The Machinery of Celebration: Mapping the Ceremonial Apparatus of Repulika Srpska
The Machinery of Celebration: Mapping the Ceremonial Apparatus of Repulika Srpska
Date
2022
Authors
Tucakov, Nikola
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Global Campus of Human Rights
Abstract
This thesis explores the possibilities of understanding the political
function and arrangement of state holidays and their associated celebrations
in Republika Srpska using the concept of the ceremonial apparatus. This
concept, adapted from Michel Foucault’s dispositif, attempts to explain
the most important constituent elements necessary to conduct these
ceremonies as a part of the larger political project of nationalism on part of
the administrations of Republika Srpska. Adopting a constructivist approach
towards nationality in Bosnia and Herzegovina and a competitive approach
in regards to the nationalist projects within its internal entities, the apparatus
is used as a means of uncovering the hidden, omitted or overlooked, but
nonetheless crucial aspects of state ceremonies, such as legal regimes,
institutional networks and financial resources, that make them so integral
to the continued functioning of an ethnicised political order. While going
beyond the most visible performative and rhetorical aspects, this research
nonetheless also considers them as part of the overarching structure of the
ceremonial apparatus. The thesis therefore divides the provisional structure of
the ceremonial apparatus into the legal, economic and performative elements,
as well as the element of social construction of time, paying great attention to
the specific traits of national state ceremonies within the context of Republika
Srpska.
Key words: ceremonial apparatus, Republika Srpska, Day of Republika
Srpska, national holidays, Serbian nationalism, national ceremonies
Description
Global Campus - South-East Europe.
ERMA - European Regional Master’s Programme in Democracy and Human Rights in South-East Europe, University of Sarajevo and University of Bologna.
Second semester University: Belgrade University
ERMA - European Regional Master’s Programme in Democracy and Human Rights in South-East Europe, University of Sarajevo and University of Bologna.
Second semester University: Belgrade University
Keywords
nationalism,
Bosnia and Herzegovina,
ethnic aspects,
political instruments