Unbribable Bosnia and Herzegovina—The Fight for the Commons affirms the transformative impulse of the February protests and plenums that took place in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2014. It brings together Southeast European Integration Perspectives | 10 a range of interventions that materialize a common emancipatory frame in which politics is recuperated against the dominant bureaucratic management of the status quo. The fight for the commons upholds life that refuses to be bribed into accepting the dominant oppression and corruption as the only possi- bility of social existence in Bosnia and Herzegovina today. Local and international challenges to this fight for the commons will entail building and proving in everyday life solidarity that targets violent practices of exclusion, inequality, and injustice. The protest and plenums in Bosnia and Herzegovina mark a new Arsenijević [Ed.] and hopeful moment in asserting a more equitable and just sociality—a fight that is local in its early achievements but global and universal in its implications. About the Editor: Damir Arsenijević is a Leverhulme Trust Fellow at De Montfort University, Leicester, leading a project “Love after Genocide”. He is an activist, academic and a psychoanalyst in training, working in Bosnia and Herzegovina. His book Forgotten Future: The Politics of Poetry in Bosnia and Her- zegovina was published by Nomos in 2010. Damir Arsenijević [Ed.] Unbribable Bosnia Unbribable Bosnia and Herzegovina—The Fight for the Commons is probably the most innovative and Unbribable Bosnia and Herzegovina important collection of texts dealing with the unbearable realities of society in post-war Bosnia and Her- zegovina. This book provides an indispensable documentation and reflection of the demands and visions and Herzegovina voiced during the protests and plenums in 2014. The authors provide a healthy antidote to counter the political and social cynicism, which prevailed for more than 20 years in Bosnia and Herzegovina. A new, just and sustainable social contract in Bosnia and Herzegovina is possible. Tobias Flessenkemper, Centre international de formation européenne (CIFE), Nice This collection is an invaluable look into the processes, histories, and potentials of the recent popular revolt The Fight for the Commons in Bosnia and Herzegovina known as the February protests and plena of 2014… Something different has been unfolding in the country; people are fed up but have not given up. Cutting through the unhelpful and myopic attempts to apply labels of success or failure, this book takes seriously the valiant struggles of people in Bosnia and Herzgovina to devise new ways of imagining community in a context that at first appears extreme but in fact reflects challenges facing ordinary people throughout the contemporary world. Elissa Helms, Central European University (CEU), Budapest Popular protests that rocked Bosnia and Herzegovina in February 2014 were the first rupture in the “con­ tinuation of war by other means” reality of a country trapped in a vicious cycle of nationalist mythomania and transitional plunder of resources by the political elite… Unbribable Bosnia and Herzegovina—The Fight for the Commons serves as an invaluable record of how these momentous events unfolded, what were their central ideas and what awaits in the struggle to see them take hold. Refik Hodžić, Director of Communications at the International Center for Transitional Justice, New York ISBN 978-3-8487-1634-0 Nomos BUC_Arsenijevic_1634-0.indd 1 11.11.14 09:07 BUT_Arsenijevic_1634-0.indd 1 11.11.14 09:07  Southeast European Integration Perspectives Edited by Wolfgang Petritsch, former High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina and Special Envoy of the EU for Kosovo Christophe Solioz, Secretary-General of the Center for European Integration Strategies BUT_Arsenijevic_1634-0.indd 2 11.11.14 09:07  Damir Arsenijević [Ed.] Unbribable Bosnia and Herzegovina The Fight for the Commons Nomos BUT_Arsenijevic_1634-0.indd 3 11.11.14 09:07  This publication benefited from a special sponsorship by Vanessa Redgrave & Carlo Nero of the “Dissent Project” www.dissentprojectsltd.com Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de ISBN 978-3-8487-1634-0 (Print) 978-3-8452-5674-0 (ePDF) British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-3-8487-1634-0 (Print) 978-3-8452-5674-0 (ePDF) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Arsenijević, Damir [Ed.] Unbribable Bosnia and Herzegovina The Fight for the Commons Damir Arsenijević 182 p. Includes bibliographic references. ISBN 978-3-8487-1634-0 (Print) 978-3-8452-5674-0 (ePDF) 1. Edition 2014 © Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, Baden-Baden, Germany 2014. Printed and bound in Germany. This work is subject to copyright. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, includ- ing photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Under § 54 of the German Copyright Law where copies are made for other than private use a fee is payable to “Verwertungs­ gesellschaft Wort”, Munich. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Nomos or the author. BUT_Arsenijevic_1634-0.indd 4 11.11.14 09:07 Contents Damir Arsenijević Introduction 7 Emina Busuladžić Why? 11 Miralem Ibrišimović My Union Fight 27 Zlatan Begić War, Peace and the Protests 35 Damir Arsenijević Protests and Plenum: The Struggle for the Commons 45 Emir Hodžić Jer me se tiče – Because it Concerns Me 51 Aleksandar Hemon Beyond the Hopelessness of Survival 59 Haris Husarić February Awakening: Breaking with the Political Legacy of the last 20 years 65 Adis Sadiković February Stirrings 71 Emin Eminagić On the University of the People: Protests and Plenums as Sites of Education 79 Igor Štiks and Srećko Horvat The New Balkan Revolts: From Protests to Plenums, and Beyond 83 Stef Jansen Rebooting politics? Or, towards a <Ctrl-Alt-Del> for the 89 Dayton Meantime 5  Larisa Kurtović The Strange Life and Death of Democracy Promotion in Bosnia and Herzegovina 97 Edin Hajdarpašić Democracy in the Conditional Tense: On Protests in Bosnia and Herzegovina 103 Eric Gordy From Antipolitics to Alterpolitics: Subverting Ethnokleptocracy in Bosnia and Herzegovina 111 Asim Mujkić The Evolution of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Protests in Five Theses 119 Jasmin Mujanović The Baja Class and the Politics of Participation 135 Jasmina Husanović Traumatic Knowledge in Action: Scrapbooking Plenum Events, Fermenting Revolt 145 Selma Tobudić Protests and Plenums—A Remembering 155 Vanessa Vasić Janeković Remembering Work as Political Sovereignty 165 Nigel Osborne The Plenum Brain 173 Contributors 181 6 Introduction The February 2014 protest and plenums are the only genuinely novel devel- opment in Bosnia and Herzegovina since end of the war in 1995. As a popu- lar revolt and a form of political organisation, they put an end to the predom- inant fascination with the “one” of power—with an image of the unity and homogeneity of power—and they proved in practice that it is possible to disperse and dispose of the symbolic guarantee behind the existing ruling structures. They went further. Anticipated by various site-specific protests that had been manifest in previous years throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, the February 2014 protests changed from merely voicing dissatisfaction to inventing methods of making decisions that concern the future of all citizens. Up until February 2014, the predominant mode of protest in Bosnia and Her- zegovina was one of pseudo-activity, which followed the logic of making records of injustices—of representing the obvious. The political consequenc- es of breaking away from “representation” alone mean that new forms of actively organising politics needed to be invented and tested. All this led to an accentuation of social conflict and the introduction of a sharp divide in the social: breaking from pseudo-activity, to which most of the so-called “civil society scene” has acquiesced, the protests and plenums disrupted the passive fascination with the management of identitarian differences and created an active, practical site for new social ties and new solidarities to be forged, tested, and lived in the street and in the plenum venues. In this reclamation of space, body, and voice, a boundary was crossed: from the “exhibition of dissent to dissent in action.” From now on, the stakes for any future protests in Bosnia and Herzegovina can never be the same. In the context of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the February 2014 protests and plenums rescued politics itself. Politics, predominantly considered as synonymous with corruption, nepotism, and clientelism, returned into the public domain as a common concern. Popular revolt escalated in response to unprecedented police brutality and the arrogance of complacent ethnic oli- garchs, in whose view, citizens are mere disposable bodies. The fight back against the physical violence, which had been directed at protesters, showed that these disposable bodies still matter and cannot be as easily discarded as they were in the carnage of the 1992–1995 war and through their subsequent post-war exhaustion, as the processes of the privatisation of the commons ground on and poverty stared them in the face. 7  More importantly, in this fight back there lies a shift: from being a help- less victim, to assuming responsibility for one’s life with no external guaran- tees. In this, a crucial change took place: the position of victimhood was discarded. This is why many who were and are invested in maintaining the status quo, both in Bosnia and Herzegovina and internationally, were quick to condemn this fight back—the “violence” of protesters—in the course of which several government buildings were burnt. Condemnations ranged from claims of alleged re-traumatisation of citizens because of their exposure to images of burning buildings, to the continuation of bureaucratic terror by attempting to criminalise the protests and protesters, and brand this fight- back as an act of terrorism. All these are ideological positions at their purest: the former, through its insistence on war-time victimhood and the creation of trauma, as supposedly some kind of comfort, turns a blind eye to the systemic violence of ethnic oligarchs; the latter through projecting the terror enacted by the state apparatus onto the citizens-in-revolt. However, the “violence” of protests must be defended to the very end. This is a violence that politically opposes and strikes against the disposability of life itself. It is, thus, a strategy for survival and our pledge for the times to come, as its act of creation has brought about a new modality for contemplating and enacting politics. In the political life of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the February 2014 pro- tests and plenums are primarily a site of renewed enthusiasm and energy, caused by the rupture of a different possibility for life and a move away from mere passive resignation to the only choices previously being posited. The enthusiasm and energy have to be affirmed, as their context is almost 20 years of a predominant ideology that threw all of its persuasive and practical efforts into making impossibility seem convincing. It is worthwhile recalling that, amidst the uncertainty and risk that any true political gesture entails, the renewed enthusiasm and energy gave us all—in the streets protesting and in taking part in the plenums—a sense of being alive and a chance to meet one another anew. Moreover, people who had never met before, and who had hitherto lived in their separate social circles, came together, jointly, to make demands, and in so doing, transformed public space into social space. Soli- darity, as a concept and as a practice, was rescued from being held hostage by those who were all too ready to relegate it to history. It became an everyday word and a lived experience that we had to prove through words and actions. Such rekindled enthusiasm is probably best expressed by a newly-met friend who, on our way to a plenum meeting, said: “It feels like a holiday!” In the protests and plenums, people have re-invented ways of declaring and enact- ing their presence in public spaces. Hence, many strategies and forms were tried and tested: from street marches and protests where it was critically im- portant to “keep bodies moving in space”; through the plenums, as forums, wherein public demands for justice were made; to manifestos, as a means of making demands visible and being able to address them, transparently, to the public and to the authorities. The language in which these strategies were 8 articulated left no room for ambiguity; the banners reading “We are hungry in all three languages,” “Reverse corrupt privatisation” and “End nationalism” spoke clearly about newly re-identified and new political priorities: that it is still possible to demand freedom, justice, and better life. The protests and plenums were themselves heterogeneous, not only between different cities— Tuzla, Bihać, Mostar, Sarajevo—but also within these cities. However, as a particular political sequence—and the protests and plenums are nothing less than this—they shared the same principle: the principle of the insistence on the “commons,” as that in, which we all partake, on an equal basis. This point of equality is the minimum, lower than which benchmark any future revolt cannot go. Unbribable Bosnia and Herzegovina—The Fight for the Commons affirms this benchmark and links the insistence on equality with the concept of “un- bribablity”—as an individual and collective refusal to be bribed and coerced into submission and servility. All the contributions in this book uphold such a stance. In the context of Bosnia and Herzegovina, where privatisation parti- tioned and sold off social space, causing the collective and individual escape into private helplessness, the insistence on unbribability means not settling for the crumbs of freedom but reclaiming and returning to common use that which has been stolen through privatisation and maintained in privatised units of all kinds. This is how we recuperate and make, as our commons, not just material assets and natural goods, but “all life” that has survived, with complicated affect, from which we must learn and draw our strength and inspiration. In such recuperation, nobody is left behind. The legacy of previ- ous workers’ rebellions and all anti-fascist struggle, evident in the decisions and symbols of these protests and plenums, is a powerful reminder that we have a tradition that actualises the idea of and the fight for emancipation. This is why the book opens with contributions by two workers who led the strike actions and first protests that started in their factories—Emina Busuladžić from Dita and Miralem Ibrišimović from Polihem. Their accounts stand as powerful reminders how the many have been sacrificed by the self- aggrandising few in the chase after capital and how we are fighting for a dialectically qualitative change, not some tinkering with minor quantitative adjustments. A short note on who “we” are. At the start of the protests in February 2014, some politicians, voicing their contempt for the protesters, called us bagra (scum, nothing), a significant appellation that symptomatical- ly said more than they intended. It is precisely in bagra that we should notice not just the fantasy of purity that preoccupies the ethnic oligarchs, but, more importantly for us, as the etymology of the word suggests, is the implication that the political scum are daring to claim public space, to speak, and to act heretically.1 We are now beyond daring. We have already commenced. 1 Most telling in the etymology of the word, dating from the eleventh century, is the evoca- tion of debauchery and the reference to the Bogumils. 9 This book would have been impossible without the enthusiasm and camara- derie of all the contributors who answered the call to take part in this endeav- our. The contributions range from those written in the early days of protests to those taking into account how protests and plenums subsequently devel- oped and the effects of the big floods that happened in May 2014. I am par- ticularly grateful to Tag McEntegart, Nebojša Jovanović and Šejla Šehabo- vić, my trusted collocutors, for their insights and suggestions. Christophe Solioz nurtured the book to its existence. Alma Fidahić and Besmir Fidahić selflessly translated the majority of the contributions. My special thanks go to Vanessa Redgrave and Carlo Nero of “Dissent Projects,” who made it possi- ble for this book to see the light of day. Damir Arsenijević, 9 November 2014 10 Contributors Emina Busuladžić - Trained as a chemical technician, Emina has been a worker in the Dita factory, Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina, for 38 years. She is a lifelong trade unionist and the leader of the Dita strike board and, from 2009 onwards, led the protest for the continuation of production in her factory. Miralem Ibrišimović - A worker in the former Polihem factory in Tuzla, Bosnia and Herze- govina, from 1975 until its enforced closure. He is also a shop steward of many years standing, who led the strike committee in this factory, and organised the public protests against corrupt privatisation in Tuzla in the early 2000s. In February 2014, in Tuzla, he played a crucial role as a moderator of plenum sessions. Zlatan Begić - Assistant Professor of Constitutional Law at the Faculty of Law of Tuzla Univer- sity. He is the author of several scientific papers on Constitutional Law which have been pub- lished in Bosnia and Herzegovina and internationally. As the secretary to the project and a member of its expert group, he was deeply involved in the reforming project Proposed Recom- mendations for Amendments to the Constitution of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Damir Arsenijević - A Leverhulme Trust Fellow at De Montfort University, Leicester, U.K., leading the project Love after Genocide. He is an activist, academic and a psychoanalyst in training, working in Bosnia and Herzegovina. His book Forgotten Future: The Politics of Poetry in Bosnia and Herzegovina was published by Nomos in 2010. Emir Hodžić - An artist and human rights activist from Prijedor, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He has been involved in social movements internationally, and is one of the founders of the initiative Jer Me Se Tiče (Because it Concerns Me) in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as an activist of the Stop Genocide Denial. Aleksandar Hemon - The author of The Lazarus Project, The Book of My Lives and several other books in English. He has been writing a column in Bosnian for the past 20 years. He is angry in both languages. Haris Husarić - A journalist from Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He gained his degree in journalism from the Faculty of Philosophy in Tuzla. He continued his education in the field of sociology at the Faculty for Social Sciences at Masaryk University in Brno, the Czech Republic, and is currently working on his Master’s thesis, which deals with the February 2014 events in Tuzla. Adis Sadiković - An activist from Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina, who participated in the mass protests and plenums in 2014. He has a B.A. in Economics and is currently unemployed. Emin Eminagić - An activist and translator, based between Tuzla and Tešanj, Bosnia and Herze- govina, he holds a BA from the University of Tuzla in English language and literature, and an MA in nationalism studies from CEU in Budapest. He was one of the members and initiators of the Students’ Movement/Students’ Plenum Tuzla, he is also a founding member of Lijevi, a small political organisation. He is also part of the Psychoanalytic Seminar Tuzla. Igor Štiks - A Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the Edinburgh College of Art, the University of Edinburgh, UK. His monograph Nations and Citizens in Yugoslavia and the Post-Yugoslav States: One Hundred Years of Citizenship is forthcoming by Bloomsbury (Summer 2015). His novel A Castle in Romagna received the Award Slavic for Best First Book. His second nov- el Elijah’s Chair has been translated into a dozen European languages. 181 Srećko Horvat - A philosopher and the author of What does Europe want? (Columbia University Press, 2014) with Slavoj Žižek, and Radicality of Love (Polity Press, 2015). Stef Jansen - Dr Stef Jansen, Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Man- chester, UK, has conducted a series of long-term ethnographic studies in the post-Yugoslav states since 1996. He spends much of his time in Sarajevo, where he has also taught a range of courses at the University. For details, see: http://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/staff/stef.jansen Larisa Kurtović - A political anthropologist and Adjunct Professor of International Studies at DePaul University in Chicago, USA. She is currently writing a book about grassroots politics and the prelude to the ongoing protests in post-war Bosnia, entitled Future as Predicament. Edin Hajdarpašić - Assistant Professor of History at Loyola University Chicago, USA. His research explores conflict and memory, ethno-national politics, and imperial legacies in south- eastern Europe. His book, Whose Bosnia? Political Imagination and Nation-Formation in the Modern Balkans, is forthcoming in 2015. Eric Gordy - Senior lecturer in Southeast European Politics at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College, London, UK. He is the author of The Culture of Power in Serbia (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999) and Guilt, Responsibility and Denial: The Past at Stake in Post-Milošević Serbia (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013). For details, see: http://eastethnia.wordpress.com/ Asim Mujkić - Professor of Philosophy at the Faculty of Political Science, University of Saraje- vo, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Author of We, the Citizens of Ethnopolis, Kratka povijest pragmatizma (A Brief History of Pragmatism), Pravda i etnonacionalizam (Justice and ethno- nationalism). Jasmin Mujanović - A PhD candidate in Political Science at York University, UK. His research focuses on the democratization of post-war Bosnia, with a broader interest in the role protests and social movements play in post-authoritarian democratic consolidation. Jasmina Husanović - Associate Professor in Cultural Studies at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Her interests are in cultural and political theory and praxis dealing with the politics of witnessing, governance of life, culture of trauma and emancipatory politics. She has published widely on these themes in the post-Yugoslav region and internationally. Selma Tobudić - An independent researcher from Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina. She complet- ed undergraduate studies in English and French Language and Literature at the Faculty of Letters and Arts in Ljubljana, Slovenia. She is an activist engaged in various local and international networks and initiatives. Her research interests focus primarily on the intersection of teaching and translation. Vanessa Vasić-Janeković - she works in the intersections of art, theory and activism, researching and articulating registers and distribution of tensions inherent to knowledge production hierar- chies and their economic underpinnings. Previously a journalist, Vanessa has covered all of the major 1990s conflicts, reporting on the existence of the camps in Bosnia and covering the war crimes trials for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Nigel Osborne - A composer and pioneer in using the creative arts to support children who are victims of conflict in the Balkans, the Caucasus, the Middle East and Africa. He is Emeritus Professor of Music and Human Sciences at the University of Edinburgh, UK; visiting Professor at the University of Rijeka, Croatia; and Consultant to Peking University, China. 182