising from Otpors programme forms an organic whole with the Orientalist discourse.
Cultural-racist propositions are based upon the wish to historically legitimize personal pretensions to the status of a true Western society. Globalization as a process / project encompasses certain claims for rootlessness as a prerequisite for the unification, but in order for a society to be regarded as a winner in the game of globalization there is an almost suppressed necessity of belonging to a tradition hidden behind the first layer of ideology. Thus, liberal democracy, appearing at the end of history, is not entirely modern. For the proper functioning of the institutions of democracy and capitalism to be possible, these institutions have to coexist alongside some premodern cultural conventions (Fukuyama, 1996: 381).
Fuelled by their wish to break all connections with the damaging influences of collectivism Otpors paradoxical anti-left-wing fervour goes as far as adopting extreme positions on matters of welfare and basic workers rights. This is typical of extreme neoliberal ideologies. Hence, the Declaration, the document stating Otpors aims, advocates the restructuring of economy, creating the conditions for a free market, the inevitable privatisation and opening of the economy to foreign investment backed by legal guarantees that would facilitate safe investment (Deklaracija, 1999). There is no mention of measures for reducing the effect of significant economic changes; such as a safety net for the employees or the regulation of social security contributions. This is no wonder since the Declaration mentions only two things in the paragraph concerning social justice. Otpors definition of social justice includes only equal employment opportunities and regular rates of pays and pensions (Deklaracija, 1999).
Since it has supposedly been proven that imperialism is the final phase of capitalism, Otpors ideologists vision of economic development is influenced by an ethos of militarism. The hegemonic claim on Serbias leading role on the Balkans, on its becoming a regional power, is backed by the conclusion according to which Serbia
had had a significant part of the Balkans under its military control but had to relinquish it. This is why it is necessary to substitute military for economic power in the century to come. It should be done in form of a Balkan Commonwealth, a zone where Serbia will be able to attain its economic goals with the help of a regional initiative(Memorandum, 2000).
The proposed economic expansion is tightly linked to the adherence to an elitist principle:
Since a healthy economy needs not only the work force but expert managers and decision makers special attention must be given to the creation of such staff. (Memorandum, 2000).
The firm believers in the corporate system of the free market (Said, 2000) i.e. the young vanguard of the civil society in Serbia embodied in Otpor received the Annual 2000 MTV Free Your Mind Award on the account of promoting the freedom of expression and the human rights.
The mutual recognition of the ruling pop-cultural forces in the liberal late-capitalist West and the hegemonic forces of the Serbian civil society arouses doubt about the possibility that each appropriation of the surplus value is matched by a cunning extortion of the surplus of enjoyment. After all, the myth of Oriental despotism enabled, in a similar manner, the 18th century Reformation authors to create the modern ways of extorting obedience (Groriar, 1988: 155).
The extent of influence Otpor will, most probably, have on the creation of identity needed for the forming of The Other Serbia in the following decades becomes obvious when we consider the importance Otpor had in mobilizing wide masses of youth in the ousting of the former regime from power i.e. in the increase of the political awareness of the youth that facilitated the increase of the number of young people becoming NGO activists.
After the disappearance of Miloević from the political arena Otpor lost its raison detre but what is here to stay are the consequences of the ill-considered direction of their political and cultural alternative, the consequences of the uncritical attitudes towards the historical and cultural tradition and of the careless adoption of the neoliberal ideology.
All the abovementioned phenomena could create a number of obstacles to the creation of a critical approach to politics, of a rational type of antifascism and of a truly intercultural society that could stem from the rich history of the Balkans.
References
*** (1999) Deklaracija OTPORA za budućnost Srbije, in Srpski otpora (pamphlet).
*** (2000) Istraga poturica. OTPOR! Info-26.2.2000; URL: http://www.otpor.com (July 25, 2000).
*** (2000) Memorandum. OTPOR!; URL: http://www.otpor.com (July 25, 2000). Fukujama, Frensis (1996) Konflikt kultura. Treći program 27 (3, 4): 373-443. Grami, Antonio (1980) Filozofija istorije i politike. Beograd: Slovo ljubve. Groriar, Alen (1988) Struktura saraja. Azijatski despotizam kao tvorevina mate na Zapadu u XVIII veku. Beograd: Vuk Karadić. Janković, I. and Ristić, B. (2000) Kome smeta Otpor? Republika 12 (234): 46. Offe, Claus (1987) Novi drutveni pokreti: izazov granicama institucionalne politike in Pavlović, Vukain (ed.): Obnova utopijskih energija. Beograd: IIC SSO Srbije i CID PK SSO Jugoslavije; pp. 125-162. Said, Edward (2000) Problems of neoliberalism. Al-Ahram Weekly. 7-13; URL: http://www.ahram.org.eg/weekly/2000/498/op2.htm (September 20, 2000). Sardar, Ziauddin (1999) Orientalism. Buckingham: Open University Press. Todorova, Marija (1999) Imaginarni Balkan. Zemun i Beograd: Biblioteka XX vek i Čigoja tampa. iek, Slavoj (1999) NATO as the left hand of God? Bastard (global edition). pp. 40-42.
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[1] Even though a comparison could be made, a careful analysis would show that October 5 in Serbia differs significantly from January 3 in Croatia, and not only because there was an escalation of violence in Serbia or just because the events were ordered differently.
[2] Passing of a new law about universities, instigated by eeljs radical right wing Serbian Radical Party and marked by the summer of 1998 war in Kosovo, was conceived by the Serbian government as a counter-measure against the development of the student movement and other free-thinking elements in academia. The bizarre beginning of the implementation of the law in the autumn of 1998 caused a stir at Serbian colleges, especially among the students of the Faculty of Philology and the School of Electrical Engineering in Belgrade. This caused the slogan Otpor (Resistance), that later became a trademark of a number of student activists known for their participation in previous protests, to be readily accepted by those who experienced the functioning of universities stripped of their autonomy.
[3] Otpor attempted to be organized as a new social movement, characteristic of the 1980s Europe, by proclaiming that it will not be organized according to the principle of vertical diferentiation. Otpor's activists explained that the non-existence of hierarchy and formal leadership in their movement was needed to avoid the possibility of the government buying off or intimidating the leaders and because people had had enough of the leaders of all kinds. What made Otpor even closer to the new social movements paradigm was the fact that individuals took part in Otpor's actions mostly in an informal, ad hoc, content-sensitive and egalitarian manner (Offe, 1987: 134). However, the tendency to expand, to form regional boards throughout Serbia and to influence high school students brought on the need to instruct new activists about the field work and this had to be done by experienced individuals. The responsibilities also had to be divided between the design teams (people who organize actions and coordinate the regional teams actions) and the action teams (people who stick posters, hand out fliers and perform). All of this caused the non-hierarchical faade to collapse and even Otpors movement status to come to question because its type of organization became closer to the formal political organizations. Moreover, the democracy of the organization itself became questionable, at least its procedures did, because of the informal but growingly present hierarchy and because a few people who made the decisions did not get there through election procedures.
[4] What is interesting here is Otpors aggressive attitude towards their own historical legacy; the Castle of Ni is among the most important monuments of Ottoman rule. If Otpors activists were better informed it would be interesting to know what they think about the history of Belgrade whose official name since the 16th century had been Darul-Jihad, Arabic for the house of the holy war.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Originally published in Croatian under the title Druga Srbija u Diskrepanciji: Elementi ideologija neoliberalizma i orijentalizma u procesu konstituisanja jednog balkanskog civilnog drustva, Diskrepancija Vol. 2 No. 3, 2001.
The Elements of Neoliberal and Orientalist Ideologies Incorporated in the Process of the Development of a Civil Society in the Balkans
Summary
This paper deals with certain elements of the ideology of the organization/movement Otpor (Resistance) that sprang from student movements and was among the most active counter-Miloević civic forces in the Serbian society. Such ideological issues have been, to this day, relevant to the processes of establishing the identity of the Serbian civil society. Among these the influences of a neoliberal ideology and of the Orientalist discourse have been crucial. The paper criticizes the indiscriminate attitudes that Otpor's ideologists adopted towards Serbian historical and cultural traditions; towards the legacy of Ottoman rule for example. It also points to the limitations present in the process of the development of an authentic identitiy of a Balkan society.
Keywords: civil society, Otpor's ideology, Miloević's Serbia, neoliberalism, Orientalism
Author: Vladimir Marković
University of Belgrade, Serbia and Montenegro
Faculty of Philosophy
Department of Sociology
Translation from Croatian: Hana Golubovac
In the course of the social production of their lives during the last ten years, people in Serbia have established certain ties. Whether this has happened against their will or not remains a question. These ties are actually the relationships within the cultural production of identity and correspond to the late capitalist phase of the development of ideas.
Most political protagonists in Miloevićs Serbia were in favour of the pro-war politics that were being used for the ethno-nationalist mobilization of the population. The identity produced by the political sphere could not, in the long run, satisfy the specific interests based on the social reality. Thus, the collapse of the hegemonic project was inevitable. The significant roles in the collapse were played by the international community, the forces of the political opposition and the forces of the emerging civil society. It is worth mentioning that none of these influences was unambiguous.
The former social situation in Serbia, shaped in many parts by isolation and self-isolation, proves the assumption that the phenomena such as Miloevićs regime are not opposed to the new world order, they are rather its symptom and also that the choice between the new world order and the neoracist nationalists opposed to it is nonexistent: these are two sides of a coin - the new world order itself creates the monstrosities it fights against (iek, 1999: 42).
Both the prodemocratic opposition and the institutions of civil society in Serbia have been dependant conceptually, even more than financially, on the leading factors in the developed West. They were also oriented towards the remnant urges of ethnic particularism. Hence we should not be amazed that it has come to a number of inconsistencies in the attempts to articulate a valid alternative to the undemocratic government and its imperialistic politics, and also that it took so long for the regime to be overturned. NGOs and other civic initiatives played a major role in these processes because they were less prone to come under the influence of the weaknesses that the official political opposition was exposed to. This segment of the Serbian society was mainly shaped by a relatively vast mass of young people and students. At that, in 1995 already a number of the former student leaders had contributed, with their experience and charisma, to the civil sector and the party opposition.
The student movement, more precisely the student actions, was one of the best articulated oppositions to the official state politics of diffuse fascistization in Serbia during the nineties. This movement was marked by a strong democratic impulse which was shadowed by the student leaders inclination to narcissistically identify with the role of the vanguard and morally unquestionable arbiters of all social and political issues. The myth about the intact moral integrity, which is in the core of each student motion, had long been a commonplace of the political jargon of both the students who were protesting and of those who perceived student protests as either threatening or facilitating their purposes. The feigned wide support to the student protests of 1992 and 1996/1997 went hand in hand with the aspirations of the majority of leaders and participants in the protests not to form a counterculture but to articulate the claims of the moral majority of the population, even if that was to be done in the national-romantic manner. This is the origin of the need to require the support to protesters antiregime claims from the Serbian Orthodox Church, the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences, from the army and other national institutions. Obviously, the 1968, the year of the student riots, had long been gone, so conservatism and counter-counterculturalism had poignantly marked the different forms of the Serbian student movement confined by traditionalism and the lack of solidarity.
Otpor was on outgrowth of such tendencies among the socially active students. Because of the initial dilemma about Otpor being a student action, a youth group, a student organization or a national movement or just a widely accepted slogan the only consistent publicity Otpor had was a fist sign. As all the media appealing tension on the colleges had already been released the coordinations of college action teams were pushed back by the dominant visual identity and marketing. Otpor was created as a reaction against the implementation of the law aboutuniversities but after a time it started aiming at its real target, Slobodan Miloević, the personification of all the frustrations of the Serbian youth.
In this way Otpor was established as an illegal organization seeking to mobilize a significant part of the young population. This mobilization was based upon the romantic idea of rebellion and an almost revolutionary struggle against the unhealthy and corrupt system. Declaring such radical standing points helped to lessen the impact of certain opposition parties on the emerging organisation. Thus Otpor also became an alternative to the petrified and incompetent opposition parties that did not succeed in ousting the communists i.e. the Red from power. Otpor followed social movements patterns of action i.e. they did not consider negotiation, compromise, gradual improvement and reform, realized by the pressure groups, to be possible ways of communication with their opponents and other political protagonists but rather that radical binary oppositions are the only possible way of communication (we/they, victory/betrayal). For these reasons Otpor received support from the general public that had already had enough of the hopeless prospects of significant changes happening in Serbia.
This explains why Otpor became the crucial factor, or in Gramscis terminology the hegemonic force (Gramsci, 1980: 81), within the civil society in Miloevićs Serbia. Such importance of Otpor will surely affect the Serbian society even in post-Miloević era. Hence this paper deals with certain elements of Otpors ideology which could play an important role for the constitution of the identity of the Serbian civil society even if Otpor ceases to exist.
Offe claims that what was known as the new social movements typically lacked a meaningful system of ideological principles and interpretations of the world that would serve as a basis for the creation of the image of a desirable social system (Offe, 1987: 134). In contrast to the new social movements Otpor gave prominence to a system that was constructed by the politically-best-informed leaders of the organization, the experienced opinion makers and the political-marketing consultants. Ideologists of Otpor gave a number of statements and created several important documents from which stemmed the ideological image of Otpor as a rebel movement.
Creation of a specific Balkan self-image is an ambiguous, and in this case amateurish, project that is facilitated by a familiar labelling process known as Orientalism or Orientalist discourse. Such a search for political identity is marked by a sense of insecurity which can easily be overcome by positioning ones own identity as opposed to the Oriental Other. The Other is stigmatized in various ways and even some parts of societys own history could be Orientalised, Ottoman era and its legacy very often are (Todorova, 1999: 44). Exactly such a clich is used by the creators of an Otpors document when they write:
in the Balkans and in Serbia we find two fundamentally opposed tendencies, two trees stemming from two completely disparate historical and cultural roots. We will term the first root Asiatic not because of the continent it originated from but because of the mentality it inherited from Ottoman sultanate and Islamic Jamahiriya. In Serbia this root originated in almost 500 years of Ottoman occupation and in the prevailing ideology of pseudo socialism.
This thought later transforms into an assumption about the authentic basis of the Serbian culture, and forms a bricolage together with some traditionalist and neoliberal patterns:
The other root, embodied in the Reformation visions of St. Sava and Dositej Obradović, has in these territories long been stifled by the dominant Asiatic root. This European root, which had almost been destroyed and was renewed in the 19th and early 20th century by our compatriots who came home after studying in Europe, is primarily grounded in the belief that social prosperity comes from individual initiative and personal motivation. The European model rests on the idea that a rich and satisfied individual will create a rich and prosperous society. In this model the value system is exact, its laws are the laws of personal motivation and free market in all the spheres of active life; both material (work and prosperity) and spiritual (ideas, culture, education). Obviously this social model rests on the idea of individual initiative and the individual, his/hers wishes, flaws, fears, ideas and actions are in the centre of the system of social values.
The Asiatic model, which is still dominant, has been trying its best to destroy the European root, but in the long run, there are no chances for such a thing to happen. Thus, it is futile to try to transform Serbia into a leper colony which is surrounded by a barb wired fence in order to prevent the ideas that endanger the regime from coming in. Only in small societies forgotten by everybody, such as Cuba, it is possible to preserve such a model but in the heart of Europe where all the roads meet (in Serbia) this is impossible. (Memorandum, 2000)
This kind of rhetoric not only distorts the perception of ones own identity but it also discredits the whole culture of the other; be they Turks, women, Libyans, socialists, lepers or Cubans. This is done incidentally in a frenzied crusade against the roots of despotism in a narcissistic harangue that is reflected in the statement that Otpors main ideaposes danger to all regimes of Asian sultanate.
When it comes to such ideological talk it is especially hard to match the deeds with the words, but Otpors action Converts- to- Islam Investigation taken on February 20, 2000 in front of the Castle of Ni proved it possible. The aim of this demonstration was to incite people to speak their minds in favour of an Asiatic Serbia, modelled on Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon, and proposed by the government, or in favour of a European, democratic Serbia modelled on the developed Western countries, the one we will all have to fight for. At the end of the demonstration it was noted that the result of the investigation was: some 500 in favour of the European Serbia and only one in favour of the Asiatic Serbia.
The discourse in question is a postmodernist one, consistently post-ideological- nomadic-political discourse (Janković and Ristić, 2000: 46) that got involved with the black spots of Orientalism and thus, in a highly specific manner, proved that even in the postmodern era Orientalism continues to misrepresent and silence, ideologically, the Asian civilizations (Sardar, 1999:107). If we now turn to the other element of the end of grand narratives we should pay attention precisely to the end of history. Neoliberal ideology arising from Otpors programme forms an organic whole with the Orientalist discourse.
Cultural-racist propositions are based upon the wish to historically legitimize personal pretensions to the status of a true Western society. Globalization as a process / project encompasses certain claims for rootlessness as a prerequisite for the unification, but in order for a society to be regarded as a winner in the game of globalization there is an almost suppressed necessity of belonging to a tradition hidden behind the first layer of ideology. Thus, liberal democracy, appearing at the end of history, is not entirely modern. For the proper functioning of the institutions of democracy and capitalism to be possible, these institutions have to coexist alongside some premodern cultural conventions (Fukuyama, 1996: 381).
Fuelled by their wish to break all connections with the damaging influences of collectivism Otpors paradoxical anti-left-wing fervour goes as far as adopting extreme positions on matters of welfare and basic workers rights. This is typical of extreme neoliberal ideologies. Hence, the Declaration, the document stating Otpors aims, advocates the restructuring of economy, creating the conditions for a free market, the inevitable privatisation and opening of the economy to foreign investment backed by legal guarantees that would facilitate safe investment (Deklaracija, 1999). There is no mention of measures for reducing the effect of significant economic changes; such as a safety net for the employees or the regulation of social security contributions. This is no wonder since the Declaration mentions only two things in the paragraph concerning social justice. Otpors definition of social justice includes only equal employment opportunities and regular rates of pays and pensions (Deklaracija, 1999).
Since it has supposedly been proven that imperialism is the final phase of capitalism, Otpors ideologists vision of economic development is influenced by an ethos of militarism. The hegemonic claim on Serbias leading role on the Balkans, on its becoming a regional power, is backed by the conclusion according to which Serbia
had had a significant part of the Balkans under its military control but had to relinquish it. This is why it is necessary to substitute military for economic power in the century to come. It should be done in form of a Balkan Commonwealth, a zone where Serbia will be able to attain its economic goals with the help of a regional initiative(Memorandum, 2000).
The proposed economic expansion is tightly linked to the adherence to an elitist principle:
Since a healthy economy needs not only the work force but expert managers and decision makers special attention must be given to the creation of such staff. (Memorandum, 2000).
The firm believers in the corporate system of the free market (Said, 2000) i.e. the young vanguard of the civil society in Serbia embodied in Otpor received the Annual 2000 MTV Free Your Mind Award on the account of promoting the freedom of expression and the human rights.
The mutual recognition of the ruling pop-cultural forces in the liberal late-capitalist West and the hegemonic forces of the Serbian civil society arouses doubt about the possibility that each appropriation of the surplus value is matched by a cunning extortion of the surplus of enjoyment. After all, the myth of Oriental despotism enabled, in a similar manner, the 18th century Reformation authors to create the modern ways of extorting obedience (Groriar, 1988: 155).
The extent of influence Otpor will, most probably, have on the creation of identity needed for the forming of The Other Serbia in the following decades becomes obvious when we consider the importance Otpor had in mobilizing wide masses of youth in the ousting of the former regime from power i.e. in the increase of the political awareness of the youth that facilitated the increase of the number of young people becoming NGO activists.
After the disappearance of Miloević from the political arena Otpor lost its raison detre but what is here to stay are the consequences of the ill-considered direction of their political and cultural alternative, the consequences of the uncritical attitudes towards the historical and cultural tradition and of the careless adoption of the neoliberal ideology.
All the abovementioned phenomena could create a number of obstacles to the creation of a critical approach to politics, of a rational type of antifascism and of a truly intercultural society that could stem from the rich history of the Balkans.
References
*** (1999) Deklaracija OTPORA za budućnost Srbije, in Srpski otpora (pamphlet).
*** (2000) Istraga poturica. OTPOR! Info-26.2.2000; URL: http://www.otpor.com (July 25, 2000).
*** (2000) Memorandum. OTPOR!; URL: http://www.otpor.com (July 25, 2000). Fukujama, Frensis (1996) Konflikt kultura. Treći program 27 (3, 4): 373-443. Grami, Antonio (1980) Filozofija istorije i politike. Beograd: Slovo ljubve. Groriar, Alen (1988) Struktura saraja. Azijatski despotizam kao tvorevina mate na Zapadu u XVIII veku. Beograd: Vuk Karadić. Janković, I. and Ristić, B. (2000) Kome smeta Otpor? Republika 12 (234): 46. Offe, Claus (1987) Novi drutveni pokreti: izazov granicama institucionalne politike in Pavlović, Vukain (ed.): Obnova utopijskih energija. Beograd: IIC SSO Srbije i CID PK SSO Jugoslavije; pp. 125-162. Said, Edward (2000) Problems of neoliberalism. Al-Ahram Weekly. 7-13; URL: http://www.ahram.org.eg/weekly/2000/498/op2.htm (September 20, 2000). Sardar, Ziauddin (1999) Orientalism. Buckingham: Open University Press. Todorova, Marija (1999) Imaginarni Balkan. Zemun i Beograd: Biblioteka XX vek i Čigoja tampa. iek, Slavoj (1999) NATO as the left hand of God? Bastard (global edition). pp. 40-42.
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[1] Even though a comparison could be made, a careful analysis would show that October 5 in Serbia differs significantly from January 3 in Croatia, and not only because there was an escalation of violence in Serbia or just because the events were ordered differently.
[2] Passing of a new law about universities, instigated by eeljs radical right wing Serbian Radical Party and marked by the summer of 1998 war in Kosovo, was conceived by the Serbian government as a counter-measure against the development of the student movement and other free-thinking elements in academia. The bizarre beginning of the implementation of the law in the autumn of 1998 caused a stir at Serbian colleges, especially among the students of the Faculty of Philology and the School of Electrical Engineering in Belgrade. This caused the slogan Otpor (Resistance), that later became a trademark of a number of student activists known for their participation in previous protests, to be readily accepted by those who experienced the functioning of universities stripped of their autonomy.
[3] Otpor attempted to be organized as a new social movement, characteristic of the 1980s Europe, by proclaiming that it will not be organized according to the principle of vertical diferentiation. Otpor's activists explained that the non-existence of hierarchy and formal leadership in their movement was needed to avoid the possibility of the government buying off or intimidating the leaders and because people had had enough of the leaders of all kinds. What made Otpor even closer to the new social movements paradigm was the fact that individuals took part in Otpor's actions mostly in an informal, ad hoc, content-sensitive and egalitarian manner (Offe, 1987: 134). However, the tendency to expand, to form regional boards throughout Serbia and to influence high school students brought on the need to instruct new activists about the field work and this had to be done by experienced individuals. The responsibilities also had to be divided between the design teams (people who organize actions and coordinate the regional teams actions) and the action teams (people who stick posters, hand out fliers and perform). All of this caused the non-hierarchical faade to collapse and even Otpors movement status to come to question because its type of organization became closer to the formal political organizations. Moreover, the democracy of the organization itself became questionable, at least its procedures did, because of the informal but growingly present hierarchy and because a few people who made the decisions did not get there through election procedures.
[4] What is interesting here is Otpors aggressive attitude towards their own historical legacy; the Castle of Ni is among the most important monuments of Ottoman rule. If Otpors activists were better informed it would be interesting to know what they think about the history of Belgrade whose official name since the 16th century had been Darul-Jihad, Arabic for the house of the holy war.
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Originally published in Croatian under the title Druga Srbija u Diskrepanciji: Elementi ideologija neoliberalizma i orijentalizma u procesu konstituisanja jednog balkanskog civilnog drustva, Diskrepancija Vol. 2 No. 3, 2001.