When Criticism Goes to War : Njegos, Andric and Their Detractors

Abstract

A bold intervention into the lingering debates on Serbian writers Petar Petrovic Njegos and Ivo Andric in the late Yugoslav and post-Yugoslav period, which interrogates the political and moralizing (mis)use of literature. This open access study asks difficult questions about the relationship between literature, history, politics and ethics: Does representing something in fiction mean endorsing it? Should fiction be used to rewrite history? Should we weaponize legitimate ethical concerns while reading fiction and transform them into superficial moralizing? Should political misreading of fiction be opposed? Zoran Milutinovic examines a well-established, deeply rooted and widespread Bosniak nationalist discourse on Ivo Andric and, to a lesser extent, Petar Petrovic Njegos. This discourse claims that Nobel Prize winner Andric expounded a nationalist ideology in his works, which instigated, or at least justified, the genocide of Bosnian Muslims. Milutinovic argues that this Bosniak nationalist discourse is not really about Andric’s works. It is a political discourse that uses Andric’s works and career merely as a springboard, and as literary criticism and scholarship, it is harmful. This is criticism that goes to war. When Criticism Goes to War is a study characterized by a smooth and sensitive writing style that makes this contentious subject accessible to those more generally interested in political distortions of fiction and its authors, as similar attempts to misuse literature are not limited to the Yugoslav context. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com.