Upotreba simbola i korištenje mita
The Use of Symbols and Myth

Summary/Abstract: The break-up of the former Yugoslavia could be read through the political use of symbols. In the former Yugoslavia, Communist symbols drew their inspiration from the images of war. The nationalist symbols used in the destruction of the Communist order were also fed by war fantasies. This raises a very topical question: how is it that the symbol of a powerful and rigid totalitarian body created a new sense of society and the future. It is my intention in this essay to deal with the symbolic representation of the body during the organized ritual excavation of the pits that formed the mass graves of Serb victims killed during World War II. What particularly interests me is how these rituals were used, following the experience of Communism and “brotherhood and unity,” to legitimize a certain war propaganda in which the national collective coalesced through an eruption of violence.

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