|
Resumes and bios from the participants
 Obrad
Savić,
teaching
History of Social Theory and Social Philosophy at the University of
Belgrade (1979-2000). As a Visiting Lecturer taught at all
universities in former Yugoslavia (University of Ljubljana,
University of Sarajevo, University in Pristina). Delivered lectures
at many universities in the United States of America and Europe:
Columbia University, Cornell University, Bates College, USM, Drexel
University, Stamford University, New School for Social Research,
Ohio State University, Rochester Institute for Technology, Bergen
University, Oslo University, Milano University and Copenhagen
University.
Editor of many theoretical journals: Theoria, Philosophical Studies,
Text and Belgrade Circle Journal.
Edited and published several collections and books: Philosophical
Reading of Freud (1988), European Discourse of War
(1995), Politics of Human Rights, Verso Press, London (1999),
Charles Taylor: Invoking Civil Society (2000), Richard
Bernstein: Responsibility of the Philosopher (2000), The
Balkans as a Metaphor, MIT Press, Mass.
(2002). Published over the hundred articles, essays and texts.
Translated into many languages: English, French, German, Italian,
Denmark, and Greek.
Member of The Philosophical Society of Serbia, Psychoanalytic
Association, and Aesthetic Society of Slovenia.
One of the
Founders and Acting President of the Belgrade Circle NGO. During the
period of communism (1975-1985) active member of the Belgrade
Dissident Group. Since 1992 active in the Organization of
Independent Intellectuals, the Belgrade Circle.
After 21 years of teaching at the Belgrade University, first
suspended and then in May, 2000 fired from the faculty for political
reasons.
Presently
working on a book Modernity and Death: The Birth of Nation out of
the Spirit of Crime to be published by Polity Press,
London and in Serbo-Croatian, in the Byubook, Sarajevo.
Currently working at the Belgrade Circle NGO on a long-term project,
Give us Back our University!, and in co-operation with the
Transregional Center for Democratic Studies (of the Graduate
Faculty, New School for Social Research, New York, U.S.A.) on the
project Democracy Seminars 2001/2004.
BALKANS OR SELF-COLONIZATION
SUMMARY
The reconstruction of the genesis of the term the Balkans can show
us that Balkan as SIGNIFIER became less and less in DIRECT RELATION
to the SIGNIFIED. After balance between signifier and
signified in Balkan’s discourse, (phase of a GEOGRAPHIC Discovery)
we have misbalance or demarcation between signifier (Balkan
discourse) and signified (Phase of Historical and Literary
Construction). Namely, at the beginning of the XX century,
Balkans began to be increasingly filled with political connotation!
In this last phases a term ‘BALKANIZATION’ (“Kleinstaaterei” – the
system of mini-states) was forged in a negative sense: process of
state fragmentation! Both terms, Balkans and Balkanization belonged
to the vocabulary of POLITICAL INSULT! (Politčke uvrede).Thus
Balkan became SYMBOLICAL SYNONIM for mistreats, lethargy,
corruption, irresponsibility and much else.
Suzana
Milevska
(Bitola, 1961),
curator of the Museum of Skopje, theoretician of contemporary art
and visual culture, and a PhD candidate of the Goldsmith College
since 2001. She has translated and has written a preface to the book
Spurs – Nietzsche’s Styles by
Jacques Derrida (Tabernakul, 1993).
She is the editor of three books: Pluralia Tantum
(1993), The Image of the Other (1999) and
Capital and Gender (2001);
she also edited the
Macedonian
selection
in the
East Art Map (2002). Her
texts are included in the anthologies: Primary
Documents (MoMA,
New York, 2002), Kunst Nach Ground Zero (Dumont, Cologne,
2003) and Cultural
Territories (GFZK, Leipzig, 2004);
numerous other anthologies published in English, French, German; and
in international art magazines such as:
Index, Nu, Springerin, Flash Art, Contemporary. She
has participated in approximately 30 international conferences and
has been the curator of more than 50 art exhibitions in Macedonia
and abroad.
The title of
the text for the conference Postcolonial Discourse and
Understanding the Balkans is:
Of Balkan
Hospitality in the Age of 'Absolutely Postcolonial'
SUMMARY
The main
issue that I want to tackle in my paper is the preconception of
Balkan hospitality and the urgency of its questioning in the age of
globalization. There is an inevitable call to revisit the cliché
that the hospitality is embedded in the cultural practices of the
peoples in the Balkans especially after the big refugee crisis in
1999 when after the statement of the local DA politician Vasil
Tupurkovski that ‘Macedonians didn’t give even water to the
refugees’ the term ‘hospitality’ emerged as a kind of haunting ghost
that was never seen but everybody believed in its existence until
that very moment. The challenging event that served as a kind
of turning point caused a need for re-definition of the ethics of
hospitality and re-examination of its limits in the terms of what
Derrida calls ‘unconditional hospitality’
Nikola Gelevski,
managing editor of Margina – The Magazine for Integrations and
Diversities; director of the publishing house Templum; president of
the association of citizens Kontrapunkt that incorporates the
cultural centre Tochka; a columnist, and writer of theoretical
texts and fiction.
His published works are: Fireflies and Darkness (contribution
to media criticism, 2002), Phantom vs Shadow (fiction, 1994),
A Universally Flipped Out Dictionary of Macedonian (fiction,
1993), Labris (comic strip in collaboration with Aco
Stankovski); he is also the author and organizer of the art project
Surrogates (2002-2005).
The title of
the text for the conference Postcolonial Discourse and
Understanding the Balkans is:
History as Anamnesis and Amnesia
SUMMARY
The
traditional view that remembrances reflect true events, and that
history reflects remembrances, is at present considered as
simpleminded. Both history and remembrance seem problematic from a
contemporary standpoint. The recollection and documentation of the
past are no longer taken as innocent acts. According to Peter Burk,
memory and history do not appear real. In both cases we are
accustomed to the fact, that all conscious or unconscious choices,
interpretations and distortions made during documentation, must be
always taken into account. The choices, interpretations and
distortions are conditioned by the social circumstances. It is not
only the individual that is to be held responsible. Literary
speaking it is the individuals that remember. But the social groups
determine what is ‘worthy of remembrance’, and the way it is
remembered. Our rituals and celebrations are forms of reanimating
the past - acts of remembrance, but are also the reflection of the
will to interpret and shape remembrance in a certain manner. In
every sense, they represent given characteristics of the collective.
Elizabeta Sheleva
(Ohrid, 1961),
scholar
of comparative literature
and cultural analysis, lecturer of Theory and Methodology of
Studying Literature, chief of the Department for General and
Comparative Literature within the Faculty of Philology in Skopje,
since 2001. Lecturer in three summer schools for post-graduates HESP
in 1999, 2000, 2001. She is in charge of the course “Feminist Theory
of Literature” in The School for Gender and Politics within the
institute Euro-Balkan. Since 1998 she is the editor of “Nashe
Pismo”, magazine of The Independent Writers of Macedonia. A
translator of theotetical literature from English.
She is the
author of 5 books: Comparative Poetics (1996),
),
Literary-Theoretical Studies
(1997), From Dialogism To Intertextuality (2000), Essays
in Cultural Studies (2000), Captives of The Day (e-book,
2003), Open Letter (studies of Macedonian literature and
culture, 2003).
Mirushe
Hohxa
was born in 1968, Skopje. She writes studies, essays and critics.
She has PhD. from Zagreb University on Transcultural technics of
the actor's internal development: n example from the Sufi practique.
She works as assistant on the Faculty of Philology at Skopje
University and on the South East University in Tetovo.
The
Dualistic perception and the Neocolonial identity
SUMARRY
The way in
which the hierarchies are created and generated in the modernity
influenced the creation of the modern identity and it's grain that
leads towards the neocolonial identity. It is this neocolonial
identity that inhabits The Balkans' space, nowadays.
Senka Anastasova
By
The Skin of Identity’s Teeth
(postcolonial discourses)
SUMMARY
The
cultural identity issue resembles the epidermal tissue, this matter
is continually skinning and due to its remarkable elasticity is
capable of self-renewal. This implicates a long-lasting process of
examination and observation of one’s own difference;
self-questioning and self-surprisal; it requires readiness and
responsibility from the individual in order to stir, evaluate and
analyze within the community. The skin as a metaphorical harness of
protection and resistance, as a pore that extracts and secedes in
order to goad the exposure of one’s own difference, enlivens the
organism. Cultural identity has/is the right to exit the skin and
enter into a new langue-seized identity. Each opening is a risk, but
it is also the continual urge for fulfilling the debt, to ‘tear
open’ the skin in order to hand over the ‘fruit’.
|
