Aldo Milohnić
A Conversation with Boris Buden
Our conversation is taking place on the first day of spring. These days numerous discussions are also revolving around the repeated outbreak of violence in Kosovo. What would be your preferred topic of conversation?
We could discuss both. The first thing that comes to my mind when somebody mentions spring (in the context of what is currently taking place) is the 'Slovene spring'.
Could it also be the 'Croatian spring'?
It could, this is definitely the second association that springs into my mind. However, for my understanding there is a difference in the fact that the Croatian spring has a negative connotation, while from Zagreb I experienced the Slovene spring in the 80's as a great democratic opportunity. For me this was, as I would say today, a period of utopia. When the Slovene spring, which was at the time of course not called this, promised a great change (I can hardly call this a revolution), this did not appear to be a democracy of the Western, capitalist type or anything similar. I think that at the time nobody spared a thought for this. Everybody from my generation had a feeling that changes are necessary and that this change is a positive one, when taking into account the political situation in which we lived. The 80's were a period of intellectual intervention into the political reality, some sort of a spring of theory, if you wish. I cannot say that this theory was directed against the official philosophy, because there was none in the former Yugoslav socialism. However, certain mainstreams did exist, such as for instance the Praxis philosophy, which was at the time (in the 80's) no longer of any cultural or theoretical interest.
Thus, the Slovene spring represented the last moments of hope for me. From the Slovene spring emerged the new Croatian spring, as a repetition of the same nationalism that started in 1971. This nationalism found its continuation in the Croatian state formation ideology and this in turn finished with the concept of the national state, with the idea of a society, which is reduced to its ethnic identity. It resulted in a state that has a racist stance to everything coming from the East, everything coming from the Balkans and so on. This state also has something that is very interesting to observe today, i.e. a translation of communism into a unique cultural identity. This is told through neologisms, such as for instance 'Yugo-communism' or 'Serb-communism', which suggest that within the frame of the ethnic identity of the Croatians there is no space for something like communism. Communism, which is, as we might remember, an ideology of universal emancipation, was translated into a specific cultural identity, into something that is called cultural otherness.
The post-communist discourse deals with the translation of communism into various cultural identities. The best examples of this are the communist museums that have suddenly grown all over Eastern Europe. These museums link the 'communist terror' to Russia, to the Russian identity, i.e. to some type of the East. The governing liberal ideology states that communism is in fact a non-European, Eastern ideology and a type of anti-modernistic Eastern culture; thus what took place following the fall of communism is a sort of a cultural re-conquest. The parts that have been occupied by this non-European, non-modern and anti-modernistic culture, have to be reclaimed for the West. The expansion of the European Union is understood in the same way: as reclaiming those parts that were temporary occupied by a hostile culture.
Today this cultural dimension that I (at the time) considered to be the carrier of emancipation, has changed into something that is against emancipation, into a renewed closure of the freedom horizons, into the removal of freedom from the political, ideological and cultural horizon. Today, I understand culture as a name for domination, a name for closure, a slogan of a new form of subjugation the victim of which I am also myself. The cultural spring has not changed into a summer of democracy, nor into a fruitful autumn, but into a freezing winter because of which your blood in your veins freezes solid.
In Kosovo this was driven to a paradox, there even the international community admits that the interventionism (humanitarian intervention, civil society intervention and so forth) has failed and that the only thing that remained as a winning principle during the past fifteen years is the logic of ethnic cleansing. The logic of total separation of different cultures. There is no better case for the Huntington thesis on 'the battle of the civilisations' than the post-Yugoslav experience, at which culture is once more reduced to the element of pure, mutually excluding ethnical, i.e. cultural identities. From this derives the thesis that the only solutions are separation and totally pure entities, i.e. identities that are completely separated one from another. This in fact confirms that the logic of those who are on trial today is winning.
When I hear the word culture my blood freezes solid. But it started with spring. In my opinion the Slovene spring was an introduction to the illusion that the subversive power of the cultural production is capable of producing positive political and democratic changes. Even though the notion of culture has started on the positive side, the side of expectation of a utopic, positive emancipation it returns as an enemy, as a moment of closure, as a moment of frustration.
In the same way as you now use the metaphor of spring and winter, you have in the 90's written about Kosovo as a theatre. At the time you explained that the essence of the theatre is that it offers an endless play of opportunities, meanings and so forth. In Kosovo nothing happened from freedom, but from the lack of freedom, from the repression, which suspends the discourse: 'That is why reality is shown as in the theatre. Not in an aesthetic illusion but in the illusion of the aesthetic, emerging from the broken fragments left from the discourse.' On the ruins of the discourse emerges the gesture, 'the quietened word'. Today we have a situation, in which the international forces safeguard the Serb population from the Albanian majority. The situation has thus turned around. But, as I see the situation in Kosovo, we are still dealing with a ghetto. Even though the Albanians represent the majority and they have reached certain positions within the system, they are still in a ghetto. Is their discourse still structured as a gesture?
When I was writing this text before the beginning of the war, I still believed in the promise given by the public, the democracy. I would say that at the time I believed in a version of something that the Russians called 'glasnost'. That is a sort of a Habermas-like concept of the public, an idea of transparency, which by itself ensures what we like to call democracy, freedom, etc. To put it in other words, I thought that this lack of power that the Albanians had in articulating themselves in public produced the language of violent gestures at the same time as they were being closed into ghettos. This was a ghetto of non-discourse, a ghetto of being cut off from the public, a ghetto of intimate speech, silence. I was wrong. I was proven wrong by my own experience in Croatia in the 90's, with the project Arkzin, with my own participation in the public discourse, i.e. with the experience of an open passageway to the public. Not only I had an open passageway, so did all of the most important truths of that moment. These truths were, for instance, ethnic cleansing, crime, also Croatian crime - truths that we wrote about in Arkzin at the time. The basic experience is that recognition and transparency of reality does not change this reality. As an example I can take the crime committed against the Zec family (one could find many other such cases in Croatia). This Serbian family was killed, amongst them was also a twelve-year old girl. Approximately a year or two after this the Zagreb magazine Globus published the story as told by the killers, who described their crime in great detail. Even today they are free. To put it into other words, I could no longer believe that anything would change when a certain social content becomes transparent.
When I say that I am speaking from a Croatian experience, this is because I used to work in Croatia. However, this situation holds true also for Belgrade and everything that started in the early 90's as a war and a form of aggression by the Yugoslav People's Army against its own nation. The point is that there were plenty of facts. Anybody who was interested could see what it was all about. We had a situation of total 'glasnost', absolute transparency, yet we could change nothing.
Today the situation is similar. Once again everybody knows everything as regards the events in Kosovo. There are no secrets as regards these events. Yet, it seems that the route of history cannot be stopped. Nothing can influence this reality. And in reality this reality is the reality of ethnic cleansing. Or, to state it differently, this is also the hope from the spring of the 80's, which has changed into winter. The idea of light, transparency, the public, a communicative community, which ensures a certain kind of social good, whether this is in the form of a democratic life, the rule of law or protection of minorities. All of these hopes have been changed into darkness, a winter of a certain reality, which no transparency can defeat. I am not talking merely about the Balkans, I am not discussing merely the post-Yugoslav case, I have in mind the state of the international community. The state in which we live is the powerlessness of insight. A paralyses. A sort of darkness of transparency. Hope and spring did not change merely into scepticism, but much worse, into the loss of faith in what we call the public. This is the greatest problem for the understanding of democracy.
While we are discussing the issue of public and private I would like to return to your books, for in them I have discovered a connecting motif, which is linked to what you are currently describing. It seems that you have managed to develop a political issue from a private, personal theme. This is where I see the connection between the books Barikade (Barricades) and the Kaptolski kolodvor (Capitol Railway Station). You have managed to compress the motif, which is repeated in your works into the following sentence: 'Man has nowhere to return, because he has nothing to leave behind.' And you continued: 'Kaptolski kolodvor is the name for the utopia of return, for the fiction of the homeland as the final destination of any travel. Whoever has once left the world of national culture and (in the political sense) the universe of national democracy has no longer anywhere to return.' This is the motif, reminiscent of the famous Croatian writer Miroslav Krleža. I am interested where does your fascination with the motif of arriving and leaving (which seems to be your personal story) come from? I am also interested from where does your fascination with Krleža, with the position that he had in the Yugoslav society at the time come from?
In the Kaptolski kolodvor I tried to step out of the Krleža universe. Krleža does not depict the incapability to return, but the tragedy of the return. The tragedy of returning offers him cultural compensation. It is because it is tragic that it makes a story. This is a story of the old motif of Odyssey, which has a meaning only until there is a home to which you return. The travel, discourse and narration are possible if home, the wait, the return and Penelope exist. Krleža develops the motif in such a way that the tragic, romantic flow of his hero (Filip Latinović) is drawn back to his return. The return in itself is a tragedy, the end. This motif no longer has the power it used to have. The return home is possible, but it is utterly banal (in the same way as the departure), because the motif of the homeland, the motif of the final destination has been completely lost. This is due to the global nature of the world we live in and our incapability to make some sort of sense from our experience, from our national democracy.
I guess that the Slovenes have a different experience. However, I am talking about my experience. This is the thing that is private. I can make this as radical as I wish and I can state completely honestly that I do not believe in democracy. This appears to be a defeatist statement. But, when I state that I do not believe in democracy I have in my mind the fact that I can no longer find the motivation - in the only existing political form of democracy, i.e. national democracy (democracy that is possible only within a democratic national state) - to fight. I think that I have drained all of the energy and hope that I used to have. When I state that there is no possibility to return, I have in mind that it is not possible to return to this complex. One has to stay well clear of Ithaca. Ithaca has sunk while we were travelling. Not even a private tragedy can take place on Ithaca, nor a disappointment, or the romantic suffering of a hero. This story no longer emanates the energy it used to. In this sense I am leaving Krleža behind, regardless of the great respect that I feel for him and his work.
When I state that there is no return, this does not mean that it is not possible to return to Croatia. It is possible to return to Croatia, but this has no longer the intellectual or narrative meaning it used to. The return has changed into the absolute banality of emigration. Today a person can literary be an emigrant in his own home. This is also true the other way around, for it is today possible for a man to no longer know where his home is. Even though we are politically democratic (if we want to be) and we live a democratic life, we are sentenced to the belief in the reproductive power of democracy. We are sentenced to believe that my voice and my word will have positive effects in the public, however, I find this hard to believe.
The form in which both books are written is chaotic, styles and genres are mixed, themes follow each other in a schizophrenic rhythm: from the philosophy of language to popular jokes, from short ideology to abusive language and war crimes, from Kant to Mica Trofrtaljka, from Lacan to Franjo Tudjman. The books are full of expressive spontaneous, diverse and dissolute material. It is this chaos and the non-linked form that links both books. The second thing is that the theme of the disintegration of Yugoslavia, the political context and the consequences of this disintegration weaves the red thread from the first to the second book. It is obvious that the books are linked, but I would like to ask you in what points do they differ?
The difference can be found in the form. The book Barikade are a compound of the columns in Arkzin, which represent a direct intervention into reality. Every single sentence tries to have an effect. The column provokes, irritates and tries to co-operate in this reality, regardless of whether it is only angry at it, laughs at it, defends the moral reaction to reality or merely analyses the reactions whatever they might be. It is always critical and sharp, thus it always takes a firm political and moral standing point. These are elements of a direct intellectual interventionism, which have their own form - the column. This is a novelty in the Croatian peace movement, which far from the idea of journalist professionalism embodies the activism of the struggle for human rights with intellectual, cultural, artistic, design and all other capacities that are at its disposal. The book Kaptolski kolodvor is much more reflective. It includes various reasons and forms of the essay. But what really links both books is the attempt of a critical and reflective settlement of the reality of the Yugoslav ruins in the cultural, political, moral and aesthetic sense. I think that with these two books I have finished and somehow brought to an end the story of ruins. As far as I am concerned this story is finished. I do not mean that the story of the former Yugoslavia is finished, however, the story about the illusion of democracy and democratisation, of the fall of communism, which brings a significant improvement, is definitely finished. This is what I consider to be finished and this is why I can state that the first book expressed utter belief that it is possible to change something with intellectual and cultural interventions, it expressed the belief in the meaning, in the performative power of the intellectual. The second book is more reflective, but it is still a part of the healing of the trauma. Both books round up this story about the impossibility to return. I am not saying that a return to the former Yugoslavia, a form of harmony amongst various nations, something that we could call Yugo-nostalgia, is impossible. I am saying that it is impossible to return to what is described to us as our future. This is democratic development and social, economic, cultural welfare within the current political frames. I am saying that there is no return to the future and not that there is no return to the past. There is no return to the hope that the future will bring something better.
I would like to remind you of an essay, which is of great importance for our current conversation. I think that this essay is very interesting also otherwise. I think that it has been translated into several languages and it definitely deserves this. This is the essay 'Political logic of culture' in which you write about the demonstrations in Belgrade during 1996 and 1997. The first thing that I have noticed is your analysis of the Western neo-liberal standpoint, which within the Balkan 'other' searches for the image described by Marija Todorova, when she analyses the prejudice of the Balkans as a wild, barbaric island in the midst of civilised Europe. On the other hand we are dealing with the second stereotype that derives from universal ideologies, from the Internet globalisation and is linked to the Western processes of actualisation. This stereotype searches the Belgrade demonstrations for a picture, which would be appropriate for its own idealised image of the 'global' world and its 'universal truths'. These two prejudices seemingly contradict each other, but they operate through a similar logic. This logic is in fact the transfer of the political conflict in the field or registry of the cultural. Thus, culture is changed into what you like to call the continuation of politics with other means. With this you have of course paraphrased the known sentence, that war is the continuation of politics through other means. Why does this process occur?
Culture became the ultimate horizon of all activities, including political. It became a sort of universal language. Today it is possible to articulate only what is first shown in a cultural discourse. The demonstrations in Belgrade during '96 and '97 did not have a significant political importance, they were much more important for culture. In this essay I have chosen to write about a report in the magazine Wired because it represented the pinnacle of this stupid idealism as regards the great post-political progress. Nothing could stop the reporters from Wired in their euphoria. They stated that history and politics have ended and that all that was left remaining was the cultural progress that they could see everywhere around them, even though at that moment that meant only the defeat of democracy in Serbia and nothing more. They were thrilled to 'realise' that the Serb youth has become the same as the Western youth in the cultural sense and that is why they believed in the future of the Serb youth. Politically this cultural superiority did not by any means question the logic of reality, i.e. the logic of war, ethnic cleansing and war crimes. This was a symbiosis of the cultural recognition and political ignoring of everything that was happening, even at the stage when it reached intervention. Today we know that the 'humanitarian interventions' in the territory of former Yugoslavia did not produce any essential political consequences. At the time I wrote that culture is a place, where political impotency is experienced as cultural superiority.
When you talk about the translation of the political into the cultural, you say, that the culture of human rights has become a substitute for the politics of human rights. With this thesis you explain why the West was not capable of on time political intervention during the war in Yugoslavia, the worst possible violation of human rights after World War II in Europe. Because human rights became a cultural (and no longer political) category, they are no longer universal; instead they became culturally specific. Maybe they can merely be, as you state: 'tolerated in their specifics and not go into battle with them or for them.' I can see a certain paradox in this relation between the cultural and political. On one hand we are dealing with something universal at the human rights, i.e. the concept of 'natural rights of man' and its political program ('everybody is born free') - this is the universal moment. On the other hand, at the cultural translation of human rights, we are dealing with something particular, with the 'cultural diversity', with 'multiple identities', i.e. with cultural relativity. At first glance we could think that the totalitarian derives from the universal, from the position that saturates and totalizes the entirety.
A grand narration, for instance.
Yes, a grand narration. But what is going on? It seems as if the contemporary forms of totalitarianism are moving hand in hand with the politics of identities, as if they need the 'culturalised' human rights for their existence. How does this transfer from the universal to the particular take place? How would you explain this paradox?
I could remind you of the analysis that was made by Rastko Močnik. This is an analysis of the Stability Pact for South-Eastern Europe. The task set by the Stability Pact was to come up with a project of democratisation, normalisation and bring peace to the Balkans following the wars in Yugoslavia. In order for democracy to work it must first of all have a parliamentary system, a free public domain, various laws have to exist, there have to exist prospects for economic progress and so forth. In order for these laws to work, i.e. for a regulated market to work, the political culture has to change. For the civil rights to become universal human rights the subject (in this case the nation) has to reach a stable level of political culture. Culture is not merely a medium, a subject of democracy or a subject of human rights; it is also a part of the civil society. The field of the civil society operation is in its core cultural and according to its classic definition it can be found somewhere between politics and economy. Thus we are confronted by culture as the only horizon of political changes, as the horizon that could establish human rights. However it occurs that one culture which states for itself that it has already ensured human rights (and by this I mean the Western culture), at the same time states for another culture that it has not yet performed this and that it still has to do this and that. At this stage we are dealing with a culture, which is enforcing its power and is forcing another culture to accept its norms. Everybody knows the statement given by Ralph Dahrendorf, which says that the post-communist states would need another sixty years to truly become democratic states. With this he, of course, did not have in mind a multi-political party system, parliamentarism, laws, constitutions, but the development, the culture of human rights, the culture of legality and so on. Culture is thus the only horizon and subject of democracy, however, once it is introduced we are dealing with the cultural difference between those who have already established the culture of human rights and those who, in order to reach 'democracy' need another five, ten, fifty, hundred or five hundred years.
In this I can see the second consequence of your thesis as regards the culturalisation of human rights. I will quote you again: 'The phenomenon of the East European dissidence was possible only due to the active politics of human rights, which was enforced by the West, i.e. due to the concrete form of political solidarity.' Due to the regression of the politics of human rights into the culture of human rights this is no longer possible. The so-called Western parliamentary democracies encouraged this from purely pragmatic reasons, in order to preserve a certain realistically existing capitalism and the 'real' politics (Realpolitik) linked to it. I have an instructive example: the comparison of the former Berlin Wall and the current Schengen Europe. People who we used to call 'Flughelfer' i.e. the one who helps the dissident to escape to the West, were greatly respected. Willi Brandt even handed out rewards and plaques to those who helped people escape from East to West Berlin. Today we no longer talk about 'Flughelfers' but about 'smugglers'. These are people who are performing a task similar to the one performed by the 'Flughelfers', however today their activities are described as criminal activities. Of course there are differences between traffickers and smugglers, but in the usual media and political discourse the differences disappear and both are treated as part of the organised crime. Now this is down to the police, the repressive body and no longer a thing of politicians, who hand out plaques. What sort of a cultural and political strategy (Kulturpolitik) is thus at all possible in the Schengen Europe?
The general public often perceives me as being radical and extremist. But once again I have to (as a radical and extremist) state that the problem obviously lies in the European project, i.e. in the identification with the European project. It is obvious that the European project includes something that is in its core non-democratic, something with which a person cannot identify. This is exactly what proves to be the case with the Schengen boarder: the perverted stories of freedom, dissidents, people who helped cross boarders, about the idea that boarders are something bad, because they restrict personal freedom. Today boarders are presented as an assurance for freedom, protection, democracy and everything else that is in contradiction. People who escape to Western Europe today have rebelled against crime and terror, which is much worse than the terror of the for instance Hungarian communism from the 70's or the terror of the former Tito's Yugoslavia, when people who ran across the boarder were accepted in the West as heroes of the struggle for democracy and dissidents. This was the moment in which the West identified with its own values. People who have run away from Yugoslavia in the 90's ran from realistic threats - murders, rapes and other crimes - and they were accepted in Europe as refugees from a sort of natural disaster, i.e. as people who are in need merely of humanitarian aid. This is why the intervention was humanitarian, because it did not dare to articulate itself politically, it did not identify with any particular political goal, except to offering humanitarian aid to innocent victims. All of the time it was experiencing a tragicomic disappointment, that it is constantly saving victims only for them to become offenders the very next day. They merely saved the Croatians from the Serb crimes and they already had to start saving the Serbs from Croatian crimes. As soon as they rescued the Muslims from Serbs and Croatians they had to start saving Serbs and Croatians from the Muslims. It was the same situation with the Serbs and Albanians. Everything was constantly revolving around the hope in pure innocence, which then turned into disappointment and help was offered to the other side. All of this is totally absurd. This absurdity that has been continuing until today totally disables any kind of move, which would stop the circle of actions, the logic of this reality that is not questioned by anything. If solidarity towards these people ever existed it was cultural solidarity because of the presumption that these people respect Western values such as freedom, human rights, etc. This is the joy of the West that has 'discovered' the Belgrade demonstrations and they found this absolutely fascinating - they are people, just like us. They have similar ideals to us. And what is already tragicomic - they know how to use e-mails, send a fax and make a telephone call. Thus the racist pattern was constantly reproduced and this is a form of solidarity. A pure form of fetishist stereotyping, which is constantly reproduced and merely confirms that there are no dissidents, that the boarders are completely different. If I would paraphrase Wittgenstein: 'the borders of my culture are the boarders of my world'. What was in opposition to war and its criminality, could not be perceived politically. The thing is that we no longer have political dissidents, even though they are more numerous than ever before.
The cultural racism within the European project that you have mentioned is in fact the problem of inclusion and exclusion. In one of your essays you draw attention to the statement of the former German Minister of Defence as regards compatibility in Europe: only those countries or cultures should be incorporated that are culturally compatible with Europe. You ask yourself what is left for the excluded. Then you state that the subject of this change is a bastard that derives from the radical re-politicisation of his own cultural exclusion, i.e. from the standpoint of the political criticism of culture. I think that it is not a coincidence that you use the word bastard, for this is a word play with a double meaning. Firstly, this was the title of one of your more important political and theoretical projects and secondly bastard also has a broader meaning, it defines somebody, who differs from the homogeneity of the whole. When you say that the only thing that remains is the 'radical politicisation of our own cultural exclusion from the viewpoint of the political criticism of culture', does this mean that we have to finally say goodbye to the concept of class struggle and face the 'cultural struggle'? What can we still do today with the critique of the political economy? How can we establish a link between economy and culture? What sort of a role does the political have in this relation?
You are opening questions of key importance, but unfortunately I have no concise answers to them. I will start with something, which I can answer, with a kind of self-criticism. At the beginning the Bastard project represented the bastard attitude to what was at the time considered in Croatia as the imperative. This is the identification with the Croatian culture, the Croatian identity, or the identification with a certain type of universal within the Croatian - i.e. that a person (as an individual) was threatened as a Croat in this war. During this period an individual was forced to experience himself through the identity of a nation. For me bastard was somebody who rejected the identification with this story, who wanted to step out of this bewitched circle of national culture, the logic of national defence, the battle for a national country, sovereignty. This also meant the bastardisation of the relation towards Croatian culture, including Krleža, who we have already discussed. Meanwhile, the notion of bastard, which I have used in a concrete Croatian political environment, became the mainstream of contemporary theory through the process of hybridisation. Once again he is completely culturalised with the idea that the so-called post-essentialist cultural identities, identities of the so-called third space are being distanced from the horizon of national culture, which was in fact also my idea. The concepts of hybridisation, the concepts of the post-colonial bastard are also apolitical. They believe that cultural subversion is the same as political activism. Thus, the fact of hybridisation of cultural identities is said to be in itself emancipative. In this sense I renounce the use of the term bastard. For me - especially within this theory - he is contaminated and useless. To defend the idea of bastardisation today means to defend the idea of a certain post-modern, post-colonial bastard in the sense of national identity as well as an even more radical de-politicisation and an even more radical culturalisation in the modern world.
In one of the essays in Capitol Railway Station you described an experience from an exhibition dedicated to the anniversary of the Communist Manifesto, which was in this context becoming culturalised, it became a cultural artefact.
Absolutely, it also becomes entirely harmless and politically unimportant, minor. Regardless of what theoreticians wished to explain, i.e. that the communist manifesto still discusses the world in a very radical way; I say that the truth is the cultural truth. We do not experience it in the political world, because the truth of the world in which we live in no longer represents our active attitude. We experience the truth as a cultural artefact. We can enjoy this, we can debate this, we can make a Ph.D. in this, develop an academic discourse, some sort of 'post-communist studies', 'post-communist condition', and so forth. But the communist manifesto is no longer what it used to be 150 years ago. At that time it was an appeal to change the world. Now it is a part of the incapability to change this world, a part of its truth.
Thus we arrived at the political economy, which is what you were asking me about. I am far from returning to the search for answers in political economy. The reason for this could be found in my intellectual inferiority or my scepticism. Why? Because I think that we no longer have at our disposal the same intellectual power. Or to state it differently: the relation between theory and practice is no longer such that we could have a certain critical position as they had in the period of Marx, with which the evoking of the political economy issue would mean anything else than a cultural or political problem. Basically, the economic sphere can not be approached. The post-modern places this fact under question already with the fact that the economic sphere no longer exists for us in the way it used to - as a certain basis. The economic sphere is no longer something, which could be an issue of criticism, i.e. the possibility of a critical attitude towards the problem of political economy no longer exists. This does not mean that the problem no longer exists. I am only stating that I do not believe those who in a declarative form state that this is the solution. Merely the fact that they have stated that this is the solution, can surely not be the solution.
Partially, the problem is that the subject of society has become unclear. If Marx made this big Copernicus turn and deconstructed the mysticism with which the sphere of work was surrounded, or to be more broad the sphere of capital and economic relations, we could state that we are currently living in a period which has woven a thick web around both spheres. The parallel processes are taking place also in the political sphere. There is a great crowd in the political centre. Political parties in any Western society are oriented towards the centre. The victorious policy of the Slovene Liberal Democrats (LDS), i.e. the party that has been more or less on power since the declaration of independence, is the policy of an equal distance from the right and the left. This is in fact The Myth of the Victory of the Left as is the title of one of the books in the collection Media Watch published by the Ljubljana Peace Institute. When voting for LDS numerous voters still wrongly believe that they have voted for the left wing. The idea that a liberal could be a part of the left wing seemed absurd only a few years ago, for the left wing is traditionally linked to the worker's class, while the liberals are the party of capital, i.e. they by definition protect the rights of those who are opposed to the workers. Such absurd situations are possible because today the relation between politics, economy and the work sphere is completely unclear, hard to define. I cannot help but ask myself where does culture fit within all this?
What is culture in this constellation? Culture is nothing but the foggy quintessence of fog. Culture is not a part of fog, it is the very characteristic of fog that disables us to see.
OK, but how would you, taking into account that constellation, comment the actual cultural processes in Austria or in Croatia, if you prefer? I think that you are very well acquainted with both situations.
This is in fact very easy. Firstly, there is a state mainstream, this is the old traditional form of national culture, which can be better or worse in the sense that the Vienna opera is better than the Zagreb one, or that the Burgtheater is more interesting than the Croatian National Theatre. But in fact this is all the same. The majority of the cultural production is a part of the mainstream and this seems to function. I would say that most of the workers in the field of culture could be located within this story. There are also certain cultural achievements that can not be denied. There are more of them in Austria than in Croatia, for Austria is richer, more interesting and economically stronger than Croatia. We can develop this further and talk about the domination of the Western culture over the post-colonial culture of the third world. Let's remember that Frantz Fanon saw this culture as the medium of emancipation from colonialism. Today, nothing that would emancipate is taking place in the field of culture. There is a very small part of the cultural sphere, which has a critical stance towards the mainstream, but this is no longer alternative or subversive. Alternative culture is no longer subversive; instead it is very quickly becoming a part of the mainstream. It is getting absorbed. Even when it defies the mainstream, the alternative culture no longer posses the provocation it used to. It no longer questions the existing structures of power and the existing relations of domination. The difference between the mainstream and alternative culture can be found in taste, for they are certainly no longer found in the key issues. That, which is called the post-national culture, i.e. the post-colonial third space, the space of hybridisation, is also absorbed into a sort of a cultural economy and mainstream and is becoming the sphere of opportunism, especially political.
Something similar was also stated by Mark Terkessidis, an author, who I know you respect. He stated that the mainstream today represents itself as minority and draws a nice political capital from this. Thus, it is able to become a parasite on the let's say symbolism of resistance. I am interested in your vision of the new street 'Wienner Akcionizmus', which took place in Vienna, when Heider stepped into the ruling coalition. For these street events were attempts to operate in a subversive manner using these cultural actions. I am interested in what was the cultural and political reach of these actions, if they had any effect whatsoever?
The most important thing is that this reaction which did not have any political consequences, created a new type of socialisation. It created a new type of communication between people, who were otherwise separated. Suddenly, intense communication was established and the intellectual, philosophical, theoretical initiatives met as did the emigrant activism and so on. And this is of course a positive thing. On the other hand it was once again proven that these events were culturally interesting, but the only meagre positive effects were restricted to the changes in socialisation and the cultural sphere, where some things that used to be invisible became visible. All the rest is represented by the political dynamics that changed as soon as Berlusconi and Aznar came onto the scene, for there was the expectation of a political victory of the conservative forces at the approaching elections in Germany. All of this minimises the appearance of Heider, who is once more leading Carinthia. Heider was a symptom. He opened the possibility of something that seemed impossible: for the racist policy to become a part of the mainstream and thus obtain the right to citizenship. There is certain logic in all this. This is not about Heider escaping back to the Austrian province, but about the fact that Europe is increasingly becoming an Austrian province. Europe did not drive Heider back to Carinthia, instead Carinthia spread all across Europe. Heider is the victim, but his idea is victorious.
The way in which you stated this last thought reminds me of your aphoristic manner of writing, which seems to charm the readers. But it is not just charm it is also the fact that you manage to (from the aphoristic sentences, syntax or even with the use of certain words) develop entire essays. It is because of this picturesque style that the readers remember it. Such statements were for instance 'Europe is a whore', 'Slobo-Clinton' and similar. For the end I would like to know whether you have a new 'leitmotif'? Especially because you stated that a certain story was ended with the book Kaptolski kolodvor. Is there a new one emerging?
At the moment I have no new ideas, but as far as the style is concerned I would like to state that I used to be a translator and I translated quite a bit of Freud. Freud never received any acknowledgement for his scientific work, but he was acknowledged for his style of scientific writing. I picked up my aphoristic style from Freud. Freud is full of aphorisms, and his terminology is aphoristic all the way, which you might understand as a criticism of Freud, but I am of the opinion that this is the point upon which not only the style functions, but also knowledge and truth. My aphoristic style mostly takes place in German, for I mostly write in German. Obviously I have understood my message as regards the impossible return before time and I am now often forced to the use of aphorisms due to the lack of knowledge of the language in which I have to articulate my style. The readers then understand my lack of language proficiency as a surplus of aphorisms. This is a productive mistake, due to which I have a certain benefit on the intellectual market.
Ljubljana, spring 2004