Fossil Dance

When in my text "Speed Memories" (Belgrade Circle 0/1994, pp. 224-230) I published the fragment "Thinker on the Stage" in which, among other things, I made public professor Djuric’s cloying nationalism, I had no intimation of the kind of reprisal which I would be faced with. The liquidation was announced in protocolary form, from an appropriate legal instance. The text of the reply was brought to our editorial office by an official courier and an officially empowered attorney, with all the necessary papers! You really can’t mess around with a professor of Philosophy of Law. Even though he knew that his response would be published in the next issue of the journal, this philosopher of heavenly Serbia, it seems, was not satisfied. With youthful impatience, he hurried to make his response public in the pages of a high-circulation weekly. With the selfless help of the journalistic brotherhood, a public condemnation was hastily staged. Thus this Nitzschean from Sumadija prematurely started his revanchist dance, his victim’s game of revenge. How else can one understand the fact that the text was published under the inquisitorial heading "In Belgrade Circle Journal, editor-in-chief Obrad Savic attacks professor Mihailo Djuric" (Polemics, NIN no. 2371, p. 31). Hard to believe. Reading the pathetic laments contained in Djuric’s letter nearly made me cry. The tone of his text "In the Vicious Circle of "The Belgrade Circle" sincerely calls on brotherly pity and tribal compassion. The diligent guardians of the local philosopher’s person and opus went into overdrive immediately. How had I dared to question this pride and joy of Serbia, to ironize the virtuosity of such a national giant! Truly, who dares to parody Djuric’s lavish talent for nationalist rheotric is richly deserving of eternal scorn and implacalble excommunication.

I nearly fogot: in his answer to my supposedly "monstrous accusations" of nationalism, professor Djuric says that I "gratuitously (!) misused two quotes taken out of context" from his book, "insolently twisting the meaning of his words". I publicly admit that I occasionally indulge in semantic exorcism, that I am an initiate of black magic, that I twist truth and forge meaning. In order to demonstrate to our Thinker how "slanderers and troublemakers" operate in the conspiracy of signs, I shall quote here the full context from which I extracted his xenophobic jewels without authorization. Let the "Thinker on the Stage" speak again, and let us listen carefully to the rhythm of those signs in their ominous, nationalist tone.

"The true and sole way of ensuring our spiritual survival can, therefore, be only the road of overcoming the existing division in the Serb people. With this aim, we must start from the beginning, we must first educate the people itself in the national spirit. We must cultivate the consciousness that the national belongs to the sphere of highest human responsibility, that we owe our allegiance and devotion of a special kind to the nation, that national belonging and national feeling are original, primary human characteristics, and that the national interest and the national good enjoy an uncontested advantage and dominance over all other earthly interests and considerations (Whoa! O.S.). Of course, warning in the process that the national is not an unconditional metaphysical principle, not an absolute authority, not an eternal, unchangeable category, but only a real historical condition of all human existence, at least from the 19th century onwards. Today, it is somehow clear to all in advance that without national identity there is no real human character, even though we all know that this connection was no longer as firm as it until recently was". (Mihailo Djuric, Experience of the Difference, Belgrade: Tersit, BIGZ, 1994, pp. 117-118)

One last remark. In comparison with the lascivious brutality of raw, populist nationalism, Djuric’s cold analyses, these tame, ennobled and cultivated thoughts on the nation, seem almost aristocratic. What else is left to us then, than to surrender apathetically to this seductive magician, to his icy fascination with Evil.

©opyright

Provincial cultures rarely observe international copyright conventions. The peripheries of civilization are not at all encumbered by legal formalism. Therefore, nobody seems to be getting very excited over the fact that our country has become a veritable pirate Disneyland, a land of thieves’ Utopia come true. Legalized theft and public rapine are carried on rapturously. International scams increase our managerial pride and deepen our business creativity. Uncontrolled stealing of foreign production finds carefree asylum and a safe haven here. Numerous intellectual smugglers and resourceful cultural managers prowl this stage with particular enthusiasm. Their brigandly inventivity and "business" lucidity seems infinite. The case of a recent publishing undertaking exemplifies this kind of talent.

Visiting the Belgrade Book Fair, which irresistibly reminded me of a provincial cattle fair, I chanced upon the book Conditio Moderna, by the respected German philosopher Manfred Frank (Novi Sad: Svetovi, 1995). I learned that the book had been published without the author’s knowledge and, of course, without the permission of his German publisher! This piratical venture gained in significance when yet another editorial maneuver was revealed. Namely, with the intention of covering their tracks, the lucid publishers arbitrarily deleted - that is, did not publish - the last section of the book, entitled "Nationality and Democracy". This editorial gesture plainly represented censoring of Frank’s stinging critique of nationalism. In his poetic rapture, our wakeful editor tried at any price to deprive us of insight into the complete contents of the book. Buried in glory and awards, this small provincial publisher knows that the idea of national (self)assertion has no editorial price.

Indeed, in Serbia all is possible. A respectable institution - the Library of the Matica Srpska in Novi Sad - has backed this undertaking, illegal only according to international standards, by cataloguing this pirated book as ISBN 86-7047-219-8. This catalogue number warns us of the extent to which the whole society is involved in the machinations of an (extra)ordinary publishing policy.

True, voices of generous approval come from all sides. The new sentimental order heralds decisive exculpation of such and similar machinations. Under extraordinary circumstances, goes the favourite argument, ratified international agreements can produce no legal effect. For the duration of the "unjustly introduced and in no way provoked sanctions", as they are ritually termed here, observance of applicable international standards and rules of procedure is not recommended. Who wouldn’t welcome with open arms this new alibi for old international tricks! The stealing of foreign cultural resources is now carried on under the banner of national retaliation: our pride cannot bear the merciless superciliousness of the West, its colonial logic of copyright.

Through a set of unforeseeable circumstances, the censored text will be published in our language This time, the bibliographic forgery of Svetovi publishing house has not succeeded. The author of the German original has unwittingly given a special contribution to the public denouement of this episode of piracy. Namely, when over a year ago I asked Manfred Frank to contribute something to our journal, I could not imagine what would happen. Frank kindly sent us the manuscript of the English version of the text "Nationality and Democracy: Defining Terms in Germany", which he included in the book Conditio Moderna (Leipzig: Reclam Verlag, 1993). What cruel prescience. The respected German philosopher sent us precisely that text which would later, in the pirated Serbian edition, be censored. However, as the book has appeared already, one shouldn’t nitpick! As witty Serbian managers would say, everybody’s got their own: the impostors publishing glory and, naturally, profit, the victim - justice! The controversial text, in agreement with the author, is published in this issue of the Belgrade Circle Journal. Thus, we have prevented further manipulation with the Serbian translation of the German original.

Bookshop

All literate inhabitants of Belgrade know that on Marx and Engels Square, now called Nikola Pasic Square, one of the best bookshops in town is to be found - formerly Komunist, then Danilo Kis, now Nikola Pasic. Thanks to a recent encounter with an ethnically talented saleswoman, I had to opportunity to see how our bookshops had become privileged places for practicing Serbian nationalism. Namely, I took some copies of the Belgrade Circle Journal to this bookshop, with the idea of suggesting that they carry it. Little did I suspect that this routine visit would turn into a strange event, creating its own stage and dramaturgy. When I asked the bookshop employee whether they would carry the Journal, she answered no, with the laconic explanation that she had "no intention of distributing that anti-Serb rubbish". At first, I thought this was some sort of advertising prank, a small business joke. However, her diffuse roughness soon convinced me things were much more serious. With unprecedented enthusiasm, she started expounding a theory, very popular in Belgrade at the time, about Treason, the New World Order, the Vatican, Sarajevo, Communism, Ustashas, Europe, Muslims and the West. The woman looked like a real logorrheic bomb, a personification of pure oral terrorism. Her wild discourse, this berserk ideological eclecticism, did not include even a zero-level of civic courtesy. I politely interrupted her shoreless Serbifying, insisting that we return to the business aim of my call. The exalted bookseller angrily told me that she would not take the controversial journal because she didn’t want "to provoke the national feelings of customers". In spite of the shop assistant’s unscrupulous arbitrariness, I managed to collect myself and leave the bookshop practically enlightened. At the door, I already understood quite well that her voluntary exercise of sacral ethno-censorship should be encouraged. In my opinion, it is especially the literate part of the population who should support this precious and selfless endeavour. Educated citizens should, namely, realize that the diligent bookseller is preventively protecting them from spectral exposure to the suspicious brilliance of evil literature.

Local Community Centre

If you wish to find out how a local community centre can become the site of privileged political discourse, do get in touch with the used-up state philosopher Mihailo Markovic. One must not miss the spectacle of the prophetic enthusiasm this seer brings to talking to housewives and idle retirees. His activist passion has no end. He has tirelessly carried on his symbolic actions and stage performances for decades. Who else has so prodigally spent his energy wondering as a phantom and haunting as a ghost the political stage of Serbia? Only this true and tested national philosopher, the leader of the Serbian philosophical brethren, academician Mihailo Markovic. Without him, our cultural and political arena would be decapitated: who could bear that acephalous vacuum, this fatherless society?

Luckily, the biographical denouement is moving in an altogether different direction: "the leading thinker of our time" is in top form and functioning flawlessly. He is the master of compulsive reanimation: he is ready at every moment to multiply social roles and to fake professional vocations. There is no end in sight to this chain of social mutations. Every meeting with this creature causes a new physiognomic shock! Is it at all possible that one and the same man is simultaneously circulating within these numerous personalities: Young Communist and Commissar, Captain, Secretary and Professor, Philosopher and Scholar, Director and Editor, Self-Manager and Academician, Communist and Nationalist? He really does not care: he was a political dissident and party official at the same time. He brought the same elan to speeches at the congress of the ruling Socialist Party of Serbia, at sessions of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts and at meetings in the Lipov Lad local community centre. We would not be at all surprised to find him speaking at country fairs, harvest drives and village gatherings. Just remember his famous appearance before the Association for Protection of Foreign Currency Depositors -God help us! What a fascinating radius of movement this field humanist has, and what fascinating effects he produces!

The truly astonishing biography of Mihailo Markovic has nothing in common with boring academicism or distant elitism. On the contrary, Michael has been and remained the type of patient, nearly stoic activist who devotes his whole life to the great process of populist (re)animation. His programmatic appearances were precisely adapted to the popular masses. Every gesture of the national academician was adorned by noble concern for the heartland and for the fate of "Serbian man". This ultra-fluid rationalist acts in a state of total symbolic self-will. The productive effects of his linguistic practice, of his commonsense rhetoric, are visible at every step. Blessed is the community which has an intellectual whose language is immersed in national jargon and populist code even unto banality.

This philosopher of epic provenance has demonstrated particular enthusiasm when addressing the masses via the press, radio and television. The interview has always been his favourite media genre. The law of didactic despoticism rules there: everything is short, clear and effective. In one of the numerous interviews he peppered Serbia with, this optimist-on-call said: "We are again in a situation when we need to do what seems nearly impossible. That’s where we Serbs feel at home" (Mihailo Markovic, Selected Works, vol 8, Belgrade: BIGZ, 1994, p. 444). There is no bargaining with this message: Serbs are virtually most successful when they tend to the impossible -who could possible deny them this virtue or deprive them of it! The academician’s discourse is full of noble sentiments: "If Serbia looked on calmly, limiting itself to diplomatic activity -which is hard to believe -it would lose its soul" (Ibid., p. 339). This populist philosopher has always been characterized by political decisiveness. His common, too common, sense was never infected with the ancient schools of doubt. All wavering is alien to him, and he is fully free of any hesitation! In an inspired message to the world which, like Kim Il Sung’s fiery speeches, awakes biological pride, he says: "Still the West could not deprive us of our verticals, natural or spiritual. The Sun went on warming us, rain still waters our fields... This they could not take away from us" (Ibid., p. 385). Fortunate the Serbian peasants, know that they know this huge geopolitical secret: "In socialism, it is warmest in summer"! Who can resist this agricultural revelation, this bucolic oracle? Mihailo is truly a geophilosophical wizard, he knows that freshly watered and, naturally, fertilized land is the best basis for the sprouting of the language of hope, for the blooming of the prophetic future. Who else has such a well-founded future? Let us listen to how our philosphical Messiah is obsessed with the rituals of national transparency. His words often take on the power of true divine manifestation: "The Serbs are a reflective people, they are fascinated by the historical moment in which they lost their freedom for several centuries... It is a fact that the Serbs somehow understood the thought that history is actually the development of freedom, that they understood this thought before the great philosopher (Hegel, O.S.) explicitly formulated it" (Ibid., p. 359). A truly sensational discovery by our turbo-ethno-folk-philosopher: the Serbs are populational Hegellians, brought into being before Hegel himself!!! After this philogenetic revolution, the Germans will finally lose their primacy in philosophy. It is high time that a completely new history of philosophy be written, in which the Serbs will shine with their original symbolic brilliance.

Indeed, a stalwart personality is at the basis of this bizarre hallucination - the importunate figure of an old, tired and obstinate academician. In spite of reanimation, his intellectual, his intellectual and political aura is waning: only indifferent banality speaks still. Who still needs it today, anyway?

The Balkan Tassadaians

An ethnological story says that the Tassadaians were found deep in the jungle, living in their pure, natural state without contact with civilization and out of reach of other cultures. Although curious colonists posed a threat, the real danger for this Amazon tribe came from another, quite unexpected side: in contact with aggressive ethnologists, the indigenous people fell apart like a dessicated mummy. Post-colonial ethnology therefore staged a paradoxical turnabout: the "endgangered" object was saved by returning it to its natural, "philogenetic" state. What does this gesture of returning the Tassadaians to the jungle’s security zone really mean? What is the real sense of that forced return to the "viriginal" ghetto of nature? The backward movement of referential simulation sets ethnology free from its parasitical fixation on its real "object". The spectral light of liberated ethnology can virtually shine on any tribe or people, any culture or civilization. Exclusive ethnological "specimens" are no longer strewn through the outbacks of civilization, the jungles and wildernesses. In disguise, they are hiding all around us.

We are alerted to the global presence of "savages" by an irresponsible tribe, sown throughout the Balkan mountains, waiting impatiently to be recognized. They are mountain people who, more or less, live in a state of constant excessive orgy-making. The explosive force of pagan self-will is at the basis of their campaign to achieve ethnic and national identity. Isolated in the middle of Europe, this tribe immoderately indulges in celebrations, feasts and rituals. Wild bacchanals are staged to rejuvenate the community, to renew its biological potential. The time of excesses is highly prized, as it heralds the long-delayed outbreak of the joy of destruction. Feasts are equally devoted to outbursts of happiness and abundance of life on the one hand, and to waves of hatred and eruptions of death, on the other. The tribe is fatedly inclined to Important Times, to historical waves of disorder, violence and death!!! Nostalgia for the frontline appears periodically, and ardent militarism is a seasonal occurrence. Tribal and international wars, the cruel and no less atavistic flip side of celebrations, are provoked cyclically. Tribal self-will is rhythmically rejuvenated through violence. In that region, war is truly experienced as a feast, as a time of holiness, of birth of the divine. Everybody is ready for great sacrifice without reason or recompense. In lyrical rapture, the population sinks into the monstrous cruelty of war. Virginal transformation is born in the sin and evil of bellicose fanaticism. Innocent faces come out of the war, looking as if they had been prepared in funeral parlours. That exotic rosy-facedness cannot be found even in the jungles of the Amazon.

Crime Story

I never understood the general passion for thrillers, spy stories and detective fiction. Even less did I comprehend the excentric fascination with Raymond Chandler, who, as we now know, preferred furniture to women! However, on a recent occasion when I was forced to temporarily take on the role of victim, I suddenly changed my attitudes towards crime stories. I discovered how false innocence works, how the bizarre virtue of the genre can seduce. What happened?

At the invitation of David Durst, with some friends I recently visited the American University in Blagoevgrad, in Bulgaria. We took part at the First International Conference on Philosophy devoted to the subject of "Contemporary European Philosophy: Traditions and Transitions". Our trip to Blagoevgrad was effortless and without problems. No sooner had we reached our destination, however, then our adventure started, an adventure full of unusual plots and carnival farce. While we were routinely checking into our hotel, thiefs broke into our car and stole all the luggage. We were robbed completely, everything vanished, from bags and personal items to books, magazines, manuscripts and computer disks. I was suddenly faced with two problems. First, I was not prepared to improvize on the subject of my announced paper -"The Reception of Baudrillard in Serbia". Second, I was even less prepared to accept this incident according to the classic schemes of crime fiction. Still, the amateur search for the thieves turned into an unconvincing detective plot. At the very first step, we were faced with local mistrust and suspicion. The director of the hotel in which we were lodged resolutely refused to put us in touch with the local police. We probably looked like spoiled tourists to him. At the police station, we were received as arrogant foreigners who do not understand local circumstances and customs. We were told very openly that the police had no intention whatsoever of opening an official investigation. Just in case, a routine, empty and useless complaint was filed. Also, we were discreetly given to understand that we should count ourselves fortunate for still having a car. That was a sign of exceptional neighbourly friendliness, a pure gift from our good-natured neighbours. Carried along by our tourist enthusiasm, we continued looking for the thieves by ourselves. We tried imitating the professional demenaour of secret agents who immediately blend into the enemy camp. We were ready to take on the risk and dive into the tumult of local criminal conventions. Drawn in by the plot, we fruitlessly tried to approach the secret realm of suspects.

Time was running out, and we helplessly went around in circles. And when we least hoped, the culprit was named and identified! Namely, on the last day of our stay, the director of the American University gave a farewell banquet. At this function, I had the opportunity to indulge in a friendly talk with some Bulgarian colleagues. They expressed sincere regret that we had been robbed in their country. During our informal chat, they suddenly indulged in a strange, national disavowal of criminality. According to their detection, only the ethnic minorities in Blagoevgrad (i.e., Macedonians, Greeks and Turks) could have carried out this pillaging diversion!!! What a phenomenal discovery, what a spectacular hunch, what a fascinating flight from the appearance of innocence. The philosophers of the "sinful parish" could not face up to the banal canon of the crime story - that robbery, just as murder, can be an exotic form of hospitality.

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