Zamišljene Drugosti: o postimperijalnim nacionalizmima
Imagined Otherness: On Post-Imperial Nationalisms

Summary/Abstract: The paper revisits Benedict Anderson’s revolutionary claim in ”Imagined Communities” (1991 [1983]) in the light of recent approaches to post-imperialism. After re-examining Anderson’s understanding of empires and imperial legacies as integral to his argument on ”modular” nationalism, the paper proposes a complementary concept of imagined otherness. The concept draws on the theories of antagonism and agonism developed by Carl Schmitt and Chantal Mouffe, which challenge the assumptions of liberal democracy. The argument is further grounded in Max Weber’s notion of ideal types, from which four ideal types of ”imagined otherness” are derived: proximate enemies, historical enemies, civilizational enemies, and geopolitical enemies. Each form of otherness and enmity is illustrated primarily with examples from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Turkey. Proximate enemies reflect Freud’s idea of the ”narcissism of small differences”; historical enemies serve as a pretext for rejecting pluralism in the present; civilizational enemies presuppose spatial and temporal conditions that resist reconciliation; and geopolitical enemies reconfigure other forms of intolerance—particularly post-imperial hostilities— into the fault lines of international political tensions.

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