Title National deconstruction : violence, identity, and justice in Bosnia / David Campbell

Published Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, ©1998

Click on the following:
ProQuest Ebook Central

Copies

Description 1 online resource (xv, 304 pages) Contents Preface: Problematizing Bosnia; Acknowledgments; 1. Ethics, Politics, and Responsibility: The Bosnian Challenge; 2. Violence and the Political; 3. Ontoplogy: Representing the Violence in Bosnia; 4. Violence and Identity in Bosnia; 5. Responding to the Violence; 6. Deconstruction and the Promise of Democracy; 7. Bosnia and the Practice of Democracy; Note on Sconces; Notes; Index Summary How did Bosnia, once a polity of intersecting and overlapping identities, come to be understood as an intractable ethnic problem? David Campbell pursues this question--and its implications for the politics of community, democracy, justice, and multiculturalism--through readings of media and academic representations of the conflict in Bosnia. National Deconstruction is a rethinking of the meaning of "ethnic/nationalist" violence and a critique of the impoverished discourse of identity politics that crippled the international response to the Bosnian crisis. Rather than assuming the preexistence of an entity called Bosnia, Campbell considers the complex array of historical, statistical, cartographic, and other practices through which the definitions of Bosnia have come to be. These practices traverse a continuum of political spaces, from the bodies of individuals and the corporate body of the former Yugoslavia to the international bodies of the world community. Among the book's many original disclosures, arrived at through a critical reading of international diplomacy, is the shared identity politics of the peacemakers and paramilitaries. Equally significant is Campbell's conclusion that the international response to the Bosnian war was hamstrung by the poverty of Western thought on the politics of heterogeneous communities. Indeed, he contends that Europe and the United States intervened in Bosnia not to save the ideal of multiculturalism abroad but rather to shore up the nationalist imaginary so as to contain the ideal of multiculturalism at home. By bringing to the fore the concern with ethics, politics, and responsibility contained in more traditional accounts of the Bosnian war, this book is a major statement on the inherently ethical and political assumptions of deconstructive thought--and the reworkings of the politics of community it enables Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 249-298) and index Notes Print version record Subject Social psychology. War -- Psychological aspects. Fear. Yugoslav War, 1991-1995 -- Bosnia and Herzegovina -- Psychological aspects social psychology. fear. PSYCHOLOGY -- Social Psychology. POLITICAL SCIENCE -- International Relations -- General. Fear Psychological aspects Social psychology War -- Psychological aspects Bosnia and Herzegovina Form Electronic book ISBN 9780816688043 0816688044

  Permalink