BOSNA, BOŠNJACI I IDENTITETNA HISTORIJA: OSNOVNE CRTE PROCESA IDENTITETNE HISTORIJE
BOSNIA, BOSNIAKS AND THE HISTORY OF IDENTITY: THE KEY FEATURES OF PROCESSES WITHIN THE HISTORY OF IDENTITY

Author(s): Senadin Lavić
Subject(s): Politics, Sociology, Ethnohistory, Politics and Identity, Identity of Collectives
Published by: Институт друштвених наука
Keywords: Bosnia; Bosniaks; identity history; denial of identity; ethnophaulism
Summary/Abstract: In this paper, the author presents the key moments of the evolutionary history of a being and a consciousness which, though recorded in history, have been largely historically ignored, discarded or deliberately misinterpreted. This gave rise to an entirely inappropriate picture and interpretation of the Bosniak being in the cultural, historical, ethnic and national senses which particularly falsify the content of the multilateral cultural environment of the southeastern part of today’s Europe. This misinterpretation was used in non-scientific, pseudo-scientific and ideological constructs of the Bosniak being and unverified stereotypes about its development and formation. It was especially in everyday life that it served for construing “the enemy” or the Other as a danger. It should certainly be emphasized that the Bosniaks and the Serbs are by no means primordial enemies. This sinister interpretation has relied on ethnophaulism, ignorance, deliberate negligence of facts, the suppression of memories, relativization of suffering and pain, fictional historiography, the construction of a negative stereotype, a literature bearing a political message about the “hated Turks”, the transformation of the Bosniaks into satanized “strangers”. Non-scientifi c myths of origin, identity, the history of identity, cultural forms, the ethnic and national definition of the forms of sociability and other moments that are intended to present populist and ideological concoctions as “serious science” using the Montesquieu eff ect pose a serious challenge to the research community and research institutions. We have to deal with them at the level of critical thinking. Bosnian and Serbian myths about their own position or the structure in time and space need to be relentlessly refuted. This is an inevitable process of facing the truth and events which basically have a pathological background and stem from irrationality, which has long been the driving force of evil and unrest in this part of the European continent. This process must lead us towards facing our traumas that have become on obstacle for normal human existence.

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