DISARMAMENT OF HATRED

AIM, BELGRADE, March 20, 1995

The International Scientific Gathering "Towards the Language of Peace"

In August last year, a dramatic shift occurred in the Yugoslav war tangle - the party which had inspired and prolonged the war in Bosnia started supporting a peaceful resolution of the conflict. How close did this change bring peace to the former Yugoslav space? According to the view of Dr. Ranko Bugarski, Professor at the Philological Faculty in Belgrade, the shift in the official Serb policy is not essential: peace is now discussed in the language of war. Political drums are echoing: "Peace, peace, peace", instead of "War, war, war", but the sound of the drums goes on. Many hawks have become doves, and warmongers have turned into peacelovers. A hero here and there has become a scoundrel, some patriots have turned into traitors and vice versa, friends and enemies have somewhat changed positions. But, the world has still remained divided into patriots and traitors, friends and fiends - us and them. Only the declared goals of the Serb official policy have changed, and phraseology with them; the field of communications is still dominated by militant rhetoric, according to the words of Dr. Milan Popovic from Podgorica, as the main property of language of domination.

Language of peace is still just a metaphor. How it can be attained, how it can be turned into a "perceptible element of the real world" - that is what was discussed at the two-day international scientific gathering organized last week in Belgrade by the Director of the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, Dr. Bozidar Jaksic.

Production of "war speech"

Socio- and psycholinguists who attended the gathering pointed out that there are no separate languages of war and peace. Language as a system of denotation, i.e. a means of self-expression and social interaction, is equally capable of speaking in favour of war as well as in favour of peace (Dr. Bugarski). War or peace are, therefore, political goals which language may be used by, just like any other philosophical or religious beliefs, or political programs. The "language of war" or "language of peace" are just specific usages of language - special choices made from the joint repertoire of linguistic means, specific "manners of speaking". Therefore, linguists spoke in favour of making a distinction between the concepts of war and anti-war rhetoric.

War rhetoric was produced by those in whose thoughts and words bullets whistled much before real weapons sounded, as Belgrade ethnologists, Dr. Ivan Colovic, said. These "criminals seated at their desks", as a specific group of war criminals in various Yugo-spaces spread hate speech, xenophobia, arrogance and intolerance.

This type of discourse, as Dr. Lino Veljak from Zagreb indicated, was borrowed from the Communist regime where it was developed as a manner of inducing support of the public for repressive measures against social enemies. Enemies in that regime were defined ideologically - there were enemies of "all colours" and they were produced in especially orchestrated campaigns founded on demonization of the other party. Enemies were recruited from among "our ranks", they drifted away from the "joint road" for ideological reasons and took positions on "the opposite side of the barricades"; they destroyed "our identity" - in this sense the internal enemy was more dangerous than the external. The extent of credibility of these campaigns declined with the decline of the legitimacy of the system. When legitimacy of the system reached the "phase of critical deficit", a decisive shift took place: the enemy was not defined on the ideological basis any more, but on the ethnic one. That is how first the Albanian separatists were identified with the whole Albanian population in late eighties, as genetically predetermined, due to being different and other, to be the enemy. Later on, this also happened to other ethnic groups. Differences between "us" and "them" multiplied to such an extent that they led to creation of a wish to exterminate the others from the space which is "ours" or is perceived as "ours". The ruling structures in former Yugoslav republics established their legitimacy according to this pattern - production of homogenizing and mobilizing hatred.

War rhetoric which was addressed at whole ethnic collectivities, was aimed at inducing a political will in them for a certain projected political goal - national state. By usage of special expressions and phrases, as Mirjana Radojicic, M.A., of the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory points out, this goal was supposed to be expressed as self-understood and self-justifiable. For instance, the phrase about participation of the Serbs in the war for the sake of defence of their centuries-old homes, by usage of words (lexemes) "defence" and "hearths", was expected to ensure benevolence and approval for the Serb party. They have a positive semantic value: "defence" is associated with danger, helplessness, righteousness, and it is substantiated,by the stereotype on the Serbs who have always fought defensive wars; "hearth" which is one of the most commonly exploited concepts in the media presentation of the war, it denotes inveteracy, cosiness of home and family happiness. Ritual repetition of this formula was aimed at winning inclination and approval for every political gesture of those who are defending their "centuries-old hearths", although hearths in the homes of these war-stricken people do not exist for a long, long time.

Political speech of this kind, as Ms. Mirjana Radojicic stresses, did not tend to convince but to persuade, or better still, to outspeak, to win over by irrational means, to prevail upon the speech of the recipient of the message.

Protected by the nation as a tothem, as Dr. Svetlana Slapsak sees it, political speech uses the magic of nominating others as the enemies for the sake of self-identification - because in absence of those others, the denominator has nothing to define himself with. The name as a means of identification, as the basis which determines the status of a man, is equally recognized by ethnic intellectuals who have introduced this kind of discourse and policemen at the borders of the new states who decide who will be permitted to cross them (Lino Veljak, for instance, was stopped at the border coming from Zagreb to the gathering in Belgrade, and was then allowed to cross it only after a political intervention).

"Peace speech" - from a Metaphor to Reality

Militant discourse is founded on the rhetoric strategy of a threatening link "either - or" ("Freedom at any cost", but also "There is no alternative to peace") instead of "and - and". It uses ethical stereotypes and prejudices, labelling with no arguments, war mongering, lies and ambiguities, with "we" superimposed on all individualized "I"'s, and words such as "all", "never", "we must", "we must not" with higher frequency than "we can" and "we will try".

As Mr. Veljak stresses, anti-Communist and anti-fascist rhetoric in the same discourse, i.e ideological field - are both Bolshevik, or they are both equally distant from the language of tolerance and understanding. According to the opinion of Dr. Zagorka Golubovic, this is the case of the discourse of both the ruling party in Serbia and the nationalistic opposition, because they both have nationalism as their ideological warp. Only protectors of national (state) interests and traitors are denominated differently, but rhetoric strategy based on irrationality, labelling, intolerance, arrogance, denomination of the "other" and the "different" as the traitor remain the same. Such alleged alternative discourse can only raise doubt about the quality of one leader on account of the other, but it does not deny the need to have a leader.

Pacifist rhetoric which takes over the militant discourse pattern from its opponent also belongs to this "spiritual field". Such support for the struggle for peace which leaves nothing but waste behind it, juxtaposes one dogma, pattern and myth to the other such dogma, pattern and myth, according to the words of Mr. Colovic, and narrows down the space of communication by the use of words-transparents and words-passwords, instead to broaden it.

The language of peace need not convince the opponents that they are wrong, but offer people of good will a possibility to reflect upon the reality in a way they have never done before. Peace-making language, according to the opinion of Prof. Bugarski, ought to be inverted in relation to its belligerent predecessor, it should avoid its totalitarian way of thinking, authoritarian rhetoric and ritual repetition of the same formulae. Peace discourse ought to be turned towards using lexical, grammatical, and rhetoric means of the language aimed at mutual understanding, tolerance and compromise. Its spiritual field is culture of rational arumentation.

To pacifism born by social groups pushed to the margins, Svetlana Slapsak suggested the strategy of "carnevalization". Nicknaming oneself by, say, "Rimtutituki" as opposed to the "jeopardized Serb" efficiently destroys the established collective identification. Carneval denomination steals away the very foundation of identity and makes the critical distance from the established system of values, creating its own by the model of marginal culture.

Participants at the gathering agreed that to support the language of peace means in fact to speak in favour of social communication according to the standards of a democratic society, development of various patterns of democratic discourse. This means that language of peace should be opposed to the language of war, but, as Mr. Popovic emphasizes, the language of emancipation should be opposed to the language of domination. Newly fledged peace-makers, as experience shows, manipulate the rhetoric of liberation equally well as rhetoric of peace.

Jovanka Matic