/ 1968
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PINK TRANSITION IN SERBIA: SIX THESES CONCERNING OUR CULTURAL SITUATION

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During transition, Serbia and other (semi) peripheral countries have become economical, political and cultural colonies of transnational capitalist class (TNCC) whose center (metropolis) is found in the main societies of the world capitalist system – the US and the EU. This has influenced the formation of the Serbian system of mass culture that is characterized by the culture of forgetting, the ideology of consumerist “liberation” of sin and shame, fetishism of sex and violence, as well as normalization (“relaxation”) of pathology and amorality. These features dominate also in the “high culture” produced and consumed by TNCC members (and candidates for it). Most of the “high culture” is now under TNCC control, which essentially dictates the dominant tastes. Members of the bourgeoisie, who successfully produce or demonstrate the right taste on the (semi) periphery, are incorporated into the idiocratic fraction of TNCC. Hence almost all high culture in Serbia is marked with comprador content and style, and also marked by “conceptual art”. And since it is impossible, in the current socio-historical conditions, to reject the main cultural function of the mass media in Serbia as a “collector” of consumer hypnosis, it is also impossible, in the current socio-historical constellation, to change the colonial comprador character of the institutions of high culture in Serbia. They are only an institutional expression of the dominant, financially and socially hegemonic classes in Serbian society – the comprador bourgeoisie.

/ 1968
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STRATEGIC DILEMMAS OF CONTEMPORARY CULTURAL POLICY IN SERBIA / HOW FAR ARE WE FROM A BALANCING ACTION

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This paper deals with strategic dilemmas of social development that have a great potential to affect the quality of civil life as well as the conceptualization of Serbian cultural policies, but have remained out of public space and public debates during the transition period: interior-exterior culture, endogenous-exogenous resources, rural-urban communities and many more. The aim of this research is to look at the complexities of contemporary cultural policy and analyze its capacities for the democratization of the cultural system and the inclusion of rural population into cultural life. The empirical research has been based on a case study of the villages Starčevo and Omoljica, located on the territory of the administrative, industrial and cultural centre of South Banat – the City of Pančevo. It can be perceived as a representative example of a balancing action of the economic, educational and cultural policies that have crucial influence on the quality of life of its citizens. The study of theoretical and empirical sources demonstrates results of public policies led since the early phase of industrialization at the beginning of the 18th century up to this date, and by analyzing its strengths and weaknesses, it intends to indicate the course of action of cultural policy in the future. The crisis of our contemporary urban-industrial civilization provides an opportunity for better understanding of repressed concepts on the other pole of the dichotomy (interior culture, endogenous development, rural communities). This involves discovering values with the concepts that are worth reviving and incorporating them into contemporary development strategies. Village schools and libraries have a particularly significant role in this area and so far they have not showed awareness of the value of rural cultural heritage, or its role in its protection, preservation, conveyance and usage. In the communities in which those two types of institutions of culture and education are organizationally separate, schools and libraries represent a complementary institutional framework of potential partnership for sustainable development.

/ 1968
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SERBIAN CULTURE IN TRANSITION – NEW CONTRADICTIONS

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Three key transition contradictions in the culture of the Republic of Serbia (and Serbian culture) are: 1) a confusing relation between the state and culture, 2) the role of the market in culture, and 3) political instrumentalization of culture and the problem of general interest in culture and art. The first part offers a study of the inconsistent relation between the state and culture from 1990 to 2011. The state and its cultural policy are criticized from an anti-étatiste standpoint. At the same time the state is expected to enable cultural development. The free market, as a key factor of transition, has not been well accepted in the Serbian culture somewhat due to the crisis, somewhat due to the traditional state support to culture and arts. The second part of the text points to the political utilization of state supported art. Critical analysis of these phenomena is faced with the dilemmas referring to democracy in culture, where the issue of general national interest arises. The conclusion offers expectations of a continuation of contradictions in cultural policy of Serbia rather than their solving.

/ 1968
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SCOPE OF THE CONCEPT OF CULTURE AND CULTURAL POLICY

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The author focuses on one aspect of the problem in defining the concept of culture – its importance for the conceiving of cultural policy, along with the following topics: 1. A Viewpoint: technological globalization – economic and legislative integration – cultural communication; 2. Some moments in the history of broader and narrower definitions and legal instrumentalization of the concept of culture; 3. The case of Serbia; 4. Advantages and disadvantages of theoretical and legislative use of the broader and narrower concept of culture, and a pragmatic recommendation for the use of the narrower term; 5. Culture as a collection of symbolical forms and practices, and a meaningful value orientation in the world and in life.

/ 1968
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CULTURE OF SERBIA AT THE CROSSROADS OF THE 20TH AND 21ST CENTURIES – UNFINISHED MODEL

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This piece was based on a research, conducted by the Centre for Study in Cultural Development at the end of 1989, of the contents and messages from a big conference held in the same year in Geneva, and on the reactions of the cultural public to the state of culture here and now. Some of the interviews were used from the research titled Future Cultural Needs and New Models of Culture Organization (Kulturne potrebe u budućnosti i novi modeli organizovanosti kulture) commissioned by the Committee for the third millennium of the Serbian Academy of Science and Arts, conducted with the representatives of cultural public, authors of culture columns in the print and electronic media and members of the so-called representative public: university professors, writers, architects etc. The international conference in Geneva called Pact for Future – Factors to Synthesis of the Economy, Culture and Communication offered a completely new approach to balancing these three important social fields. Finally, in an analysis of the print media in the last six months in regard to the rising discontent not only of the artists and professionals, we have tried to detect the opinions of the cultural public as well as their views on the causes of such unsatisfactory state of affairs. A combination of all this is viewed within the intellectual field concept which, being part of the global social space tends to function as a symbolic space. Incompleteness of culture models is reflected in the lack of a cleaner model that could have prevailed, in which remains of the old model would not be cause of conflict and in which a balance would be achieved among state interventions, free market and main self-organized stakeholders in the intellectual field.

/ 1968
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EDITOR’S NOTE

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/ 1968
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FREUD ANTHROPOLOGY AND PSYCHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF THE ROOTS, NATURE AND FUNCTIONS OF RELIGION

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Freud’s understanding of human nature is “pessimistic”; he emphasizes the dominance of the irrational, instinctive and unconscious motives over rational, conscious and moral. The man is a tragic and split creature within himself, with an intense conflict between the conscious and the unconscious, the instinctive and the spiritual, the pleasure principle and the reality principle. He is a creature prone to self-deception and one of the biggest self-deceptions and illusions is – religion. The creator of psychoanalysis seeks to systematically demystify its origin, substance, its social and psychological function in his in-depth critique of religion. The origins of religion lie in the response of feelings of guilt and remorse, as a result of the murder of the primal father. God is the idealized infantile omnipotent father figure, who protects rewards and punishes, while the comfort of religion is a collective illusion, a response to feelings of helplessness. This consolation is pleasant, but not real, says Freud. Careful study and analysis of the texts of letters of the first psychoanalyst, as well as testimonies of his closest associates, reveal that this uncompromising atheist has his own religion – Science, and that his hidden God is – Logos.

/ 1968
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IS PHILOLOGY REALLY OBSOLETE

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The domination of structuralism in linguistics and in other humanities and social sciences during XX century has led to the suppression of philology. The focus of academic research on the linguistic system and the exclusion of the semantic and communicational function of the language, i.e. the text, has proven itself inadequate in answering our need to understand the modern world. Philology is re-actualized as a neophilology which takes into account all theoretical insights of structural linguistics, but also renews the complex analytic approach to the text and again confirms itself as an irreplaceable study of man. The programs of modern university education, including those built on the basis of so called Bologna Declaration, implicitly confirm this tendency. Using the example of the metamorphosis of oriental philology as an interdisciplinary academic field at the Faculty of Philology in Belgrade it is shown how disintegration and fragmentation of a classical philological discipline represent a cyclic move towards a new program complexity. Syllabi of modern studies are, in fact and in essence, neophilologically designed, even though the mention of philology is, by order of academic correctness, avoided.

/ 1968
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AESTETIC UTOPIA OF WILLIAM MORIS

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The aim of this paper is to show the cultural and intellectual relevance of thought of William Morris at the beginning of the third millennium. It is primarily exposed in his novel “News from Nowhere”, which is a utopian vision of a society whose main feature is concomitant aestheticism and simplification of life in an age that could be called post-post-industrial. The first part of the paper analyses elements of the intellectual biography of William Morris and points to a fundamental diversity of understanding of and reception of his work over the past hundred and fifty years. The paper then analyzes the main features of his utopian imagination and exposes arguments that speak in favor of their permanent relevance. The final part of the paper confirms the claim that William Morris was primarily a morrist – a term which denotes its original synthesis of romanticism, Marxism and utopianism.

/ 1968
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THE CULTURE OF FEAR

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This paper shows that fears of the modern age have built up so intensively that we can now talk about the catastrophe culture. At the moment when it seems impossible to ensure means for risk reduction and the behavior of both nature and the society appears unpredictable, a universal feeling of fear of the coming catastrophe is born. We can say that catastrophism is becoming the ethos of the global world order. The feeling of powerlessness lies in the gap between our fears and our replies to fears. The exits which are offered us follow along the traced paths of development embedded in the hegemonic model of neo-liberalism and globalization, which smothers all alternatives and expects help to arrive from the directions that caused the problem in the first place. The future is a problem that needs to be solved using all means available, as it is hard to believe that history has left only a few doors open.