HABERMASOVSKA “TRANSLACIJA” RELIGIJSKOG GOVORA U POSTSEKULARNOJ JAVNOJ SFERI ZAPADNOG BALKANA: ASIMETRIČNA POSTSEKULARNOST KROZ PRIZMU REPRODUKTIVNIH PRAVA I OBRAZOVNOG KURIKULUMA U HRVATSKOJ, SRBIJI I BOSNI I HERCEGOVINI
HABERMAS'S “TRANSLATION” OF RELIGIOUS DISCOURSE IN THE POST-SECULAR PUBLIC SPHERE OF THE WESTERN BALKANS: ASYMMETRIC POST-SECULARITY THROUGH THE PRISM OF REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS AND EDUCATIONAL CURRICULUM IN CROATIA, SERBIA, AND BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA

Summary/Abstract: The article undertakes a critical application of Jürgen Habermas's late conceptual apparatus — specifically the notions of the “institutional filter” between the informal public sphere and the formal political-legal sphere, and the “cooperative translation” through which religious moral intuitions can be made admissible in the latter — to the empirical material of public debates over reproductive rights and educational curricula in Croatia, Serbia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina between 2013 and 2022. Drawing on Habermas's foundational essays on religion in the public sphere and on the empirical literature concerning the Croatian 2013 marriage referendum, the 2018 ratification of the Istanbul Convention, the role of the Catholic Church and the Serbian Orthodox Church in shaping public discourse, and the segregated educational arrangements in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the article argues that Habermas's framework requires a substantive supplement when transposed to the postsocialist Western Balkan context. The original contribution of the article is the development of the concept of asymmetric post-secularity — a post-secular configuration in which (1) the historical sequence runs in reverse to the Western European trajectory Habermas presupposes, with state-imposed secularisation followed by post-1990 re-publicisation of religion; (2) the power asymmetry between religious and secular interlocutors favours the religious side rather than approximating Habermasian parity; (3) the institutional filter between the informal public sphere and formal law-making is structurally porous, allowing religious vocabulary to flow into legal-political reasoning without successful translation; (4) the labour of cooperative translation is empirically borne almost exclusively by the secular side, contradicting Habermas's stipulation of bilateral effort; and (5) the very status of the translation proviso is contested rather than presupposed. The concept is empirically illustrated through three thematic clusters — the Croatian reproductive-rights debates (2013– 2018), the Serbian curriculum debates over religious and civic education, and the Bosnian Herzegovinian segregated schooling and curriculum politics.

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