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Free keywords:
Balkans, Bosnia-Herzegovina, European Union, postcoloniality, post-socialism, Sarajevo
Abstract:
To observers of contemporary Bosnia-Herzegovina, the years 2013–2016 have been marked by heightened public discontent and the emergence of civil protests. While early protests surrounded sites unmistakably pertaining to the country's socialist legacy, such as privatized factories, more recent dissatisfaction is being articulated around sites that point to Bosnia's past as a colony of the Hapsburg Empire. This essay argues it is not accidental that these colonial markers have become instigators of protest and dissent articulated through the memory of the recent Socialist past. Under the claim of cultural heritage protection, former colonial sites in Bosnia-Herzegovina and throughout the Balkans are unearthed tangibly to mark new realities of postcoloniality. The resurrection of Hapsburg heritage in Bosnia is instructive as it helps illuminate the wide range of tensions and contradictions inherent in the move from colonial Europe to a (post)colonial European Union. Far from wiping the slate clean and offering a fresh start, as EU actors often claim, this process is paradoxically reinstalling institutions that were once the embodiment of colonial expansion. In arguing for the expansion of postcolonial critique to include the Balkans, this essay examines the political, economic, and symbolic ways in which Hapsburg colonial sites and institutions are restored into public visibility as registers of Sarajevo's European futures.
