> "A nonsmoker like Hitler" is not a sentence. Does that mean you're an a
> grammatical leftist?
i'm definitely an a grammatical leftist.
> From: "christian a. gregory" <chrisgregory11 at email.msn.com>
> > 'the recolonization of yugoslavia': as though YU were a solid,
> > homogeneous, and abiding entity that merely and passively was sub-
> > ject to the wills and wiles of great powers. 'yugoslavia' is the
> > name for what seems to have been the very transient period during
> > which the great powers exerted less direct influence over the re-
> > gion; but it was formulated through the very aggressive suppres-
> > sion of its component cultures--basically, *tito* colonized it.
>
> More seriously, a couple of things. First, which is it? You object to the
> use of "colonization" on the basis of some postruc-esque argument ("It's not
> identical to itself; therefore it can't be colonized." [?] ) Then, you claim
it's not like a sheer abyss separates ancient narrative of conquest from froofy '80s pomo wilderness-of-mirrors rhetoric; there's a lot of muddy stuff between them, and to look at what people say about yugoslavia isn't necessarily to lapse into post-structural omphalo- skepsis. the nation called 'yugoslavia' now is not the yugoslavia of a few decades ago; and nor is *that* yugoslavia the correct name for that same region a century ago, any more than it'd be correct to call what's now the US 'the united states' 300 years ago. to ac- knowledge this isn't exactly the same as babbling about things not being identical to themselves. but my point, which is should have made more clearly, is that tito's yugoslavia was itself in many ways a product of 'colonization' and assorted other great-power activities. talking about the region's 'recolonization' distorts the region's history by casting the titoist episode as not colonized. the fact that it wasn't overrun with foreign troops hardly means that its development wasn't determined in big ways by foreign ambitions: there's mucch more continuity to the rise and fall of ex-yu than 'recolonization' suggests.
> that Tito colonized it by way of "aggressive suppression of its component
> cultures" at a time when the great powers had no interest in Yugoslavia.
i doubt i said they had no interest...
> (Evidently, Tito can render YU's citizens powerless, homogenous, and passive
> in a way that others cannot. Interesting, though how do you figure?) But,
on the contrary: he *balanced* conflicting forces in the region.
> second, the US and USSR had a very strong interest in Yugoslavia during the
> Cold War. However, they were interested in its neutrality--they wanted it to
> remain as a buffer zone between Western and Eastern Europe. So its integrity
> was important: Tito could distance himself from Stalin just so long as he
> kept the federation together.
bien sur.
> Yugoslavia was always the mythic example of "socialism that worked." And,
> there are those that think that postwar Yugoslavia was a pretty good example
> of a multinational state (Peter Gowan, Susan Woodward among others)--it gave
> formal constitutional status to every member of the federation in order to
> avoid Serb dominance. The suppression of cultures argument doesn't wash in
there are certainly *worse* examples of a multinational state-- which isn't to say that it was a good one. and the complexity of the interplay of forces makes an idea like 'serb dominance' a pretty blunt tool for analyzing what was going on. having said that, i pretty much agree with what you say. dominance, after all, can take pretty blunt forms.
> that context, since such cultures don't become the grounds of political
> emnity by themselves, and since you make the argument that Tito's
since it's pretty hard to pinpoint anything that *does* become grounds for political enmity, i wonder about this claim. it's a chicken-and-egg problem, no?
> "mechanisms and balances" lived on past his death. Even if they did, and
> whatever they were (can you give examples?), that doesn't explain how
distribution of industrial facilities, ethnic distribution of military leadership, structural tensions in the government at various levels, cultural autonomy (curricula and languages in schools, politicization of the press), etc.
> cultural differences became an issue. Indeed, it seems to buy the American
> and European press line that the conflict was mainly and intrinsically one
> about cultures. That line ignores that the break-up coincided with the break
> up of the Soviet Union--ie that it was at least in part a crisis of
> US/Europe's desire to reorganize the erstwhile socialist world--and that it
> was in part due to the differing interests the U.S. and Europe had in
> Yugoslavia.
i think the misunderstanding we might have is that i don't as- sume that 'culture' is magically distinct from its larger eco- nomic and political environment. you're quite right that the breakup of the USSR specifically and many states in the 'ex-east' generally played a huge role; but it doesn't therefore follow that the forces unleashed (or restrained) can't be expressed 'culturally.' some of that translation is just callow manipu- lation on the part of ambitious politicians--but not all of it.
> Date: Sat, 16 Oct 1999 19:34:06 -0400
> From: Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu>
> Another reason why t's 'irony' doesn't work is that, in its resolute
> disregard of the referent (the deaths & expulsions of the Serbs and Roma,
> the threatened lynchings of the anti-KLA Albanians, etc.) of the story (in
> favor of paying attention to how the story is told and that only), it fails
> to be equal to the reality to which the Guardian article stood as one
> response (among many others). Let us have another look at t's 'irony':
oh, please, let's have a look at your 'earnestness.' evil exists throughout the world, and the fact that you dwell on yugoslavia fails to be equal to the reality etc., etc.
your point seems to be, roughly, '...but PEOPLE are DYING!!!'
and unless i'm terribly mistaken, that pimento-studded baloney you forwarded was only one more installment in the ongoing saga of _the guardian_ bending itself into an N-dimensional pretzel in its editorial stance toward NATO's actions.
cheers, t