Problemi srpskog kulturnog identiteta
The issue of Serbian cultural identity

Summary/Abstract: The issues of cultural identity are of crucial importance in defining not only cultural policy but the overall social growth. If not defined against the identity basis of a society, cultural policy as a specific activity either revolves around abstract paradigms detached from social reality, or is reduced to institutional attempts to aid existent individual and collective creativity without grasping the overall importance of cultural life and its most suited direction. There are two separate schools of thought concerning the issue of Serbian cultural identity. According to one school, the root of the problem lies in the absence or malformation of a clear cultural identity, caused by the political and historical events and ideological and cultural experimentation. The other school believes that this cultural identity exists either fully or mostly developed, but that its quality is doubtful in itself due to various reasons. This paper therefore investigates the nature of traditional and modern Serbian cultural identity within its historical growth, noting its particularities. The author concludes that this identity is not an «expression of backwardness, xenophobia or authoritarian ideology», but an essentially «reservedly open», elastic notion functioning on principles of counter-balance between various influences, giving them a unique quality, in keeping with its own position as a model based on neighboring but conflicting civilizations, which is a role to be renewed and maintained.

• Details
• Contents