Re: Syndicate: SERB THUGS TARGET ROMA

[Inke Arns <inke@snafu.de>]

At 10:11 01.03.01 +0100, Andrej Tisma wrote:
>Yes, as you can see Serbia is now becoming more like Europe! 

What do you mean by "is becoming more like Europe"? This reminds me of
well-meaning people like the director of the Heinrich-Boell Foundation here
in Berlin who said during a conference which took place after the political
changes in Serbia (including otpor people etc.) that finally the country
had "returned" into the circle of European nations ... I found that remark
quite astonishing. 

In another context I quoted a text by Karl Schloegel, who supports the idea
that Serbia has always been at the heart of Europe (although, for different
reasons):

"Deep Europe, conceived of as the parallel existence of different,
heterogeneous cultures and identities located next to and on top of one
another in Europe, cropped up again recently in a different context. Karl
Schloegel summarised 19th and 20th century European history in an article
entitled "Kosovo Was Everywhere" published in Die Zeit on 29th April 1999.
According to Schloegel, European history is the history of ethnic
cleansing, and the homogeneity it has given rise to was and still is
"uniformity, provincialism in many respects". It represents a war against
Deep Europe: "The existence of transitional zones, scattered locations and
the mixed culture of cities used to be characteristic of Europe. They
constituted not only its vulnerability, but also its astonishing
productivity and elasticity. However, all that has gone. "Unmixing Europe"
is a horrible term which has now found its way into almost every last
corner. [...] Unmixed Europe is not only less exciting, it is also less
complex, less rich in diversity and structure, poorer in almost every
respect."

('Beyond the Surfaces: Media Culture vs. Media Art, Or: How we learned to
love tunnel metaphors', in: Stephen Kovats (ed.), Media*Revolution, Campus
Verlag, Reihe "edition bauhaus", Bd. 6, Autumn 1999.
<http://www.v2.nl/~arns/Texts/Media/medrev-e.html>)

Greetings,
Inke Arns



- http://www.v2.nl/~arns/

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