Page 126 - Darko Štrajn, From Walter Benjamin to the End of Cinema: Identities, Illusion and Signification. Ljubljana: Educational Research Institute, 2017. Digital Library, Dissertationes, 29.
P. 126
from walter benjamin to the end of cinema
ie. Nonetheless, the film can be taken as evidence in favour of Levi’s ob-
servation: “Although the flames of nationalism fully flooded the region in
[the] 1990s, during the mid and late 1980s they were carefully and patient-
ly nurtured by the ‘ethnically concerned’ intellectual and cultural elites”
(Levi, 2007: p. 11). Rams and Mammoths actually confronted the discours-
es of a new construction of ethnic identity in Yugoslav federal republics,
which Levi has in mind. The film did this at the time these discourses were
entering the public sphere, and it meets them head-on by exposing social
phenomena of ethnic myths and prejudices.
Ethnicity in the Balkans under Communism
The expression of ethnic identity in multi-ethnic communist conglomer-
ates was not subject to indiscriminate repression, nor did the departure of
Marxist ideology create an “ideological vacuum”, which then presumably
began to fill up with nationalist ideologies. The unfounded hypotheses that
ethnicity as such was suppressed under communism (on behalf of the cat-
egory of social class) opened the way for a simplistic line of reasoning, ac-
cording to which the former repression caused the later outbreak of na-
tionalism in a pathological form. This kind of view could be observed soon
before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall in Western journalists’ columns
(in Newsweek, Time, etc.). On the other hand, claims of ethnic identity be-
ing repressed under communism were first uttered in Slovenia by some po-
litically conservative groups, which also developed conceptual platforms
for newly established right-wing political parties. The most prominent such
group in Slovenia was gathered around the journal Nova revija, which, as it
happens, had been published from the mid-1980s onward and had received
subsidies from the (formally still “communist”) government. Dozens of ci-
tations in various texts published in Nova revija could be offered in sup-
port of this assertion. They more or less affirmed this claim, just in different
words: “The national crisis stems from an underestimation and neglect –
typical of communist ideology – of pressing national issues and from sup-
pression of legitimate national demands. They just sweep them under the
carpet of a phantasmal ‘unity of the working class’ or ‘working people’ and
their supposedly unified ‘international’ interests (Urbančič, 1989: p. 580).
In fact, communism placed the attribute of ethnicity within its (sym-
bolic) system. “Hard data are hard to get at, but it seems that around 1950
the states of Europe had achieved an unprecedented ethnic homogeniza-
tion of their populations” (Therborn, 1995: p. 47). These processes also took
124
ie. Nonetheless, the film can be taken as evidence in favour of Levi’s ob-
servation: “Although the flames of nationalism fully flooded the region in
[the] 1990s, during the mid and late 1980s they were carefully and patient-
ly nurtured by the ‘ethnically concerned’ intellectual and cultural elites”
(Levi, 2007: p. 11). Rams and Mammoths actually confronted the discours-
es of a new construction of ethnic identity in Yugoslav federal republics,
which Levi has in mind. The film did this at the time these discourses were
entering the public sphere, and it meets them head-on by exposing social
phenomena of ethnic myths and prejudices.
Ethnicity in the Balkans under Communism
The expression of ethnic identity in multi-ethnic communist conglomer-
ates was not subject to indiscriminate repression, nor did the departure of
Marxist ideology create an “ideological vacuum”, which then presumably
began to fill up with nationalist ideologies. The unfounded hypotheses that
ethnicity as such was suppressed under communism (on behalf of the cat-
egory of social class) opened the way for a simplistic line of reasoning, ac-
cording to which the former repression caused the later outbreak of na-
tionalism in a pathological form. This kind of view could be observed soon
before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall in Western journalists’ columns
(in Newsweek, Time, etc.). On the other hand, claims of ethnic identity be-
ing repressed under communism were first uttered in Slovenia by some po-
litically conservative groups, which also developed conceptual platforms
for newly established right-wing political parties. The most prominent such
group in Slovenia was gathered around the journal Nova revija, which, as it
happens, had been published from the mid-1980s onward and had received
subsidies from the (formally still “communist”) government. Dozens of ci-
tations in various texts published in Nova revija could be offered in sup-
port of this assertion. They more or less affirmed this claim, just in different
words: “The national crisis stems from an underestimation and neglect –
typical of communist ideology – of pressing national issues and from sup-
pression of legitimate national demands. They just sweep them under the
carpet of a phantasmal ‘unity of the working class’ or ‘working people’ and
their supposedly unified ‘international’ interests (Urbančič, 1989: p. 580).
In fact, communism placed the attribute of ethnicity within its (sym-
bolic) system. “Hard data are hard to get at, but it seems that around 1950
the states of Europe had achieved an unprecedented ethnic homogeniza-
tion of their populations” (Therborn, 1995: p. 47). These processes also took
124
