THE PRIVILEGED CROSSROADS: THE METAPHOR AND DISCOURSE OF SPACE
THE PRIVILEGED CROSSROADS: THE METAPHOR AND DISCOURSE OF SPACE

Summary/Abstract: Nermin Moranjak-Bamburac deconstructs the "metaphors we live by", which not only describe our self-perceptions but also determine them (cf. Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). In a discussion which gave the title for the present issue, Moranjak-Bamburac points out the complex ramifications of the metaphor "Bosnia is a crossroads". Though the metaphor has now become institutionalized as a "fashionable act of magical legitimisation" that underpins popular, literary and political discourse, it can have negative as well as positive connotations; and its dominance conceals other possible metaphors for the Bosnian-Herzegovinan experience. "Although it might seem that any discussion of Bosnia leads inevitably to communication conflicts, there is at least one consensus as to what Bosnia, its history and culture has (at least until now) comprised. Bosnia is almost universally seen as a "crossroads" of historic interests, cultures and identities. Moreover, in modern times the paradigm of the crossroads has often been used to transform the specific case of Bosnia into a framework for posing general questions relating to world, subject and identity. With a view to understanding the nature of identity in the Bosnian space and stopping this endless process of semiosis, a series of metaphoric operations have been undertaken - which, by a process of association, have shaped a quasi-identity into a schema of "Bosnian identity". The crossroads paradigm suggests a richness of different possibilities gathered into one spot, into one here and now, where the world resides in all its diversities, virtualities and, most importantly, values." (...)

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