CALE Discussion Paper No.13
November, 2015

The Symbolic Construction of
the Enemy:
the Case of Serbia and Japan
Prof. Dr. Djordje Stojanovic

Nagoya University
Center for Asian Legal ExchangeCenter for Asian Legal Exchange (CALE)

Nagoya University, JapanThe Symbolic Construction of the Enemy: the Case of Serbia and Japan Prof. Dr. Djordje Stojanovic

SerbiaContents
Acknowledgments ..............................................................................................................................3
Introduction ........................................................................................................................................ 4
1. Post-positivist “agnosia”- some methodological issues..................................................................... 10
2. The postmodernist and/or poststructuralist conception of politics, state and international relations ...... 19
3. National identity problem .............................................................................................................. 41
4. Material production or social construction of the enemy: the realist paradigm versus the constructivist
paradigm ...................................................................................................................................... 58
5. Discursive coding of the enemy text in contemporary formulation of international narratives of Serbia.................................................................................................................................................... 73
6. Discursive coding of the enemy text in the contemporary formulation of international narratives ofJapan ............................................................................................................................................ 91
Conclusion .....................................................................................................................................110
Bibliography:..................................................................................................................................112

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Acknowledgments
I want to thank the professors and staff at Nagoya University, Nagoya University
Graduate School of Law and the Center for Asian Legal Exchange on exceptional kindness andassistance, and prof. dr. Mamoru Sadakata who not only made me a better scientist but also a
better man overall.

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Introduction
The war on the Balkan Peninsula, caused by the disintegration of Yugoslavia, has resulted
in the creation of political space in which the phenomenon of perpetuation of inter-state or interethnic hostility, in terms of meaningful Schmittean political identity inauguration grounded in the
ontically-based friend-enemy relationship, can become a standard in defining the post-war
relations between the former Yugoslav federal, now independent, state entities. In addition, on
the one hand, to such “European state of affairs” we can add disagreements in the HungarianSlovak relations that culminated recently, or “petrified” disputes in the Macedonian-Greek andTurkish-Armenian relations, as well as Kurdish, Basque and Northern Irish problem. On the other
hand, global international moments should not be overlooked, for example: the attack on theWorld Trade Center and the Pentagon on 11 September 2001, that led to the location of aninternational network of terrorists as the leading (absolute) enemy of the George W. Bushadministration, and more or less connected to it, the wars in Iran and Afghanistan, and theinternational crisis and confrontation with frightening or potentially cataclysmic consequences of
the “meta-hostility”, such as the diabolical genocide in Rwanda, permanent disagreements in the
Pakistani-Indian or South Korean-North Korean relations. It is clear that the relevance ofSchmitt’s ideas for substantive issues of world politics (nationalism, identity, war, balance ofpowers, sovereignty, the nature of the international system, etc.) should not be doubted at all.
However, accepting the question of enmity as extremely important for political science andexisting global political situation, I have to say that Schmitt’s realistic approach to the problem isonly one of more possible theoretical perspectives in its explanation.
What is it actually about? The complicated time that we live in has become the time we
do not wish to belong to, the world we make and are made does not seem to be the world we
accept, reality has become so removed from the modernist promise of progress, equality,
tolerance, freedom and peace that wondering what this world is about represents an extremelycomplex aporime which, in the theoretical universe, culminates as a continuous succession ofradicalized disputes, while, at the level of real, everyday life, it suppresses, contorts, denies ordestabilizes the universe of human spirituality. The foremost part of what systemically surrounds
us and what we systemically belong to, that which “converges or diverges” us, what we believein, has become a provisorium and the only certainty is currently a permanent and intense4uncertainty. In our pursuit of self-determination, we have agreed to imitation and manipulation,
the “ultra-hegemony” of perpetually fluctuating, if arbitrary, symbols, icons, rituals andceremonies, “megalomaniac cultural” codes that we find difficult to abandon or change. In otherwords, it has more or less become evident to all of us that the world in which we exist has longsince become postmodern.
However, even in this well-advanced postmodern era, for a significant number of“theorists and practitioners” of every academic orientation and rank, there is nothing thatprovokes such aggressive, undisguised and persistent aversion as postmodernist ideas (which, ofcourse, we cannot regard as some exclusive “official ideology” of postmodernism). In any case,elementary assumptions and key practices of the “so-called” modern world politics are tarnishedby technological, organisational, social and, above all, by cultural changes in the sense of
discontinuity, incongruousness, disonnance, fragmenting and dissensus. Ergo, it is my view thatthe reflexive antipode to the “enlightenmentist-positivist-modernist” school of thinkers,
convinced of the possibility of absolute cognition, postmodernism, even in its radical variation,
which abides the notion that no knowledge is possible, represents an unavoidable approach in thecontemplation and explanation of such challenging topics as hostility, sovereignty, borders, war,
identity or statesmanship.
The shift of emphasis from the epistemiological and ontological perspective of knowledge,
from the rigid cannons of pure “scientific power”, towards the perspective of power and authority,contemplation about the imposing of true and authoritative interpretations, from empiricallyperceptible “facts” towards the hard-to-perceive social creations, suggests that today, it is far lessimportant to plead for the achievement of Truth, and far more important to expose the dictate of it.
After all, that “truth with the capital T” is, of course, an inherently modernist position per se,
which is not of great, and certainly not of essential meaning for postmodernism. It has become
virtually impossible to circumvent “methodological strategies” such as genealogy, simulacrum,
discourse, text, narrative, deconstruction or “double reading” if we aim to complete ourperception of a phenomenon or relation. How is it possible to ignore, say, the deconstruction of
Kenneth Waltz’s paradigm presented in the book: Man, the State, and War: A Theoretical
Analysis, 1 carried out by Richard Ashley, which claims that for the rationality of man to be

1

Waltz, K. (1959) Man, the State, and War: A Theoretical Analysis, New York: Columbia University Press.

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sovereign it cannot ignore chaos or anarchy, or, indirectly, war2 or the provocative assertion by
James Der Derian that, despite all differences, George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden resemble
one another in their unwavering conviction of their own ethical and epistemological tenets.3
Finally, I will add that diatribes directed against postmodernism, albeit a much more
postmodernist genre, go so far that they define its impact on the indigenous and global culture
through a misconception of relativism, as an injection of the amoral and immoral, which, at leastindirectly, led to the terrorist attacks on the aforementioned iconic symbols of the West (Pentagon
and the World Trade Centre). My view of these issues and of many other apocalyptic events andtragedies is opposite, “trans-substantial”, if our focus is on the blame, then modernist positivism,
with its understanding of nature and people as mere things that can be successfully and infinitely
manipulated, often bordering on social engineering, is indeed responsible. It should beemphasised here once again that the age that we belong to is the age of transparent, turbulent andradical changes. Post-positivist racourse perceives it in the following way: 4 (1) it is composedthus that it alters our international, interpersonal and intertextual relations in terms of inversion of
objective reality to textuality; (2) the production modality is replaced by the informational one;(3) representation converts into simulation; (4) classical understanding of Imperialism
metamorphoses into an Imperialism of Signs.
Arguable as it might be, for the purpose of this research I will define Carl Schmitt’scontemplation as dominantly realistic, essentially characterized by rationalism and positivism,
while I will elaborate postmodernism (in line with the aforesaid) through a set of oppositing
qualities (antifoundationalism, antihumanism, antihistoricism anti-essentialism, linguistic antirepresentationalism and antipositivistic utopism). In the sphere of international relations, thebasic systemic postulates of realism can be designated as follows:5 (1) anarchy- the international
system comprises states as political units with no central body or some overarching authority; (2)states potential for offensive- military power capable of inflicting damage to one another or
potentially cause the destruction of a state; (3) states can never be absolutely certain of theintentions of other states- that is, it is not possible to know exactly if some state will not use its
2
Ashley, R. (1989) “Living on Border Lines: Man, Poststructuralism, and War.” in Der Derian, J. and Shapiro, M.
(eds) International/Intertextual Relations: Postmodern Readings of World Politics, New York: Lexington Books, pp.
259-323.
3
Der Derian, J. (2001) “The War of Networks.” Theory and Event, 5(4): 15.
4
See Der Derian, J. and Shapiro, M. (eds.) (1989) International/Intertextual Relations: Postmodern Readings ofWorld Politics, New York: Lexington Books,
5
Mearsheimer, J. (1994-1995) “The False Promise of International Institutions.” International Security, 19(3): 10.

6

military potential against another state; (4) survival- main goal of every state is to preserve its
own sovereignty; and (5) states strategically contemplate survival in the international systemstates possess instrumental rationality which is doomed to periodical commission of errors as aresult of imperfect information.
The academic locus communis is that constructivism lies in the middle between these twotheoretical poles (realism and postmodernism) and represents the key “rival” to the postmodernist
study of international relations in the frame that is classified as post-positivist theoretical corpus
in mastering international relations (later I will present more philosophical classification of John
Gerard Ruggie). 6 It is a theoretical approach which attempts to resolve the disparity between
scientific objectivity and anti-empirical relativism by emphasizing inter-subjectivity in the sphereof international relations. This approach foregrounds the sameness of the normative and material
structure, underscoring the importance of identity in the shaping of political activity andemphasizes the co-constitutive relation between structure and agents. 7 By underscoring intersubjectivity of actors and their interaction, the relevance of the norms and practices defining thecontent and scope of international relations is emphasized, their construction is refracted throughthe lens of historically determined interpretations and, consequently, the element of meaning thatthe actors assign to some international situation or relation becomes a very important factor for
their research. A direct consequence of the approach conceptualized in this way is that statescreate something more extensive and subtle than just a system, something that can be designatedas the international society. Constructivism, therefore, rests on equalising the importance ofmaterial and normative structure, emphasizing the role of identity in defining political action andon the co-constitutive relation of agents and structures. Still, idealistic approach withinconstructivism should not be understood as an equivalent to utopianism (liberal idealism), but asa theoretical approach that emphasises the structure of human associability as determined rather
by common ideas than material factors.
Considering the above-said, this study will first, in part one, discuss several theoreticaltenets of this type of research. Namely, the research will employ “discursive triangulation”(multidisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity and neodisciplinarity) in elaborating the phenomenon,
See Adler, E. (1997) “Seizing the Middle Ground: Constructivism in World Politics.” European Journal ofInternational Relations, 3(3): 319-363. and Ruggie, J. G. (1998) “What Makes the World Hang Together? NeoUtilitarianism and the Social Constructivist Challenge.” International Organization, 52(4): 855-885.
7
Reus-Smit C. (2005) “Constructivism.” in Burchill, S., Linklater A., Devetak R., Donnelly J., Paterson M., ReusSmit C. and True, J. (eds.) Theories of International Relations, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 188-213.
6

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construct or text of the enemy (independently from some “hard” positioned selection of thetheoretical paradigm a priori) and will, accordingly, interpret key theoretical postulates ofrealism, constructivism and postmodernism (poststructuralism) along the lines of author’s key
points in pursuing the subject of this research.8 With this in mind, paper will examine Schmitt’semphasis on the human need for political identity, embodied in the analysis-intriguing friendenemy distinction as the vertical explanatory base of the entire international system. His focus on
identity aside, and because he identified the causes of war as invariable constants of the man's
psychological constitution, rather than by the functional dependence of ideational elements,
Schmitt's position can be defined as being closer to realism than to constructivism. While theinclusion-based “constructivist identity” implies the possibility of becoming the bearer of thestructural metamorphosis of the international system towards the formulation of a qualitatively
better global society, Schmitt's exclusion-based “realistic identity” suggests the impossibility of
global systemic change. The still controversial postmodernism will be used to illuminate the“extreme simulacral nature” in some conceptualisations of enemy, to interpret the creation ofenemy from the completely inexistent or dislocated, simulated reality that is treated as somedeparting social complex, national imaginarium, in hegemonious discourse or narrative of one or
another rank, with the intent of providing the symbolic justification and grounding of certain
power distribution in the context of multiple juxtaposed “paralellel international realities”.
Also, paper scopes the Serbian and Japanese idea of the enemy. Perhaps the substantive
cultural dimension or the hostility criterion are not important for the friend-enemy relation in
Schmitt's, let's call it “meta-thesis” (as it is constantly variable depending on the specifichistorical contingency), but it is definitely given at a specific point in time and situation, so theanalysis of these moments could have significant implications for the resolutions of animosity
which, in the Serbian case, culminated in violence. While the first part of the paper, at least at thelevel of Schmittean (realistic-rationalistic) perception of the phenomenon, discusses how thecollective enemy has to exist if one wants to enter the sphere of the political and examines thebasis and impacts of this concept refracted through the constructivist and postmodernist optics,
the second part explains why this choice of enemy in the Serbian case ended in inter-ethnic

8
Cf. Long, D. (2011) “Interdisciplinarity and the Study of International Relations.” in Aalto, P., Harle, V. andMoisio, S. (eds.) International Studies: Interdisciplinary Approaches, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 31-66.

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conflict, while in the Japanese case it identifies the general constructivist factors, ideas, norms
and beliefs, relevant for the perpetuation of peace since the end of World War II.
Generally speaking, such approach is beneficial in at least three ways: (1) it affirms
analytically theoretical validity of notional-normative-cultural area outreach on formulation of aninternational system on the level of principles (let aside whether such intervention entails
optimistic or pessimistic vision of the world); (2) it explicitly shows that constructivist approachto the international relations demands constructivist interpretation of national identity as well;and (3) it points to the dialectics of permanent formulating and reformulating of national identity,
including as an relevant element the definition of Otherness, as both a forming and formed factor
in the international system, a special narrative sum of idiosyncratic domestic and foreign
discursive elements or factors in the interpretation of an international state position.

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1. Post-positivist “agnosia”- some methodological issues
In my opinion, the first rule of postmodern “methodological etiquette” is narrative. Of
course, narrative here is not understood as a predominantly literary form, but mainly as an
epistemological category. Similar to the concepts of time and space, narrative can be treated as
something that is not characteristic of our experience, but as something abstract, such as “empty”
coordinates, boundary markers or “pickets” of the cognitive field within which we learn about theworld, as a contentless form imposed by our perception on a “stripped” flow of reality, thus
ensuring it with the comprehensible empirical order. The point is not that we should talk about
the world, tell stories about the world for the purpose of understanding it, but for the world toshow itself to us in the form of stories, one can say, to tell the story of us. It is a kind of“epistemological finality”, not only in the sense that there is no narrator outside the narrative
space (for example, this narrator may be the Truth), but it is impossible to imagine the world (itsstructure, form or categories) outside the narrativity and for that product or statement ofimagination not to end as a story, because narrative itself is narrative in nature.
Since the story or narrative is actually a specific language, a linguistic universe, it could
be said that at the foundation of every narrative lies a cultural code as a complex combination ofsigns and symbols, namely symbols and symbols, of this or that meaning. The cultural code thatwill be further discussed later is certainly a kind of “symbolic social contract” of its, I would say,parts, carriers of primary distribution of particular meanings, of individual identity views of theworld, that aspire to become its images, but never actually are, because there are no pictures of
the world beyond its symbolic representations, the image of the world outside of the image
offered and perceived as reality. This discrepancy or gap, the fact that the individual image of theworld does not refer to the objective reality but its narrative or discursive reflection, makes
postmodern shift of such set position possible, this idea that the cultural code is constantly
symbolically configured, rephrased and transformed through changes in the practice of ourmeaningful interactions and/or exchanges. In other words, from a transcendent and impersonal
formatting by narrative, we become a self-narrative, a story about ourselves, and a fragment of alarger story about us.

10In principle, we can identify four types of narratives: 9 (1) ontological narrativesmanifested in non-a priori and non-fixed, individual accounts, that are also a social product,
addressed to the self and its position in the world and in our personal history. We use them tofunction as social actors, they are important for the theory of agency as they suggest relationality
between identities (self-understanding) and agency (conditions for action). The insight into how
people act to change the world implies also an understanding how people understand themselves(personal narratives rely on and invoke collective narratives (or cultural macronarratives),
symbols, linguistic formulations, structures and vocabularies of motives, without which thepersonal would remain incomprehensible and impossible to interpret); (2) public narrativeswhich, unlike collective narratives as very broadly based and independent from some specificmodel, are stories attached to social and institutional formations larger than the individual, suchas the family, religious institutions, literary system and nation (thus,

the manipulation ofliterature and its influence on the national identity formulation, through the production of pseudohistories that create or empower national mythologies played a significant part in the conflicts informer Yugoslavia, an issue that will be further discussed later); (3) conceptual narrativesconstructed by social researchers as a vocabulary that can assimilate a contention that social life,social organisation, social action and social identity are narratively, that is, temporally andrelationally constructed through ontological and public narratives and that they reflect theawareness of their historical and contingent nature; and (4) meta (master) narative- in which weare incorporated, embedded or installed as contemporary social actors and social scientists, allsociological theories, tenets, or concepts are encoded in relation to their narrative attributes,
although they exist as a presupposed epistemiological dimension of social sciences, or more
precisely, beyond their clear awareness, which renders them different from conceptual narratives(they include, for example, Progress, Industrialisation or Enlightenment, the epic opposite
binoms such as Individual vs. Social, Capitalism vs. Communism and Barbarism vs. Civilised, orthey can be progressive narratives of teleological unfolding such as Marxism and the triumph ofClass Struggle, Liberalism with the triumph of Liberty or the rise of Nationalism).
Somers, M. R. and Gibson, G. D. (1993) “Reclaiming the Epistemological 'Other': Narrative and the Social
Constitution of Identity.” CSST Working Paper #94 and CRSO Working Paper #499, Ann Arbor: The University ofMichigan, pp. 30-33.; Baker, M. (2006) Translation and Conflict: A Narrative Account, London: Routledge, pp. 2850.; Hinchman, L. P. and Hinchman S. K. (eds.) (1997) Memory, Identity, Community:The Idea of Narrative in the
Human Sciences, Albany: State University of New York Press; and Patterson, M. and Renwick Monroe, K. (1998)“Narrative in Political Science.” Annual Review of Political Science, 1(1): 325-326.
911

A narrative can be defined through four characteristic features: 10 (1) relationality of parts(hermeneutic composability)- underscores the fact that the meaning of some event can bediscerned only in its relationship to other events; separate, isolated events do not posess relevant
cognitive capacities, while relationality of parts turns events into episodes; (2) causal
emplotment- refers to the order of elements of a narrative as a logical plot, or formulation of a
network of configuration of mutual relations, allowing for events to have some significance andexplanation, to turn a set of propositions into an understandable sequence of events that one canhave an opinion about (two people can agree about a set of facts or events, but they may notagree about their interpretation); (3) selective appropriation- indicates the inclusion of some andthe exclusion of other elements; through evaluative criteria, the narrator determines the adequacy(privilege) or inadequacy (averseness) from a whole array of intersecting and open events
constituting experience; and (4) temporality or narrative diachronicity- is a constitutive elementof a narrative, it does not indicate some correct order of their unfolding in reality or chronologicaltime, but their irreducible durability, pointing out that some parts of a narrative are always
situated in a series or sequence and that this order or configuration not only influences but also
defines the meaning of a narrative.
The second thing of good postmodern “taste” is a relationship between knowledge andpower and its manifestation in discourse and discursive formations, where discourse is defined as
an organizing principle and organizational formation of knowledge, with rules and regulations
that dictate specific practices, that is, ways of thinking and acting, and discursive formations as
the hierarchical criss-crossing of particular discourses. Discourses operate through: enabling,
constraining, and constituting. 11 They are like social scenarios that we consciously or
unconsciously perform, what we believe to be our own experience is always experience ofanother, or from within another particular discourse, what we think about ourselves manifests theinternationalization of many discourses, all that we are is enabled, constrained and constituted
within or through discourses. Discourses produce knowledge, and knowledge is always a weaponof power that through discourse produces the truths we live. As Michel Foucault puts it, every
society has its regime of truth, its general politics of truth: (1) the types of discourse it accepts
Somers, M. R. and Gibson, G. D. (1993) “Reclaiming the Epistemological 'Other': Narrative and the Social
Constitution of Identity.” op. cit., pp. 27-29.; Baker, M. (2006) Translation and Conflict: A Narrative Account.
London: Routledge, pp. 28-50.; and Patterson, M. and Renwick Monroe, K. (1998) “Narrative in Political Science.”
op. cit., pp. 324-325.; Bruner, J. (1991) “The Narrative Construction of Reality.” Critical Inquiry, 18(1): 1-21.
11
Storey, J. (2009) Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction, Harlow: Pearson-Longman, pp. 128-131.
1012and assigns them a function of the truth; (2) the mechanisms and instances which enable thedifferentiation of true from false statements; (3) the means of sanctioning them; (4) the
mechanisms and procedures for evaluation in the search for truth; and (5) the status positions of
those who are responsible for determining what counts as true.12 A regime of truth does not haveto be true, it should be understood as the truth by which we act: when ideas become beliefs, they
establish and legitimize a specific regime of truth. Discourse cannot be identified by language
alone, by its institutionalized use at the level of disciple, politics, culture and small groups, it also
includes complex sets of institutional practices and power relations that produce meaning.
As structural epistemological and metaphysical postulates of what the subject of
postmodern conceptual repulsion is, and can be defined as Western Rationalistic Tradition, we
determine:13 (1) the existence of reality independent of human representations, which means that
despite the existence of intellectual and linguistic representation of the world, in the form ofbeliefs, experiences, statements and theories, there is a world that is completely independent ofthese representations, some of the views of independent, autonomous reality (metaphysicalrealism); (2) the functioning of language not only at communicative but also on referential level,
language refers to objects and situations that exist independently of itself (understanding ispossible because both the speaker and the listener may have shared thoughts, ideas, and meaningsof reality independent of both); (3) theory of adequation or correspondence theory, whichassumes that truth is a characteristic of the statement, a statement is true only if it corresponds tofacts, when thoughts and objects match (adaequatio intellectus et rei), in the matching of thestatement with the object of our statement, i.e. the statement and the object of our statement, thatis what it is, regardless of what we think about it (for postmodernists, this is about essentialism,in its more rigorous form postmodernism is the abandonment of the explication of truth throughthe theory of correspondence or adequation, i.e. reservations about the belief that reality and truth
are one, that there is only one true understanding of the real state of things, while in its more
flexible form it does not manifest such rejection of the view that opinion represents the reality asmuch as a reference to what the representation implies); (4) objectivity of knowledge, because thecontent of what is known is always a true proposition, and because truth is a matter of accurate
representation of an independently existing reality, knowledge does not depend on or cannot be
12
Foucault, M. (2002) “Truth and power.” in Faubion, J. D. (ed.) Michel Foucault Essential Works: Power, London:
Penguin Books, p. 131.
13
Searle, J. R. (1993) “Rationality and Realism, What Is at Stake?” Daedalus, 122(4): 59-69.

13derived from subjective attitudes or feelings, the truth of any claim to of knowledge is therefore,“emancipated” from motives, culture, ethnicity, race, class and gender of a person or persons who“make” that claim, and refers to empirical support that promotes it; (5) formal position of logic
and rationality that provide procedures, methods, standards and canons (of proof, validity andreasonableness) as the basis for the assessment of different and competing claims to true
knowledge; (6) the existence of valid criteria for assessing the validity of statements, theories,
explications, interpretations and other sorts of accounts (some of these criteria are “objective” inthe sense that their application is independent of human sensibility, while others are“intersubjective” in the sense that they appeal to shared features of human sensibility).
Keeping in mind the previous, suppose the dominant paradigm in political science isbased on the following hierarchical sequence of methodological assumptions: 14 (1) politicalscience is focused on understanding of the truth about politics; (2) researches in the field ofpolitical science contribute to such orientation by adding to base of objective knowledge about
politics; (3) growth of this knowledge is directly contingent on the formulation of theory that
explains politics; (4) the formulation of theory is dependent on the development of universal
generalizations regarding the behavior of political actors; (5) the growth of decontextualized
generalizations occurs by testing falsifiable or refutable causal hypotheses, successful at the levelof prediction; (6) the accumulation of predictions about political behavior is associated with thestudy of variables in samples involving large number of cases; and (7) the body of objective,
causal knowledge can be put in service of society, especially by influencing public policy makers
and state implementers of policies.
Supposedly only methodological, but also hegemonic perspective of the scientificallyvalid set like so pushes into the background the pluralistic perspective of contextual, contingent
and multiplied political truths that imply stronger connection between theory and practice andgreater bond between thought and action. Epistemologically speaking, when talking about
positivism, at least when it comes to its diehard version, any statement that is not subject tosensory check is automatically qualified as metaphysical nonsense.15 What concepts refer to ismanifestable: perceivable people or events that can be measured. For realism, social world is

Schram, S. (2003) “Return to Politics: Perestroika and Postparadigmatic Political Science.” Political Theory,31(6): 835-836.
15
Reed, I. A. (2011) Interpretation and Social Knowledge: On the Use of Theory in the Human Sciences, Chicago:
The University of Chicago Press, p. 40.
14

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multilayered, and social knowledge includes in-depth interpretation, discovery of carrier strata
that explain surface or visible outcomes, events and phenomena that we want to understand.
Positivism is structured to encourage its followers to overlook contingency behind supposedly
objective social categories. Such a point of view gravitates towards laws and regularities or
towards models that marginalize meaning or treat it as a given social or economic factography.
Contrary to that, interpretivism implies that meaning constitutes networks, discourses orparadigms, which can be understood only by considering them as a whole.
Postmodernism is marked by the principle that the authority of the interpreter to go
beyond what was presented to social world is an entirely unjustified heuristic act, and that, almost
as a rule, it is reduced to the exercise of a matrix of power. Use of a theory (such as Marxism andRational Choice Theory) as a way to “scratch the surface” of social life is, in fact, a way not toreveal or clarify but prescribe and impose truth. It became completely irrelevant whether the“disguised or made up”, evident social truth is, in relation to its “chromatic” source, “covert”
social truth, socially monochromatic, polychromatic, isochromatic or even achromatic, when this“meta-social palette” is not at all the place where the postmodern epistemological “veduta” rests
or around which it revolves. The point is the “mirror” that is neither fixed nor big enough for“camouflaged” social reality to recognize itself in it, there are millions of little mirrors in thehands of individuals who, from different perspectives, lay claim to the complete interpretation of
the reflection and its change caused by the change in the point of view: beyond every mirror there
is nothing but a newly created and singularly unique array of mirrors. In its most strained form, it
became quite irrelevant on which side of the mirror of “Truth” we are, because we were still“only” a reflection in an endless “carnival” continuum of masked reflections and refractions, acombination of signs that never equals to real us, we become what we are not, measured by those
who are not, an unstable code position of the designator and the designated.
Therefore, in the case of the modernist conjunction of understanding of science andknowledge, discrepancy and hierarchy between the truth and the way, that is, medium or form of
its expression are assumed. For the scientific method characteristic of modernity andfoundationalist epistemology, objective truth exists autonomously in relation to any sign formulathat mediates or transfers it; reason is undoubtedly more authoritative, superior to its own
external matrix expressing it. In contrast to the assumption on the ontological andepistemological separation of the rhetorical or the linguistic from truth, postmodernists are more15

focused on the poetic, aesthetic and political dimension of knowledge rather than its logical andempirical dimension, on how something becomes knowledge, instead of what knowledge is.
Along this line, they actually promote rhetorical understanding of science, and relativize or“anarchize” reason by combining classical hierarchy binomials: (1) what doxa (δόξα) is and what
episteme (ἐπιστήμη) is; (2) truth and its expression; (3) rationality and language; (4) phenomena
and the reality; and (5) meaning and metaphor or metonymy.16 Previous shift of the focus ofknowledge into the zone of the mechanism of symbolic construction result in knowledge andsocial reality no longer being considered only as objective products, but also as processes that are
inherently of persuasive nature. Consequently, knowledge of truth is not treated as a matter of anon-linguistic rationality, because rationality itself is demystified and reconstituted as a historicalcreation and engagement of the holder of a rhetorical position.
By placing emphasis on sociology and political science, without eliminating other social
sciences, consideration of methodology was also marked by the following features: 17 (1) the
existence of several different methodologies (such as qualitative, quantitative, autobiographical,“narrative”, etc.), that should not be treated as inherently superior or inferior, each of them has its
weak points and tends to ignore some problems while favoring the others; (2) methodologies,
especially the quantitative one, that simulate the complete absence of bias and perspective,
deceive both themselves and their audience, it's just a desire for obtaining the status of
intellectually more superior methodological variant and the implementation of its superiority anddictation; (3) methodologies are, in fact, literary strategies or rhetorical tools, ways offormulating proof; methods can be regarded as special imprimaturs that allow scientific papers togain legitimacy and authority; (4) tendency to neglect their reasonableness or justification of their
theoretical arguments during the peer review of scientific papers, and emphasizing their
methodological sophistication, all for the sake of increasing the so-called “scientificity” of thevery papers and the prevention of the erosion of scientific disciplines they originate from; and (5)the fact that many advocates of quantitative methods consider their non-quantitative counterpart
illegitimate, therefore, unscientific, while many members of the qualitative side, which I think isin a far more complex situation, reject mathematics and statistics, and return to the neo-Kantian

Brown, R. H. (1990) “Rhetoric, Textuality, and the Postmodern Turn in Sociological Theory. ” Sociological
Theory, 8(2): 188-197.
17
Agger, B. (2004) The Virtual Self: A Contemporary Sociology, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, pp. 93-97.
16

16

intellectual position- sharp separation of natural and social sciences, both in terms of method andsubstance.
We should also note the problem of insufficiently clear differentiation of “social andsociological” theoretical constructs.18 Namely, unlike “sociological theories”, based on the beliefof their proponents that sociology is a science like any other (this, of course, also implies thenatural scientific corpus) and thus must be posed or rounded off in accordance with strict
methodological rules, procedures and standards, so that the facts once examined are taken as
valid indicators of the objective nature of things they represent, “social theories”, in addition torespecting the factual, also have a strong critical note, they are scientifically “more flexible” andmore agile in their political aspirations, less considerate to the facts and more interested in humanvalues. Ergo, the proponents of sociological theories are a priori prone to “brutal” degradation of
postmodernism (which does not mean they not deal with it, often at the level of “academic
pasquinade”), while those who are prone to explanation, rejection or promotion of
postmodernism, busy being engaged with all what questions the of a world conjunction, belong to
the “block” of social theorists. According to the state of things, reference to something beyond
hard factual argumentation and, as such controversial, but of obvious importance forunderstanding of the world we live in or that we live, social theorists cannot avoid dissension andmutual disputation.
More or less, it is clear that political theory seeks to offer, I would say, a comprehensive
matrix of methodologically structured explaining of clusters of ideas, principles and facts in theform of certain statements and proposals for understanding political reality and its moral
grounding. 19 Since this matrix may at any moment refract through the ideological prism, its
respective makers should become aware of their role in its potential ideological use and abuse,
and always have a clearly structured tactic as well as a strategy for avoiding such possibilities.
Either way, hardly any scholar or theorist in their efforts is: panoptic, they cannot possibly see all
the topics or objects of their reflections from all viewpoints, or completely impartial, they cannot
possibly filter out, clear their opinion or language from their own interests or prejudice. This,
undoubtedly, does not mean that political theories are, or should be located outside the sphere of

18

Lemert, C. (2005) Postntodernisnt Is Not What You Think: Why Globalization Threatens Modernity, Boulder:
Paradigm Publishers, pp. 24-26.
19
Thiele, L. P. (2002) Thinking Politics: Perspectives in Ancient, Modern, and Postmodern Political Theory, New
York: Chatham House Publishers, pp. 216-238.

17

reason and rationality, but that the same ideas mean different things to different people, i.e. todifferent cultures. Opposite to the process of ideologization as a tendency to monologicalpatternization in political theorizing, we can set up a process of ironization.
While ideology is based on a rigid fixation of systematization for the sake of providing“certain” and practical answers, irony is founded on the deconstruction of the world in terms of
posing “unpleasant” and problematic questions. Unlike the fixed optics of an ideological template
for the interpretation of the political state of affairs, ironic kaleidoscope offers a broad-set
exegesis for the decomposition of immanent complexity and aporicity of political life, without
any acceptance of a particular conceptual or value arrangement. Ergo, for proponents of irony
there is competitive contestability of both ideas and principles that appear as set markers ofpolitical life, and of epistemological categories, such as reason and rationality, that are taken as a
substructure of our ideas and principles. Irony thus becomes an inseparable attribute of
postmodern perspectivism (that will be discussed later), that by favoring particular perspectives
in perception of the world dismisses dogmatic and authoritarian statements about it, thus creatinga certain skepticistic deflection as an embryo of irony. Abandoning primacy of some finite
linguistic formulas that objectively define reality, postmodern irony is “trapped” in the
tropological structure of permanently unstable pedestal on which knowledge is built.

18

2. The postmodernist and/or poststructuralist conception of politics, state andinternational relations

Prior to outlining the basic characteristics of postmodernism, I would like to briefly
introduce the Enlightenment modernist paradigm. From an etymological point of view, the word
modern or modernity are related to the word modernus, which, analogous to the word hodiernus(from hodie - today), had been derived from the word modo (recent, present, just now). It was
first used as an antonym of the word antiquus (ancient, old), while subsequently terms such as
modernitas (modern times) and moderni (a modern, contemporary man) came into usage. Under
the term modernity we commonly understand a corpus of intellectual, social and politicaltransformations that led to the creation of the contemporary world. 20 Modernism is a cultural
movement originating from the end of the nineteenth century. Therefore, it could be said thatmodernity emanated from a sequence of undoubtedly significant historic moments and events inthe period from the beginning of the fifteenth century to the beginning of the nineteenth century:
Humanism and Renaissance, the invention of printing technology, the Reformation, geographicalexplorations, i.e. the discovery of non-European cultures (with particular emphasis on the
discovery of America or the so-called “new world”), scientific revolution (distinguished throughthe combination of rational thinking and empirical research in order to explain natural world), as
well as astonishing increase in production capabilities caused by technological advances andcapitalist economic system, with its accompanying demographic expansion and rising numbers of
big cities.
From the fifteenth to the seventeenth century, a gradual rise in confidence in the ability ofhuman mind was taking place, thus fundamentally altering up to that point valid traditionalist or
archaic matrix of the world and authority comprehension. However, it is important to mention
that modernity, if its social dimensions are considered to be the focal point of interest, wasfrequently discussed through the prism of regeneration of its relationship with the ancient world
as a model or an ideal that should have been (imitatively) reinstated. Not until the French
20
Habermas, J. (1981) “Modernity versus Postmodernity.” New German Critique, 22: 3-14.; Habermas, J. (1987)
The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, Cambridge: Polity Press, pp. 1-23.; Thiele, L. P. (2002) Thinking
Politics: Perspectives in Ancient, Modern, and Postmodern Political Theory, op. cit., pp. 65-103.; Kumar, K. (1995)
From Post-Industrial to Post-Modern Society: New Theories of the Contemporary World, Oxford: Blackwell
Publishing, pp. 90-123.; Lemert, C. (2005) Postmodernism Is Not What You Think: Why Globalization Threatens
Modernity, op. cit., p. 4.; and McGowan, J. (1998) Hannah Arendt: An Introduction, Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, p. 36.

19

Enlightenment, at the end of the seventeenth and during the eighteenth century, did the final
breach from the “nostalgic” view backwards and promotion of a belief in limitless increase ofdemystified and desacrilised knowledge and the progress based on it, i.e. repositioning of rational
potential from the exclusive tendency towards conquering of the nature onto mastering thecontrol over the social, moral and political betterment, take place.
Ergo, modernity rests on the teleological belief that history is marked by prudence (orrationality), direction and purpose, a belief with a temporal and spatial-population dimension. 21
The first indicates that modernity is perceived as initiated by barbaric, destructive, religioustheomaniac, slavish, non-state and clan times, while the other identifies Europe as a pivot point ofthat metamorphosis, thus implying that the rest of the world has been lingering to a greater or
lesser degree in wake of previously pinpointed geographical epicentre of the changes. Not only
did modernist discourse treated its departure from the period of dark primordiality as a sort of its
own culmination manifested through a breach with time and space obscurity that it originatedfrom, but the ”act of abandonment” itself was multiplied and set as a separate principle ofcontinuous progress: it transformed its own discursive discontinuity or a breach with a single rule
into its own formative principle. In other words, modernity is not simply once depleted breachwith traditional, but a law of a constant critical discord- metacriticism, an Enlightenment formula,designed in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, of continuous progress towards greater liberty,
equality, prosperity, rationality and peace (which could be understood as the dynamics of themodernity phenomenon in the broadest sense, as well).
Certainly, it would be wrong to assume that ideological theatrum mundi of the lateeighteenth and nineteenth century was comprised solely of the Enlightenment postulates, since,
as a response to threats against the institutions, general conditions and doctrines of the old regime,
programme conservatism was formulated as a separate ideological construct and a form ofpolitical engagement. 22 The reason for its existence is conscious juxtaposition of the
Enlightenment aspirations directed towards social change on the line of secularism,
egalitarianism and self-rule, resistance to the challenges of radicalism and forces of modernity
that were endangering traditional social and political order. Intellectual imperfectability of
mankind has been most commonly identified as a theoretical foundation of conservatism, both in
21

Brown, W. (2001) Politics Out of History, Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 5-6.
See Hinde, J. R. (2000) Jacob Burckhardt and the Crisis of Modernity, Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen's
University Press.

22

20

its religious and secular form. Thus, for Jacob Burckhardt that imperfection stemmed from theoriginal sin, and the power of sin and imperfection is so strong that neither reason pursues what it
knows nor thinking is able to induce and sustain the divine in us. 23 This standpoint manifests a
diametrically opposite position to the one that distinguishes the Enlightenment, the one whose
basis is immanent rationality of an individual and which claims that by engaging intellect andpersonal interest as a motivational agent better and more perfect world could be accomplished,thus implying a belief in historic and moral progress.
Peter Hamilton distinguishes ten main assumptions on which the paradigm of the
Enlightenment rests, as follows (see figure 1):24 (1) reason – implies the primacy of reason andrationality as a way to orginising knowledge (with redemptive addition of experience andexperimentation), rationalistic concept is determined as a process of rational thinking based on
innate or inherent ideas characteristic to every thinking individual; (2) empiricism – a previous
version of rationality is, thus, attached to (Lockean gnoseologic and Berkeleyan methodological)
empiricism, the idea that the comprehensive knowledge of nature and society is founded on
empirical facts, matters that all human beings perceive through senses; (3) science – a view thatscientific knowledge, directly reliant on the experimental method, is of crucial importance toenhancement of human knowledge in toto; (4) universalism – a concept that reason and science
are applicable to any single case without any situational alteration to one’s principles (sciencegenerates universal laws that without exception govern the universe); (5) progress – a notion thatnatural and social state of human beings can be improved through implementation of science andreason, leading to ever increasing levels of happiness and prosperity; (6) individualism – aconcept that every individual embodies the resulting outcome of their knowledge and actions, i.e.
individual reasoning cannot be subordinated to some higher authority (in that sense, society is asum or product of thought and action of a multitude of individuals); (7) toleration– a view thathumans are essentially identical irrespective of their religious and moral beliefs, which implies
negation of inherent primacy of European Christianity over the beliefs of other races orcivilisations; (8) freedom – retraction from traditional restrictions in the matters of beliefs,
communication trade, social interaction, sexuality and property (with still problematic range of
freedom for women and lower classes); (9) uniformity of the human nature – a belief that the23

Ibidem, pp. 115.
Hamilton, P. (1992) “The Enlightenment and the Birth of Social Science.” in Hall, S. and Gieben, B. (eds.)
Formations of Modernity, Cambridge: Polity Press, pp. 21-22.

24

21

defining characteristics of the human nature are the same at any circumstances; and (10)secularism – a point of view manifested through intensive anticlericalism, a demand for secularknowledge disentangled from religious dogma.

ReasonSecularism

Empiricism

Uniformity ofhuman nature

Science

The paradigmof theEnlightenment

Freedom

Universalism

Toleration

Progress

Individualism

Figure 1. The paradigm of the Enlightenment in accordance with Peter Hamilton

22One of the approaches to generally hard-to-define concept of postmodern claims that it
represents terminological blend which suggests a certain order, ethos or movement that is either
out of, against or after its modern counterpart.25 This thesis, however, should be considered rather
cautiously, because its modernistic nature is manifested through mere succession of modern bypostmodern, through situating postmodern within the modern order of linear time, which makes it
firmly bound to the meta-narrative of historical progress or evolution. On the other hand,
postmodernity could be approached not from the vantage point of continuation or breach withmodernity, but from the vantage point of discovery and transgression realised through theacceptance of the experimental moment hidden within the modernist movement. Postmodernity
violates modernity and related narratives from within and promotes novel forms of historic timethat contain their own strategic potentials. It (postmodernity) ”sabotages” linear time ofmodernity by acting simultaneously in the past and future, not only is it a mere breach withtradition and modernity, but a historic deconstruction of the modern past in order to make room
for a new undefined future.
Never is postmodernism what one thinks it is.26 On the one hand, it is not what one would
suppose it to be, since it in principle rejects and evades every model of definition. On the other
hand, it is not what it is predominantly thought to be, it is not in principle a form of social thought.
When we contemplate postmodernism it is of vital importance to distinguish the theories of theworld from what is really happening in that same world, insight into the nature of the world
should precede the adoption of any theoretical project on the basis of its nominally declared
relevance. Postmodernism has presented a whole range of challenges to numerous sociologicaland cultural theories, but their likelihood should be tested in contrast to factography of the world
itself. To claim that it is not what one thinks it is means to put to trial the concept that that idea
can be an idea. Extraordinary “magical” allurement and intensity of the manifestation of the idea
is foremost reason why it is extremely difficult to accept the concept that postmodernism canexist independently from postmodern reality. To claim that the realm of culture or social life has
no foothold in reality, that it is more a spectacle than a reality itself, does not mean to negate theexistence of the world, but to emphasise utter eccentricity of the form it abides in. To start with,

25

Gane, N. (2002) Max Weber and Postmodern Theory: Rationalization versus Re-enchantment, New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 83-89.
26
Lemert, C. (2005) Postmodernism Is Not What You Think: Why Globalization Threatens Modernity, op. cit., p. 2631.

23

roughly speaking, I would say that postmodernism as a comprehensive philosophical paradigm,
on the ontological level poses a proposition that reality was created, on the epistemological levelthat knowledge is fluid and temporary, on the methodological level that interpretive and criticalmethods are the most suitable for the study of pluralistic society, while on the axiological level itmeans that there is no value set which is automatically better than any other.
Michel Foucault as the intellectual postulate of his work would determine the exposure of
the fact that majority of things surrounding humans and comprising broader human environment,
the things they deem universal, are actually a result of extremely precise historic changes. 27 It
revolves around the resistance to the concept of universal in human existence, which does not
only exemplify arbitrariness of the institutions but identify free space still available to us, byuniversilising” the resistance to the universal uncovers changes that should be implemented ”putto function”. According to Jean Baudrillard, modernity no more commands capacities to produce
those finalities and references, such as progress or humanity, which represented inseparable partof the European conception of the Enlightenment. When reality ceases to be what it used to be,when we are able to establish its absence, either nostalgia gains a completely new meaning or
everything leads to panicky generation of the real, the culture tends to establish itself throughoppressive simulation of hyperreality (a ”fantasised” reality which demands to be the only one).28
In this respect, postmodern culture is not familiar with the bifurcation between real and unreal,true or false representation, it metamorphoses in”more or less” alluring simulation relieved ofthe”weight” of the real, which permeates the totality of the representation edifice as something
intrinsically simulacrum (understood as an image, or, to be more precise, its semblance, as a truththat outside it there is no other truth that is referred to). Since postmodern culture is notdisciplined, conditioned or “coerced” by anything that could be manifested outside itself, itbreaches from representation per se and becomes uninhibited in construction of the imaginary
universe without any point of external foothold.
Friedrich Nietzsche stands as the first professed thinker of the postmodernism, who
resolved to strongly challenge the Enlightenment project with a view to destroy modernist shroudof the reason as such, by repudiating it as a mask for a new prime principle articulated as the will

Martin, R. (1988) “Truth, Power, Self: An Interview with Michel Foucault.” in Martin, L. H., Gutman, H. and
Hutton, P. H. (eds.) Technologies of the Self, Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, p. 11.
28
Baudrillard, J. (1983) Simulations, New York: Semiotext(e), pp. 9-13.
27

24

to power.29 In contrast to the fact that modernity proposes progress and emancipation, even thenwhen theoreticians adherent to it have not succeeded in solving its inherent problems, Nietzsche
identifies emergence of postmodernity, which refutes advance in knowledge and morality, further
offering a dissonance and strife for domination as its basic qualities. For him, in this early phase,the truth is nothing else but the space of metaphors, metonymies and anthropomorphism.30 It is asum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically enhanced, transposed andembellished and which, after prolonged exploitation, seem to humans to be fixed, canonized andobligatory: the truths are the illusions we have forgotten them to be. To tell the truth means to lie
in compliance with the established conventions; therefore, the term of illusion functions as anequivalent of unconscious lies. To claim that something is a lie, one has to rely on a certain belief
that defines fake; therefore, the statement that lies are illusions suggests that all the propositions
we call truths are, indeed, lies.
Nietzsche is further significant to postmodernism because he inaugurated perspectivist
doctrine. According to him, traditionally understood objectivity is actually a pointless absurdity,so he negates the existence of knowledge per se (pure reason or absolute spirituality), as
emancipated from the attributes of the individual who created it, and favours the interpretation
founded on a certain specific projection point. From an epistemological point of view, thefollowing characteristics could be attributed to perspectivism: 31 (1) our knowledge about anobject is derived from a particular perspective, from a viewpoint of specific interests and needs;
therefore, knowledge is inevitably linked to a particular perspective (perspectivist proposition);(2) the more perspectives there are in circulation, the more vested interests are there in the
cognition of an object, the more valid our concept of the object would be; a plurality ofperspectives equals better knowledge (pluralistic proposition); (3) all the possible perspectives of
the cognition object cannot be depleted, there are innumerable interpretations of interests, all ofwhich are credible, the number of perspectives is limitless (infinity proposition); and (4) there is awhole range of factors that can deform our knowledge about an object, in other words, certain
interests and urges distort the nature of the object (”puristic” proposition).

29

Habermas, J. (1987) The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, op. cit., pp. 85-88.
Clark, M. (1990) Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, р. 65.
31
Leiter, B. “Perspectivism in Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals.” у Schacht, R. (ур.) Nietzsche, Genealogy,
Morality: Essays On Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals. University of California, Berkeley, 1994, стр. 344-346.
30

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Jean-Francois Lyotard is the author of in the field exceedingly renowned and influential
book, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge.32 The question is whether there is abook lesser in volume but with more epochal, ”vertical” reach in understanding the time andworld we live in. At any rate, for him postmodernism represents the following: (1) a part of thepresent, i.e. modern times; (2) an intellectual reaction to the present; (3) a retreat from andcriticism of the real (he questions representation in order to represent the sublimated); (4) thetriumph of establishing the new rules of the game; (5) refusal to be nostalgic about the past; (6)an attempt at representing the unrepresentable; (7) the positioning of time, not a subject, as amain hero; (8) granting precedence to the signifier; and (9) a departure from the unquestionableacceptance of the grammar and vocabulary of the language, playing with it instead. Lyotard
replaces the totalising recourse which views history and society through great or masternarratives (metadiscourses), such as dialectics of the Spirit, hermeneutics of sense, emancipationof the rational or productive subject, and turns to small stories that originated from heterogeneous
subjective positions of individuals and the plural of social groups. 33 Postmodernity does notfollow modernity but is ever-present part of its nucleus, challenging and refuting comprehensive
and totalising master narratives which serve to legitimise modernist practice. Modernist linear
time does not apply to postmodernity, which combines “institutions” of the past and the future in
a form of what is going to be, simultaneously being both in the first and the second position. By
refusing to approve of metanarratives in ethical, political, aesthetical or metaphysical domain,
Lyotard retreated to the philosophy of difference, not only unavoidable but preferable as well, theone that does not look for a solution in some higher unity, but in divergence or dissonance, hence
favouring authenticity, particularity and singularity of a happening, i.e. event.
To this research particularly intriguing, also, is The Diffėrend: Phrases in Dispute, 34
where the author tried to explain diametrical, profound and incommensurate differences in thedomain of discourse, ethics and politics. Lyotard’s concept of diffėrend is the most similar to theterm of friction or schism. The difference in question is the one that is utterly irreducible, marked
by absence of any common basis or ground, i.e. non-existence of any common standards that one
could refer to when judging what the different is. Diffėrend can be defined as a conflicting case32

Lyotard, J. (1984) The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press.
33
Ibidem, p. xiii.
34
Lyotard, J. (1988) The Diffėrend: Phrases in Dispute, Manchester: Manchester University Press.

26

among at least two sides which cannot be resolved justly, because the rule of judgment applicableto or for both sides is missing.35 Abandoning the great narrative means abandoning its variant
which refers to justice or goodness as a product of agreement of all the parties involved. In thatsense, as it is based both on agreement and consensus, democratic policy assumes metadiscourseof the type, therefore for Lyotard the issue of the uttermost importance becomes the method ofdecision making in the instance of a friction when by definition consensus is not possible. The
range of choices can go from violence to a new sort of political thought that will accept to theutmost frictions in the common social space. That common space should be filled by the norms
that function more with the aim of minimising the evil, characterised as a deprivation of a varietyof opportunities, rather than maximising the good. Let it be noted, Lyotard’s term diffėrend
should not be confused with Jacques Derrida’s term diffėrance, which will be discussed furtheron.
Dominic Strinati identifies the following as a determining characteristics ofpostmodernism:36 (1) the emergence of a society in which mass media and popular culture poseas the most important and most powerful institutions, institutions that profile all other kinds ofsocial relationships, there is an equality sign drawn between culture and society (the idea thatmedia reflect broader social reality is substituted by the idea that the society positions itself
within the boundaries of mass media, the superficial layer of media presentation do not lead
anymore to distort a certain reality outside itself, it is, in other words, the reality itself); (2) theemphasis on style and volubility is growing more and more important, signs are used forthemselves only rather than for any usefulness or deeper value that they may represent (theconsequence is neglect of the qualities such as artistic validity, integrity, seriousness, authenticity,
realism, intellectual depth and strong narratives – the contents, the gist, and the meaning havebecome nonsensical); (3) elimination of distinction between high culture (art) and popular culture,
postmodern popular culture does not appreciate ”noble” diversity and ”celestial” pretensions of
the art; (4) the fact that due to the speed and scope of modern mass communications, ease andvelocity with which people and information are able to move from one place to another, time andspace are becoming less consistent and intelligible and more confusing and incoherent, that in theend leads postmodern popular culture to become a culture outside history, which does not

35
36

Ibidem, p. xi
Strinati, D. (2004) An Introduction to Theories of Popular Culture, London: Routledge, pp.211-216.

27

perceive history as continuous, linear narrative, as an undisputable sequence of events; (5)scepticism of the postmodern theory over metanarrative propositions (absolute, universal andcomprehensive systems of knowledge and truth), over totalising discourses and the illusion of“universal” human history, which it considers to be disintegrated, diminished in value andlegitimacy, and more and more liable to criticism.
While underlining that as a postmodernism he understands both the period and a form oftheoretical thinking, Norman Denzin finds that postmodern social theory is characterised by thefollowing (see figure 2):37 (1) breach from complex systems theories that conceptualise society asa totality; (2) powerful preoccupation with the crisis of legitimacy and the experience denoted bymodern, computerised and media”saturated” world cultural system; (3) advance in theorisingwhich surpasses phenomenological, structural, poststructural and critical theoretical formulations;(4) radical conceptualisation of language, linguistic philosophy and pragmatism; (5) criticism ofscientific knowledge and realism of the late capitalist era; (6) criticism of the subject of social
theory; (7) restoration ofcommodification as the main theoretical issue; (8) focus on thedisappearance of scientific, religious and artistic metanarratives from everyday life; (9) insistence
on a novel perception of the social, language society and human subject; and (10) deep-rooted
mistrust of reason and science as powers which would lead to benevolently set utopian society
founded on consensus, rational communicative action and human liberty.
Jacques Derrida is the author of in academic circles rather influential concept of
deconstruction, which can be denoted as the dismantling or disintegration of conceptual
contradictions, as the disassembling of hierarchical system of thought, which can then be
reinscribed within a different order of signification, i.e. similar to seeking meticulously foraporias, blind spots or moments of internal contradiction, where the text accidentally discloses
disharmony between rhetoric and logic, between what one consciously has intended to say andwhat is, conversely, forced to say.38 Apart from internal linguistic contradictions, deconstruction,
hence, manifests also the fact that certain rhetoric forms, such as binary oppositions of subject
and object, manifestation and reality, mind and body, male and female, self and others, external
and internal or speech and writing, lead to establishment of hierarchy of values (logocentric
procedure) that then becomes standardized as truth, thus making engagement on the level ofDenzin, N. (1986) “Postmodern social theory.” Sociological Theory, 4(2): 194-195.
Norris, C. (1987) Derrida, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, p. 19. and Derrida, J. (2001) Writing andDifference, London: Routledge.

37
38

28

refuting strategies of exclusion and inclusion, which are produced by above-mentioned binary
oppositions. The notion is that world is a text or some arrangement of mutually permeated texts
in a constant process of writing and rewriting. In postmodern thought culture, understood here as
symbolic codification of reality, is above all manifested as a complex of “neo myths”, I would
dare say, even phantasms, “neo fairy tales” and “neo legends”, generated within a systematicallyestablished communicative background or communicative range. No doubt it is more semiotic
game, creation or production, rather than “hard” realistic continuation or extension of some reallife experience. Its meaning has to be deconstructed, dismantled and tracked to the reader, theaudience and the author, with no one of them gaining any interpretative preponderance over theothers.
In medias res, deconstruction is focused not on the ability of language to represent reality,
but on its ability to construct reality; it does not originally pertain to the capacity of the power torestrict action or urges, its conceptual focus is actually the capacity of the power to constructidentities (within hierarchical established categories of experience and social structures) and thus
“provoke” certain forms of action or urges. As a matter of fact, it revolves around the following
characteristics of deconstructivism: (1) impossibility to reduce a text to a single substantial
message; the same text sample can be interpreted in several equally legitimate ways, there is no
mono-substratum or petrified essence, the interpretation itself depends on historical facts anddistribution of power; (2) a criticism of binary oppositions in terms of poles of the binary axis
being dependant on each other, with an accent on the manner of their integration , where there isa multitude of subtle nuances between them, not simply unsurpassable difference and privilegium
prioritatis of one pole (category, element, etc.) over the other; (3) retraction from metaphysicalhypothesis of history based on latter’s rationality, intelligibility, teleology, controllability andcausality, i.e. from “naturalness” of politically motivated historic-reconstruction narratives, thedeconstructivist genealogy of human history emphasises contingency of the historical production
by its denaturalisation, deessentialisation and dereification.
When we mention politics it is most often in terms of engagement of, primarily public,
power, social, not necessarily legitimised, propulsive moment, which acts, i.e. impacts, on people
so that they strive toward certain goals or accept certain norms as guiding or organisational
factors of their common existence: there is at play a manner or principle of its accumulation,

29

partaking and distribution.39 Politics are a manifestation of the use of governing power for the
purpose of regulating the social interactivity and allocation of scarce resources in order to satisfy
certain individually attuned needs. Nevertheless, it does not merely amount to that particulardimension; it is a significant factor in determining the manner in which these needs are created
and articulated, as well as determining the relations among them. Politics precedes and surpasses
distribution of scarce or limited resources and fulfillment of individual preferences, as it isdirectly involved in formulation and perception of our resources, interests, relations and selves as
individuals. The paramount characteristic of such a proposition is modernist individualistic
concept, the presupposed individual as an independent participant and autonomous moral agent,
whose manner of mutual interaction with other individuals and the manner in which the politicalcommunity is formed and developed in terms of the outcomes of that mutuality, serve as a
research core of the modern political theory and science. Individualistic conception of power
tripod-like accumulates around the following problem sets:40 (1) the nature and level of powercertain individuals hold; (2) the nature of political processes and institutions responsible for
distribution and management of the power of individuals; and (3) moral and rational standards
that the individual has to maintain in order to exercise power or defy it.
For those liberals who accept above outlined individualistic concept, the key proposition
is prepolitical position of the autonomous agent. Ergo, individuals constitute politics, not theother way around. Such a point of view is in contradiction with communitarianist philosophy thatfavours the significance of moulding or cultivating attitudes, values and behaviour of themembers of political community, in terms of the maintenance of social life and political society.
The principles linked to individual autonomy and social order cannot be treated as ahistorical
truths, but as segments that directly rely on broader context, a combination of these or thosehistorical and cultural circumstances. Such a view of politics has not been based solely on theaction outlined by the fulfillment of individual interests, but has been concerned with formulationof identity, of what one is and how it is being what it is. To that end, communitarist hypothesis issimilar to what we encounter in postmodernist theoretical sphere. Nevertheless, while
communitarism remains confined to highlighting traditional means of moulding moral identities(such as strengthening of the family, state interventionism for the sake of inciting cultural and39

Thiele, L. P. (2002) Thinking Politics: Perspectives in Ancient, Modern, and Postmodern Political Theory, op. cit.,
pp. 65-99.
40
Ibidem, p. 70.

30

ethical expression or a need for the increase in the level of social structure) with a view toindividuals having to be fused into a highly organised social whole, postmodernist approachaccentuates competitive dimension of identities that originated from social and politicalinstitutions, difference and variety of (complex, multilayered and evolutionary) identities.
The logic of identities, characteristic of philosophical and theoretical discourse that denies
and suppresses diversity, is marked by a projection of the entity through unifying substratum, andto the detriment of processes or relations.41 In no way could be from the realm of identification ofwhat we are eliminated the fact that we do so through distinguishing against others; every
totalisation of identity, its reduction, hermetisation or occlusion, will cause us to perceive theothers, through this “impoverished stereotyping”, reduction, as simplified, one-dimensional or“anaemic”. Ergo, for a political racourse interesting locus, from a research point, is notestablishment of the fact that we all have identities but which fragment of our identity will be in
the foreground, which will be driven to the background, how our identities metamorphose andwhat sort of relationships they will embark on under the influence of the variety appreciation.
Modernist inclination subsumes deliberate individual wielding of the power, an individual taken
as an autonomous agent of fixed nature and relatively stable, persistent and freely choseninterests, while postmodern orientation assumes individual and collective identities formed in duetime within certain social context and interests arisen from these identities.
Without denying the importance of structuralist “glorification” of the power aggregatedon the level of governing and economic elite, postmodernist recourse insists on them not being
the sole institutional loci which not only influence our lives but shape them as well. In otherwords, there is a whole pleiad of proteic social forces responsible for production of different
identities, a proclivity to discursive social “albums” recasted as customary systems, whichpermeate society and generate social identities. Their study should be completed part by part andfrom bottom to top, through individual practices, particular institutions and individual events,
which in themselves are products of the type of power residing in the epicentre of our researchendeavours. Certainly, never should it be neglected, as it has been already explicitly stated, thatsome independent research standpoint, is mostly a consequence of some type of social power, aswell. Postmodernist renunciation of the existence of a certain petrified essence that defines
humankind or humanity, does not in any way imply that a human can be whatever “comes to41

Young, I. M. (1990) Justice and the Politics of Difference, Princeton: Princeton University Press, p. 98.

31

their mind”.42 Identities are by no means roles that can be swapped like clothes on a daily basis,but complex matrices of norms and desires, thinking and behaviour, for whose formation time,
directly proportional to the integration into dense social networks, is a requisite. In that tone,
postmodern tendency toward politics presupposes multidimensional construction of identities thatare not easy to change. Multidimensionality can be understood as a product of multilayered social
environment, as a fact that we are members, participants and subjects of different groups,
associations, organisations and relations that form our views, values, behaviour, and,
consequently, self-understanding.
At this point two focal concepts of Foucault’s methodological approach should be
mentioned: “the archeology of knowledge” (or archeological analysis) and “the genealogy ofpower”, both equally important to him, mutually supportive, and, to a certain degree,complementary. 43 The archeology of knowledge embodies identification of a sequence offormational rules which determine the conditions for something to be claimed, in any given
moment, within the boundaries of some specific discourse. To understand the archeologicalanalysis (here, archeology, naturally, does not designate either academic discipline or colloquial
notion of it) it is necessary to incorporate a whole range of concepts or constructs (such as savoir,connaissance, discursive formation, discursive practice, enunciation rules, discontinuity, event,periodisation etc.), where none of the constructs can be “torn” or “drawn out” in order to be
examined or implemented separately without endangering the method itself, but both theirindividual understanding and comprehension of them as mutually bound and intertwined into awhole, is needed. The former could be best illustrated by methodological positioning of theconcepts savoir and connaissance. According to Foucault, therefore, “archeology” is not a
research discipline but the domain of research.44 In other words, there is in the society not only acorpus of knowledge, philosophical ideas and everyday informal thought, but institutions,42

Thiele, L. P. (2002) Thinking Politics: Perspectives in Ancient, Modern, and Postmodern Political Theory, op. cit.,p. 80.
43
See Foucault, M. (1966) The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, New York: Vintage.;
Foucault, M. (1969) The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language, New York: Harper Colophon.;
Foucault, M. (1994) “The Order of Things.” in Faubion, J. D. (ed.) Michel Foucault Essential Works: Aesthetics,
Method, and Epistemology, New York: The New Press, pp. 261-269.; Gutting, G. (1989) Michel Foucault’sArchaeology of Scientific Reason, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.; Dean, M. (2003) Critical and Effective
Histories: Foucault’s Methods and Historical Sociology, London: Routledge.; Sheridan, A. (2005) Michel Foucault:
The Will to Truth, London: Routledge.; and Scheurich, J. J. and McKenzie, K. B. (2007) “Foucauldian Archeological
Analysis.” in Ritzer, G. (ed.) The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 1771–1774.; andRitzer, G. (2011) Sociological Theory, 8th edn. New York: McGraw-Hill, pp. 605-645.
44
Foucault, M. (1994) “The Order of Things.” op. cit., pp. 261-262.

32

economic practices and political activities and customs referring to a certain implicit knowledge(savoir) typical of that society. Thus specified knowledge fundamentally differs from formal
corpus of knowledge (des connaissances), which can be found in scientific monographs,
philosophical theories and religious dogmas. The most relevant is the fact that implicit
knowledge (savoir) makes it possible at a certain point for theories, thoughts and practices toemerge, that savoir represents the broadest discursive conditions (it could be said, a sort of preknowledge) necessary for the development of connaissance, particular sciences or disciplines (e.g.
quantum physics or evolutionary biology). The archeology is an extraordinary quest for the mostcomprehensive system or rules, for the discourse and its oral and textual components, with thequest not representing hermeneutic need for their comprehension, but analytical, descriptive andorganisational operativeness, they are irreducible and do not yield to the interpretation which
would lead to deeper understanding.
In the simplest of terms, genealogy embodies tracing of the processes through which we“unconditionally” accept or acquiesce to our world as natural and meaningful. 45 It is quite a
specific type of intellectual history, the way of connecting various historical elements into
organised and systematically directed trajectories. However, genealogy, at a fundamental level,
embodies non-acceptance or a criticism of a sort of modernist teleological dimension of history
as a constant advance from a temporally and sense-wise fixed point. Conversely, according toFoucault, not only do not such “points-footholds” exist but are often fabricated. Still, he does notdeny the role of the reason as a part of thus perceived history, but does not treat it as a soleparticipant in more broadly set dramaturgy of modernity. 46 Genealogy is, then, preoccupied withthe process through which we construct the genesis and apply meaning to a certain view of thepast, representation that defines our everyday life and restricts our political and social options,adjusting them to its own construct. While archeology is an experiential decomposition of

Foucault, M. (1994) “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History.” in Faubion, J. D. (ed.) Michel Foucault Essential Works:
Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology, New York: The New Press, pp. 369-393.; Bleiker, R. (2003) Popular Dissent,
Human Agency and Global Politics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 24-29.; Dean, M. (2003) Criticaland Effective Histories: Foucault’s Methods and Historical Sociology, London: Routledge; Scheurich, J. J. and
McKenzie, K. B. (2005) “Foucault’s Methodologies: Archeaology and Genealogy.” in Denzin, N. and Lincoln, Y.
(eds.) The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research, London: SAGE, pp. 841-869.; Devetak R. (2005)“Postmodernism.” in Burchill, S., Linklater A., Devetak R. et al. (eds.) Theories of International Relations, New
York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 161-188.; Fuller, S. (2007) “Genealogy.” in Ritzer, G. (ed.) The Blackwell
Encyclopedia of Sociology, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 1896-1897.; and Ritzer, G. (2011) Sociological Theory, 8th edn.
New York: McGraw-Hill, pp. 605-645.
46
Foucault, M. (1994) “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History.” op. cit., pp. 373-374.
45

33

historical discourses, genealogy is both their critical reconsideration and the analysis of theirattitude to issues and problems of the contemporary world. When we focus on genealogy ofpower, there is at play consideration of ways to govern oneself and others through production ofknowledge, which brings people into a position of the subjects, and then governs them. It is
important to underline here that such a proposition does not imply a conscious conspiracy
committed by some elite, but the emphasis is put on the structural relationship between
knowledge and power.
In crudest terms, differentiation of poststructuralism and postmodernism can be drawn
from the fact that, provided they are theories, poststructuralism is a theory of knowledge andlanguage while postmodernism is a theory of society, culture and history (such a propositionentails significant overlaps). Postmodernism is closely connected with postindustrialist conceptof modern society, where the manufacturing of raw materials into industrial products undergoes
ever greater changes with production and distribution of symbols, knowledge and information.
Characteristic of it is profound constructivism that emphasises more the human creativity thansome “deeper” ontological realities. Greater and greater efficiency and pervading dimension ofcommunication technologies led to creation of simultaneous and non-vertical phenomenologicalnotions that do not “probe” either space or time. Consequently, retraction from meta-narratives,
through which we determine our “status and locus”, and modern understanding of power
represents a specific interpretation of political community and economy: the world is nothing
more than a text we have to interpret.
In its more rigid form, as already mentioned, postmodernism represents abandoning
explication of the truth via the theory of correspondence or adequacy, i.e. reservations toward
teleological-metaphysical belief that reality and truth are one, that there is only one truthful ideaof what things really are, while in its less rigid form it does not manifest so much the rejection ofa view that thinking represents reality as reliance on what that representation means.
Postmodernism is antireductionist and pluralistic, equally in its causal priorities and its policy,
which are more liberal than radical. Generally speaking, postmodernism directs its attention to
the novel aspects of social reality, such as systems of thought and language that stipulate public
discourse/practice. It shall be added to the previously mentioned, established distinction thatnature of the relationship postmodernism has to poststructuralism also depends on whether one
regards postmodernism as a historical period, cultural context or theoretical approach. Due to34

great scope of diversity in postmodernist theorising, there are analytical commentaries which lessdetermine it as a theory/theories than a corpus of thought whose ideological space has been
constituted via centrality of the concepts of language, power, identity and resistance.
On the one hand, it could be said that structuralism is focused on the fundamental rules ofthe organisation of social phenomena into a social system with aim of objectivity, coherence,
rigidity and veracity. Structural analysis (similar to functionalism and Marxism) aims to clarifysocial phenomena in terms of concepts of linguistic and social structures, rules, regulations andsystems, and to develop grand, synthesising theories (I would say– the theories that encompass
the already all-encompassing). On the other hand, poststructuralism, as well as postmodernism, isfocused on complex and diffuse links between power and knowledge, on the manner in which
individuals are being constituted as subjects with given unifying identities, i.e. on micro policies
and subjectivity, differences and everyday life. It represents the means of analysis to a higher or
lesser degree deposited rules and meanings that have an impact on political construction of social,political and cultural identity; the initial proposition is that what exists becomes comprehensibleor understandable only when it is united or merged with a specific form which constitutes its
identity (formulation of the identity is not based on some metaphysical authority such as God,nature, man or reason).
Postmodernism denies the existence of an omnivalid historical pattern and negates current“state of affairs” as inevitable and unconditional (there is no omniscient historical axis, but
merely a shift from one discourse to another). This discursive theoretical approach accords
precedence to the political over the social, and as the discourse coexists with the social,
discursive order is politically construed through the acts of inclusion and exclusion, in otherwords- through the use of power (every truth is, therefore, political truth). All in all, as main
characteristics of poststructural, but also of postmodern, discursive theory, the following can beselected: 47 (1) antiessential ontology (opposes the idea of self-determining centre which
structures society and determines identity, while itself does not undergo the process ofstructuring); (2) linguistic form of analysis; (3) primacy of politics; and (4) anti-foundationalist
epistemology (the non-existence of any extradiscursive authority in terms of empirical facts,

47
Torfing, J. (2005) “Poststructuralist Discourse Theory: Foucault, Laclau, Mouffe, and Žižek.” in Janoski, T.,
Alford, R. R., Hicks, A. M. and Schwartz, M. A. (eds.) The Handbook of Political Sociology: States, Civil Societies,
and Globalization, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 155.

35

methodological rules or privileged criteria of scientificity for the sake of preservation of truth orscience).
Thus, Timothy Mitchell, in poststructuralist, but postmodernist fashion as well,determines state-centric approaches as an attempt to explain the state as an autonomous entity,
whose actions are irreducible to or determinable by social forces, which, again, demands drawing
a clear line between state and society rather than providing analytical advantage to the state at theexpense of society. 48 The main analytical preoccupation is aimed at formulation of a stabledemarcation line when “osmosis” is evident, not only of state, official with semiofficial, but alsoof semiofficial with unofficial practice, in a way that state remains separate and self-guided
object. Weber’s well-known definition of state, understood as an organisation which within
precisely determined territory has a monopoly on legitimate use of physical force, says nothing of
how to formulate contours of that amorphous organisation. It should be mentioned that
postmodernist approach to democracy is manifested via conceptualisation of agonistic respect
through negotiation on identities and differences; therefore the “natural” domain of its interest
becomes pluralist policy of identities characteristic of public sphere.
Above problematised organisational issue has not been solved either by the new
proponents of state-centric approach, who offer a more narrow definition of a state as a systemfor decision-making. Mitchell emphasises that the “narrowed theoretical focus” sees the essenceof the state not in the monopolistic organisation of coercion nor the structures of legal andideological order nor in mechanisms by which social interests achieve the political representation
nor in arrangements which preserve the given relationship between producers and the owners ofcapital, but in modeling and expressing of authoritative intentions or ideas (terminologicallymarked either as “rule establishment” or “decision making” or establishment of “concrete,individual public policies”), which actually transforms the state into subjective realm of plans,
programmes and ideas.49 We surmise that in this context the state can be branded as a “controlled
utopia”. Ergo, this subjective proposition copies a disputable distinction between state andsociety onto apparently “sharper” distinction between subjective and objective, including eventhe perspective of demarcation between meaning and reality. Within such a conceptualisation the

Mitchell, T. (1991) “The Limits of the State: Beyond Statist Approaches and Their Critics.” The American
Political Science Review, 85(1): 81-82.
49
Ibidem, p. 82.
48

36

state, concludes Mitchell, emerges as separate from society in an unproblematic manner whichindicates that intentions or ideas are treated as “seceded” from the outer world that they refer to.
Mitchell considers that the state should not be examined as contemporary structure, but as a
powerful metaphysical effect of practices which enable that structure to exist (thus the national
state is the key structural element of the modern social world, it encompasses such institutions asarmy, school and bureaucracy, while, except that, its increased presence takes the shape thatappears separately from social world and provides external structure for it).50 In the same vein, by
forming the territorial borders and exerting the complete control over their crossing (which isdefinitely a characteristic of the modern state), state practice defines and enables constitution ofnational entity (“drawing” the borders comprises also the practices such as passports,
immigration laws, inspections, etc.) Such a constellation, unfamiliar just two hundred, or even ahundred years ago, has produced an almost transcendental entity – national state, which seems to
be much more than a sum of constitutive mundane activities and emerges as a structure which
consists of and renders both order and meaning to human lives (what we call the state, andconsequently deliberate as an intrinsic object distanced from the society, manifests a sum ofstructural effects of the type).
Such a hypothesis has as its result the fact that the state and the question of its borders isdefined in comparison to the society by the following five propositions:51 (1) whether it is treatedas an agent, an instrument, an organisation or a structure, the state should not be regarded as anindependent entity, separate and opposed to the other entity which can be labeled as a society (oreconomy); (2) the distinction between the state and the society (or the state and the economy)
should not be taken as a defining quality of the modern political order, the state must not be
discarded as some abstraction or ideological construct, subdued for the sake of some more real,material reality; (3) the state either should not be defined via subjectivist view that essentiallyestablishes it as a phenomenon of decision or policy making; (4) the state should be deliberated
as a result of a detailed process of spatial organisation, temporal involvement, functional
specification and control, which create the semblance or impression of the world divided into thestate and the society (or the state and the economy); the essence of modern politics is not, then,its formulation on the one side of the divide, but production and reproduction of the demarcation
50

Ibidem, p. 94.
Ibidem, p. 95. and Mitchell, T. (2006) “Society, Economy, and the State Effect.” in Sharma, A. and Gupta, A.
(eds.) The Anthropology of the State: A Reader. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, pp. 184-185.

51

37

mark; and (5) these processes create an effect of the state not only as an entity that is separate
from the society (or economy) but as a remote dimension of structure, context, codification,planning and intentionality.
Mitchell's main aim is to approach the state not as an object, location or agent but as a setof powerful but difficult to pinpoint methods of ordering and presenting the social practice,which create an effect of an agent or structure, i.e. the state, as something that is outside the“category” of the social. From the standpoint of the majority of other theories of state such ahypothesis can be criticised in two ways: the first refers to the incorrect substitution of something
real (and objectified in a form of an independent entity) by an impression, while the second
relates to classification of the term “impression” as something “too” illusory. On the same note,
critical position incorporates or suggests a return of the focus to real political forces. Certainly,
these two critical notes, as well as Mitchell's critical observations on the issue of statist approach
are not absolute and definite, not in a sense of lacking critical universality but in a sense that they
represent condensed and particular expression of a certain theoretical position that can be
criticised as well. In that sense, not only does the internal methodological organisation of “thecriticism of the criticism” of some interpretation of the state important but the theoreticalparadigm by which we wish to explain everything concerning the state assume an important if
not crucial position.
The remarks of Georg Sorensen should be added here, who as main differences between
the modern and postmodern state (allowing that the meaning of postmodern varies from author toauthor) identifies the following characteristics:52 (1) concerning the government, the modern stateis a centralised system of democratic rule, founded on administrative, police and military
structure, sanctioned by legal system, with clearly highlighted monopoly of legitimate use offorce within a given territory, while the postmodern state entails government on several levels
and in several mutually overlapping zones, it is a government in the context of supranational,
international and transnational relations, where the interaction and blurring of the borderlines
between national and international policy making take place; (2) concerning the nation, themodern state refers to people who within a given territory comprise a community of citizens, with
political, social and economic rights, and a community of sentiments, with linguistic, cultural andSorensen, G. (2006) “The Transformation of the State.” in Hay, C., Lister, M. and Marsh, D. (eds.) The State:
Theories and Issues, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, p. 205.

52

38

historical ties (a high level of cohesion and obligatoriness), while the postmodern state brings
supranational elements to both the community of citizens and the community of sentiments,
where the state is no more the primary object of collective loyalty; and (3) concerning the
economy, the modern state champions self-sufficient, isolated economy in terms of incorporatingof all the sectors needed for its reproduction, while the postmodern state highlights the economic
activities within cross border networks (economic self-sufficiency is significantly diminished). It
should be added here that, according to Robert Cooper, there are several distinguishing factors of
the postmodern state in relation to all the others:53 (1) blurring the distinction between internaland external domains of the state; (2) mutual interference in traditionally defined space ofinternal affairs and mutual supervision; (3) utter rejection of the use of force in resolving disputes
and, consequently, legal codification of such a platform of response; and (4) security which isbased on transparency, mutual openness and interdependence. The postmodern state is inherently
paradoxical entity, deprived of stability of a prediscursive, a fixed and immutable identity, and apossibility of discovering a performative nature of one's own identity, it is based on a regulated
and stylised repetition of practices (such as foreign policy) with a view to controlling unpredictedsituations and its own security.
With respect to the above-mentioned, let us highlight some of the undoubtablepoststructuralist and postmodernist achievements in the sphere of international relations andpolitics in genere:54 (1) uncovering the significance of the problem and paradox of representation
for the modern political life; (2) posing questions about visible and utterable, vision andlanguage; (3) openness of the theory to the importance and functioning of the paradox andambiguities of political life; (4) problematisation of the subject; (5) new ways of deliberation ofmediation, power and resistance issues; (6) repeated deliberation of political functions ofknowledge, remembrance and history; (7) a novel approach to the relationship of time and space,dynamics and place, restrictions and violations; (8) introducing a specific interpretation of therelationship between parts and the whole, local and total, individualisation and social
institutialisation; (9) demonstration of the relevance and possibility of serious deliberation ofdiverse subalternate expressions of the modern political life, coupled with constant focus ofdifficulties, dangers and paradoxes characteristic of every attempt at theorising or urging towards
53

Cooper, R. (2000) The Postmodern State and the World Order, London: Demos, p. 22.
Ashley, R. (1996) “The Achievements of Post-structuralism.” in Smith, S., Booth K. and Zalewski, M. (eds..)
International Theory: Positivism and Beyond. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 245-246.
54

39

radical (enemy) otherness; (10) openness to forcing the issue of politics, with a view to its
insufficient inclusion in the institutional categories of the social; (11) openness to forcing theissue of politics of the marginalised movements, never sufficiently encompassed by the logic ofsocially-oriented politics; (12) inquiry into the dependence of modern state governance on thepractice of repressing resistance, domestication or extraterritorialisation of the excess, thencreation of some exclusive area of subjectivity which the state can claim to represent; (13)interpretation of the practice of international organisations and diplomacy, not as an area ofinterstate action relating to the occurrences outside their borders, but as a means of global
positioning of what could be defined as an external danger, thus enabling unguided orchestration
practically effective, mutually recognisable borders behind which certain activities can be
excluded without questioning assumed presence of national communities; (14) implications of
the constructs of race, ethnic identity, gender, needs, rights, etc. in the practice of state
governance; (15) inquiry into a possibility of rearticulation of traditional constructs such ascommunity, pluralism, democracy, citizenry, etc.; (16) innovation and elaboration of
deconstructivist, interpretive-analytical and other methods, which despite problematising thenotion of methodology itself, enable engaged, strict and critically-minded questioning of eventsand activities imposed and surpassed by the limits of social opportunity; (17) demonstration of afeasibility of inquiry modalities which are truly transdisciplinary and which, as such, question thefocus on ‘’purely’’ disciplinary inquiries.

403. National identity problem

As main scientific approaches to the national identity original primordialist or essentialist
approach and instrumentalist and constructivist, as subsequent approaches, stand out. The
concept of primordialism underlines the significance of primordial community for the identity,
which it understands as basic human category given by birth, i.e. unchangeable and closed
concept. The sense of community founded on the idea of common descent and historicalexperience of the community, together with common myths, tradition and culture, is essentially
irrational and unutterable, and bounds people by deep ties. National identity is considered as
fundamental, since along with characteristics acquired by birth, through those that are acquiredby affiliation to the national culture, emotions, instincts and collective experiences memory aretransferred as well, and in a manner that has not much to do with will of an individual. In thatsense, national identity is largely predestined.
In the basis of the latter approaches to the national identity, the instrumentalist andconstructivist ones, lie social, political or interest constructs. Identity is perceived as multiple,changeable, fluid, related to the particular circumstances and choice the individual makes withinthem. According to the instrumentalist view which favours rational approach to the identity,
national societies are created out of interest and are artificially kept alive where there arepragmatic reasons to it; national identity is perceived through its functionality both to thestate/political community- economic-territorial-political functionality that provides resources,
territory, labour force and political unity to the state, and to the individual, it supplies referential
frame for perception of the self and others, i.e. for identification.55
Antiessentialist and constructivist approach insist on identity as produced, created invarious historical, discursive and social contexts that are changeable and to a large extent
dependant on subjective experience and definition. As a most general starting point in this part ofthe paper, constructivist approach implies combining, on the one hand, elements of primordial
understanding of identity- although it sets off from a rational basis of the identity, it does not
exclude either the existence of “primordial” emotions (feelings of deep and unutterable
closeness) or the forms of cultural determinedness. However, it observes them in a constructivist

55
Smit, A. (1998) Nacionalni identitet (National identity), Beograd: XX vek, pp. 32-34. [Smith. A. (1991) National
identity, London: Penguin Books.]41manner – on the other hand, it respects instrumentalist emphasis on political and pragmaticinterest/construct as an important basis of national affiliation.56
National identity as a sociopsychological phenomenon is construed during life and is a
product of a fusion of primordial bonds’ of a cultural origin, i.e. unique cultural determinednesses
adopted through the processes of socialisation, and choices an individual makes by following his
interests, cultural and political/ideological preferences. As a social construct, national identity is a
product of a choice among certain discourses, i.e. it is diversely articulated in different discursive
practices. With a view to that, national identity can be to a certain degree historically “traced”,
since a future member of a nation does not enter historically and culturally empty space, although
he is not decisively restrained by already present “heritage”. When viewed as a social constructthat is present within the constraints of a certain sociocultural context, national identity is a
product of discursive practices and cultural codes inwrought within dominant discourses about it.
According to the proponents of social constructivism, all objects of our consciousness including
our understanding of a person and our identity, are constructed through language, and produced
by discourses as coherent systems of representation. Discourse seen as a means of constructing
meanings which influences and organises both our action and our understanding of the self
enables us to perceive the issues from within. Discourse is not what upgrades or represents
already existing categories, but what designs them. Conceptions about “us” and “the others”
encompass the repertory of certain identities while using restrictively, or excluding, the repertoryof others.57
If we adopt as our starting thesis that one of the social constructivism that claims reality
itself does not exist but only its individual and collective constructions, then processes of their
origin, social transfer and (ideological, political) (mis)use transpire as very important. We deal
here with the standpoints of social constructivism, on the basis of which our understanding ofourselves and social reality are perceived as social constructions dependant on culture fromwhich they originate, i.e. cultural patterns woven into the language. Moreover, it is emphasisedthat the relation among verbal signs, mental images and objects they relate to ceases to be a mere
representation, and becomes constitutive, i.e. the existence of an object and its representation

56

See Cornell, S. and Hartmann, D. (2007) Ethnicity and Race: Making Identities in a Changing World, London:
SAGE.
57
See Burr, V. (1995) An Introduction to Social Constructionism, London: Routledge. And Foucault, M. (1969) The
Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language, New York: Harper Colophon.

42

become inextricable from each other. Thus we reach the concept of discourse and its role in theconstruction of social life and identity.
Contemporary studies focus on the examining how discourses of a society at the sametime reflect, constitute and reproduce certain social organisation, cultural values, beliefs andnorms; how a discourse illuminates/generates social processes, particularly within social
conflicts.58 Discourse is a practice that forms the object of discussion and provides a referential
context, a means of interpretation of the world and assigning a meaning to that world, which weinternalise via language, education and social interactions. Language, thus, through discourse,
enables us to subjectively experience both ourselves and the world. Identity is born out of humaninteractions, constructed via discourses which we posses within our culture, and devised throughpermeating of various categories of affiliation. An insight into constructive nature of the national
identity does not, however, mean a rejection of any permanency of national identifications, or
acceptance of the view which reduces them to changeable interest constructs or dominant/topical
identity strategies. Contemporary deliberations of the nation and national identity phenomena
actually gather around this fundamental theoretical controversy established on the relation
determinedness-permanency-determination to construction-changeability-fluidity. The basis ofconceptual starting point for representation of this for the issue of identity crucial theoreticalcontroversy is, in this paper, composed of ideas of Benedict Anderson, Anthony Smith, JeanFrançois Bayart and Stuart Hall.
The notion of subjective imagining as a basis of national identifications Benedict
Anderson has, through expanding cultural roots, placed at the mere core of understanding thenation and national identity phenomena. 59 By insisting on, for his analysis, fundamental
distinction between nationalism as an ideological movement and national identity as a collective
cultural phenomenon, Anthony Smith has determined nationalism as a political ideology with acultural doctrine at its core.60 The foundation of the thesis on imaginary in identity affirmation
has been laid by Jean-François Bayart, through linking the processes of tradition codification to

See Grimshaw, A. (2001) “Discourse and Sociology: Sociology and Discourse.” in Schiffrin, D., Tannen D. andHamilton, H. E. (eds.) The Handbook of Discourse Analysis, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2003, pp.750-752.
59
See Anderson, B. (1998) Nacija, zamišnjena zajednica (Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin andSpread of Nationalism), Beograd: Plato. [Anderson, B. (1983) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin andSpread of Nationalism, London: Verso.]
60
Smit, A. (1998) Nacionalni identitet (National identity), op. cit., pp. 6, 120.
58

43

the processes of national identity construction. 61 Perceiving the processes of creation of thenational identity as a fusion of planned establishment of political control via cultural
homogenisation and conflicting processes, compromises and unconscious adoptions throughcourses of cultural community formation, Bayart wanted to emphasise the contradictory unity of
construction ad formation of the nation. According to Anderson’s assumption, “being nation” isnot being linked to political ideologies, but to great cultural systems which created undeniablereferential context, namely religious community and dynastic kingdom that had preceded andfrom which and against whom these originated. Being nation was enabled through spontaneous
distillation of a compound mixture of independent historical powers, 62 it was situated in acomplex social change, which is not solely economic, but cultural as well; it is a change inunderstanding time, space, sign, communication, the other and oneself.
In anthropological approach, Anderson defined nation as “imagined political community”
inherently restricted and sovereign; restricted because even the greatest nations have limits andnone is imagined to correspond humankind; sovereign because the notion of nation appeared inan era when the legitimacy of dynastic kingdom was crumbling, i.e. when its historicalsovereignty become people’s sovereignty, i.e. sovereignty of the members of the nation.63 The
notion of “imagined nation” in Anderson’s definition has a specific meaning which is meant toinclude into consideration real and complex social processes that generate the point of being anation. Imagining nation is a real (although partly subjective) social process of creating a uniquecommunity. Nations are imagined communities because their members are mutually connected
not by acquaintance but a system of notions about their togetherness existing in every of them;these are real phenomena whose production happens on an imaginary level.
The instrument and medium of imagination that creates imagined community of a nation
is culture. As Anderson explained, nations became imaginable only when three fundamental
cultural conceptions lost their primacy. The first conception referred to the privileged status ofcertain written, holy languages in the approach to “ontological truth”, which createdtranscontinental religious communities (such as Christianity and Islam). In the period of
See Bajar, Ž. F. (2009) “Imaginarno u identitetskoj afirmaciji (Imaginary in an Identity Affirmation).” in Halpern,
K. and Ruano-Borbalan, Ž. K. (eds) Identitet(i): pojedinci, grupa, društvo (Identity/Identities: Individual, Group,
Society), Beograd: Clio, pp. 384-390.
62
Anderson, B. (1998) Nacija, zamišnjena zajednica (Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spreadof Nationalism), op. cit., pp. 14, 22.
63
Ibidem, p. 17.
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44

domination of this cultural system, confessional affiliation was a means of distinction between
communities. The second cultural conception was associated with divine foundation of theauthority of the ruler, i.e. considering loyalty to the ruler and Holy Writ as “crucial approach to
being”, based on the belief that society is naturally organised around and under the reign ofsublime centres – monarchs. The third was the conception of time according to which cosmology
and history were inseparable, and origin of the world and humans in essence identical.64
Changes in understanding of time led to fundamental shift in comprehension of reality.
While eternity in a religious sense was anchored in every moment of the history and represented
just one and the same moment that perpetually persisted in the present, proclaiming in every
moment the divine order, the new order founded on the notion of empty time (filled with external
characteristics of a calendar) has opened the way towards the new understanding of the world. By
demolishing the structure of sacred time numerous individual moments, which have to begathered into a certain sense, surface. That sense was brought actually by nation, comprehended
analogously to the idea of “social organism that calendar-like moves through homogenous emptytime”, as a solid community that continuously moves through the history. 65 Specific socialchange that created conditions for the advent of nation, was, according to Anderson, determinedby interaction “between systems of production and production relationships (capitalism),
technology of communication (printing), and enormous diversity of human languages”; it enabledcreation of a “new form of imagined community which by its basic morphology laid the scene fora modern nation”. 66 Anderson tried to show how institution practice ruptures in discursive
practice, and that fracture actually demonstrated modularity of nation and specificity of a style ofits imagining on the basis of which, according to the author, nations mutually differ.
The creation of national cultures coincides, according to Jean-François Bayart, with “amovement of cultural alienation” which we witness from the 18th century via inventing tradition,i.e. “a tendency of re-use of fragments of a more or less phantasmagoric past”, that accompanies
social, political and cultural changes and emergence of a modern state in the West. 67 Parallel withthe processes of systematic evaluation of the elements of the folklore culture, social groups

64

Ibidem, p. 43.
Ibidem, p. 34.
66
Ibidem, pp. 49, 51.
67
Bajar, Ž. F. (2009) “Imaginarno u identitetskoj afirmaciji (Imaginary in an Identity Affirmation).” in Halpern, K.
and Ruano-Borbalan, Ž. K. (eds) Identitet(i): pojedinci, grupa, društvo (Identity/Identities: Individual, Group,
Society), Beograd: Clio, p. 386
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retroactively react to that building work under their own values, their own cultures. As Bayart
succinctly puts it, “building of national identities is inseparable from their formation”. Distinction
between building as a conscious creation of the devices of political control by a certain social
class or party and formation which delineates conflicting, unintentional and utterly unconscious
process and which leads to the chaos of conflicts and compromises via masses of namelesspeople, perfectly fits the description of a contradictory process of national identity creation. It is,thus, at the same time a result of its construction via dominant groups or phases of social ascent,and formation, in other words, of that total alchemy created within societies.68
Building and development of awareness of national unity, provision of a common history,
language and culture of its members for an imaginary community, in the conditions of cultural
heterogeneity of the pre-modern era, is a project that largely exceeds a scale of a mere politicalideological construct for mobilisation of the masses in the creation of state borders. As
emphasised by Anne-Marie Thiesse, for the idea of nation to be accepted s legitimate andtransformative social power, it is necessary to create common identity of the nation members
around which, through cultural-historical references and common practice, a common sense ofaffiliation could be developed. Ernest Renan’s definitions use as their starting point precisely theidea of heritage as a basis of the national idea. Finding objective characteristics inadequate fordefining nation, Renan underlined the importance of spiritual creed, moral awareness andsolidarity, common indivisible and inalienable heritage, memory, but also current consent, a will
to cohabitate, i.e. continue to respect/preserve the heritage that we acquired as indivisible. The
formation of the national identity was comprised of the building of those heritages which havefundamentally proven to be mutually quite similar.69
What is particularly important, the building enterprise of tradition codification involved
also the endeavours to standardise the national language. As Anderson points out, the nation wasfrom the beginning understood through language, and not blood. In other words, important wasthat exact moment of an individual’s initiation into their social role and language practice of themembers of a national (language) community, as one of the vital factual and symbolic

68

Ibidem, pp. 386-387.
According to Tijes, A. M. (2009) “Kulturna proizvodnja evropskih nacija (Cultural Production of European
nations).” in Halpern, K. and Ruano-Borbalan, Ž. K. (eds.), Identitet(i): pojedinci, grupa, društvo (Identity/Identities:
Individual, Group, Society), Beograd: Clio, p. 335.

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confirmations of membership and unity of the nation.70 The printed (national) languages laid thefoundation of national awareness through creating of a unified field of exchange andcommunication below Latin while above vernacular, through connecting the readers via print,
which both in its secular visible invisibility created an embryo of nationally conceived
community. Printing capitalism strengthened language, which in time contributed to theformation of the notion of antiquity, vitally important for the subjective conception of a nation.
Imagining the nation in Anderson’s terms “does not entail any internal necessity, nor is ita proof of a real historical continuity, but a consequence of both a symbolic treatment of time andspace and selection of those elements of the cultural past that in any given moment can supply
and confirm the idea of continuity”.71 Deeper insight into the cultural foundations of a national
identity Anthony Smith achieved through matching it with ethnic identity/community, trying to
explain exactly the character of cultural doctrine that lies in their foundation, exploring the pastand processes of nation creation. Linking modern nations with any kind of ethnic cores, however,is a problematic and often criticised thesis in the contemporary research. The most common
argument of criticism is the existence of significant examples of nations shaped without ethnie(merging of the cultures of successive waves in America, Argentina and Australia), 72 althoughneither these facts exclude the possibility of, where ethnie existed, nations being shaped on theethnic bases as a kind of cultural configuration, nor could this serve as an argument sufficient fora basic rebuttal of the proposition. As Smith underlines, the first nations, historically speaking,were modelled became models for later cases of modelling. That ethnic model was sociologically
productive, as it fitted easily with the pre-modern type of community.73
Similar proposition on modelling the nation during its “transplantation” into newsociocultural and political environments can be found with Anderson, too. Being a nation havebeen transplanted into various social areas where, merging with political and ideologicalconstellations, it gained its function via official nationalism, becoming thus an efficient productfor the mobilisation of the masses in order to create state borders. As a consequence of nation
Anderson, B. (1998) Nacija, zamišnjena zajednica (Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spreadof Nationalism), op. cit., p. 138.
71Đorđević, J. (2009) Postkultura: uvod u studije kulture (Postculture: An Introduction to the Study of Culture),
Beograd: Clio, p. 339.
72
Kordić, S. (2010) “Ideologija nacionalnog identiteta i nacionalne kulture (The Ideology of National Identity andNational Culture).” in Ajdačić, D. and Lazarević Di Đakomo, P. (eds.) U čast Pera Jakobsena (In honor of Per
Jacobsen), Beograd: SlovoSlavia, p. 232.
73
Smit, A. (1998) Nacionalni identitet (National identity), op. cit., pp. 70-71.
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modularity, the variety of abundant concrete manifestations of this social phenomenon has
resulted in impossibility of providing a universally valid scientific definition. Opposite to thediversity of the types of nationalities stands specific universality of nation; one of its crucial
anthropological dimensions Anderson determined by perceiving it as “a secular way to transform
destiny into continuity, to give meaning to the coincidence”,74 indicating at that close similarity
between nationalistic and religious mentality.
Yet another significant aspect of permanency associated with national identity is certainly
the durability of functions that it performs, on which even “traditionalist” and “modernists” agree.
Anthony Smith singles out two categories of national identity functions: internal and external.
External functions, territorial, economic and legal-political, related to creation of a social,economic and political environment where members of a nation exist (authorisation of legal
rights and obligations, legal institutions which reflect distinct values, traditions andcharacteristics of a nation). Internal functions of a national identity originate from its ethnic andcultural dimensions; they relate to the establishment of social ties among the members of a nation
via repertory of common values, symbols and traditions; they are evident in the processes of asocialisation of an individual as a national and citizen of a given nation; therefore, they areconcerned with the assumption of cooperation among confronted social classes and theiracceptance of a unitary collective self-definition.75
Even though scientific approach to the national identity rejected a long ago a view thatnational feeling is given by nature, its foundations are still being perceived as in a specificmanner “given”. The character and content of that determinedness are highly complex, difficult
to analyse and dependent on a multitude of factors; but what is certain is that it does not mean
unchangeability and that esteem for it does not necessarily lead to the essentialisation of the
problem, or politicisation of ethnic identities. It is possible to establish numerous relations
between ethnic and national identity, where one of the more relevant is definitely the one related
to cultural configuration. The study of national identity as a social construct entails scrutiny of its
cultural foundations which to a large extent coincide with the ethical one, at least on the basis ofAnderson, B. (1998) Nacija, zamišnjena zajednica (Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spreadof Nationalism), op. cit., pp. 2, 8-9.
75
Smit, A. (1998) Nacionalni identitet (National identity), op. cit., pp. 32-34;
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terms that Smith highlighted; it is about ideology, language, mythology, symbolism and(collective) consciousness that serve as a basis for national identity, being intertwined.76
By stressing symbolical-cultural attributes of ethnic identity, Smith has positioned it in acertain way also in cultural foundations of a nation themselves. Among underlined traits of ethnic
and national identity that the author mentions, compatible are just those attributes with mainly
cultural and historical content and highly subjective nature.77 According to him, the distinctive
characteristics of national identity are: historical territory, i.e. homeland; common myths andhistorical memory; common mass public culture; common legal rights and responsibilities ofnation members; common economy with a territorial mobility of nation members.78 The approachto national identity which relies on isolating its distinctive characteristics is problematic, though,in a sense that by it institutions and creative work of an ethnic group/nation are assigned to an
already defined list of cultural traits understood in an unhistorical manner; this leads to reasoning
which qualifies cultural change as impoverishment and decline. Every concept that sees inisolation a foundation for the appearance and preservation of collective identities is essentiallywrong, because such a view “solidifies a social reality of a group founded on isolation and its
cultural development”, while in reality all societies/nations/ cultures maintain constant, more orless intensive relations with their surroundings.
To a great extent statistically, Smith’s approach inadequately takes account of one of the
crucial dimensions of identity, its relational nature, the relation with the other. The meaning ofaffiliation is always defined by its relation with non-members and perceived differences.
Furthermore, the importance of the deliberation of historical nature and changeability of national
identifications is underestimated. The abovementioned components of national identity cannot be
accepted as entities sui generis, as they are the ones that are constituted/constructed in relation tothe others and in a certain sociocultural, historical context.79 By determining the central paradoxof an ethnicity as coexistence of me and permanence and seeing national identity as constantly
varying individual expression within certain social and cultural parameters which limit theperspective and cultural content of a given community. and via which the heritage of tradition isŽunić, D. (1999) Nacionalizam i književnost: srpska književnost od 1985 do 1995 (Nationalism and Literature:
Serbian Literature from 1985 to 1995), Beograd: Open Society Institute (available at:
http://rss.archives.ceu.hu/archive/00001127/01/133.pdf), p. 12.
77
Smit, A. (1998) Nacionalni identitet (National identity), op. cit., pp. 39- 41.
78
Ibidem, pp. 29-30.
79
Radenović, S. (2006) “Nacionalni identitet, etnicitet, (kritička) kultura sećanja (National Identity, Ethnicity,(critical) Culture of Memory).” Filozofija i društvo, 3(2): 226.
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transferred transgenerationally, Smith still respects to some extent the dynamic nature of national
identity. Linking ethnic and national identity by a common cultural configuration directs us to
study of mutually connected processes that make a twofold spiral of ethnic identities: “on the one
hand the emergence of the essentialisation of the features which leads a group to imagine itself asa social species, while on the other creating flexible social boundaries that induce the same socialgroups to expand or divide”.80
Instrumentalist proposition of national identity reduces culture to an inert possibility, aresource from which a social group/party/government on its own choosing draws its emblems81
leaving aside emotions, norms and values that are transferred transgenerationally via language
and processes of socialisation and to a large extent adopted unconsciously. On such a proposition
are based reductive research approaches that referral to identity or culture perceive exclusively
through reduction to identity strategies or political goals.82 Identity policies are constructed byinterested political agents to serve accessing the power, in other words the elites staying in power,and due to competitive relationship they often lead to political instability and even an armed
conflict. What is controversial here is equating of a negative extreme of manifestation and misuseof a phenomenon with phenomenon itself. According to Bayart, the affirmation of some cultural
identity is always in itself a potential source of a conflict, even of totalitarianism. A certain
culture imagined as authentic is defined as an opposite to neighbouring cultures, which are seen
as radically diverse; that assumption of non-being-identical is according to the author equal to theprinciple of exclusiveness, whose logical conclusion is a campaign of ethnic cleansing.
Intercultural exchange is perceived as a threat to authenticity of cultural identity to which it refers.
Establishment of links between culture and (national/ethnic) identity does not necessarily
have to mean the adoption of a concept of total and unconditional cultural homogenisation andcultural identity as a petrified set of cultural characteristics; it is because the homogeneity ofculture in relation to each of its basic characteristics always represents merely a frame within
which a spectrum of diverse nuances that match individual variances of norms and cultural
patterns realisation. Inseparable from the notion of cultural community, cultural identity, still,
Formozo, B. (2009) “Rasprave o etnicitetu (Discussions about Ethnicity).” in Halpern, K. and Ruano-Borbalan, Ž.
K. (eds) Identitet(i): pojedinci, grupa, društvo (Identity/Identities: Individual, Group, Society), Beograd: Clio, pp.
307.
81
Ibidem, p. 300.
82
Ruano-Borbalan,, Ž. K. (2009) “Identitet, resurs za akciju (Identity, a Resource for Action).” in Halpern, K. andRuano-Borbalan, Ž. K. (eds) Identitet(i): pojedinci, grupa, društvo (Identity/Identities: Individual, Group, Society),
Beograd: Clio. p. 424.
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represents the source of danger of equating cultural community with ethnic and religious ones, inwhich case – as exemplified through experiences – cultural pluralism translates into ethnic andreligious which inevitably gains political dimension and leads to conflicts. 83 The creation andstrengthening of cultural identities, when subjected to political processes, particularly struggle forpower, relies on existent traditions, most often a religious one. Numerous contemporaryinterethnic conflicts rest on radicalisation of the identity, accompanied with instrumentalisationof religious, ethnic and other traditions.84
The term identity joined with the term culture has achieved a contemporary scientific andmedia success. As Jean-Claude Ruano-Borbolan points out, this success emanates from the factthat a concept of cultural identity has enabled us to ridicule anthropologists old racial theory,
which subjugated colonised peoples to an unlimited domination.85 Contemporary usage of theterm of identity coupled with the term of culture is, however, at the least ambiguous, and forsome authors even problematic. In the context of defending the rights of the oppressed, minorities,
as stated by Borbolan, this concept “serves at the same time to immortalise differentialism that is
not far from the idea of race and can support all nationalisms, xenophobisms andethnocentrisms”.86 Despite the fact that the notion of cultural identity can converge on the ideas
of intercultural dialogue, there remains a negative meaning potential that is associated with theextremes of understanding the unity of a national culture, and with it a controversy ininterpretation.
Not rarely in literature do we encounter contrary theses on the growth of a nation on thefoundation of a particular, already present ethnic reality, in other words theses that refute theestablishment of any kind of continuity between nations and pre-modern forms of association.
The fact is, however, that ethnic reality can symbolically and mythologically contribute to the
feeling of ethno-national continuity that does not have to represent a real continuity at that.87 As
Smith underlines, a creation of a coherent mythology and symbolism of a historical and culturalcommunity from available cultural components poses as an important condition for the existenceŽunić, D. (1999) Nacionalizam i književnost: srpska književnost od 1985 do 1995 (Nationalism and Literature:
Serbian Literature from 1985 to 1995), op. cit., p. 16.
84
Ruano-Borbalan,, Ž. K. (2009) “Identitet, resurs za akciju (Identity, a Resource for Action).” op. cit., p. 326.
85
Ibidem, pp. 423-424.
86
Ibidem, p. 424.
87Žunić, D. (1999) Nacionalizam i književnost: srpska književnost od 1985 do 1995 (Nationalism and Literature:
Serbian Literature from 1985 to 1995), op. cit., p. 9.
8351

of a nation, no matter how clear or constructed ethic ties were.88 It is basically one of the crucial
reasons for the mere notion of ethnic identity to acquire negative meaning, particularly when it isequated to cultural or religious identity, which is understandable to a degree if we bear in mind
numerous examples from the recent history that speak of to what extent those equations havebeen politically manipulated.
Orientation towards the past, the so-called “culture of remembrance” is considered to be acharacteristic of an ethnicity which specifically distinguishes it from the other categories of acollective identity. It is about the past that is being memorised, transmitted and interpreted in a
selective manner through which certain individuals and events develop into significant symbolsof ethnicity. Culture of remembrance is comprised of common myths and historical memory, as
well as ways/mechanisms of their social transfer/transmission, i.e. inventing, processing,maintaining, suppressing, forgetting and remodelling the past; it is a sum of individual andcollective constructions/images of the past that participate in the interpretation of the present andcreation of a vision of the future. Opposite to the collective memory, which is dynamically andreconstructively similar to a mosaic of chosen topics, as needs it fulfills are changeable, criticalculture of memory is not restricted to distinction of symbolical structures within selective
analysis of the past, but always takes into account interest, ideological, political and personal
determinedness of the process. What is vital is why and how we remember, in other words how
the past is interpreted; therefore, along with material remnants of the past, symbols and meanings,
also ideologies, myths, prejudices and stereotypes present in their current usage, are taken into
consideration. 89 Culture of remembrance stands as a part of a cultural apparatus that creates
meaning, through expressing the past it shapes conceptions of the present and plays an importantrole in the self-introspection of individuals and groups.
The significance of the critical approach to culture of remembrance is underlined by thefact that it is a permanent factor in interethnic tensions. Along with unequal and uneven forces ofcultural representations that partake in the struggle for political and social authority, it is noneother but the unequal distribution of ethno history that is one of the more prominent causes ofinterethnic tensions and conflicts. Ethnohistory, in other words, can be a vital source of cultural
power and focal point of cultural politicisation if it is characterised by wealth and authenticity.
88

Smit, A. (1998) Nacionalni identitet (National identity), op. cit., p. 71.
Radenović, S. (2006) “Nacionalni identitet, etnicitet, (kritička) kultura sećanja (National Identity, Ethnicity,(critical) Culture of Memory).” op. cit., p. 233.

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Communities of such histories possess a competitive advantage over the ones where those arescarce or “dubious”. The lack of continuous, long and rich ethnohistory is quite often
compensated by “cultural wars” in which science (philology, anthropology and archeology) is
engaged into establishment of vague genealogies, rooting of populations in the domestic grounds,
documenting their peculiar traits, and annexation of past civilisations.90
One of the products of “cultural wars”, a phenomenon called “strategic syncretism“, lies
exactly in the procedure through which self-definition is performed in relation to the other via
borrowing from that other its most valuable and effective cultural characteristics.91 Widely spreadprocesses of vernacular mobilisation and cultural politicisation draw their strength from culturalcompetition of nations/ethnic communities. Keeping that in mind, along with the experiences of
the recent wars in our region, we can notice the perceptiveness of Smith’s forecast according towhich “in view of the number of ethnic communities and categories that can be mobilised via
reenactment of even indistinct ethno histories, the probability of ending cultural wars of ethnie or
nations and suppressing nationalism, is ever so slight”. 92 The fact that even today in many
regions of the world national and ethnic identities act as instruments for seizing the power
possibly due to their manipulability which partly stem from great emotional legitimacy that they
relish, while partly is founded on the systems of political socialisation which along with essential
values of the liberal democracy also instil into citizens from a precocious age loyalty to thenation/homeland as a value. The character of this loyalty mainly depends on political culture
narrative of the society in question, i.e. whether it inclines to authoritarian or democratic model.
Political socialisation encompasses a totality of all processes through which prevalentpolitical norms of political culture of the society in question are acquired, retained and alternated.
Political culture which is passed from one generation to the next, is being transformed inconcordance with the change in socio-political conditions provides axiological coherence for thesystems of national identification via symbolical systems of culture. Permeation of
instrumentality and autotelic in the functioning of a symbolical culture in this sense is evident inprinciples, rules, hierarchy of values which in the history of culture supplied religious,
philosophical and ideological concepts, determining one principal and superior scale; and in its

90

Smit, A. (1998) Nacionalni identitet (National identity), op. cit., pp. 352-354.
Bajar, Ž. F. (2009) “Imaginarno u identitetskoj afirmaciji (Imaginary in an Identity Affirmation).” op. cit., pp. 387388.
92
Smit, A. (1998) Nacionalni identitet (National identity), op. cit., pp. 352-354.
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content, the so-called ideological homeland, as Osowski dubbed the totality of attitudes ofgroup/national community members and their correlates to common fund of spatial, artistic,
intellectual, ideological and religious symbols that are seen as a product and heritage.
Internalisation of these values “is correlated to the conviction of their special relationship with
their own group, its historical fate, character, and way of acting”.93
Ethno-political entities as a recent creation stand as, according to Bayart, “a product ofengineering for the creation of the identity”. 94 They show that religious, language, ethnic
differences, but also solidarity, exist in a strong form only when they are used for political goals.
In fact, the importance that these differences assume is intensified in times of instability, socialand political changes, in other words, when the other is needed as enemy so that in an atmosphereof jeopardy the support of the members of a community could be easier won. With that aim is
activated ethnic identity which determines symbolical construction of a cultural difference anddichotomisation of the others as strangers and which as an authentic group identity performs its“natural” functions until it becomes a basis for politics and ideologies and transforms into
ethnonationalism; then it “mutates” into a powerful weapon of political mobilisation, which uses
ethnic categories as point of reference for a political identity.
On the one hand, history has confirmed that the production of otherness is a multitude oftimes well-tried and proven means of identity construction. In produced conditions of jeopardy
the other is equated to an enemy, it becomes a catalyst of identity, as dichotomies to the othergain primacy in self-determination.95 On the other hand, the modern age brought ambivalence,
heterogeneity, multiplicity and openness of perspectives, and identities have become changeable,
pluralistic, historical, contextual and dynamic. Whatever approach to the manipulability ofnational identification we take, it is always upon citizens to have a final choice inunderstanding/accepting or not the political enterprise of their government as national interest.
Every political elite will aspire to create and spread the conceptions of national identity that are inconcordance with their political goals. If it comes to the identification of the given political
agenda and national interest, demanded obedience does not seem any more as a mere subjugation
Kloskovska, A. (2005) Sociologija kulture (Sociology of Culture), Beograd: Čigoja štampa, pp. 353-355.
Ruano-Borbalan, Ž. K. (2009) “Kultura, vrednosti, sve postmoderne (Culture, values, all kinds of postmodern)?”in Halpern, K. and Ruano-Borbalan, Ž. K. (eds) Identitet(i): pojedinci, grupa, društvo (Identity/Identities: Individual,Group, Society), Beograd: Clio, pp. 326.
95Đurić, J. (2008) “Identitet i interkulturalnost- Srbija kao mesto prožimanja Balkana i (Srednje) Evrope [Identity
and Interculturality- Serbia as a Place of Permeation among Balkans and (Central) Europe].” Filozofija i društvo,19(3): 223.
93
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to the interests of the government. Such a view is to an extent still an instrumentalist reduction
which construction of collective identities scales down to political goals and strategies without
dealing with either social interactions on which their implementation depends, or neutralising
effect of the opposite powers which can even lead to the contrary effect.
In public sphere, as a sphere of openness where there is a constant struggle of different
discourses for prestige in delineating of social reality and its phenomena and, even, various
identities that find their affirmation in it, manipulative patterns of national identification enter
competitive relations (more or less equal depending on achieved democratic quality of the publicdomain) with other patterns. Contemporary understanding of the identity respects its hardly
dissectible multidimensionality, its dynamic, relational character and correlation of identity andculture, i.e. identity and discourse. The category of identity marks in contemporary interpretation
what is not singular but multiplies and transforms itself during its life, and is a product of various
antagonistic discourses, practices and positions that often intersect one another. The advancetowards discursive construction of identity strengthened the cultural paradigm interested in the
problems of identity erosion produced by the new processes of globalisation.96 Cultural paradigm
topicalises issues of discursive political constructions of ethnic, national, cultural identities,
where it interprets the identity as a space for resistance. Being viewed as an effect of a discourse,
identity becomes decentralised, unstable, discontinuous and capable of transformation ormetamorphosis, as its construction, based on certain strategies just temporarily stabilises cultural
categories.
The disappearance of traditional cultural identities deprives individuals of cultural
boundries they are used to, but that still does not mean that breaking the cycle of long-lasting
cultural cycles, whose role is to match the significance/meaning of the present to the past and thefuture of identities, leads to reduction of collective identities to functions in the technology ofgovernance. Identities are not monolithic and static but comprised of multiple interlinked,
intertwined or overlapping layers, which, although potentially given, can be altered, abandoned
and lost, imposed and taken away and again (re)constructed.97

Đorđević, J. (2009) Postkultura: uvod u studije kulture (Postculture: An Introduction to the Study of Culture), op.
cit., p. 355.
97
, J. (2008) “Identitet i interkulturalnost- Srbija kao mesto prožimanja Balkana i (Srednje) Evrope [Identity andInterculturality- Serbia as a Place of Permeation among Balkans and (Central) Europe].” op. cit., p. 229.
96

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Stuart Hall isolates three possible methods of defense from homogenising globalisation
which he sees as anticipation of a great crisis of identity, in other words significant element increation of fragmentised identities.98 The first is reaffirmation of national identity, the second
insisting on ethnic independence, while the third is creation of new, decentralised identities, andwhich is according to the author the only one adequate for contemporaneity. Without refuting thefact that national and ethnic identifications are what people internalise in a such way that theyexperience discourse as essences, the natural order of things, Hall identifies them as temporary
because identification poses as a never completed process, determined thus that it can never beconquered or lost, supported or terminated, realising itself on the basis of a fantasy ofappropriation. Hence identities always merely temporarily conquered, a consequence of someform of articulation, as noncompulsory connections among discursive concepts which only
temporarily are linked by connotative or evocative ties and that on the basis of the action of
power and power of tradition. Identities that seem to us intact and eternal are actually historicallyspecific temporary stabilisation or arbitrary closeness of the meanings.
National identity is on the one hand socially programmed through mechanisms ofsocialisation and dominant patterns of identification and cultural values woven into leading
discourses in the public sphere; on the other hand, as it is individually-psychologically realised,national identity is also a part of an individual identity formula within which, in compliance withpersonal choices of an individual, can be stronger or weaker, or even absent. Furthermore, incompliance with their own cultural preferences, individuals adopt elements of their national
culture and determines the extent at which they are going to be determinative for their cultural
identity. With all these conditionalities, culture still is primary frame/context for individual
choices, which poses as one of the fundamental argumentations in the protection of minority
identiitesin multiethnic states, primarily as a protection of the rights of minority groups tomaintain their own culture. The idea that the construction of differences, as foundations of selfidentification of a collective/ethnic group/nation, unstable product susceptible to modelling is
acceptable only to the extent that it respects complexity of cultural mechanisms and processes ofdemarcation that lie in the basis of the development of distinctive features; as these mechanisms
and processes define the character of a specific continuity in national identifications, throughAccording to Đorđević, J. (2009) Postkultura: uvod u studije kulture (Postculture: An Introduction to the Study ofCulture), op. cit., pp. 362-363.

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establishment of symbolical-axiological structures, a form of permanency within the dynamic ofchanges immanent to society and culture in general.
The poststructuralist contribution to discourse analysis does not rely on the complete
acceptance of the idealist perspective, it definitely contains the promotion of the materialist
nature of any discourse structure as well. 99 In contrast to rationalists and conventional
constructivists, focused on scrutinizing the explanatory potential of ideational factors (such asideas, ideal, identity or culture) as opposed to material factors, poststructuralists attach
importance both to ideas and matter as inseparable elements of a single whole. Ergo, thepoststructuralist notion of discourse implies interest in material facts in terms of analysing theirproduction and priority. Discourse takes into account social conditions in which a text is
produced and interpreted through three dimensions: 100 (1) situational- defining the immediatesocial setting in which discourse takes place; (2) institutional- forming a broader frame fordiscourse; and (3) social- implying the totality of a given society as an organisational entity.
Consistently, the methodological objective is the understanding of relations between the text, of
the way in which it is produced and of social conditions in which it is conceived, promulgatedand understood.

99

Laclau, E. and Mouffe, C. (1985) Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics,
London: Verso, pp. 108-109.
100
Renwick, N. and Cao, Q. (1999) “China’s Political Discourse Towards the 21st Century: Victimhood, Identity,
and Political Power.” East Asia: An International Quarterly, 17(4): 116-120.

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4. Material production or social construction of the enemy: the realist paradigm versus theconstructivist paradigm

To a greater or lesser degree, the conceptual position of ideas in the theoreticalobservation of international relations still poses as a space for persistent and comprehensive
academic debates between rationalists (realists, neo-realists and neo-liberal institutionalists) andproponents of the interpretative methodological school of thought (poststructuralists,
postmodernists, feminists and Frankfurt school critical theory’s followers). Political realism,“power politics” (Realpolitik), therefore, poses as the oldest and most often applied theoreticalthinking on international relations, which could be historically traced back as far as Thucydides
in 5th century B.C. At the most general level, 101 political realism cannot be reduced to somecomprehensive and all-encompassing, centrally positioned theory, but only defined through setsof common source (first) principles and underlying assumptions from which its various
theoretical variants emanate. However, it is not the matter of having a particular and explicit
complex of assumptions and propositions, but of the wholeness of that original alignment ofprinciples, alignment compounded of “axiomatic premises” and reformed by the dynamics ofchangeable “normative cross-section”.
Ergo, it is evident the necessity to differentiate certain borderline characteristics ofrealism, perceived as a theoretical paradigm (a perspective, orientation or philosophicaldisposition), from what is going to be any of its constitutive individual assumptions. Politicalrealism, thus, is not fixated or petrified, it is immanent in the process of constant rethinking andreformulation towards better explanations and more precise forecasts, refining and clarification oftheoretical concepts which underlie its research programmes, as well as their broadening towards
untreated problem areas. 102 Nonetheless, political realism is more than a scientifically based
research programme, it is also a political philosophy and worldview.
To begin with, I shall mention several most representative general postulates of realism.
Thus, relying on Niccolо Machiavelli (1469-1527) and his book The Prince, according to Edward
See Schweller, R. (1997) “New Realist Research on Alliance: Refining, Not Refuting, Waltz’s Balancing
Proposition.” American Political Science Review, 91(4): 927–930. and Vasquez, J. (1997) “The Realist Paradigm andDegenerative versus Progressive Research Programs: An Appraisal of Neotraditional Research on Waltz's Balancing
Proposition.” American Political Science Review, 91(4): 899-912.
102
Schweller, R. “New Realist Research on Alliance: Refining, Not Refuting, Waltz’s Balancing Proposition.” op.
cit., pp. 927.
101

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Carr, realistic philosophy has three conceptual foundation stones:103 (1) history is a sequence ofcauses and consequences, intellectually comprehensible and analysable, but not prone tomanipulation by “imagination” (utopian standpoint); (2) theory does not create practice, but
practice theory; (3) politics is not in the function of ethics, but the reverse. For Hans Morgenthau,still, realism stands for:104 (1) politics that is manifested in objective laws based on the humannature; (2) the concept of interests which is determined in the sense of power; (3) changeabilityof the power and interests contents; (4) inapplicability of moral principles to the functioning of
the states; (5) refusal to identify moral intentions connected with an individual state as a universal
moral law; and (6) autonomy of the political domain. According to Kenneth Waltz, the elementsof realism are the following:105 (1) state interests that represent initial mechanism of state action;(2) needs associated with politics connected with lack of regulation of competition among states;(3) calculations based on these particular needs that may result in policies adjusted to stateinterests; and (4) success of thus defined policies which is manifested in the preservation andstrength of the state.
For Robert Gilpin, realism rests on:106 (1) “conflict groups” as basic units of social andpolitical activity (current primary “conflict group” is a national state, which superseded bysucceeding to achieve a higher level of efficiency in the organisation of the military power,
regulation of economic relations and provision of security); (2) national, i.e. group interest as the
focal point of state motivation, that can be economic, ethnic or territorial in nature (shifting
national interest is dictated by currently governing elites and objective components, such as
economic facts or geographical position); (3) power and to it and from it ensuing relations present
an essential characteristic of international affairs sphere (it is the broadening of the definition of
the power that excludes “pure” moral exigencies and deliberate persuasion as powerful motives
in a political life- moral functions best on the level of a particular group, not among groups, andimplies three forms of power- economic, military and psychological).

Carr, E. (1946) The Twenty Years’Crisis, 1919–1939: An Introduction to the Study of International Relations.
London: Macmillan, pp. 63-64.
104Morgenthau, H. (1954) Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace. 2nd edn. New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, pp. 4-10.
105
Waltz, K. (1979) Theory of International Politics. New York: Random House, pp. 117.
106
Gilpin, R. (1996)“No one loves a political realist.” Security Studies, 5(3): 7-8.
10359

According to Randall Schweller, there are seven basic assumptions relevant to realistic
school of thought:107 (1) the basic scheme of human to human relationship is not conceived as
individual relation but is of a collective nature, people treat one another as members of groups
that determine and control their loyalty; (2) international affairs take place in an anarchicalenvironment; (3) power is essential quality of the international politics, it is absolutely requisite
for the realisation of national goals, whether these are ruling the world or aspiring to bare survival,
there is no clear line between the will for power and apparently reduced strategy, the will for life;(4) the intrinsic nature of international interactions is conflicting, a world without struggle would
be a world in which the life as we know it, would cease to exist; (5) humankind is not able toovercome conflicts through positive power of reason to devise a sort of scientific pacifism; (6)politics is a product of ethics, morality is the effect of power; (7) state exigencies, needs andreasons always prevail over ethical and moral values.
For John Mearsheimer, realism, again, rests on five assumptions related to theinternational system: 108 (1) the international system is archaic (which, let us repeat, does notmean a state of chaos, but manifests organising principle that indicates that the independent
political units, states, have no central government superior to them, sovereignty is inherent to thestate, there is no “governing government”; (2) states inevitably possess certain offensive militarycapacities, which enables them to inflict damage or destruction on one another – states are to one
another a potential source of danger; (3) states can never be absolutely sure of other states’
intentions, i.e. a possibility of their offensive military capacities’ engagement cannot becompletely dismissed; (4) survival is a primary motive that governs states, which tend to
perpetuate their sovereignty; (5) states deliberate strategically on their survival, they are
instrumentally rational.
Let us now draw a principal distinction between “classical” or traditional and structural or
new realism. While “classical” realism equally champions anarchism and egoism, structural
realism endavours to abstract all qualities of the state other than its capacities of registering anddetermining the impact of anarchy, that relational distribution of capability. More or less as a

Schweller, R. (1997) “New Realist Research on Alliance: Refining, Not Refuting, Waltz’s Balancing
Proposition.” American Political Science Review, 91(4): 927.
108
Mearsheimer, J. (1994-1995) “The False Promise of International Institutions.” International Security, 19(3): 10.
10760

crucial differences between these two types the following can be identified:109 (1) the existence ofphilosophical skirmishes about disciplines which serve as a basis of the theory of realism(traditional variant is predominantly tied to sociology and history, while neorealism mainly relies
on microeconomics); (2) traditional realism treats power as a goal in itself (states can tend
towards increase of both power and security), while neorealism sees security as the highest state
goal; (3) traditional realists claim that power and interests of the state dictate the behaviour, while
neorealists see anarchy and distribution of capabilities as important; (4) traditional realism, as atheory of foreign policy, is focused on the relative distribution of capabilities between certain
states or their coalitions, while neorealism, as a theory of the international policy or international
relations, is oriented towards distribution of capabilities on the level of the integrity of the systemor polarity of it; (5) followers of the classical realism claim that international system is composedof units, interactions and structure, interaction gives rise to process variables such as institutions,norms and rules, while proponents of neorealism cannot treat process variables as system
attributes.
Keeping the above in mind, according to Kenneth Waltz, thus for neorealist proposition,
the organisation of the international system is related to the postulated principle of sovereign
equality of its elements or units and from it resulting general attributes of system decentralisation
and anarchism. Since it can be established there is some form of superior government authorised
to govern the elements of the international system, these confront one another through relationsof coordination. 110 Anarchism permanence arouses the issue of the functional nature of units.
Unlike hierarchical internal political system, where its segments are differentiated throughfunction they perform, anarchic international system is comprised of units functionally similar to
one another, since anarchism itself enforces certain rules that favour units which behave in asimilar way. Neorealism is characterised by states which are ranked or positioned solely in
relation to their power, only material capabilities generate the position of a unit in a given
international structure.
If we approach this distinction from an intense critical perspective of poststructuralist
discourse of Richard Ashley, the difference between classical realism and neorealism can be

Schweller, R. and Priess, D.(1997) “A Tale of Two Realisms: Expanding the Institutions Debate.” Mershon
Interna-tional Studies Review, 41(1): 7.
110
Waltz, K. (1986) “Political Structures.” у Keohane, R. (ур.) Neorealism and Its Critics, New York: Columbia
University Press, pp. 81.
109

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interpreted on several different levels.111 On a methodological level, the first variant of realism isbased on an intuitive approach, all the while remaining in a close relationship with a current
statesmanship practice, while the latter one endavours to objectify political life, with the intentionof gaining a status of a social science for the international relations. If we allow for such a criticalconstellation, it comes into view that neorealism has neglected what is within classical realism
treated as a focal conceptual point – the relevance of diplomatic practice. Furthermore,
proponents of the classical realism are not particularly interested in economic subject matters,
while neorealists are preoccupied with them. They are also proponents of statism or statecentrism, where such theoretical position, in fact, denotes more a belief in eternity, incessantness
or metadimensionality of a state-centric world, and less an inclination towards a state capable ofresulting in some form of etatism, i.e. totalitarianism.
Classical realism opens room for international implications or changes derived fromsubjective attitudes of statesmen, while neorealism rests on the conviction that objective
structures, such as position a state occupies in the international state hierarchy or physicalcharacteristics of the states that constitute the international system, determine the functioning or
behaviour of statesmen. Moreover, neorealism can be quite radically criticised for assuming
transhistorical truth, objectivism and value-neutral technical intellect as elements which profile
limits and kind of action. In concordance with such theoretical qualificative, realism is, to put it
mildly, gained reputation of an amoral, or, if you wish, even immoral doctrine, the one that does
not question the supremacy of the state uninhibited by any fundamental ethical considerations.
Truth be told, neorealism states the existence of national interest as a landmark of state action,
which definitely implies some sort of state engagement that is not strictly connected/adherent toparticular and selfish interests of the ruling class. The point is that ethical and political activity
cannot be performed unless state practice and relative theory are equally appreciated, whichmight suggest distinction of realism from idealism and abstract theorising.
The main critical nexus of inadequacy and incorrectness of realistic (particularly
neorealistic) orientation can be grouped around following subject matters:112 (1) domestic politics
must be appreciated to the utmost, since structural conditions, as well as power conditions, are

See Ashley R. (1986) “The Poverty of Neorealism.” in Keohane, R. (ed.) Neorealism and Its Critics. New York:
Columbia University Press, pp. 255-301.
112
Vasquez, J (1999) The Power of Power Politics: From Classical Realism to Neotraditionalism, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, pp. 377-382.
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insufficient to define activity in the sphere of foreign policy; (2) systemic level of analysis should
be supplemented by engagement on other levels, particularly formulating of the foreign policy
theory; (3) insufficient determination of realistic predictions; (4) model of preoccupation withactions related to the balance of power is neither an adequate answer to the anarchism of theinternational system, nor does it occur in conditions in which it should be expected nor bears
consequences that can be absolutely and always anticipated; and (5) the existence of isolatedareas of peace whose presence is not included by the realistic paradigm, and which is associatedwith democratic-liberal states.
The starting premise of Schmitt's definition of the political and the friend-enemy
distinction represents the notion that all relevant conceptual observations of human life in genere
are based on dual antithetical categories (e.g., ethics in the distinction between good and evil,
aesthetics in the distinction between beautiful and ugly, economics in the distinction between
lucrative and unlucrative). In this context, Schmitt's perception of the political is derived from thefundamental (profound) friend-enemy distinction. 113 Man has an inherent need for political
identity that can be achieved solely through the identification of some otherness as the enemy ofone’s own self. Ergo, the peak point of politics (and not of the political) is materialized in the actof recognising the enemy as the enemy.114 Since the political environment contains a variety ofstates, religions, classes and other forms of collective human association, group differences arise
from an area that is, as Schmitt says, “pluriverse” and not universal. 115 The groups’ conflict
potential and intergroup antagonisms are both inevitable as well as perpetuated (continuous):
even when a political entity annuls or neutralises the enemy, the inevitable recidivist recognitionof a new existential, disparate enmity occurs.
Such a conjunction is less intended at any final distinction between people, which causes
the designation of the other as the enemy, and more at people’s gravitating towards reproducing
the “ominous” hostility (that is, the “ominous” enemy) over and over again. It is understood thatthe whole thesis is dependent upon the assumption that mankind has a “genotypic” need to create
political groups that are recognized as such only through polarity towards their political enemies.
Survival in the international system implies the preservation of political identity, which entails
the elimination of the possibility for a collective to reach the level of general inter-collective
113

Schmitt, C. (1996) The Concept of the Political, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 25-27.
Ibidem, p. 67.
115
Ibidem, p. 53.
114

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friendship; finding a political enemy for its own political identity is postulated because it
represents its conditio sine qua non.
According to Schmitt, the friend-enemy formation must be understood in its existential
and concretized, “objective” or “substantive” sense, it is inherent reality, not an abstraction or anormative ideal, the relationship between the friend-enemy opposite cannot be treated as“imaginative-metaphorical”. 116 An enemy is something different and alien, and in extreme
culminated (intensified), conflict (collision) with him is a “more than likely” option. 117
Simultaneously, human diversity is embodied in civilization rife with potential conflict hotspots.
The political is always associated with war, the friend-enemy relation obtains its true meaning inreference to the possibility of killing, physical elimination. For all that, the political is not to be
confused with war or even with its glorification, its possibility is what defines the space of thepolitical.118 In the context of the state, the friend-enemy is manifested ambivalently. On the one
hand, such a concept of the political supports the state, because it is the state that identifies
specific decisions determining the sovereignty and basic political unity of the collective. On theother hand, the idea of the state presupposes the idea of the political, while the inverse
presupposition is not necessary: other entities (nation, church, trade union or any other socialgroup) can replace the state as a political entity.119
It appears that the concept of the political, based on the antithetical friend-enemy binomial,
incorporates the existential decision about friends and enemies that constitutes the collective
identity, associations, or communities, while the ethical is only subsequently derived fromidentity so formulated. The reality, “objective content” in the understanding of a collective’s selfidentity is also reflected in the fact that it arises from the actual components, from “homogenizing
substance”, the physical and ethical similarity manifested through the common: race, convictions,fate, language, tradition and religion.120 However, Schmitt does not relinquish the infinitesimal,“ontic” political quest to find the enemy. Identity is established negatively by means of defining
the enemy: who we are depends on who our enemies are. The open possibility that friends may
become enemies suggests that identity is fluid and redefineable. The criteria on whichcollectivities base their own identities change over time, myriad transformations, development
116

Ibidem, pp. 27-28, 33, 67-68.
Ibidem, p. 27.
118
Ibidem, p. 34.
119
Ibidem, p. 37.
120
Schmitt, C. (2008) Constitutional Theory, Durham: Duke University Press, pp. 258-260, 264-265.
117

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and revolutionary leaps inherent in human history result in new forms and dimensions of politicalassembling.121 Political assembling can arise from religious, moral, ethical or other domains, aslong as the underlying primordial, proto-oppositeness is sufficiently intense to produce thepossibility of physical violence. 122 Yet, there is no political activity that can be consistently
specified: any conflict, whether ethical, religious or economic, can enter the sphere of thepolitical if its intensity is sufficient to transform difference into hostility.
Schmitt differentiates private from public (political) enemies, invoking the terminologicaldistinction that was diachronically marked back in Old Greek and Latin (echthros and polemios,that is, inimicus and hostis). According to him, only public enemies (not individuals) are enemies,
only groups can be enemies, because hostility exists only when one collective, even potentially,
enters into confrontation with a similar collective (this particularly refers to nations). For
Schmitt’s argumentation, the pivotal criterion of the friend-enemy division (content of identity),
is of no consequence, the political choice of friend or enemy is entirely arbitrary, not justified orbased on reasons and it manifests an absolute decision created out of nothingness. 123 What counts
is the form of identity, that is, regardless of its own self-determination, people always shows thewill to determine its political existence through the friend-enemy dichotomy.124 Let us add to thisa few facts that will be important for the end of this segment of the paper, when a framework forthe conceptual construction of the enemy will be proposed. It can, therefore, be said that a private
enemy is, in terms of content, is distinctly characterised by emotionality, especially hatred,
whereas the stance toward an enemy with a public status can include components of emotional
empathy, but it definitely isn’t defined by sentiments (“affectivity”). Thus, for ancient Greeks, themaxim “help a friend, harm an enemy” represented the first principle of social interactivity; in theHellenic world the moral good and pleasure in inflicting damage to the enemy is a very
influential ethical variable.125 In his Rhetoric, Aristotle says that good is the opposite of evil, as
well as the opposite of what is useful to an enemy (being courageous is good, because being
fearful is useful to the enemy), adding that in some extraordinary situations the same thing can be

121

Schmitt, C. (1996) The Concept of the Political, op. cit., p. 47.
Ibidem, p. 37.
123
Schmitt, C. (2005) Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, p. 66.
124
Schmitt, C. (1996) The Concept of the Political, op. cit., p. 28.
125
See: Blundell, M. W. (1991) Helping Friends and Harming Enemies: A Study in Sophocles and Greek Ethics,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1991.
122

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useful to the two opposite sides (accidents bring people closer if faced with the shared danger).126
Although Socrates disputes Polemarchus’ idea that justice is a craft that benefits or harms bothfriends and enemies,127 for it is not the proper function of a just man to harm anyone at all128, thequestion of hostility in the public functioning of the polis occupies an important position in the
structuring of Plato's ideal state.
Understanding the distinction between private and public enemies in Schmitt's work
implies a differentiation of a respectable or normal enemy from the absolute variety that is an
intimidating or criminalised enemy. Departing from the Schmittean theoretical vocabulary setup,normal enemies can be said to “play by the rules”, their non-radicality (“conventionality”)
concerning the very foundations of the system being undisputable. By contrast, the absoluteenemy represents a radical challenge to “ontic” foundations of the community on the meta-level(not only as a physical threat, but also in terms of threats to the social imaginary, the space ofreferences through which the actors valorize their own activities and those of others).129 In otherwords, to return to “orthodox” Schmittean theoretical flows, a respectable (normal) enemy is thatwith whom, regardless of the fight, peace can be made, whereas the absolute enemy is that who
needs to be destroyed (eliminated) or punished and humiliated.130 According to Schmitt, since
17th century, wars have been rated, by contrast to the medieval theological doctrine of the justwar, by their outcome rather than intentions; the war has become a legal means of changing asystem of ownership, and thus, humanisation, rationalisation and legalisation of warfare werecarried out.131
By contrast, the modern understanding of war incorporates the separation of a just froman unjust war, the notion that makes an offender out of an enemy, an enemy who is no longer
treated as a legally defined enemy (iustus hostis) but as a criminal, and is referred to by Schmitt
as a quasi-theological concept of war.132 Unlike the more acute forms of hostility and violenceculminated in some form of ideological fanaticism, realistic interpretation of the friend-enemy
126

Aristotel (1987) Retorika (Rhetoric), Belgrade: Nezavisna izdanja 40, 1362b-1363a, pp. 38-39.
Platon (1983) Država (The Republic), Belgrade: Beogradski grafičko-izdavački zavod, 332d, p. 8.
128
Ibidem, 335d, p. 13.
129
Buck-Morss, S. (2000) Dreamworld and Catastrophe: The Passing of Mass Utopia in East and West, Cambridge:
MIT Press, pp. 12-13, 145.
130
Schwab, G. (1996) “Introduction.” in Schmitt, C. (1996) The Concept of the Political, Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, pp. 9-11.
131
Schmitt, C. (2003) The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum, New York:
Telos Press, p. 100.
132
Ibidem, p. 124.
127

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relationship conceptually proclaims a more “civilised”, “etiquette”, variant of violent behaviour
towards others, a metamorphosis of the terrifying enemy into the “classic” one.133 The point isthat the “war in white gloves” is treated as a possible result of the conflict of interest, devoid ofintense ideological attributes, and as such it can be resolved through some form of compromise
manifested by the achievement of peace.
Man, according to Schmitt, represents not an evil, but a dynamic being of danger, which,due to its indeterminability, unpredictability and incomprehensibility is in the risk area. 134 The
problem is greatly complicated by the modern realist premise that, even in a system where all
elements are stably good-hearted and benevolent, someone who is your friend today could easily
become an enemy as soon as tomorrow.135 Schmitt does not relate political hostility to moral evil
(someone who is morally evil need not be the enemy), but to the existential discrepancy between
us and the enemy. His separation of the political as a distinct sphere is particularly problematic
because it implies that political decisions do not have any ethical reprecussions.136 By and large,
a collectivity that ignores the identification of the enemy cannot survive as a political entity. It
loses its chance to react adequately in response to actual violence targeted towards it, risking to
be defeated in a potential showdown with the enemy.137 What is even worse, if an enemy is notdetermined, if the group loses energy, capacity or will for the act, it completely loses the chancefor self-determination: its identity disappears, its political existence abated (even if it declareditself a universal friend, things would change: the antithetical pair of friend-enemy is a necessity;
it does not leave the world, but weak collectives decline).138
Constructivism, on the other hand, can be defined as a quite broadly established scientificmethod that encompasses in itself various schools of thought on social: Weberian interpretativesociology, symbolic interactionism, variants of Marxism,

Veblenianinstitutionalism,

poststructuralism and hermeneutics, it rests on irreducibility of the intersubjective dimension ofhuman action. 139 Humans are cultural beings, endowed with a capacity and will to take adeliberative stand of the world and furnish it with meaning. Such a conjunction opens up space
See Desch, M. “It is Kind to be Cruel: The Humanity of American Realism.” Review of International Studies,29(3): 415-426.
134
Schmitt, C. (1996) The Concept of the Political., op. cit., pp. 60-61.
135
Mearsheimer, J. (1999) The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, p. 31.
136
Scheuerman, W. (1999) Carl Schmitt: The End of Law, Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, pp. 248-249.
137
Marder, M. (2005) “Carl Schmitt and the Risk of the Political.” Telos, 132: 22.
138
Schmitt, C. (1996) The Concept of the Political., op. cit., pp. 45-53.
139
Palan, R. (2000) “A world of their making: an evaluation of the constructivist critique in International Relations.”
Review of International Studies, 26(4): 576.
133

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for a new class of facts, social facts, those that do not exist in the physical world of material
objects, but their mere existence depends on human agreement, thus requiring human institutions
for their presence.140 Constructivists, in fact, hold that the international relations are prevalently
comprised of social facts, just as ontological realists did, because not only do they believe in theexistence of the material world, but in the resistance on the occasion of taking action on it. Ergo,
for constructivism the way in which material world profiles human action and interactions and isbeing shaped by it (human action and interactions) depends on the dynamics of normative andepistemic interpretation of the material world.
Various classifications or categorizations of constructivist ideas testify to their diversity
and breadth.141 Thus we can distinguish: (1) critical and conventional constructivism; (2) modern
and postmodern constructivism; or (3) modern, legal, narrative and genealogical constructivism.
Apart from the need to restore order in not so negligible number of relevant differences,
concentration on the differences contributes to a more comprehensive and deeper understandingof the complexity of the constructivist theorising. With a view to that, three conceptual origins,
ontological dialogic circles: (1) constructivism inspired by sociological institutionalism; (2)constructivism inspired by Jurgen Habermas’ theory of communicative action; (3) constructivism
inspired by Michel Foucault’s deliberation of knowledge and power. When we put focus on thefirst variance, the guiding thought is that social structure has ontological primacy; it is a starting
analytical level and is guided by the logic of adequacy, constitutive power of norms over interestsand behaviour, while its rules and values create all the relevant agents in the arena of theinternational politics. Recast in constructivist conceptual apparatus, it means that the norms
constitute state identities and interests. Opposite to the Western model of the social science where
an individual is treated as an unproblematic, irreducible and autonomous actor, whose aspirations
are not in direct causal relation to cultural context, institutionalism axiomises the individual as a
product, not a producer, of the society and culture. The norms shape national security interests,
i.e. security policy, and the state identity.
The second variance is based on the logic of argumentation, i.e. on the significance ofcommunicative action in mediation between agents and intersubjective values. The norms do notformulate identities and interests in some direct, mechanical and unproblematic way, a multitude
140

Weber, M. (1949) The methodology of the Social Science. Glencoe: The Free Press, pp. 81.
Reus-Smith, C. (2002) “Imagining society: constructivism and the English School.” British Journal of Politics
and International Relations, 4(3): 493-496.

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of situations are marked by bringing face to face diverse, sometimes antithetic or paradoxical,
norms that may be interpreted in different ways. Opposite to the realists, who would in such asituation determine the reaction of the agent via selfish criteria of power enhancement,
Habermasian constructivist movement claims that agents on the most general level participate in
the process of argumentation; through collective communicative process they reach the cognitionof whether their assumptions about world are correct (the sphere of theoretical discourses) or inwhich situations their norms of adequate behaviour are being activated and how these can bejustified (the sphere of practical discourses). 142 Discussion, demonstration and argumentation
imply an effort of the agents to question value attributes inherent in any normative or causal
statement and to aspire to normative consensus in connection with their understanding ofsituational context and justification of the principles and norms that govern their actions.
The third variance of the constructivism is actually extracted from Foucault’s deliberationof knowledge and power. In other words, creation, production or delivery of a discourse represent
a form of power, they generate and legitimise certain types of behaviour and living conditions asnormal, i.e. construct certain categories that degrade, marginalise or make inconceivable certain
practices and views: disciplinary, even it could be said commanding, moment is manifested inpromotion of what is standard, normal and natural, and simultaneously of what is deviant,unthinkable of and to be unanimously condemned. Such thorough examination of norms and theirimpact on self-understanding and preferences bears severe consequences, the origin of norms andmeanings in a specific era and context is discursively contingent, and not a matter of somerational evolution. Restrictivity of the norms is not only limitative behaviour factor, norms arealso productive in the sense of constituting what we are, and we form our identities throughimplicitly grasped norms and commonly accepted practices.
Constructivism can be also classified by the engaged level of analysis. With a view to that,theoretical perspective of Alexander Wendt is of systemic nature, domestic political sphere istreated as theoretically irrelevant. He finds that the conceptual nucleus of constructivism as astructural theory could be expressed by three propositions:143 (1) states are basic units of analysis
in the international political theory; (2) key structures in a state system are rather intersubjective
than material; and (3) state identities and interests are constructed by these social structures thanRisse, T. (2000) “Let’s argue!: Communicative Action in World Politics.” International Organization, 54(1): 7.
Wendt, A. (1994) “Collective Identity Formation and the International State.” The American Political Science
Review, 88(2): 385.
142
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exogenously given by human nature or domestic politics. Diversely to this approach, there is aconstructivist movement that emphasizes relations between domestic social and legal norms andidentities, interests and state actions. Finally, we can mention “holistic” constructivists, those
who endavour to put the international and domestic domains under a common analytical optics,
by treating external and internal as two sides of the same social and political order.
Emphasizing that, by and large, every classification is arbitrary and registering thesociological, feminist, jurisprudential, genealogical, emancipatory and interpretive variants, while
underscoring their underlying philosophical bases and their relation to the possibility or
grounding of social science, John Gerard Ruggie distinguishes between three types of
constructivistm:144 (1) neo-classical constructivism- indicates its ties with the classical tradition
and implies (1.1) an epistemiological affinity with pragmatism, (1.2) a set of analytical tools formaking sense of intersubjective meanings and (1.3) a commitment to the idea of social science,
positioned as more plural and more social than was the case in mainstream theories, withacknowledgement for the fact that its insights would be temporary and unstable; (2)postmodernist constructivism- emphasises the linguistic construction of subjects which generates
a discursive practice as fundamental elements of reality and analysis, that is, a logic ofinterpretation marked by complete reserve to cataloging (classifying), various calculations and to
specifying the “real causes”; and (3) naturalistic constructivism- stemming from the assumptionthat it is no longer necessary to select between the insider and outsider perception of social action
or social order, not because social science emulates the natural sciences as was the case withnaturalistic monoism, but because their respective ontologies are virtually identical; scientificresearch of the natural-material and social world is largely oriented toward examining the hidden
and the non-observable, intersubjective aspects of social life mainly exist independently from themental states of most individuals who constitute it.
Constructivist model relates choices associated with a certain type of behaviour to certain
identities and interests that are not presupposed but are of process nature. Within this process,agents acquire and reproduce identities, narratives of what they are, that reversely formulateinterests that are influential in matters of selection of a certain type of behaviour. Nevertheless,without denying the necessity of quantitative research and risking to become “quasi-

Ruggie, J. G. (1998) “What Makes the World Hang Together? Neo-Utilitarianism and the Social Constructivist
Challenge.” International Organization, 52(4): 880-882.

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anachronous”, we succumb to the opinion that questioning of the position of ideas, norms andculture in world politics brings to the foreground interpretative methodological approach. This isdirectly linked to the fact that agents attach meaning to their engagement, those meanings aremodelled through already existing sphere of intersubjective meanings incorporated in thelanguage and other symbols, while the consequences of such meanings can never be perceived in
an adequate way if they are treated as some measurable variables that influence behaviour insome direct or quantified manner. To toe the line, national identity is manifested as one of themost complex cultural-discursive phenomena, which by sheer broadness of its rasp cansignificantly influence perception and creation of the international manifestation if some nationalsociety, primarily seen as a national state, without rejecting a possibility, if not even a rule, thatthe international system influences formulation and reformulation of national identity.
In summa, besides the undeniable importance of identity in the Carl Schmitt’s theoreticalopus, his work cannot be classified as constructivist but as realist. The rationale is that the“demarcation line” between realism and constructivism is not the simplistic dilemma whether
ideas matter, but whether ideas have enough “propulsive” power to transform the international
system into a more just and peaceful world. While some forms of cooperation in the international
system are possible, if only through the direct dependence on material factors, the realistic
answer is, beyond any doubt, no. For Schmitt, collective identity is not relative to the affirmationof the other but rather, the collective perception of the other is expressed by its determination
through the prism of something existentially different, something that provides a counterpoint to
the definition of the collective self. Identity is important, it is based upon integration andchangeable, but its exclusion-basis disables great transformational interventions towards its
harmonization and in theoretical terms, it is primarily associated with self-recognition.
For constructivists, change is possible. The primary guidance for the conduct of states is asocially constructed ideational structure of the international system based on convictions, norms
and rules, which underlies their understanding of the world and actions (as ideas change, so does
the perception of national interests and the actual behaviour). In this context, the formulation andpromotion of the ideas of trust, cooperation and peace can lead to a better world. 145 The
constructivist concept of identity is inherently inclusive, it implies external confirmation,

See Wendt, A. (1992) “Anarchy is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics.”
International Organization, 46(2), 1992, p. 391-425.

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“verification” of one’s own right to exist and, regardless of anypotential rivalries, equality withthe other. Evidently and quite unlike Schmitt's self-recognition, social recognition matters. It is
logical to assume that this mutual promotion between self and other can evolve into a friendship,a friend-friend relationship and lead to an identity that will extend the “friend” to all people of apotential single world state.146 A potential world community could not be by any means reduced
to social ontology characteristic of any particular community. Quite contrary, we are dealing withquite a different concept. 147 Therefore, unlike certain specific community that would base its
identity on dialectical relation of the Sameness and the Otherness, the world community would
emanate from the notion of humanity as a community marked by common natural resources andplanetary habitat.

See Wendt, A. (2003) “Why a World State is Inevitable.” European Journal of International Relations, 9(4),2003, p. 491-542.
147
See Bartelson, J. (2009) Visions of World Community, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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5. Discursive coding of the enemy text in contemporary formulation of international
narratives of Serbia

From the politicological-sociological-anthropological perspective, the production ofenemy is a collective act, it is a phenomenon that can seldom be reduced to an individual’s doing,
it involves social engagement, something in which we all participate together. Hence, theassumption that the enemy is „ontologicaly rooted“ in things or the order of things should bedismissed, while the idea that it is manufactured or socially construed should be wholy
embraced. 148 Thus, at the very nucleus of the construction ofenemy lies the process ofreification. Reification can be defined as the apprehension of results of human activity as if they
were something other than human products, like facts of nature, results of cosmic laws andmanifestation of divine will. 149 In other words, reification is the approach to conceptual
categories as objectified ontological categories, a process involving the transposition of complex
everyday experience in abstract terms, for the sake of their easier management by simplificationand generalisation. Abstractions begin to have experiences of their own, others are reified insocial interactions, losing their concrete livingness in abstraction: people overlook theirauthorship position in relation to the human world, they refuse the responsiblity for the direct
construction of the world, reified world is, hence, by definition, a dehumanised world.
Following the theoretical framework elaborated by Peter Berger and Thomas
Luckmann,150 James Aho outlines several steps or stages in the social construction of an enemy(it is not specified whether all of these stages are necessary or if they follow some precisely
established order): 151 (1) naming or labelling- which serves not only to describe, but also to
discredit, defame or distance Us from Them, as a rhetorical round-off in the design of an enemy
and in the creation of preconditions for his satanization ; (2) legitimation- a formal process ofvalidation through the lens of „licenced“ power of the jurisprudent, legislative, ecclesiastical or
parliamentary provenance, whereby the labelled undergoes the public degradation ceremony in
148 148
Aho, J. (1994) This Thing of Darkness: A Sociology of the Enemy, Seattle: University of Washington Press, p.
26.
149
Berger, P. and Luckmann T. (1991) The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge,
London: Penguin Books, p. 106.
150
See Berger, P. and Luckmann T. (1991) The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology ofKnowledge, London: Penguin Books.
151
Aho, J. (1994) This Thing of Darkness: A Sociology of the Enemy, Seattle: University of Washington Press, p. 2731.

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which his actions are not treated as accidental, but rather as holistic, as part of the totality of evil
(the gestalt of evil); (3) mythmaking- the specificum of this stage is that it can have its own
separate fate as it can be used for the validation of formal legitimation, often making use of themedia as a credible source to support the construction of the enemy through biographical or
historical documenting, ranging from half-truths to total fabrications (the reconstruction of the
background context is more imaginative if ceremonial qualification is absent, let’s add that
efficient mythmaking implies the usage of authoritative jargon compatible with the official„scientific-theoretical“ concept of evil); (4) sedimentation- the constructed myth linked to acertain label transcends the act of naming itself, it becomes separated from its source, original
purpose and becomes an indiscernible part of the everyday and implied “knowledge” of society,a matter of common sense, an indisputable common denominator of all of “us”, something that“everybody knows”, it is transmitted and disseminated through the media, by word of mouth
from person to person or passed from generation to generation; (5) ritualism or ritualizationbecause human memory is unstable, newly-found characterizations must be permanently
embedded, so ritual becomes a remarkable pedagogical tool for this purpose of sustaining thetension and threat in constant reminder of the danger coming from the enemy.
It can be said that the ideational formulation of enemy, in terms of content, presents a setof identity ideas, norms and concepts that constitute a framework for the contemplation of threat,
rivalry and violence. The enemy represents a source of hostile antagonism targeted at our survival
or important goals, whether the hostile attitude is or is not marked by active violence between us(the Group Self) and them (the Group Other). Ideational formulation of the enemy includes
inherited and created normative components (national myths, religious beliefs, normatised
standards of courage, self-sacrifice, violence, etc.), as well as the ways of getting into and out of
conflicts. Two main perspectives associated with the ideational formulation of the enemy are theview of the Self and of the Other. View of the Self implies what a collective has to do whenconfronted with the enemy, understood as a test of strength and value of a collective (this ismanifested through certain rituals, stereotypes and traditional patterns of behavior). The idea of
Other serves to indicate the two characteristics of the collective identity: 152 the relational
dimension, in the sense that identity is always constituted in relation to Others, and the exclusion

152

Rousseau, D. (2006) Identifying Threats and Threatening Identities: The Social Construction of Realism andLiberalism. Stanford: Stanford University Press, p. 12.

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dimension, in the sense that Otherness is delineated by the sphere of collectivity, Other denoting
what the collective self is not. In other words, the texts related to the enemy, as a supplement to asemantic associative set, encompass a broad range of interpretation, from a blasphemer to abarbarian, while all the time linked with a form of radically perceived danger or jeopardy, which
is not necessarily transponded into a manifestation of violence.153
The phenomenon of enmification, more associated with the psychologistical discourse,
can be said to play a crucial part if not in the creation, then certainly in the perpetuation andintensification of enmity.154 Because it vilifies, dehumanizes and fuels antagonism against the
Other, every potentially violent (armed) colision contains the process of enmification as its
indelible precondition or prerequisite. The variety of enemy perceptions suggests that, in addition
to its negative characterisation, the socio-cultural and ideological perspective play an importantpart. Because perceptions of the enemy are extracted from personal experience and are based in
psycho-cultural dispositions idiosyncratic to a particular group culture or political ideology, thecomposition of the enemy identity and intensity of the antagonistic feeling cannot be treated as aresult of some universal rational mechanism. 155 Ergo, the internal power structure andlegitimizing myths, as well as the broader cultural profiling of some political community, can bea nodal point in the understanding and steering of the enmification process. The greater the
degree of incongruency of the value-symbolic narrative codes of a society, along with its
perceived and self-perceived status of vulnerability or instability of a political leadership, it ispossible to anticipate for the process of enmification to gain in socio-cultural-contextual
centrality and momentum. In sum, for an authentic and full interpretation of the enemy narrative,
it is necessary to grasp both the practice of its construction as well as the practice of its
deconstruction.

153

Aho, J. (1994) This Thing of Darkness: A Sociology of the Enemy, op. cit., pp. 107-121. and Aho, J. (1998) The
Things of the World: A Social Phenomenology, London: Praeger, pp. 71-81.; See also Vilho, H. (2000) The Enemy
with a Thousand Faces: The Tradition of the Other in Western Political Thought and History, London: Praeger.
154
Rieber, W. R. and Kelly, R. J. (1991) “Substance and Shadow: Images of the Enemy.” in Rieber, W. R. (ed.) The
Psychology of War and Peace: The Image of the Enemy, New York: Plenum Press, pp. 3-41. and Oppenheimer, L.
(2006) “The Development of Enemy Images: A Theoretical Contribution.” Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace
Psychology, 12(3): 269-292.
155
Szalay, L. B. and Mir-Djalali, E.(1991) “Image of the enemy: Critical parameters, cultural variations.” in Rieber,
R. W. (ed.) The psychology of war and peace: The image of the enemy New York: Plenum Press, pp. 213–250.

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In its stricter sense, the process of enmification includes four stages: 156 (1) registering adanger or threat- aiming to jeopardize, destabilise or devaluate the fundamental sense of the“affective nucleus”, identity; (2) distortion- which enables individuals to reduce or rationalise
contradiction in their lives by justifying their attitudes, beliefs and behaviours, even if their
dominant feature is violence; (3) rigidification- as a form of petrification or reification of theposition that generates hostile imagery and likens stereotypes with the truth, namely „theprotective hermetical isolation“ of identity from possible attacks, as the perpetuation andpersistence of hostility becomes the default component of the history and identity of therespective parties; and (4) collusion- when animosity becomes an integral part of identity, thenthe mutual odium becomes beneficial to the hostile relationship, the maintenance of adversity andconflict potential grows into a unifying group objective, a rallying point or even, a patriotic duty.
Once again, I emphasize that the most acute, but not necessary, form of negative reification is anarmed conflict, which implies the fabrication of enemy as an impersonal entity defined bystereotypes.
More or less, it is possible to register two crucial, if contradictory, principles ofenmification which refer to the “attraction and repulsion“ for the enemy: 157 (1) the similarity
between us and the enemy is evident, but we attribute our own negative traits to the enemy (putanother way, our unconscious generates the nexus between us and the enemy, while consciously
we do not admit any undesirable traits as our own, so we continue to project the difference
between “Them“ and “Us“); and (2) despite reinforcing the distance from our enemies, hostility
still connects ”Us” with ”Them”. The process of enmification is characteristic both of theindividual and collective domains,158 although rooted in the individual, enmification can also be agroup phenomenon when our aversions are arranged around some shared ideological features.
The collective enmification alternative, with its national and international scope, is less rational,
often surpasses the individual empirical frame and thus, susceptible to manipulation for the
purpose of mass mobilization. Hence, it is evident that the ideological narrative constructs at thenational level lead to projecting classification criteria distinguishing ”Us” from the antagonized156

Tidwell, A. C. (1998) Conflict Resolved? A Critical Assessment of Conflict Resolution, New York: Continuum,
135-137.
157
Tidwell, A. C. (1998) Conflict Resolved? A Critical Assessment of Conflict Resolution, op. cit., p. 132.
158
Rieber, W. R. and Kelly, R. J. (1991) “Substance and Shadow: Images of the Enemy.” in Rieber, W. R. (ed.) The
Psychology of War and Peace: The Image of the Enemy, op. cit., pp. 6-8.

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“Others” (who these ”Others” are will depend on the past experience of some other country, fromthe historical constructivist component to who has been labelled as the ”other”).
Bearing this in mind, we can identify destructive ideologies as a specific normative visionof the ideal social arrangement within which some group is identified as the obstructive element
in realising the projected ideological ”utopia”. There are different kinds of destructive
ideologies:159 (1) the “better world” ideologies –based on enhancing the welfare for all people,
except for ideological enemies; (2) nationalist ideologies – focused on power, wealth and agroup’s purity; (3) antagonistic ideologies – characterized by the vertically aligned discreditingof some external group and its perception a hostile species, prepared to inflict some damage uponus; (5) ideologies of superiority- implying the justification of subordination of another groupbased on the inherent superiority of the dominant group, whether due to race, religion orindividual traits; (6) ideologies of development – characterized by projections of economic
progress.
Leaving aside the thesis put forward by some psycho-political studies that we must haveany enemy virtually at all times, this is specific in that it indicates that groups attempt to relieveinternal conflicts and inter-group violence by utilising a shared group imaginarium, stereotypes
or fantasies about the enemy, which is an entirely different posit from the e.g. structural view ofconflict.160 Perceptions refer to beliefs and hypotheses which individuals deem valid. The groupalternative of perceptions is called stereotypes and they will be elaborated further in this paper.
Perceptions and stereotypes about the enemy are a result of the fundamental human need for
identity and of group dynamic. The identity of some individual is largely comprised of his social
identity and is therefore profiled by belonging to a group, which implies systemic comparison,differentiation and distancing from other groups. As already mentioned, intergroup conflicts are
not necessarily violent. In this respect: (1) because every individual has multiple identities,
compatibility among them reduces the probability of violent conflict; (2) inadequate material
conditions characterized by some kind of deprivation intensify existing identity conflicts; (3)chances for violence also increase due to refusal to accept some other identity as this is believed
Staub, E. (1998) “Early Intervention: Prediction and Action.” in Langholtz, H. J. The Psychology of Peacekeeping,
Praeger, London, p. 32.
160
Coleman, M. (1984) “Nuclear Politics in the 1980s.” Journal of Psychohistory, 12(1): 125. Also see Stein, J. G.
“Image, Identity and Conflict Resolution.” in Crocker, C. A., Hampson, F. O. and Aall, P. (eds.) Managing Global
Chaos: Sources of and Responses to International Conflict, Washington: United States Institute of Peace Press, pp.
93-111.
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to have an adverse effect on an individual’s own identity; (4) egocentric tendencies may lead to
exaggerating someone’s actions in the sense that they are targeted at us; (5) someone’s actions
are often evaluated in the dimension of personality rather than situational factors; (6) identity
conflicts are often utilised in the pursuit of political goals, as an easiest strategy in the countries
characterised by deep rifts and their elites’ proclivity for mass media control.
The role of public discourses in strengthening ethnic stereotypes and contemporary
mythical images is primary, these expressions are characterised by axiomaticism and lack ofargumentation. Meaning of the arguments is acquired by stereotypes by relying on social,political and ideological context; that contents of meanings of stereotypes adapt to the changes insocial reality but also that by stereotypical strategies can be altered even notions about them. In
scientific, especially politicological discourse, reductions of meanings of stereotypes to therhetoric of simplifying truths about “ours” and “them”, “us” and “others”, i.e. ethnic distance thatis manifested in overestimating of “ours” and underestimating of “theirs”, are amply present;
however, even though it is one of its manifestations, it is not a whole truth about its nature andsocial functions; stereotypes represent unavoidable mechanisms of our psychological constitution,
our cognition and socio-psychological processes in general. As a manifestation of the necessity oflanguage (thought) economy, in other words simplification and equalisation- typification ofnotions of the world, sterotype is not merely a verbal reality but something that even on semantic
level possesses a value of “a primary realia”.
Those are historically changeable, but still stable everyday categorisations, typificationsof the surroundings. As such stereotypes have a vital cognitive function. As systems of social
adaptation and demarcation, stereotypes have also an important social role. In the sphere ofeveryday and public communication they codify behaviour in different situations, which makes
them important social landmarks. 161 Particularly significant to our issue is also the fact that
cultural identity is actually constituted via cultural stereotypes, understood as systems ofpromotional postulates, or as structures of perception/interpretation of the world, in the sense of
the series of concepts that are schematised through socialisation and education. The basis of theseRot, K. (2000) Slike u glavama (Images in the minds), Beograd, XX vek and Krug, p. 260 and Đerić, G. (2005)
Prvo lice množine: kolektivno samopoimanje i predstavljanje- mitovi, karakteri, mentalne mape i stereotipi (First
Person Plural: Collective Selfawareness and Representation- Myths, Characters, Mental Maps and Stereotypes),
Beograd: Institut za filozofiju i društvenu teoriju and Filip Višnjić, pp. 34, 36, 42-43.

161

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processes makes capability of symbolisation and comprehension of the meaning which provide acommon context for the interpretation of the world.162
In the domain of public political application a pragmatic importance of stereotypes isparticularly prominent, in the form of the effects of ideological mobilisation of their meanings.
This is possible because they play an important role also in strengthening of common notions ofevery collective, via clear value attributes. As such, stereotypes play an important role instrengthening of the group cohesion; by marking the boundaries between group members andthose that are not, they enable group identification (whether it is defined via gender, age,profession, kinship, language, religion, or via ethnic, cultural affiliation, identification with anation or state) and represent vital factors in construction of both individual and social/national
identity. 163 For the issue that we deal with, particularly important are ethnic stereotypes, asclichéd, formulaic and axiomatic notions which (the same as national myths, national
characterology and national space-time “topography”) represent forms of narratives by whichcollective convictions and self-comprehension are expressed.
Ethnic stereotypes are quite often equated to prejudices, as judgments that exist even
before a personal experience of an individual within a certain group and that an individual
accepts without any verification, and which originate from the interaction of affective stances andmainly cognitive stereotypes, are acquired early and non-critically accepted, therefore they
represent a basis for the inception of affective clichés about “enemy”. There is a thin line between
a stereotype as a simplifying and generalising stance on the qualities of some social group or its
members and a prejudice as a point of view on the same that has a negative connotation. In its
extreme form, negative and destructive side of the stereotype is evident in the phenomena ofracism, chauvinism, anti-Semitism and xenophobia related to it.164 A stereotype is strengthened
through repetition in everyday and public usages, while its negation does not lead to automatic
rebuttal. For that very reason, the possibility of its political instrumentalisation makes it apotential danger, since expansion and the meaning of the facts of realistic explanations,

Golubović, Z. (1999) Ja i drugi: antropološka istraživanja individualnog i kolektivnog identiteta (I and Other:
Anthropological Studies of Individual and Collective Identity), Beograd: Republika, pp. 33.
163
Rot, K. (2000) Slike u glavama (Images in the minds), op. cit., pp. 275-277.
164; Đerić, G. (2005) Prvo lice množine: kolektivno samopoimanje i predstavljanje- mitovi, karakteri, mentalne mapei stereotipi ((First Person Plural: Collective Selfawareness and Representation- Myths, Characters, Mental Mapsand Stereotypes), op. cit., p. 3; and Rot, K. (2000) Slike u glavama (Images in the minds), op. cit., pp. 260-261
162

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stereotypes acquire precisely in the times of political tensions, thus becoming overly valuenuanced, stiff prejudices which inevitably influence reaching the political estimates.
Under the circumstances, ethnic categories become referential points for the political
identity, through which leaders and/or political elites perform political mobilisation, the ethnic
awareness is politicised and becomes the foundation of the ideology.165 Ethnic stereotypes, in theform of national character, mythical reminiscence and mapping of the national space and time, as
the three forms of narrative they use to express themselves, construct beliefs and selfunderstandings via language. All three of them stand at the disposal of the discourses of national
representation, i.e. possibilities of their ideological and political usage.
The most common meaning of the term stereotype, which is of utmost significance, isrelated to ethnic stereotypes as simple sketches of characteristics and values of a nation. As
narrations through which convictions about collectives are verbalised, they are characterised by ahigh level of viability in the public sphere, since they constitute the basis of a national
representation discourse. To politics ethnic and ideological stereotypes are indispensable; itcreates, nurtures and uses them. Within the context of political/ideological directing, ethnic
stereotypes can be viewed as language clichés through which both a notion of a certain group anda general social situation are being mystified. A treatment of ethnic stereotypes in science quite
often has a similar function: when stereotypes are understood as objective, real “characteristics”
of a people/nation or when by referring to the widespread use of a certain stereotype social
phenomena are explained. In both cases, analyses do not restrain to indicating “the physiognomyof the people”, they confirm or reevaluate the real condition, settle one image, indicate
accuracy/inaccuracy of conclusions about a certain phenomenon, justify political will or right ofthe stronger. Through stereotypes a new value order is established, diverse interests expressed,
certain standpoints, concepts defended, and being used to persuade.
Resorting to a stereotype is a sign of necessity of systematisation and simplification of not
only the cognition processes, but also intellectual inertness and ideological impressionability andachieving concord on values and their meanings. As a simple way to recognition of a common
evaluation stereotype encompasses mobilisation of meanings in one direction and is theexpression of the interpretation in one way only, with a predictable outcome. It is not about “aGolubović, Z. (1999) Ja i drugi: antropološka istraživanja individualnog i kolektivnog identiteta (I and Other:
Anthropological Studies of Individual and Collective Identity), op.cit., pp. 77.

165

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grain of truth” or “truthful core” of a stereotype but a success of functioning in a given context
and fulfillment of truth of a set context.166 Stereotypes can be examined from a more general
aspect, without boundaries of internal characterisation through interactive dynamics of thesameness and the difference in principle, as they serve for the positioning in a contemporary or
historical context. Characterisation of a nation is inseparable from the other universal
standardizations, such as those towards cultural achievements, openness or clannishness of asocial structure. On stereotype based comparative qualifying practices are of a prime significancein self-identification of a nation and its perception in a broader context. Similar to regulatory
principles, which depending on the context are filled with diverse contents, such qualifications
surpass the relevance of contrasting and identifying diversity, since they emphasise it as apermanent term.167
A collective evaluation of the members of other nations is manifested in the form ofmobilisation of “preserved” knowledge and a fundamental attitude to it, which is made topical inencounter with some member. Mobilisation of notions that have a tendency of being made true ata certain point has its footing in the sphere of “symbolic topography” of a nation, from which theargumentation for constituting of the credibility of a current sense is drawn. Thus symbolic points
of identification become argumentation for the relationship that they topicalise. Topicalised
typifications can be analysed in the sense of specific needs of a given moment and adaptation tonovelty in the social reality, forthcoming events, or of a symptom of a necessity of change.
Within the context of national identification, myths belong to the so-called basic identificators,
side by side with language and religion. The analysis of the domain of understanding mythicalnarrations in everyday discourse shows dominant viability of a name or formula by which ismyth represented at the expense of its meaning. The fact that contents of the myth and its
meaning is forgotten indicates not only the importance of a domain of clichéd, linguisticallyreduced communicability and transferability of mythic narratives but the importance of insight
into what of the original myth is forgotten and what remembered and accented through current
mythic reminiscences. Mythical names and formulae themselves are the carriers of certain beliefsĐerić, G. (2005) Prvo lice množine: kolektivno samopoimanje i predstavljanje- mitovi, karakteri, mentalne mapei stereotipi ((First Person Plural: Collective Selfawareness and Representation- Myths, Characters, Mental Mapsand Stereotypes), op. cit.,, pp. 42-43.
167
Ibidem, op.cit., pp. 76.
16681

and images of sense on which myth actually is sustained. A name-symbol does not explain, but
simply contain and produces the meaning.
Mythological story in a current political setting and public use in general, is not a story
from the oral tradition but applicable cliché or linguistic stereotype, a reference andargumentation in ideological use. By placing into the context of a contemporary situation,
formulae derived from mythical narrations codify and direct the reality itself, transforming into afundamental argument of political mobilisation for certain agents. In the process of politicalmobilisation, constituents of the mythical identification can gain and lose significance. For thatreason in the analysis of social phenomena, it is more logical to ask questions about assumptions
that insist on social functions of discourses propped against mythological story. Reduced
discursive representation of a national myth, in the sense of expression through derived formulae,
opens the possibility of studying this phenomenon as a stereotype. In such a usage myths are“standardised and stereotyped narrations of national history, which highlight what is important incultural remembrance and indicate the foundations of community association”. By objectifying
relevant parts of the common history, myths gain permanent strength of symbolic directing
identification.
Mutual and unbreakable links between myth and language ensure permanency. Myth isconditioned by discourse which expresses in time established descriptive and value relation to acollective; that link is linguistic and functional: in myths symbolic collective accents areunderlined, which become a basis of stereotypisation of collective self-understanding andnational identification. As they are narrational and expressed via formulaic statements, or
language, both myths and stereotypes are determined by the totality of linguistic conditions of acollective. 168 Mythological notions possess a significant stability and in everyday discourse
irrespective of environment changeability, because of them being deeply rooted in historical andcultural remembrance and because of the adaptability of both stereotypes and mythic narratives tocurrent circumstances. The subject matter of myths and stereotypes, as well as the phenomena
themselves, are strong points of every community. They give a specific nuance and depth to what
is understood as collective memory for the very fact that they are related to current perceptions of
the social reality.

168

Ibidem, op.cit., pp. 33.

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Before we get into the deconstruction of the Serbian idea of enemy, it would be useful topoint out the ideational setting of enmity in the Second Yugoslavia. Yugoslav political-cultural
code was basically constructed on two forms of enmity, founded, only seemingly, on theideological premisesof class. The first form was the internal enemy (all those “reactionaryregressive” social elements, individuals or groups, who professed a certain type of change thatwas incompatible with the idealcommunist programme of the socialist community organization
within the Yugoslav federation), while the other was the external enemy (in a variant of an“expected” capitalist enemy or the variant of the “paradoxical” Soviet enemy). Internal enemy
was divided into several subgroups spanning, ideologically speaking, a wide ideologicallandscape, from pro-liberal insistence on increasing civil liberties to an extreme nationalist
ideology. Bound by the iconography and narratives resulting from the ritual manifestations ofbrotherhood and unity of nations and nationalities and the foreign policy doctrine of peacefulcoexistence and nonalignment, Yugoslav identity found its “proto-symbolic” line in a
multinational fight against fascism, substantially reinforced by the simultaneous struggle against
national class forces (“traitors”). In other words, the Yugoslav class revolution was, from its
conception, branded with an absurd national prefix. Within the fully fledged political oxymoron“national communism”, workers equality was intensely covered by national equality, that was toreveal its universalist, anational “class sublimation” on the federal level.
In this respect, the Yugoslav identity was primarily related to the multinational anti-fascist
courage, multinational anti-fascist sacrifice, multinational anti-fascist allegiance, as the symbolicand value revivalist of Yugoslavism, that was to upgrade itself in the second instance by classcomponents in a monolithic, one-party (yet federal) discourse. Not even the concept of selfmanagement could avoid this national value prefix. From the 1974 Constitution of the Socialist
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia introduced ethnic federalism, a space was opened for the full
flourishment of separate national identities. Of course, national histories became the basis for“invented traditions”, that established continuity with the past. Invented tradition means practiceof ritual or symbolic nature, openly controlled or manifested by tacitly accepted rules aiming toinstill certain values and norms of behavior in the short period of time through repetition,83

implying a link with the past. 169 The moment national intolerance became the main politicaldistinction, internal tension peaked and the war in Yugoslavia became inevitable.
At this point, let’s attempt to determine more precisely the natural and unnatural enemy.
For Socrates, natural enmity is that between Hellenes and barbarians, whereas conflict among
the Hellenes, natural friends, points to a disease of Hellas and is called discord. 170 Therefore,
while hostility between Hellenic poleis and barbarians represents something understood andexpected, corresponding to a diametrical opposition of these two value- existential systems per se,
hostility and warfare between the Hellenic poleis is a manifestation of something deviant andproblematic. For a specific group of people, category of the natural enemy will depend on thedescription and/or selection of enemy properties or combination of properties set in theforeground (racial attributes, national attributes, religious attributes, ideological attributes, etc.).
Ergo, this sets the purpose of identifying with one group rather than another and the very
substantial base of distinction. Identification of the natural enemy helps to label others who aresimply different from others who pose a far more serious challenge (threat) to the unity of thecollective we belong to, and to whom no legal or ethical norms apply in a potential war.
In the context of ex-Yugoslavia, natural enemies were all those who in any way posed athreat to the party's revolutionary elite, or to the legacy (tradition) created under its influence of
the National Liberation struggle, as the pillar of genuine socialist system, based on ideologicallypresupposed “national-class” or “national workers” unity. Thus, in the period immediately afterWorld War II, we could identify as “pure” or natural Yugoslav enemies: the United States,
epitome of the Western Bloc's imperialist-capitalist model, and the full spectrum of internal
enemies (“fifth column”). To avoid any confusion, the certainty of the natural enemy provides acertain hermeneutical security by allowing the option that hostility does not end in a war, while
identifying the absolute enemy implies deploying all (available) combat resources until its final
elimination or neutralization. As the center of the Eastern Bloc's statist-authoritarian variant of
the socialist model, the USSR became a threat to the Yugoslav party elite and class revolution
and after the famous Cominform Resolution of 1948, a former ideological friend was culturally
turned into an enemy.

Hobsbawm, E. (1985)͆Introduction: Inventing Traditions.” in Hobsbawm, E. and Ranger, T. (eds.) The Inventionof Tradition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 1.
170
Platon (1983) Država (The Republic), op. cit., 470c, p. 160.
169

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However, the construction of differences did not lead to the process of demonisation (bycreating an evil enemy); on the symbolic plane, it stopped at the level of the “natural” enemy(due to various factors: a shared anti-fascist struggle, somewhat similar clichés of class victims,
oppression, heroism, etc.): possible armed conflict existed as an option, but the one-party
dominance received yet another mythological zone of distinction of only potentially violent
nature. A value-consistent and stabilized matrix of reasoning and behavior was created, Yugoslav
identity substantively “attempted” to mythologically surpass the bipolar division of the world(thus gravitation toward Third World countries is not surprising), while failing to incorporate, interms of values, national mythology in it. National myths proved to be culturally more persistent,
at the very least, national myths sprang from a few central motifs: the golden age, the warrior
ideal, sacrifice, martyrdom, treason, conspiracy, salvation and charismatic savior, 171 they
absorbed their parallel Yugoslav mythological counterparts, in spite of the heavy propaganda
machinery of manipulation supervised and directed by the party’s elite (and added to state
repression).
The war began with the “mapping of the enemy” in which Serbs and Montenegrins, as afriendly “unified” national option, had a shared status of absolute (mortal) enemies with the
Croats, Bosniaks and Albanians. This constellation is consistent with the understanding that theultimate evil is at its source conceptualized through the distinction at the level of enemies who
had had some form of friendship, in the case of the second Yugoslavia: living in a common
federal state founded on the ideal of brotherhood and unity of nations and nationalities, rather
than on the distinction associated with external enemies. 172 To this we can also add the fact thatthe type of hostility is always directed to the construction of essential differences that did notexist before the confrontation itself (in the case of Serbs and Croats, and Serbs and Muslims, thisprocess could be expressed as “narcissism of small differences”).173 The formulation of these new
differences often generates violence, because of the imposed need for the unambiguous, rigid
substrate of hostility, which is value-intense enough to express the new collective other andjustify entry into war.

171

Tismaneanu, V. (1998) Fantasies of Salvation: Democracy, Nationalism and Myth in Post-Communist Europe.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998, p. 9.
172
See Pagels, E. (1996) The Origin of Satan: How Christians Demonized Jews, Pagans, and Heretics, New York:
Vintage Books.
173
Ignatieff, M. (1998) The Warrior's Honor: Ethnic War and the Modern Conscience, New York: Henry Holt andCompany, p. 38.

85

The Serbian conceptual formulation of the enemy, as an expression of the vernacular,
mythical and libertarian political culture, was significantly built around the myth of Kosovo andthe associated set of abstract notions of the “ultimate” enemy (or, so to speak, the abstract“dušmanin”): 174 a highly placed national allegory of an anonymous, non-specific enemy (interms of its perceptively sublimateded timeless model) who must be resisted or else, the Serbian
identity is lost. At this level, we can identify the main implications of the Kosovo myth: at: (1)the idea of “celestial enemy” based on the idea of the “celestial people” (2) the “celestial enemy”
represents something more unjust, so an important provision for all Serbian enemies is a higher,
diabolical or great injustice, they are morally positioned as an evil per se, (3) the “celestial
enemy” is not only a national enemy, he is a general evil, to defeat the enemy meant to restore
justice throughout the Christian world, (4) considering that the Serbian “celestial people” isfighting the “celestial enemy”, it is essentially also a liberating people, the people of freedom,
and an a priori just people. Let us add to this: (1) the idea of self-importance- the fact that the
Serbian living space was always within the sphere of interests of the dominant world powers,
who always tended toward restricting its freedom, the Serbs essentially were in the “permanent”
state of war so they have, accordingly, developed a very strong collective identity; 175 (2) the ideaof the importance and sacrifice- Serbs do not go to war with the small, “epigones and satellites”
of great powers, but always with the most powerful, so every sacrifice is justified if it leads toconservation or struggle for independence; and (3) the idea of “civilizational amalgamation” andthe ingratitude of the neighboring nations- Serbs have always represented the Occident for the
Orient, and the Orient for the Occident, while those they brought freedom to always found areason to declare them tyrants.
All this, in concurrence with Slobodan Milosevic's authoritarian system, based on
instrumented mythological constructions of war as an “armageddonesque” collision between“capitalism and socialism”, “liberalism and social democracy of the Swedish type”, and the final
showdown with the New World Order, led to treating nations from the region as indirect bearersof great evil, thus making them enemies against whom all means were allowed and against whomruthlessness was asked and required. The ideal of Milosevic's enemy was the absolute enemy,

Dušmanin (from Turkish dusman- enemy), word connotatively associated with moral corruption, that is moral
evil, in Serbian laguage, while the word “enemy” excludes extreme moral implications.
175
Matić, M. (1998) Srpska politička tradicija (Serbian Political Tradition), Belgrade: Insitut za političke studije, p.
26.
174

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materialized as the United States and the European Union, clearly marked as global and ultimate
evil in a binary moral code, whose polarity of “Milosevic's Serbian good” was underlined bypopulist ideological premises based on the selective use of history and the metaphors of struggle
against class and neo-colonial oppression characteristic of the discourse of the Second
Yugoslavia. Milosevic's hate speech was made up of emotional pathos that, at the symbolic level,
always inclined to be anational in explaining all the actions undertaken in favour of the war (heonly protected the rights of Serbs), while its dramatic nature always implied vengeful rhetoric of
the one unjustly attacked by domestic traitors, ustaša-like 176 elements and Islamic
fundamentalists. Finally, the path that began at the celebration of the 600th anniversary of theBattle of Kosovo in 1989 finished with the loss of that same Kosovo 11 years later, in anenvironment defined by mortal foes.
Things changed with the democratic transformation that took place in Serbia. Thesetransformations can be interpreted from the Max Weber and Edward Shils perspective inunderstanding of the concept of charisma.177 In fact, in modern (mass) democracies, status andfunctioning of political parties is perhaps the most striking example of possible Weberian
installation (institutionalization) of the charismatic principle in the political life of a community.
Due to the fact that the position of a party as opposed to an administrative bureaucracy is marked
by the absence of coercion, it must win the elections in order to achieve its own goals throughextrapolation (appropriation) of state funds and power. Agents of change in the setting of politicalvalues of a particular democratic system are, therefore, political leaders and their parties, they are
the only ones able to control and alter a particular institutional structure. Those who take anelectoral victory are able to legitimize the proclaimed values, first at the charismatic level andlater at the legal-rational level, those who fail must wait for the next election cycle. The
participation of masses in the political process results in two political arrangements: “democracywith a leader” and “democracy without a leader”. The contemporary Serbia can be seen as“democracy without a leader”.

176
Ustaša- member of Croatian Revolutionary Movement, fascist and terrorist organization which was active before,
during and after World War II.
177
See Weber, M. (1978) Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology. Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press.; Shils, E. (1958) “Tradition and Liberty: Antinomy and Interdependence.“ Ethics, 68(3): 153-165.;
Shils, E. (1965) “Charisma, Order, and Status.“ American Sociological Review, 30(2): 199-213.; and Shils, E. (1975)
Center and Periphery: Essays in Macrosociology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

87Liberal “democracy without a leader” annuls the competition for fundamental politicalvalues, symbolic (political-cultural) frame of a regime, the electoral process is in a “politicalhibernation”, reduced to a public applause, adulation to or manipulation with masses for the sakeof state functions or, in other words, of authority, and the problem of accountability issignificantly increased. On the one hand, the template of such a position of political charisma
implies that every time a (liberal) value structure of a democratic leadership (that is far below thethreshold of a revolution, but certainly above the threshold of political reformism) is overlooked,
when it is taken as unquestionable in the architecture of democratic systems, the entire
democratic model is in danger of bureaucratization, i.e. the value treatment of the bureaucraticsystem per se (this certainly implies the view of democracy as a constant inquiring value andnormative concept). On the other hand, this suggests the co-existence of democratically profiled
charismatic value and symbolic templates that are in a state of constant competition and evenconflict of different charismas in democratic institutions- the one that has yet to enter the processof routinization and the one that has already been institutionalized, and also the possibility of theemergence of charisma not only in crisis situations but also in the regular functioning of thedemocratic system.
Shils’ setting suggests that in a complex democratic situation we can speak of someone
who gets a larger or smaller amount of charisma by the very act of belonging to a certain
institution (and it expresses its closeness to the “transcendent” state of affairs), by the position(higher or lower) or role (significant or more marginal) he/she takes in a certain institution (atthat: charisma tends to be spread across the whole institutional distribution of a socio-politicalorder) and, independently of the previous two elements that position charismatic principle asvalue, symbolic and ideological connective tissue of a social-political order, by his/herindividually proclaimed and collectively accepted charismatic singularity as a generator of
institutional (social and political) changes. In my opinion, such conceptual positioning of
charisma in democracies cannot be marked as “obfuscation” of the balance of powers, but as
inevitable trait of a democratically acquired authority. When extreme, the state force (coercion) is
a democratic legitimate power, if it was partly charismatically (valuably) verified by the will of
the people. For Shils, if my interpretation is correct, there is a difference between being
charismatic and a charismatic, that is, someone is charismatic for being, for example, a holder ofthe role of the state president, because the institution of the state president is already charismatic,88

and because he/she won the votes of the charismatic electorate or the people (citizens). Anyone
who is institutionally charismatic may not be a charismatic, in terms of special giftedness and thechange of institutions. For Weber, if we accept the previous distinction, a charismatic precedes
being charismatic,that is, the institutionalization or routinization of charisma; charisma is partly
cyclical: it ranges from one charismatic to another, with declines in intensity through the processof routinization or institutionalization, but never so it completely disappears as an institutional
element.
The current political leadership of Serbia draws its charismatic background almost
entirely from the realized democratic metamorphosis on the line of Shils' systemic charismatic
matrix. Ergo, the separation of the Serbian Progressive Party from the Serbian Radical Party, led
in September 2008 by Tomislav Nikolic, the President of the Republic of Serbia, and Aleksandar
Vucic, the First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defence of the Republic of Serbia, andalso the European “turn” of Ivica Dacic, the Prime Minister and Minister of Interior of the
Republic of Serbia and the former Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Internal Affairs of the
Republic of Serbia in the Government of Mirko Cvetkovic, shouldn’t actually be treated as
charismatic turning points, acts of individual charismatic “inauguration”. The idea is that in theabove cases it is the case of the final shift away from “bad” charismatic leaders, negation ofradicalistic premises of the “Seseljism” of Vojislav Seselj and the “Slobism” of Slobodan
Milosevic, than of promoting new and authentic charismatic figures, of distancing that was moreor less a mere political survival tactic. More precisely: it was more of a process of a unique “decharismatisation”, of subversion of charismatic movements whose followers they were, in the
direction of the inversion of a personal charismatic potential with the charismatic background ofan emerging democratic socio-political context. Such political moves implied a new historicalinstance in the Serbian political space. It is about a democratic value matrix that axiomaticallyprofiled and postulated a possible cultural and symbolic content of their “pseudo-charismatic”
manifestation determined by a democratic institutional structure, that is, by a democratic politicalsystem. At play, therefore, is not a personal charisma or institutional charisma of Weberian
provenance, but the identification of a potential personal charismatic code with the democraticsystemic charismatic code. This shift in the charismatic coding of Serbian leadership is analogous
with recoding of Serbian enemies: perception of the Yugoslav nations and NATO states shifts

89

from “evil dušmanin” to normal enemies, with whom it is possible and necessary to negotiate,
regardless of any potential disputes and disagreements.

90

6. Discursive coding of the enemy text in the contemporary formulation of international
narratives of Japan

In the broadest historical context, the economic significance of Asia manifested throughinitial establishment of trade relations, dates back to Hellenic era. At the beginning of XIX
century China accounted for 28% and India 16% of the total global GDP, while midcentury, as aresult of “western colonisation”, this conjunction was radically changed. 178 A period of
approximately 150 years of Asian economic depression and Euro-American domination ensued.
That led to the global GDP of East Asia amount to 4% in the 60s of the past century.179 Quite
contrary, present-day “Asian economic Phoenix” encompasses four particularly significant world
economies: Japan, India, China and South Korea; and the overall Asian economic situation canbe safely evaluated as a driving force of the global economy, with participation of East Asia in
the global GDP rising to 25%. It is worth mentioning that distinction between Asia and East Asia(or pro-Western expression “Far East”) actually should indicate dominantly regional, rather thancontinental dimension, of economic transformations, which clearly suggests that final outcome ofidentifiction of the East-Asian region, is without doubt of economic nature.
I will agree with the thesis that one of the most recurrent analytical approaches in
researching the historical, cultural and social dimensions of Japan can be identified as theobliteration of theoretical discourse for the sake of underscoring the implicit and genuine
premises of the Japanese cultural “being”.180 Alternatively, even when applying some theoreticalframework, which, as a rule, is of Western provenance, it represents a kind of imposed theoreticalelaboration of the national issue through, more or less, fixed facts particular to the Japaneseculture. The problem with the first analytical (“indigenist”) variation is that it would beinconceivable to undertake any cultural analysis that would exclude theoretical premises and alsothat any indigenous research employ a specific theoretical starting point that implies theincompatibility of social and cultural systems. In any case, the approach is extracted from thetheoretical postulates of the incompatibility of the Japanese (oriental) culture with Western theory
as a reflection of Occidental cultural space and represents a (latent or implicit) manifestation ofcultural imperialism. At the same time indigenous research in its broadest sense can be defined as
178

See Madison, A. The World Economy: A Millennial Prospective. OECD, Paris. 2001.
Dent, C. M. East Asian Regionalism. op. cit., p. 2.
180
Doak, K. (2007) A History of Nationalism in Modern Japan: Placing the People, Leiden: Brill, pp. 1-36.
179

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the studying of authentic local phenomena at the level of their local (emic) and global (etic)
implications.
At the beginning, I will identify key historical instances that outline the contours of theJapanese evolutional model (more for the purpose of orientation and sequencing than as acomprehensive analytically determining method): the Jomon period- from 10 000BC to 300BC;
the Yayoi period - from 300BC to 300AD; the Yamato period- from 300AD to 645AD; theAsuka period - from 645 to 710; the Nara period- during which the imperial palace at Nara wasbuilt, and in addition to Shintoism, the official religion of the imperial family, the spreading of
Buddhism as state religion begins; the Heian period- from 794 to 1185, the imperial court
relocates to today’s Kioto (Heyan kyo) and buddhism spreads among the people; the Kamaruka
period- from 1185 to 1333, when the samurai become the ruling social stratum; the Muromachi
period- from 1333 to 1568; the Azuchi Momoyama period- from 1568 to 1600, during which thecountry’s unification and of a range of political and economic reforms were begun; the Edo or
Tokugawa period- from 1600 to 1868, trade is expanding, even with European countries, society
is increasingly stratifying and diplomatic relations with the US are officially established; theMeiji period- from 1868 to 1912, when after the civil war the Charter Oath, as a kind of the firstmodern Japanese Constitution is formulated, providing for a unified Council of State comprisin
Upper and Lower House, presidential cabinet and five state ministries (for religion, war,international affairs and justice), this period coincides with Japan’s rise to the status of world
power; the Taisho period- from 1912 to 1926; the Showa period - from 1912 to 1989, after WorldWar II Japan amended its Constitution (1947), reaffirming the role of the Parliament and newpolitical parties were created; and the Hensei period- from 1989 to the present.
Japan’s social, political and cultural development from centralised feudalism, throughautoritarian state, to the democratic industrial society differs from its European counterpart,
despite some evident similarities, in one essential feature. 181 Namely, while the European
evolutionary model, during the transition from feudalism, involves class disputes between
reactionary conservatives and marxistically profiled class of the poor, the consesual form ofpolitics prevailed in Japan during the breakup with the feudal paradigm. The Japanesetransformation into a modern bureaucratic state, accomplised during the Meiji era, is marked

181

Pye, L. W. and Pye, M. W. (1985) Asian Power and Politics: The Cultural Dimensions of Authotity, Camnbridge:
The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, pp. 158-160.

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several academically intriguing characteristics: (1) extraordinary speed of the metamorphosis
from the shogunate system into a modern bureaucratic one; (2) absence of charismatic leadership;(3) efficiency and ease with which different opposing and potentially conflicting elements wereconsolidated into some form of pacification, harmony or order; and (4) the transition of the basic
Japanese cultural code from a distinct national, virtually total introversion to the national
extroversion, marked with a pursuit of more perfect or propulsive practice models in virtually allthat concerns the political or economic sphere, while minding that the system of its own
traditions was not devastated in the process. To a greater or lesser degree, Japanesetransformation process succeeded in realising the transposition of power as a monopolistic
attribute of some dominant, monopolist class or ascriptive group into a power associated with anational consensus.
As already suggested in the part dealing with identity, one theoretical strand in themodern approach to nationalism treats the nation as the newly-constituted and historicallycontingent form of collective identity that never achieve or fulfil the self-proclaimed contentions
related to their common purpose and primordial basis. Having this in mind, one of the major
dilemmas related to the deconstruction of the Japanese national narrative can be expressed as a aquest for modernity without the loss of identity.182 There has been a shift in emphasis from thenation that is synonymous with the state, towards indigenous identities profiled as non-Western,
to opposing tradition to the modern state as an expression of the imagery of westernisation whichattempts to assert its inclination for the statist understanding of the national culture ashegemonious over other social and cultural traditions. Often marginalised or particularly
overlooked in the discourse on Japanese nationalism has been the history of perceiving thenation per se as a single ethnic corpus, as well as the tension between the ethnic (I would say:generic) nation and the political state. Japanese nationalist narratives, as a result of
marginalisation of the ethnic imagination, are usually equalent to the narratives of thewesternised and glorified state; there has been a scholarly neglect of the narrative of ethnic(generic) nation and a more naturalised vision of the community (often suggested as important
categories in understanding the Japanese perception of nation).
For a proper understanding of Japanese national discourse it is necessary, above all, tocomprehend theoretical projection of “ultra-nationalism” (chō-kokkashugi) of Masao Maruyama,
182

Tanaka, S. (1996) Japan's Orient: Rendering Pasts into History. Berkeley: University of California Press, p. 3.

93one of the greatest postwar Japanese political thinkers.183 It would be wrong to understand this
proposition as a universal championing of radical nationalism, as it is rather surpassing or apeculiar substitute for a state. To a greater or lesser extent, we deal with an inadequate
interpretation of the essay Theory and Psychology of Ultra-Nationalism that is predominantly
oriented to clarification of the political context that characterised Japan during World War II. 184
In fact, Maruyama’s main intention is not utter discredit of nationalism, but distinction between
healthy, post-war nationalism, a combination of democracy and civic nationalism (kokuminshugi),
and a malign pole, ultra-nationalism or state militarism of Japanese imperialism. To this should
be definitely added the articulation of an alternative concept of ethnic national awareness(minzokushugi).
Fundamentally speaking, when we discuss Japanese national narrative, we can distinguishits three variants: (1) kokuminshugi- based on the concept of kokumin, nation organised in apolitical entity, which does not necessarily have to be derived from ethnic principle; (2)minzokushugi- based on the concept of minzoku, nation understood as predominantly ethic
comunity; and (3) kokkashugi- based on favouring or glorification of the state (kokka), on its
positioning above everything else, even nation itself. Differentiation of various defintions ofnation and nationalism (ethnic nationalism, political nationalism, cultural nationalism, civic
nationalism, etc.) is relatively quite novel to the western political thought.185
Bearing that in mind, when we focus on cultural nationalism it should be emphasised that
it is not a conceptual variation or modification, but rather an “aggregative” concept that informs
us how ideologies mobilise identity within a range of distinguished modes of nationalism, i.e.
how different forms of nationalism are mobilised via cultural discourse. It could be said that
cultural nationalism (bunka nashonarizumu) is oriented towards renewal of a national community
through creation, preservation or strengthening cultural identity in those moments of crisis when183

See Marauyama, M. (1969) Thought and Behaviour in Modern Japanese Politics, London: Oxford University
Presss and Doak, K. (2007) A History of Nationalism in Modern Japan: Placing the People, Leiden: Brill.
184
Marauyama, M. (1969) Thought and Behaviour in Modern Japanese Politics, op. cit., pp. 1-24. and Gayle, C. A.
(2001) “Progressive Representations of the Nation: Early Post-war Japan and Beyond.” Social Science Japan
Journal, 4(1): 1-19.
185
See Yoshino, K. (1992) Cultural Nationalism in Contemporary Japan: A Sociological Enquiry, London:
Routledge.; Ignatieff, M. (1993) Blood and Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism, Toronto: Penguin
Canada.; Stilz, A. (2009) “Civic Nationalism and Language Policy.” Philosophy & Public Affairs, 37(3): 257-292.;
Mason, A. (2000) Community, Solidarity and Belonging: Levels of Community and Their Normative Signifcance,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.; and McKim, R. and McMahan, J. (eds.) (1997) Tne Morality of
Nationalism, New York: Oxford University Press.

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it is perceived to be endangered, missing or inadequate. Civic nationalism, unlike ethnic which
gives prominence to a certain ethnic group within a society, presupposes that social collective
identity and political sovereignty emanate from adherence to a certain set of values, notencumbered by favouring race, religion, gender, language or ethnicity, i.e. valid for all territorialcomponent encompassed states. It should be also added that political nationalism is oriented
toward realisation of a representative state and for relational political community and assertion ofcivil rights to its members, thus enabling the experience and functioning of a common politicalcommunity.
The phenomenon of intellectual nationalism, captured by the term nihonjinron, is also
relevant for the understanding of the Japanese nationalism. It literally means the “discussion
about Japan” and it refers to the reinvention, recalibration and redefinition of the Japanese“uniqueness” and distinctiveness. 186 In relation to the primary nationalism of the pre-war andwartime Japan, nihonjinron denotes the secondary, post-war variant of the Japanese nationalism.
Simultaneously, it is also designated as the “resurgent cultural nationalism” as opposed to the“prudent revivalist nationalism”, which seeks to annul negative attitudes to some elements of the“old, primary nationalism“ the emperor system (tennō-sei), or some of its symbols and practices.
The thriving of the Japanese cultural nationalism is characteristic of the 1970s and 1980s and it
coincides with the extraordinary Japanese economic boom. In this context, nihonjinron is treatedas: (1) an attempt to reconstruct the national identity threatened by aggressive westernization andrapid industrialization, to formulate a symbolic line between the Japanese (“us”) and Westerners(“them”) and/or the to re-affirm and sustain the sense of historical continuity with the authentic
Japanese tradition; (2) as a source of the Japanese economic wonder and of Japan’s consequent
moral victory; (3) as the concealment of the capitalist (manipulative) nature of the Japanesesociety by downplaying the ideological nature of the harmony and homogeneity of the social
culture articulated by nihonjinron; and (4) as the intrinsic feature of self-reflexion and selfexamination incorporated in the Japanese culture with the relevant referral to the outgroupreferences.

186

See Yoshino, K. (1992) Cultural Nationalism in Contemporary Japan: A Sociological Enquiry, London:
Routledge, pp. 7-29, 137-168. and Kowner, R. (2002) “Deconstructing the Japanese National Discourse: Laymen’s
Beliefs and Ideology.” in Donahue, R. T. (ed.) Explaining Japaneseness: on Japanese Enactments of Culture andConsciousness. West Port: Ablex Publishing, pp. 169-183.

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Self-perception of the Japanese position, at least on the level of political and economic
elite, can be identified by terms of a peaceful state (heiwa kokka) and a trade state (shoninkokka). 187 To understand Japanese collective identity is impossible if we bypass a “vertical”
historical component of the national narrative, by defining it as a mere recent temporal provision,
as a “horizontal” national process of codification and recodification of its own historicallysimulated symbolic content. Moreover, unlike individualism, horizontality and self-autonomy asmain attributes of western societies, Japanese social structure is distinguished by interpersonalism,
verticality and dependence/other-directedness. It is thought, therefore, that the prevalent image ofJapanese society could be more successfully explained through vertical stratification of theinstitutions or clusters of institutions in relation to horizontal stratification of classes or castes.188
What is interpreted as important for Japanese society is not, for example, labour force
confrontation with capitalists and ruling class, but rather conflict and confrontation of companies
A and B.
The concept kokutai is drawn into the foreground as an underlying Japanese pre-war
identity narrative (or set of narratives) and focal point of Japanese pre-war Asian imaginarium. Its
direct translation means national essence or a community as a political entity. Initially, theoriginal, mythologically positioned, the concept highlights the permanence of the emperor system(tennosei) or throne (Japanese emperor is a continuing monarch and deified patriarch thatincarnates the state or temporally limitless succession of imperial status), i.e. state, and in that
context kokutai is symbolically tied to Japan as a divinely unified state. 189 Subsequently, inconcordance with Meiji Restoration, symbolic reconfiguration of the concept occurs and it begins
to denote an autonomous state capable of surviving in the millieu of Western colonialism, thus
becoming a specific ideological matrix for legitimation of sovereignty on the domestic andforeign plane respectively. As another element of politicisation of symbolic characteristics of theconcept an amalgamation with the narrative of elites can be distinguished, where kokutai
surpasses a dichotomy of iner-outer, and the attitudes of autochthonous Japanese elites of the
Tamaki, T. (2010) Deconstructing Japan’s Image of South Korea: Identity in Foreign Policy, New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 1-15.
188
Nakane, C. (1972) Japanese society. Berkeley: University of California Press, p. 87.
189
See Gluck, C. (1985) Japan’s Modern Myths: Ideology in the Late Meiji Period, Princeton: Princeton University
Press.; Jansen, M. B. (1984) “Japanese Imperialism: Later Meiji Perspectives.” in Myers, R. H. and Peattie, M. R.
(eds.) The Japanese Colonial Empire, 1895–1945, Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 61-80.; Tamaki, T.
(2010) Deconstructing Japan’s Image of South Korea: Identity in Foreign Policy, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.;and Kazuhiro, T. (2007) The Meiji Constitution: The Japanese Experience of the West and the Shaping of theModern State, Tokyo: International House of Japan.
187

96period demanded a unified and harmonious state capable of resisting Western colonial
aggressiveness through progress based on strength (fukoku kyohei).
The locus of the most explicit hypostasis of heiwa kokka narrative is a Japaneseconstitution proclaimed in 1947. It should be emphasised, though, that despite the intensive
dictate of Supreme Command of the Allied Powers (SCAP) during its

formulation, theconstitution contains a factor of autochthonous narratives as well, something which cannot be
defined as exclusively a product of foreign intrusion. In that sense, post-war perpetuation of apacifist cultural algorithm bespeaks of its domestification, of incorporation into narrative origins
of Japanese elites, even under assumption that its superiority

functions as a pure verbal

improvisation, its textual centrality in foreign affairs narratives indicates discursive preposition
within which a number of available options is legitimised. The most explicit narrative
standardisation of thus expressed constellation can be noticed in the preamble and Article IX of
the constitution. It is stated in the preamble: “We, the Japanese people, desire peace for all timeand are deeply conscious of the high ideals controlling human relationship, and we havedetermined to preserve our security and existence, trusting in the justice and faith of the peaceloving peoples of the world.”190 The article 9, as a glaring refutation of the war clause, prescribes
the following: “Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, theJapanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use offorce as means of settling international disputes. In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding
paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The
right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.” 191 The doctrine of Shigeru Yoshidashould be added to this, the doctrine which can be expressed through the following dimensions offoreign policy: (1) safeguarding economic recovery and post-war reconstruction; (2) minimalarmament, and (3) an alliance between Japan and the United States as a nucleus of Japanese
security policy.
Narratives that are concerned with shonin kokka remain as yet another aspect of the
manifestation or representation of Japanese identity. Several of its variances can be identified: (1)chonin kokka- manifests the idea that Japan epitomises a nation of “shrewd merchants”; (2) kaiyo
kokka or maritime power-apart from defining Japan through its geographical attributes, the phrase
190

The Constitution of Japan (available at: http://web-japan.org/factsheet/en/pdf/09Constitution.pdf, accessed May
13, 2014), p. 1.
191
Ibidem, p. 2.

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indicates a distinctly profiled necessity for Japan to be a “mercantile state” as well; and (3) shigen
sho-koku or resource-lacking state- symbolises Japanese dependence on import as a weak spot of
the national corpus. Such symbolic conjunction, in addition to the military aspect, suggests thesignificance or incorporation of the economic dimension in the fundamental proposition of the
security narrative; it, thus, means provision of natural resources and focus on the enhancement ofscientific and technological potentials for the welfare of Japan, and furthermore underlines theimportance of acting towards equalisation of the regional development with global economic
trends. Ergo, proportionally to its economic capabilities and conforming to the concept of apeaceful nation, Japan is reliant on preserving of world peace and functioning on the line of theinterests of the international society. To a greater or lesser degree in concordance with such a
discursive distribution, Japan poses as a link between post-industrial world and developing
countries (entailing as well the integration of China into the international economic system).
It could be said that Japanese understanding of freedom is similar to the one thatcharacterises European corpus of nations, that it sprang from the influence of European
conceptualisation of the state, constitutionalism and social democracy, that encompasses bothpre- and post-war Japan. 192 Undoubtedly, the Japanese, similar to Europeans, both in theconservative and social-democratic end of political spectrum, have adopted collectivist
conception of freedom, they assume as a duty of the state to undertake warranting freedom from
economic disturbances and social instability, which poses as a position diverse to Americanprofiled unconditional glorification of personal freedom as “divinised” principle. Both on thehistorical vertical and contemporary horizontal, Europeans absorbed the concept of freedom, but
in such a way to, unlike American approach, be more articulate in their exploration of the balance
between individually determined needs relating to the standards of good at the level of the society
and state.
In my opinion, for this analysis can be useful for two more concepts. First, It should be
added here that simultaneously with deliberative democratic discourse, where the focus is on asociety on the certain level of development which materialises minimalisation of power in social
relations, a theoretical racourse could be established, which as a core of democracy poses theissue of constitution of power forms compatible with democratic values. Such a proposition

See Garon, S. (2002) “Japan: State, Society, and Collective Goods versus the Individual.” in Taylor , R. H. (ed.)
The Idea of Freedom in Asia and Africa, Stanford: Stanford University Press, pp. 214-248.

192

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implies that thus defined nature of social relations has its counterpart in pragmatic foundation of ademand for legitimacy of power. Such an immanent impulse for bridging the gap between power
and legitimacy does not mean that every power is automatically legitimate, but indicates that: (1)if a certain power succeeded in realisation, it is because it was recognised as legitimate; and (2) if
legitimacy is based on aprioristic ground, it is because it results from realised power. Ernesto
Laclau and Chantal Mouffe hold that the link between legitimacy, power and hegemonic orderrepresents what the deliberative project completely overlooks by its positioning of rational
argumentation where the power was eliminated, and legitimacy based on pure rationality. 193 The
first distinction that is needed to formulate agonistic-pluralistic model of democracy, as opposite
to aggregative and deliberative models, is clarification of discrepancy between „metapolitical“ and politics. As „meta-political“ we understand that dimension of antagonism which is,
as it has already been indicated, inherent to human relations, antagonisms that can be materialisedin various forms and types of social relations. Politics, on the other hand, indicates theuniversality of practice, discourse and institutions that aspire to impose a certain order andorganise human coexistence in conditions of potential conflicts arising form a „meta-quality“ of aconflictuous human nature.
As a main goal of agonistic-pluralistic project can be pinpointed the way oftransformation of enemy status into opponent (or rival) status, into a condtion that would
guarantee confrontation of ideas, but without elimination of their right to defence. This is atransformation of Schmittian antagonism (from ancient Greek word ανταγωνισμός meaning
extreme enmity) into agonism (from ancient Greek word ἀγών meaning chivalrous rivalry). Thus
set change represents objective meaning of liberal-democratic tolerance, the category of opponent
does not eliminate antagonisms and should be distanced from the notion of participant in liberalcompetition with which is often identified; while liberal rivals fight for dominance within
existent hegemonic system, agonistic opponents question the prevalent hegemony. 194 After all,the opponent can be defined as an enemy (antagonist), if that implies a legitimate opponent withwhom we share the common space of ethical-political principles of liberal democracy: freedom
and equality, struggle against ideas does not mean denial of the rights to defend those ideas.195

193

See Laclau, E. and Mouffe, C. (1985) Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics,
London: Verso.
194
Mouffe, C. (2005) On the Political, London: Routledge, p. 21.
195
Mouffe, C. (2000) The Democratic Paradox, London: Verso, p. 102.

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Agonistic concept does not treat the inversion of the enemy status into opponent status as radical
metamorphosis of political identity, but defines it rather as horizontal process of identification
paradigms conversion . It is obvious, therefore, that a primary function of agonistic pluralism,
defined as reshaping of antagonisms into agonisms, demands a provision of channels throughwhich collective passions could be completely fulfilled.
Secondly, For Emmanuel Levinas, a thinker on whose ethical proposition numerous
poststructuralist thinkers have relied, ethic is relieved from metaphysicality and enthroned as thefirst philosophy. Contrary to the modern philosophical ethic which is, according to Levinas,
founded on the Self, premordial relation is not oriented towards itself or objects, but towards the
Other: it is an ethical relationship of a permanent responsibility for the Other. However, such an
ethical constellation does not aspire to absorb the Other into itself

but is in fact reliant

on ’’perpetuation’’ of that distinction, which coincides with poststructuralist concept of one’s
identity being directly linked to distinction, a quality not to be feared of nor eliminated. It is astate where ’’I’’ is utterly and immensely obligated to the Other, an ethical relation that precedes
and surpasses egoism and ’’tyranny of ontology’’, to be Self means to be open toward andresponsible to and for the Other.196 To toe the line, a’’statist’’ conception of ethic, an ethicaltendency toward state citizens and distancing from foreigners, can be criticised. It could be said
that in variuos aspects Levinas’ethic is similar to Christian ethic of love, but its advantage lies in
its altruistic dimension, i.e. the fact that it is not institutionalised through Christianity. Ethic
represents a binary relationship, relationship between two people, while with the arrival of the(impersonal) Third arises a need for justice and politics, both to whom violence is immanent. The
existence of the Third, therefore, suggests: (1) that we are all in connection with one another, (2)that personal responsibility towards others is under the influence of how others treat one anotherand what they do to or for others, (3) that the existence of the Third makes all relations both
direct and intermediary; and (4) that the existence of the Third results in a situation where
personal responsibility is limited and generates the issue of justice. 197 One of the exigencies of ajust moral and political system is impartiality, equal respect for the equals and equal protection ofuniversally available rights. A state can be founded on laws, protectionist and with judicial power,

196
197

Hand, S. (1989) “Intoroduction.” in Levinas, E. The Levinas Reader, Оxford: Basil Blackwell, pp. 1, 4-5.
Morgan, M. L. (2007) Discovering Levinas, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 454.

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but to be just in Levinas’ sense it must be defined through personal responsibility for all andsundry, i.e. the excess of duty over rights must prevail.
As already suggested, constructivist interpretation of the disproportion between economic
and military power of Japan, as underlying conceptual deviation from neorealistic theoretical
discourse, is based on indicating the trajectories by which common norms and ideas, cultural andsymbolic codes, shape politics through formulation and reformulation of the identity and interestof the agent. Japanese international standing could be interpreted through resistance to insistenceon parallelism between military capacities and, on the other hand, economic power, and theoverall political standing in the international community. In other words, Japanese security policy
possesses two distinguished qualities that deserve more detailed observation.198 Firstly, it can betreated as non-traditional, as it is not strictly concentrated on military aspects but encompasses
economic and political parameters, as well. Secondly, it is simultaneously flexible and rigid,
flexible in the matters of economic security but rigid in the matters of military security, and both
flexible and rigid when the focus of attention is political security (terms flexible and rigid are notrelated to any specific political orientation).
Bearing in mind what has been said previously, we can actually talk about Japanese antimilitarist culture, i.e. anti-militarist norms and (collective) identity, which, prodded bybenevolent hegemony of the USA, developed in fifties and sixties of the past century. 199 Truth to
be told, if such historical positioning can be even partially explained by international position ofJapan, then the boom which followed in seventies and the international repositioning of Japan
respectively testify to the continuity of national security policy, i.e. the fact that prominence isgiven to its pacifist cultural matrix. Therefore, it is founded on the belief that “if any advantage
could be drawn from violence, it is unremunerative on a broader scale” and forging of national
identity of Japan as a “peaceful mercantile state”, which directly affects the perception andformulation of Japanese security concerns as attainable through peaceful means.

Katzenstein, P. and Okawara, N. (1993) “Japan's National Security: Structures, Norms, and Policies.”
International Security, 17(4): 84. and and Katzenstein, P. (1996a) Cultural Norms and National Security: Police and
Military in Postwar Japan, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, pp. 1-17.
199
See Berger, T. (1993) “From Sword to Chrysanthemum: Japan's Culture of Anti-militarism.” International
Security, 17(4): 119-150.; Berger, T. (1996) “Norms, identity, and national security in Germany and Japan.” inKatzenstein, P. (ed.) The Culture of National Security, New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 317-356.; andBerger, T. (1998) Cultures of Antimilitarism: National Security in Germany and Japan, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press.
198

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The development of an anti-militarist security algorithm can be accounted for by
apocalyptic defeat of Japan in World War II and a consequential urge to thwart any possibility ofa similar political-security constellation. Still, it is undeniable although less important that bipolar
division of world power after 1945, as a significant historical milestone on the level of its
international “distribution”, reflected itself on the metamorphosis of Japanese collective identity
away from the optics of aggressive militaristic discourse toward the optics of mercantile-pacifist
one, relating to the questioning of political mechanisms through which that transformation wasachieved. Memories and beliefs associated with such epochal international historical events areinterpreted and reinterpreted by political agents.200 However, that broadest cultural platform ofJapanese security anti-militarism is transponded into a set of self-imposed restrictive rules on the
defence policy: (1) non-nuclear principles- Japan does not possess, produce or allows installationof nuclear weapons on its territory; (2) a moratorium on participation in a collective defence; (3)a moratorium on arms exports; and (4) maximum appropriation of 1% of GDP for defence
expenditure.201
When we place Sino-Japanese relations in our focus, it is worth noting that the factor of
history, as a well-researched topic, is treated in two argumentative ways:202 (1) on the one hand, it
opens up avenues for the perception of the traumatic experience caused by Japanese imperial
expansionism against China, as a reified, ubiquitous or “default“ formative identity stance ofChinese indignation and victimization; (2) and, on the other, the history of Japanese imperial
expansionism can potentially be utilized and/or controlled by the (communist) party elite in orderto (2.1) use Japan’s war guilt to demand political concessions from Japan (pressures on Japan inthis case are indirectly linked with China’s position in relations among great powers) and (2.2)
utilize it to build a strong stance against Japan, defining them as patriotic forces and gaining theman extra “dose“ of legitimacy. The first explanatory discourse tends to position Japan using thenarrative of the absolute (“natural“, “ontological“ “ absolute“ or “ public“) enemy, situated withinthe „state of affairs“ itself, as a default identity constant of the Chinese „Otherness“, which
200

Katzenstein, P. (1996a) Cultural Norms and National Security: Police and Military in Postwar Japan, op. cit., pp.

2.
Miyashita, A. (2008) “Where Do Norms Come From? Foundations of Japan’s Postwar Pacifism.” in Sato, Y. andHirata, K. (eds.) Norms, Interests, and Power in Japanese Foreign Policy, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, p. 25.
202
Suzuki, S. (2007) “The Importance of ‘Othering’ in China’s National Identity: Sino-Japanese Relationship as aStage of Identity Conflicts.”The Pacific Review, 20(1): 25-26; Rozman, G. (2002) “China’s changing images ofJapan, 1989–2001: the struggle to balance partnership and rivalry.” International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, 2(1):
106
201

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completes the circle of cultural distinction preference, while the second explanatory discourse
treats Sino-Japanese relations as part of a more broadly framed cultural matrix of Western„Otherness“. This difference between the meta-petrification of Japan as the key identity nucleus
and Japan labelled as the „advocate” in the larger resolution of Western “Otherness” , is indeed
the most striking example that no historical discourse is ontologically given and ethically“filtered”, it is contingent and in a perpetual process of construction, deconstruction andreconstruction depending on the dictate of the ruling elite, its text is written and re-written
according to the predominant coding of political power.
Currently, Japan has territorial disputes with both China, concerning the Senkaku/Diaoyu
islands, and with Korea, about the Takeshima/Dokdo islands. In both cases, claims forsovereignty rights have had powerful historical discursive background. For the Japanese politicalestablishment, the Senkaku islands represent an integral part of Japan’s territory, based upon both
historical facts and international law. 203 Namely, Japanese official narrative draws upon its
incorporation of the disputed islands before the signing of the Treaty of Shimonoseki (17 April
1895) which ended the first Sino-Japanese war (1894-1895), and due to this, Chinese claims of
the islands based on the treaty’s unfairness, are unfounded and irrelevant, as well as on theabsence of such claims until 1968, when the United Nations Economic Commission for Asia andthe Far East declared the conflict zone as potentially rich in oil and gas. Recognizing that the San
Francisco Peace Treaty (signed on 08 September 1951) did not include the Takeshima/Dokdo
Islands as one of the territories that Japan should despite explicit demands by South Korea toplace the islands on the list of problem territories, Japan treats South Korea’s sovereignty overthe islands as not in line with international law, and therefore also as illegal occupation.204
A Free Trade Agreement (FTA) represents an arrangement of two or more states on
creating a zone of free trade, in which all potential trade barriers are eased or eliminated (theagreement does is not necessarily limited to the customs tariffs or import quotas, but also to
military issues and free flow of people). Besides bilateral negotiation between Japan and South
Korea and China and South Korea and the fact that Japan and China did not sign the agreement,
there are also trilateral negotiations among all three parties. It is true that the FTA would be
203

Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan (2013) The Senkaku Island, [online] Available at:
http://www.mofa.go.jp/region/asia-paci/senkaku/pdfs/senkaku_en.pdf [Accessed 05 July 2014], pp. 1, 7, 11.
204
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan (2014) Takshime: Seeking a Solution based on Law and Dialogue, [online]
Available at: http://www.mofa.go.jp/region/asia-paci/takeshima/pdfs/takeshima_pamphlet.pdf [Accessed 05 July2014], p. 2-3.

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conducive to the strengthening of economic ties based on mutual benefit of the parties involved(win-win situation), but the Joint Study Committee in its Joint Study Report for an FTA among
China, Japan and Korea from 2011 suggests ways and methods for the settlement of contentious
issues in its Chapter entitled: Disputes Settlement Mechanism.205 This Chapter, which aims tofacilitate the peaceful settlement of disputes, includes institutes ranging from Consultations,
Good Offices, Conciliation or Mediation to Arbitral Tribunals or Panels, as well as the executionof awards or reports by the Arbitral Tribunals or Panels. Perceptions of the enemy no doubt
influence the course and success of trilateral cooperation, due to negative attribution andstereotyping that lower the total sum of trust among the parties. A ramification of such a situationis that any initiative undertaken by Japan with a view to bolstering economic cooperation istreated with a high level of suspicion and deemed as political intrigue, manipulation or trickery.
As suggested earlier, if there is any perspective of hostility that is exposed to deconstruction: theeconomic dimension in this case, as a kind of contradictory balance, nearly always there is also
the narrative segment, due to the depth of the enemy identity matrix, which still figures as achange-defying text, or in this case: a full spectrum of political relations between Japan and
China.
In my opinion, Japanese pacifistic code and analog discourse of transformation of
hostility into friendship is best manifested in the construction of a regional narrative, because
Japan gravitates206 towards the formulation of peaceful and non-aggressive international regional
texts. Regionalism could be determined in two mutually permeated manners. On the one hand, it
could be understood as an expression of ideational categories, as a unique conceptual view ofadvantages arising from the development of common norms, values, goals and policies amongpeople and governments of a particular part of the world.207 On the other hand, regionalism could
be understood from the institutional viewpoint, in terms of existence of transnational institutions
that enable a formally regulated co-operation among states in the given geographic area.208 It isby no means indisputable that relations between these two propositions entails the execution ofan engaged realisation of the idea of the region through establishment of a certain institutional
205

Joint Study Committee (2011) Joint Study Report for an FTA among China, Japan and Korea, [online] Available
at: http://www.meti.go.jp/press/2011/03/20120330027/20120330027-3.pdf [Accessed 03 July 2014], pp. 110-112.
206
See Yamazaki, R. (1997) “Review of the Guidelines for Japan-US Defense Cooperation: A Japanese
Perspective.” The Korean Journal of Defense Analysis, 9(2): 27–44.
207
Kim, S. (2004) “Regionalization and Regionalism in East Asia.” Journal of East Asian Studies, 4(1): 39-67.
208
See Pempel, T. J. (ed.) (2005) Remapping East Asia: The Construction of a Region. Ithaca: Cornell University
Press.

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structure: when we consider the dynamics of creation of a certain region, ideas precede theformulation of a specific regional institutional framework. Regionalism, therefore, refers topolitical structures that reflect and shape strategies of governments, corporations and various nongovernmental organisations and social movements.209 Despite the agreement of governmental andnon- governmental agents on general norms, values, goals and policies, significant frictions could
occur among the members of the region on the level of establishment of regional borders, therhythm of regional evolution or guidelines for regional development. An essential element in theapproach to regions also lies in the fact that regions are not predetermined or static, so theiranalysis should incorporate evolutive perspective that takes into account both structural changes
and changes in perception and self-comprehension of relevant regional agents.210 Moreover, as it
has been already mentioned, regions can be understood even without their physical geography
mapping or determinedness as already given, natural and essential, in a sense of being sociallyconstructed, founded on common identity and politically open to a whole spectrum of changes.
Apart from the notion of regionalism, which, thus, is comprised of ideas, identities andideologies linked to regional project, the notion of regionalisation could be determined as aprocess of creation of material bonds that lead to enhancement in co-operation, convergence or
integration out of state borders in a given geographical area, as a process of regional interaction
which results in the creation of regional space. Actually, regionalisation emphasises
multidimensional deliberation of regionalism, i.e. the fact that the development of one region
consists of the consideration of cultural, economic, political, security and social factors needed
for its exhaustive perception and formulation of an adequate regional arrangement.211 It should be
mentioned that this process could be perceived both as a factor in opposition to globalising trends
and a propulsive moment of globalisation. The relationship between regionalism andregionalisation can be set as a relationship of a state/states governed project, directed toorganisation of a special regional space in accordance with defined economic and political
positions, with a non-governmental or social project, a complex formulation of institutions, rules
and patterns of social interaction of non-governmental agents, i.e. as a relationship of public

Katzenstein, P. (2000) “Regionalism and Asia.” New Political Economy, 5(3): 354.
Camilleri, J. (2003) Regionalism in the New Asia-Pacific Order, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, p. 25.
211
Taylor, P. (1993) International Organization in the Modern World: The Regional and the Global Process,London: Pinter, p. 7.
209
210

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policy initiatives and civil sector activities.212 It should be noticed that, apart from this standpoint,
there coexists also a standpoint that claims that regionalism stands for a political project where
the state is not the only involved agent, and those various agents that coexist with their own
visions and concepts: at times identically oriented, while sometimes colliding, formulate
ideational regional context. Qualitative improvement of the co-operation among regional agentsleads to what could be marked as a concept of regionalism: harmonization of political regimes,
cultural predicaments, economic policies and security agreements.
Inadequate (weak) institutionalisation of East Asia could be explained by the fact that the
weaker states in the region see the formation of regional institutions as a consequence of anunequal local distribution of power, which predominantly reflects the interests of the stronger
states and negatively impacts their security. It could be also defined in a completely opposite
way: as a result of current policies of China and Japan, which is not prone to rash actions directed
to formal institutionalisation of regional integrations, quite opposite to the preferences of theweaker regional states towards their creation.213 However, if we put into focus the factors that are
not decisively linked to relations of power (neo-realistic aspects), the development of regional
Asian institutions can be marked as a rather complicated, not only due to significant diversity ofregional states, but also a tendency of regional states to informal, negotiative approach to politics(as opposed to formal-legalistic method). Furthermore, unlike closed European regionalism,
Asian regionalism can be defined as an open variant, the one that implies non-discriminatory
trade practices and a will to accept new members. Such a conjunction is most often explained bya high level of economic, political and cultural heterogeneity of Asian states, and the relationshipof the Asian region with the USA. In pursuit of this line of enquiry, weak institutionalisation canbe explained also by: (1) the fact that the USA after World War II promoted the principle ofbilateralism for Asia and multilateralism for Europe; (2) the fact that the construction of acollective identity made the establishment of a formal regional integration easier, but Asianpolitical agents refused to acknowledge the idea of creation of a separate community at that level;and (3) the fact that disproportionality in the nature of Asian states was such that it hindered thecreation of regional institutions. The most important field of the Asian regional integration was
Dent, C. M. East Asian Regionalism. Routledge, London, 2008, p. 7. and Gamble, A. and Payne, A. (2003) “TheWorld Order Approach.” in Söderbaum, F. and Shaw, T. M. (eds.) Theories of New Regionalism, New York:
Palgrave, p. 50.
213
See Katzenstein, P. (1997) “Introduction: Asian Regionalism in Comparative Perspective.” in Katzenstein, P. andShiraishi, T. (eds.) Network Power: Japan and Asia, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, pp. 1-47.
212

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the market, i.e. the increase in trade, direct investment, technological transfer and capital flow, sothat, accordingly, a crucial role was played by multinational corporations, while political cooperation played a minimal one. This way of association, the process „down upwards“founded on
economic ties and networks, is different from the process of political dialogue „up downwards“,characteristic of Europe, that precedes economic transactions.
In the late 80s and 90s of the previous century, the two most common conceptions ofregions in this part of the world were manifested through a notion of transpacific region
institutionalised via the forum of Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC, founded in 1989,
with the main aim of establishing free trade and investments zones until 2020) 214 and aconception of restricted region of South-Eastern Asia institutionalised via Association ofSoutheast Asian Nations (ASEAN, founded in 1967, with the main aim of its evolving into
ASEAN Economic Community, AEC, i.e. the creation of a common market, until 2015), 215
which in 1997 was expanded to include China, Japan and South Korea (in the form of ASEAN
Plus Three, APT). While the necessity of establishment of such an organisation as APT(primarily focused on financial co-operation and integration) is by no means called into question
by its members, on the other hand there are visible discrepancies as to the purpose of theorganisation, the means of implementation of its proclaimed goals and membership. A product ofsuch conditions are two opposing visions of the future of East-Asian regionalism: (1) on the one
hand, it is seen as a compact region which is more or less quite satisfactorily expressed throughAPT model (this standpoint is championed by the majority of ASEAN members as well as
China); (2) on the other hand, it is thought that APT should pose as a foundation for theestablishment of a far broader regional organisation (this standpoint is supported by governmentsof India, Australia and Japan). The common denominator of both concepts is the treatment of aregion as an adequate form of tackling the common economic, political and military challenges,
although the approach to those is not in unison but divergent in certain characteristics.
When we consider Japanese approach to the region, first of all it should be said thatJapanese foreign policy is „imprisoned“ by the historical vertical of a permanent dilemma overpolitical, economic and cultural inclination toward Asia or toward the West. After World War II,
214

Members of APEC are: Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, the USA, Canada, Mexico, Peru, Chile,
Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore, Vietnam, Australia, New Zealand, Papua New
Guinea, Russia.
215
Members of AEC are: Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malesia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand,
Vietnam.

107especially during Korean War, Japan developed strong economic and security ties with the USA,
which have been maintained up to the present day. At the same time, ties with the rest of Asia
were primarily based on economic matters, i.e. Japan’s need for natural resources and organisingcheap production, which at the given moment improved the position of the state on the
demanding global market.216 Moreover, after World War II, Japan radically severed traditionalties with its geographical background, which resulted in further binding with various countries in
Asia and Pacific. This particularly applies to Australia with which several initiatives forpromotion of economic regionalism have been launched (as far back as 1960 a mutual idea ofcreating Pacific regional community was promoted), which culminated with establishment ofbroadly conceived APEC in 1989. Finally, as a counterbalance to more and more prominent
economic and military dominance of China, as one of the most important values of East-Asiangrouping processes Japan sees extensive regional inclusivity through active engagement of everhigher number of Asian states.
At the moment, it could be said that East-Asian regionalism is a manifestation of theprevalence of the „conceptual trend“ or vision incorporated in ASEAN, i.e. APT, and indirectlyof Chinese approach to cardinal principles, organisational frame and institutional setting of theregion itself. At this point it must be, however, mentioned that ASEAN is encumbered withcertain „ problems“ which can to a greater or lesser extent influence the level of success of its
operability, which does not necessarily lead to degradation of its position of conceptually ororganisationally most acceptable mode of co-operation. In that sense, the principle ofnoninterference in internal matters of member states may influence the level of regional cooperativity and integrations that can be reached, and a desire to create regional community isthwarted by insistence on inalienability of state sovereignty. A significant resultant conceptual
point of „ASEAN view“ of the region’s future, therefore, is consensual decision-making. A directconsequence of consensuality is an extremely complicated procedure for the increase inmembership of the organisation itself, complicated in terms of having to reconcile occasionallyvery different and rigid views of the member states, which directly suggests a certain level ofinherent isolation, difficulties and „regulatory reserve“ on the matters of its expansion.
Furthermore, China and Japan regard ASEAN (i.e. APT) as a leading organisation of institutional216

See Miyagi, T.͆Post-War Japan and Asianism.” Asia-Pacific Review, 13(2), 2006, pp. 1-15.

108

development of East-Asian regionalism. This implies that, in order to preserve such a position,
we could hardly expect the support for the idea of broadly conceived region.
Similarly,

eventhoughtheconceptual

constructionof„ASEANand

APT

community“ particularly strong and the organisations themselves (ASEAN i APT) havecontributed to the increase in the volume of co-operativity and intensifying the sense of regional
affiliation and identity, this identity formula, as a sum of common values and beliefs, is painfully
slowly and „cautiously“ developed. No doubt that such a constellation of cultivation of regional
amalgamation is connected with „more than complex“ differences as underlying characteristic of
the region. Bearing that in mind, impeding neo-realistic moment would be prolongation ofantagonism between two leading regional powers- Japan and China, although interdependency of
two states becomes bigger and bigger (Japan has become to Chine the most important foreign
capital and technology source, while China has become to Japanese companies a crucial
production area). From a constructivist racourse, „too broadly” set regionalisation, characteristicof EAS (East Asia Summit), could lead to essentially non-problematic trans-regionalisation, but
withapotential

for

even

further

deepeningofalreadysignificant

intra-regional

disproportionalities as a focal point of the inadequate rhythm of conceptual formation of regional
identity.

109

Conclusion

The idea of enemy is actually manifested in a wide range of options and choices inunderstanding, discussing and responding to disputes and dangers. Even the position marked as“enemy” for a lack of choice, which surely the case may be, often presents a special kind ofdecision. The idea of enemy relies on the emotions and ideas that preceded politics itself, it isderived from wider cultural opinions, bordered by axiomatic beliefs, mythology, iconography,
rituals and stereotypes, and with them it attempts to provide answers to questions associated withexistence, order and suffering. It has an independent logic that consists of a “hermeneutic need”
to give meaning to violence and danger. In this sense, whether we assume that war is inherent in
human nature, there is a set of possibilities associated with our perception, meaning and reactions
in relation to the phenomenon of hostility and our ideas and notions expand or narrow the field of
choice, i.e. available options. So, in the enemy deconstruction process, it is necessary to insist on
two aspects: (1) evaluation of the specific in the sense of renewed authorisation (and/or “neohumanization”) of the political action field; and (2) acknowledgement of evil as a re-assessmentof an individual’s own participation in the design of the enemy. The process implies intervention
in the sense of initial rejection of domination of the reified “ritual language“ and“ceremonial“ behaviour aimed at perpetuating some cultural paradigm interpreted as hostile,
including the re-coding of the entrenched (institutionalised) modes or codes by the culture of
networked risk perception.
More or less, all efforts for a complete political consolidation of the former Yugoslav
space are associated with defining the enemy’s cultural-code as an important part of a broader,still distinct, emphasis on the national as a result of persuasive elite actions. Since the collapse of
Slobodan Milosevic’s regime of, Serbian political elite of democratic provenance has been
focused on establishing the relations between the nations of former Yugoslavia on new
foundations. For this process, significantly burdened with war crimes, the bombing of Serbia,
Montenegro's exit from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the proclamation of Kosovo
independence, it can be said that as much as the attribute “evil” appears in the definition of theenemy, as part of national identity profiling, so does the likelihood of violence increase, while thephrase “dangerous enemy” embodies risk. Consequently, malice, as “pure wickedness”, isdeterministic and danger is probabilistic. Danger also makes room for non-violent activities and110the newly established Serbian perception of the Yugoslav nations, United States and theEuropean Union shifts from evil foes to normal enemies- with whom it is possible and necessary
to negotiate, regardless of any potential disputes and disagreements.
Although developments in the international environment land opportunities for thepresent-day Japan to redefine the level of independence of its military potentials, chances of thisactually happening are scarce. Even if Japanese policy-makers moved forward into radical
changes of such range, they meet considerable resistance by much of the populace and by elites,
proponents of anti-militarist culture. In that context, although further evolution, correction andadjustment of the Japanese pacifist explication (construct) of defence and the consequent orconceptually broader interpretation of the enemy will be contingent on the extent, scope anddepth of the international system transformation, it would be difficult to conceive these to bedifferent from anti-militarist preferences that have been prevailing for seventy years now. The
anti-militarist narrative has, in fact, become an indelible segment of the perception of the nation’s
self and as such, the formative cultural text in defining a full spectrum of norms, institutions andpractices.
In summa, hostile entities are not constructed from the cultural-social-political vacuum,
their persistence is a publically perpetuated narrative and mythological parable, controlled anddirected by various types of elites. A political foe is, to a greater or lesser degree, a conceptual
metaphore of the autochtone and alochtone political space, it is not an ontologically positioned
quality of the internal and external (state or national) state of affairs that is transcended, and thus,
predefined and meta-fixed, at least because this approach would imply that all individuals are at
the same time enemies and friends, or some kind of „ontological chaos“ in which everyone would
not only potentially, but actually be both an enemy and a friend to everyone else. Ergo, an enemy
in the sphere of international relations is constructed and reconstructed, it is situational,
contextual and historically contingent.

111

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123Prof. Dr. Djordje Stojanovic
Djordje Stojanovic graduated from the Faculty of Political Science,
University of Belgrade (Serbia) as one of the best students of his generation.
At the same Faculty of University of Belgrade he earned a Master of Philosophy
and a Doctor of Philosophy degrees in Political Science. He works at theInstitute for Political Studies in Belgrade (Serbia) and teaches as associate
professor at the Faculty of European Legal and Political Studies, Educons
University, and the Faculty of Media and Communication, Singidunum
University. He has published several dozens of scientific papers in various academic
journals and participated in several local and international academic conferences.
He authored four scientific monographs: Civil Society: Historical Developmentof the Concept, Associative Democracy: Issues and Perspectives, Labyrinth of
Scientific Thought and Expression and Anatomy of the Contemporary State.
He is currently editor-in-chief of the Serbian Political Thought, a member ofeditorial boards of several academic journals, as well as a co-ordinator of the
project Demokratski i nacionalni kapaciteti političkih institucija Srbije u
procesu međunarodnih integracija, br. 179009, (Democratic and National
Capacities of Political Institutions of Serbia in the Processes of International
Integrations, № 179009), financed by the Ministry of Education, Science andTechnological Development of Republic of Serbia.
He has been also appointed as a member of scientific board of the VII,
VIII, and IX international conferences on Political Science, International
Relations, Security Studies (2013, 2014, and 2015) which is organised by the
Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities "Lucian Blaga", University of
Sibiu, Romania. He was engaged in the one-month (15/05/2013-15/06/2013)individual research project at the Georg Eckert Institute for International
Textbook Research (Braunschweig, Germany) on the subject of Nation, State,
and Borders: Europe and the Balkans in the Late XX and XXI Century.

C ALE Discuss ion Paper No. 13 
The Symbolic Construction of the Enemy: the Case of Serbia and Japan
Author

Prof. Dr. Djordje Stojanovic

Published by Center for Asian Legal Exchange (CALE)

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Issue date

15 November, 2015

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CALE Discussion Paper No.13 (November, 2015)
Nagoya University
Center for Asian Legal Exchange