The Machinery of Celebration: Mapping the Ceremonial Apparatus of Repulika Srpska

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