Subversive Infantilisation in Contemporary Bosnian-Herzegovinian Fiction

Written by Luke Heard

Narrated by Cass Parrish

Length

7h 8m

A considerable part of the Bosnian-Herzegovinian literature written in the past twenty-some years has revolved around issues related to the war in 1992– 1995 and the depressed transitional social state that followed. While some writers have adhered to any of the three ethnonationalisms (Bosniak, Serb, Croat) which prevailed in the war and have since dominated the Bosnian political landscape, many of the most prominent writers have engaged in attacking the very same nationalist hegemony. The works of the latter tend to share the aim to relativise and show contingent the narrow conceptual framework and narratives promoted in dominant discourse and to search for alternative forms of imagining a range of issues that continue to stifle social development in Bosnia. In fact, a suspicious attitude towards ideology in general can be identified, considering also the critical treatment of Bosnia’s socialist history during the time of Yugoslavia as well as the equally critical response to the attitudes and actions of the international community in connection with the war and the reconstruction process that followed.