Journal articles on the topic 'Kosovo, Battle of, 1389'

In contemporary Serbian Orthodox texts, Kosovo is often referred to as the Serbian “Jerusalem”: a city calling for a Christian defense. All Serbs are bound to heed the call in keeping with the Kosovo “covenant” or “pledge” dating back to the Battle of Kosovo Polje in 1389, when Serbian troops, led by Prince Lazar, were defeated by the invading Muslim Ottoman army. The battle and Kosovo in general have since then assumed a central symbolic role in Serbian nationalism and the Serbian Orthodox Church. Furthermore, it has been claimed that the imagery and narratives of Kosovo were the ideological backdrop for the wars in the Balkans in the 1990s. This article investigates the development of the Serbian narratives and imagery pertaining to Kosovo and their modern form in the Serbian Orthodox Church in order to trace what type of imagery is dominant. The main focus will be on whether and to what extent the narratives of Christian defense and holy Serbian warriors fighting in the name of Christ are dominant. This investigation seeks to discuss whether the Kosovo imagery and narratives are formed upon and influenced by a broader Christian European antemurale myth.

In "The Milman Parry Collection of Oral Literature" on Harvard University out of 131 epic songs recorded from Milovan Vojicic, several are dedicated to the popular theme of the Serbian and Balkan epic - the Kosovo Battle 1389 (Prince Lazar and Milos Obilic, The Defeat of Kosovo, ?he Kosovo Tragedy, The Kosovo Field after the Battle, The Death of Mother Jugovici, The Death of Pavle Orlovic at Kosovo, noted in 1933-34 in Nevesinje). The paper examines Vojicic?s Kosovo songs from the perspective of textual, stylistic and rhetoric criticism, poetics, and memory studies. An analysis of Milovan Vojicic?s Kosovo epic poetry leaves an impression of an active singer who has internalised tradition, and on this foundation composes new works in the traditional manner and "in the folk style". Vojicic is a literate singer who was familiar with the collections of Vuk Karadzic, Bogoljub Petranovic, the Matica Hrvatska, and the songbooks of the time. He did not hesitate to remake or rewrite songs from printed collections or periodicals, which means that his understanding of authorship was in the traditional spirit. Vojicic?s compilations lie on that delicate line between oral traditional and modern literary poetry; he is, naturally, not alone in this double role - the majority of the gusle-players who were his contemporaries could be similarly described. In the body of Kosovo epic poetry Vojicic?s songs stand out (The Death of Pavle Orlovic at Kosovo, The Kosovo Tragedy), where he abandons the printed model and achieves the kind of originality which is in fact part of tradition itself. Vojicic highly valued oral tradition and the opportunity to perform it, as part of the process of creating an image of himself as a folk gusle-player in modern terms. For this reason, his repertoire includes both old and new themes. They are sung according to the epic standard, but also in accordance with the modern standard of epic semi-literary works. In Vojicic?s world, oral tradition is an important component in viewing the historical past, and in perceiving reality and the singer?s place in it. The epic is a form of oral memory and the guardian of remembrance of past events; however it also provides a space for surveying and commenting on modern historical situations in a popularly accepted manner, at times in an ideological key, as seen in songs which gather together major historical events. This perception of the epic tradition and history is mirrored in the heterogeneity of the corpus and in the repertoire of songs, and is all a consequence of vastly changed conditions of origin, existence and acceptance, i.e. the consumption of oral works in the first half of the 20th century, in a process of interaction between literature and folklore.

After the restoration of Serbia in 1830, the areas of medieval Serbia left out of her borders were dubbed Old Serbia - Kosovo, Metohija, Rascia (the former sanjak of Novi Pazar and the neighbouring areas). Old Serbia (from 1877 onwards the vilayet of Kosovo) was dominated by local Albanian pashas, whereas the Christian Orthodox Serbs and their villages were attacked and pillaged by Muslim Albanian brigands. The religious antagonism between Muslims and Christians expanded into national conflict after the 1878 Albanian League had claimed the entire ?Old Serbia for Greater Albania?. The position of Christian Orthodox Serbs, who accounted for a half of the population at the end of the nineteenth century, was dramatically aggravated due to Muslim Albanians' tribal anarchy, Austria-Hungary's pro-Albanian agitation and, after 1908, frequent Albanian rebellions. All efforts of Serbia to reach a peaceful agreement with Muslim Albanian leaders in Old Serbia before the First Balkan War had ended in failure. The First Balkan War was the most popular war in Serbia?s history as it was seen as avenging the 1389 Battle of Kosovo which had sealed the Ottoman penetration into the Serbian lands. In October 1912, Serbia liberated most of Old Serbia, while Montenegro took possesion of half of the Rascia area and the whole of Metohija. While the decimated and discriminated Serb population greeted the Serbian and Montenegrin troops as liberators, most Albanians, who had sided with the Ottomans, saw the establishment of Serbian rule as occupation.

While the first two chapters of Doucas's historical work present a meagre outline of world history - a sketch which becomes a little more detailed from 1261 on, when the narration reaches the history of the Turks and their conquests in Asia Minor - the third chapter deals with the well-known battle of Kosovo, which took place in 1389. From that point on, the Byzantine historian gives much important information on Serbia, as well as on the Ottoman advances in the Balkans, and thus embarks upon his central theme - the rise of the Turks and the decline of Byzantium. Doucas considers the battle of Kosovo a key event in the subjugation of the Balkan peoples by the Turks, and he shows that after the battle of Kosovo the Serbs were the first to suffer that fate. At the beginning, Doucas says that after the death of Orhan, the ruler (o archgos) of the Turks, his son and successor Murad conquered the Thracian towns, Adrianople and the whole Thessaly, so that he mastered almost all the lands of the Byzantines, and finally reached the Triballi (Triballous). He devastated many of their towns and villages sending the enslaved population beyond Chersonesus, until Lazar, son of King Stefan of Serbia (Serbias), who ruled (kraley?n) in Serbia at that time decided to oppose him with all the might he could muster. The Serbs were often called Triballi by Byzantine authors. For the fourteenth century writers Pachymeres, Gregoras, Metochites and Kantakouzenos the Serbs were Triballi. However, Pachymeres and Gregoras refer to the rulers of the Triballi as the rulers of Serbia. Fifteenth century writers, primarily Chalcondyles and Critobulos, use only that name. It seems, nevertheless, that Doucas makes a distinction between the Triballi and the Serbs. As it is known, the conquest of the Serbian lands by the Turks began after the battle on the river Marica in 1371. By 1387. the Turks had mastered Serres(1388) Bitola and Stip (1385), Sofia (1385), Nis (1386) and several other towns. Thus parts of Macedonia, Bulgaria and even of Serbia proper were reduced by the Turks by 1387. For Doucas, however, this is the territory inhabited by the Triballi. After the exposition of the events on Kosovo, Doucas inserts an account of the dispute of John Kantakouzenos and the regency on behalf of John V, which had taken place, as it is known, long before 1389. At the beginning of his description of the civil war, Doucas says that by dividing the empire Kantakouzenos made it possible for the Turks to devastate not only all the lands under Roman rule, but also the territories of the Triballi Moesians and Albanians and other western peoples. The author goes on to narrate that Kantakouzenos established friendly relations with the king Stefan Du{an, and reached an agreement with him concerning the fortresses towns and provinces of the unlucky Empire of the Romaioi, so that, instead of giving them over to the Roman lords, he surrendered them to barbarians, the Triballi and the Serbs (Triballoys te kai Serbous). When he speaks later how the Tatars treated the captives after the battle of Angora in 1402, Doucas points out that the Divine Law, honored from times immemorial not only among the Romaioi, but also among the Persians, the Triballi and the Scythians (as he calls Timur's Tatars), permitted only plunder, not the taking of captives or any executions outside the battlefield when the enemy belonged to the same faith. Finally, when he speaks of the conflict between Murad II and Juneid in Asia Minor, Doucas mentions a certain Kelpaxis, a man belonging to the people of the Triballi, who took over from Juneid the rule over Ephesus and Ionia. It seems, therefore, that Doucas, when he speaks of the land of the Triballi he has in mind a broad ethnical territory in the Balkans, which was obviously not settled by the Serbs only or even by the Slavs only. According to him Kelpaxis (Kelpaz?sis) also belonged to the Triballi, although the name can hardly be of Slavonic, i.e. Serbian origin. On the other hand, he is definitely aware of Serbia, a state which had left substantial traces in the works of Byzantine authors, particularly from the time when it usurped (according to the Byzantine view) the Empire. Writing a whole century after Dusan's coronation as emperor, Doucas is not willing, as we shall see later to recognize this usurpation. Although he ascribes to Serbia, in conformity with the Byzantine conception of tazis, a different rank, he considers Serbia and the Serbs, as they are generally called in his work (particularly when he describes the events after the Battle of Kosovo) an important factor in the struggle against the Turks. Therefore he makes a fairly accurate distinction between the Serbs and the other Triballi. In his case, the term may in fact serve as a geographical designation for the territory settled by many peoples, including the Serbs. When he uses specific titles and when he speaks of the degrees of authority conveyed by them in individual territories Doucas is anxious to prove himself a worthy scion of the Romaioi, who considered that they had the exclusive right to the primacy in the Christian hierarchy with the Roman emperor at its top. He makes distinctions of rank between individual rulers. The Emperor in Constantinople is for him the only emperor of the Romans (basileys t?n R?mai?n). King Sigismund of Hungary is also styled emperor, but as basileys t?n R?man?n, meaning Latin Christians. The last Byzantine emperor Constantine XI Dragas Palaleologus is not recognized as an emperor, and the author calls his rule a despotic rule (despoteia). He has a similar view of the Serbs. Thus he says, erroneously that Lazar was the son of King Stefan of Serbia (yios Stefanoy toy kral? Serbias) and that he ruled Serbia at that time (o tote t?n Serbian kraley?n). Elsewhere, Doucas explains his attitude and says that o t?n Serb?n archgos etolm?sen anadusasthai kratos kai kral?s onomazesthai. Toyto gar to barbaron onoma exell?nizomenon basileys erm?neyetai. Lazar exercises royal power (kraley?n) in Serbia, which is appropriate, for the author thinks erroneously that Lazar was the son and successor of King Stefan Du{an. It is significant that he derives the werb kraley? from the Serbian title 'kralj', i.e. from the title which never existed in the Byzantine Empire. Moreover, there is no mention of this werb in any other Byzantine text. When he narrates how Serbia fell under the Turkish rule in 1439, Doucas says that Despot Djuradj Brankovic seeing his ravaged despotate (despoteian), went to the King of Hungary hoping to get aid from him. There can be no doubt that the term despoteia here refers to the territory ruled by Despot Djuradj Brankovic. Doucas correctly styles the Serbian rulers after 1402 as despots. The space he devotes to Serbia in his work, as well as the manner in which he speaks of it, seems to indicate, however, that he regarded it, together with Hungary as a obstacle of the further Turkish conquests in the Balkans. Doucas's text indicates that Serbia, though incomparably weaker than in the time of Dusan's mighty empire, was in fact the only remaining more or less integral state in the Peninsula. The riches of Serbia and, consequently, of its despots, is stressed in a number of passages. Almost at the very beginning Doucas says that Bayezid seized 'a sufficient quantity of silver talents from the mines of Serbia' after the Battle of Kosovo. When Murad II conducted negotiations with Despot Djuradj for his marriage with the Despot's daughter Mara, Doucas writes, no one could guess how many 'gold and silver talents' he took. Doucas also says that the Despot began to build the Smederevo fortress with Murad's permission. The building of a fortress has never been an easy undertaking and if we bear in mind that Despot Djuradj built the part of the Smederevo fortress called 'Mali Grad' (Small fortress) in two years only, we realize that his economic power was really considerable. When Fadulah, the counselor of Murad II, sought to persuade his lord to occupy Serbia, he stressed the good position of the country, particularly of Smederevo, and the country's abundant sources of silver and gold, which would enable Murad not only to conquer Hungary, but also to advance as far as Italy. After Mehmed II captured Constantinople, the Serbs undertook to pay an annual tribute of 12.000 gold coins, more than the despots of Mistra, the lords of Chios Mitylene or the Emperor of Trebizond. Already in 1454 the Despot's men brought the tribute to Mehmed II and also ransomed their captives. Critobulos's superb description of Serbia is the best testimony that this was not only Doucas's impression: 'Its greatest advantage, in which it surpasses the other countries, is that it produces gold and silver? They are mined everywhere in that region, which has rich veins of both gold and silver, more abundant than those of India. The country of the Triballi was indeed fortunate in this respect from the very beginning and it was proud of its riches and its might. It was a kingdom with numerous flourishing towns and strong and impregnable fortresses. It was also rich in soldiers and armies as well as in good equipment. It had citizens of the noblest rank and it brought up many youths who had the strength of adult men. It was admired and famous, but it was also envied, so that is was not only loved of many, but also disliked by many people who sought to harm It'. It is no wonder that George Sphrantzes once complains that Christians failed to send aid to Constantinople and that he singles out for particular blame that 'miserable despot, who did not realize that once the head is removed, the limbs, too disappear'. It may be said, therefore, that Doucas regarded Serbia as one of the few remaining allies of at least some ability to stem the Turkish advances, and that this opinion was primarily based on its economic resources. Serbia was clearly distinguished as a state structure, as opposed to most of the remaining parts of the Peninsula, inhabited by peoples which Doucas does not seem to differentiate precisely. According to him, the authority over a particular territory issued from the ruler's title, the title of despot, which was first in importance after the imperial title, also determined the rank of Serbia in the Byzantine theory of hierarchy of states. Doucas's testimony also shows that this theory not only endured until the collapse of the Empire, but that it also persisted even in the consciousness of the people who survived its fall.

The fact that ban Tvrtko of Bosnia had maternal ties with Nemanjic dynasty and seized certain areas of the former Serbian Empire was used as a basis for him to be crowned king of the Serbs and Bosnia in 1377 in the monastery of Mileseva over the grave of Saint Sava. His charter issued to the Ragusans in 1378 contains the term ?double wreath? which figuratively symbolized the rule of Tvrtko I over two Serb-inhabited states, Bosnia and Serbia. Tvrtko?s choice not to annex the conquered territory to his own state, Bosnia, but to be crowned king of Serbia as well required the development of a new ideology of kingship and a new form of legitimation of power. Although his royal title was recognized by his neighbours, including probably the rest of the Serbian lands, that the project was unrealistic became obvious in the aftermath of the Battle of Kosovo in 1389. What remained after his death was only the royal title, while the state ruled by his successors became exclusively related to Bosnia. Yet, echoes of his coronation in medieval Bosnia can be followed in the further development of the title and of the concept of crown and state. Interestingly, an attempt to revive the double crown concept was made in the early fifteenth century by the king Sigismund of Hungary, who requested that the Bosnians crown him the way Tvrtko had been crowned.

The prominent Serbian and Yugoslav composer Petar Konjovic (1883-1970) wrote five operas between 1900 and 1960. Konjovic?s operatic opus represents his homeland and his spiritual spectrum: in the first place, indelible memories of his childhood and youth focused on the Serbian National Theatre in Novi Sad, in particular its heroic repertoire of Serbian literature. Consequently, three out of five of Konjovic?s music dramas are derived from Serbian epic and theatre plays. In addition to Ivo Vojnovic?s Death of the Jugovic Mother, these are Dragutin Ilic?s Wedding ofMilos Obilic and Laza Kostic?s Maksim Crnojevic. Therefore three of Konjovic?s operas can be conditionally brought together as being in many ways related, not only by their content but also by music and the scope of time they were created: The Fairy?s Veil (based on Wedding of Milos Obilic)during World War I, The Fatherland (based on Death of the Jugovic Mother)during World War II, and between them The Prince of Zeta (based on Maksim Crnojevic). The last of them, subtitled ?A sacred festival drama? (following with its subtitle the idea of Wagner?s Parsifal) had its gala performance in Belgrade National Theatre on 19 October 1983. The structure of the musical composition was inspired by the ?Kosovo mystery play? by Vojnovic (1857-1929), an outstanding dramatist from Dubrovnik. In this case, the playwright was a narrator of the historical-legendary past of the Serbs. Drawing on Serbian national epic poetry which deals with the downfall of the Serbian medieval empire caused by the Turkish invasion, Vojnovic constructed his play on the basis of the central poem of the epic cycle about Kosovo, The Death of the Jugovic Mother. Both the epic and Vojnovic?s play present the tragedy of Serbian people in the figure of the Mother. She dies with a broken heart after the loss of her heroic husband, Jug-Bogdan, and her nine sons, the Jugovici, in the decisive battle against the Turks in the Kosovo field in 1389. Vojnovic?s play was performed in Belgrade and Zagreb in 1906 and 1907 respectively, as well as in Trieste (1911) and Prague (1926); and several Serbian and Croatian composers wrote incidental music for it. Slovenian composer Mirko Polic was also inspired by it and his work was performed in Ljubljana in 1947, while Konjovic?s ?festival drama? finished in 1960 was staged much later. Its premiere in 1983 was scrupulously prepared by the father-son duo, Dusan Miladinovic (conductor) and Dejan Miladinovic (director), who paid special attention to the visual aspect of the performance. The director, together with the scenographer Aleksandar Zlatovic created for The Fatherland a semi-permanent set of symbolical characters, with an enormous raven, made of jute, replacing the backdrop. The costume designer was influenced by medieval frescoes from Serbian monasteries in Kosovo. The director himself conceived a ?mute? and motionless appearance of figures of Serbian warriors in ?tableaux vivants? by placing them in attitudes of combat on the edge of the revolving stage during the curtain music between the acts. What the composer Konjovic aimed for with his last music drama was to eternalize in music the beautiful Serbian epic, depicting the tragic history of his people and thus reminding Serbs of their roots. In this sense The Fatherland was Konjovic?s Ninth Symphony and his oath of Kosovo.

The article explores a virtually unknown episode in the history of Gracanica Monastery, a late nineteenth-century restoration of the monastery church. The results of this undertaking were still visible during the conservation of the church conducted in the 1960s and early 1970s. At that time the nineteenth-century interventions were only partially recorded before some of them were removed and permanently lost. The nineteenth- century refurbishing of the frescoes in the main dome was signed by one Mihail Iourokosk Debrel and is dated 1898. More significant, now lost and hitherto unpublished, was the refurbishing probably by the same Mihail, of an arcosolium in the south wall of the church. This arcosolium, whose original function is unknown, was painted and inscribed with a lengthy inscription indicating that the remains of Prince Lazar (who died in the Battle of Kosovo, on June 15, 1389) was temporarily deposited in this tomb before being moved to the monastery of Vrdnik - Ravanica on Fruska Gora. While the content of the inscription is a total fabrication, its implications are nonetheless interesting in several ways. The mastermind behind the project was probably the Metropolitan of Ra{ka - Prizren, Dionisije, who died on Dec. 5, 1900. In accordance with his own wishes, he was buried in the very arcosolium identified as the ?temporary burial place? of Prince Lazar. The rising importance of the cult of the Saintly Prince Lazar around 1900 provides the background for this historical fabrication whose construction was actually made up of several disparate elements, each marked by a degree of historical accuracy in its own right thus collectively contributing to its general relevance.

In two post-conflict societies (Serbia and Cyprus), the authors investigated how people cope with in-group historical transgression when heroes and villains relevant for their collective identity are made salient in it. The authors set the events in foundational periods for Serbian (Experiment 1) and Greek Cypriot (Experiment 2) ethnic identity—that is, historical representations of the Battle of Kosovo (1389) and the Liberation Struggle (1955–1959), respectively. In both experiments, a between-subjects design was used to manipulate group membership (in-group or out-group) and representation of the salient character (hero, villain, or neutral) in fictitious but historically plausible accounts of transgressions. In Experiment 1 ( N = 225), the participants showed more moral disengagement in the case of in-group historical transgressions than in the case of identical transgressions by an out-group, while the in-group hero was rejected less than all the other historical characters. Social identification based on in-group superiority moderated both observed effects in such a manner that they were more pronounced for participants perceiving their ethnic group as superior. In Experiment 2 ( N = 136), historical transgression involving the in-group hero provoked the most moral disengagement and the least rejection of the group deviant. In-group superiority and in-group importance as distinct modes of social identification moderated these effects in such a way that they were more pronounced for high-identifying individuals. Taken together, the experiments show that the in-group hero, as a highly valued ethnic symbol, is exempt from the black sheep effect and the sanctions of critically attached group members. The authors discuss the implications of in-group heroes for political and educational communication.

After the Kosovo battle in the year of 1389 and the new Ottomans' breach into the Serbian lands, the positions of the Serbian provinces founded on the territory of the disintegrated Serbian empire underwent certain geopolitical changes. Unlike prince Lazar's direct successors, the Serbian regional landlord Vuk Brankovic, Lazar's son-in-law, continued to resist the Ottomans strongly opposing resuming the vassal deployment towards sultan Bayezid I. Only after his town of Skopje's fall late in the 1391, or early in 1392 did Vuk start losing his strategic control over the territory being in that way exposed to an even greater Ottoman pressure. Such Balkans' situation denouement forced Vuk Brankovic until the November 1392 to recognize the Ottoman sovereignty that was justified in one charter for monastery Hilandar. By the end of that year, sultan Bayezid I moved from the empire's Anatolian to the European part in order to consolidate his authority and firm the rule. The Byzantine historian Laonikos Chalcocondyles testifies on the measures taken by the sultan regarding subordinating the new Christian vassals and the conquered territories' colonization. These measures might refer to Vuk Brankovic and his province. There is no direct news considering Vuk Brankovic's political steps during the period from the end of 1392 to the spring of 1394. A dramatic meeting of sultan Bayezid I with his Christian vassals in the town of Serres in the fall-winter of 1393/1394 remained noted in the Byzantine sources. The remnant sources unequivocally of the Serbian meeting members mention only Stefan Lazarevic, the later Byzantine despot and Constantin Dragas, the Byzantine emperor Manuel II Palaeologus' father-in-law, though by being imprecise they leave an open space for the probable participation of some other renowned persons from Serbian side. The hitherto Serbian historiography predominant opinion was that Vuk Brankovic did not respond to the invitation addressed to the vassals concerning the Serres meeting. Apart from Vuk, the sources do not name as the meeting participants neither king Marko, nor his brothers Andreas and Dmitar, who may have been present as well. The sultans' resolution to execute the Christian vassals in Serres, withdrawn at the last moment, caused the split of the vassal relations of some Christian aristocracy to Bayezid I. Vuk's activity from the year 1394, and 1395 connected with gaining Venetian citizenship and moving the treasury in Dubrovnik in accordance with the politics of those Christian vassals who denied their obedience to the sultan after the meeting at Serres. Because of Vuks' conduct from the year of 1394 and the provenance of the preserved Byzantine sources asserting the events at Serres, a possibility of Vuk Brankovic's presence a the Ottomans's vassal by the side of the king Vukasin's sons, remains in spite of silence evident in relevant sources.

The article deals with consequences of the parliamentary and presidential elections in Serbia (May 6–20, 2012), which led to a reversal power shift. Preconditions of the old cabinet reversal as well as domestic and foreign policy problems, the stance on the independence recognition of Kosovo and on accession to the EU are analyzed.

The construction of a Roman Catholic church dedicated to St Peter in Stari Trg near Trepča can be related to the presence of Catholic migrants, Saxon miners and merchants from Dubrovnik and Kotor, who colonized the area around the rich mine during the medieval period. This article focuses on the role of the Ragusan colony in the construction and furnishing of the Kosovo church. Judging from the remnants of the church, it may be presumed that it was a three-nave structure, with a dome above the last bay of the central nave, same as the cathedrals of Dubrovnik and Kotor, and that a workshop from the littoral probably also decorated the church with paintings. The fact that in 1487 the parish priest at St Peter's church commissioned the altar polyptych from the Ragusan painter Stjepan Ugrinović shows that architects and painters may have been invited from Dubrovnik in the earlier centuries as well, and that there may have been continuity in their work on St Peter’s church in Trepča.

Kosovo’s Constitutional Court has played a role of paramount importance in the country’s recent history. The author uses a comparative analysis to discuss the role of the Court in light of the work and history of other European constitutional courts. This approach sheds light on the Court’s current role by analyzing Kosovo’s constitutional history, which shows that there has been a radical break with the past. This approach reveals the fact that Kosovo’s current Constitution does not reflect the material culture of the society of Kosovo. This radical break with the past is a result of the country’s tragic history, in which case the fight for constitutionalism means a fight for human dignity. In this battle for constitutionalism, the Court has been given very broad jurisdiction and a role to play in paving the way for Kosovo to move toward Euro-Atlantic integration in all spheres of life. Before reaching this conclusion, the author discusses the specificities of Kosovo’s transition, comparing it with other former communist countries. Among the specific features of constitutionalism in Kosovo are the role and position of the international community in the process of constitution-making and the overall design of constitutional justice in Kosovo. Throughout the article, a conclusion emerges that puts Kosovo’s Constitutional Court at the forefront of the fight for the rule of law and constitutionalism of liberal Western provenance.

Gazimestan June 28, 1989 – Phraseology of the Speech of Slobodan Milošević In 2019, the thirtieth anniversary of the famous speech of Slobodan Milošević delivered on the day of St. Vitus (Vidovdan) on June 28, 1989, on 600th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo, was marked. This speech was considered ominous and as an announcement of a future bloody war by many citizens of Yugoslavia and, above all, Albanians and Croats. The author of the article undertook to analyze this speech in terms of phraseology.

The paper discusses the continuity of Serbian folk epic poetry since the Early Middle Ages in relation to the discontinuity of Albanian folk epic poetry, in both cases determined by the historical and cultural setting. The research foregrounds the songs of Kosovo Albanians about the Battle of Kosovo, and a cycle of songs about borderland warriors (krajisniks) as well. In terms of motifs and ideological orientation, the former remained on the crossroads between the Serbian-Christian and Moslem-Turkish conceptions, whereas the latter conformed to the Moslem conception. The greatest similarities to the Serbian ?non-historical? epic poetry were demonstrated by the so-called Italo-Albanian songs, brought from Albania to Italy by the Albanian refugees fleeing the Turks. The paper is also an attempt at using scholarly arguments to refute the non-scholarly interpretations of epic techniques, characters and motifs, constructed for the purposes of political pretensions to the territory of the Serbian province as an exclusively Albanian land.

The article is devoted to the formation of the contemporary Vidovdan tradition in the Socialist Republic of Serbia in 1985-1991. Beings the key date in modern Serbian national history, 28 June was used to provide commemorative practices by various Serbian forces during the decomposition of centralised power in Yugoslavia in that period. The process of codifying of a new national mythology precipitated by the disintegration processes in the SFRY after the death of Tito, is examined on the background of the political discourse in Serbia. The research uses sources such as the public speeches and writings of leading political figures (above all Slobodan Milosevic), which are openly available, for example the Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, and which were published in the three most popular newspapers in the Socialist Republic of Serbia: Борба (Struggle), Политика (Politics) and Вечерње новости (Evening News) and the two main newspapers of the Autonomous Province of Kosovo: Rilindja (Revival) and Jeдинство (Unity). The research concludes that it is obvious that the establishing of a tradition of celebrating the anniversary of the Kosovo Battle as an annual public holiday is directly related to the interests of the political forces in SR Serbia.

Abstract Justice is not only about punishing the perpetrators but also protecting the rights of their victims. Corruption is not a victimless crime! Therefore, the main intention of this paper is to enlighten that protecting the rights of the victims of corruption is one of the crucial battles in the war against corruption. Wining this battle during the pandemic Covid-19 is grinding but of vital importance at the same time! Corruption has already been a remaining concern in the Republic of Kosovo. Notwithstanding, the situation with the pandemic Covid-19 has made the justice system, and not only, more fragile. Consequently, we are currently living in a perfect environment for corruption acts where the victims of corruption are not acknowledged and sometimes even “garbled” with the victims of Covid-19! It is important more than ever to ensure effective remedies for persons who have suffered from corruption acts including the possibility of compensation for their damage. Indeed, the Republic of Kosovo is not a state party of the Civil Law Convention on Corruption. Yet this convention shall be the guide for establishing such legal avenues while the good practices of the United Kingdom and the French Republic shall be the aim and motivation for this.

Vitus, a native of Sicily, who was martyred during the emperor Diocletian's persecutions, is not well known among Orthodox Christians. However, his feast day, which is celebrated on June 15th, occupies an extremely important place in the minds of the Serbian people, as Vidovdan. At the end of the 19th century, Jovan Vuckovic, a learned priest, concluded that, for the Serbs, the significance of the feast of St. Vitus does not lie in any particular reverence for St. Vitus himself, but in the fact that the Battle of Kosovo took place on his feast day. Nevertheless, there are reliable testimonies that the Serbs did revere this martyr from Sicily, in the Middle Ages. The earliest is to be found in the menologion in the Miroslav Gospel, and St. Vitus is also recorded in hagiographic sources that appeared after the establishment of the autocephalous Serbian Church. We find the most frequent mention of him in the manuscript synaxaria of the so-called First recession of the Menologue of Basil II (from 13th and 14th centuries), and several 14th century menaions contain an akolouthia dedicated to St. Vitus.

The wars and conflicts that accompanied the breakup of the former Yugoslavia are inextricably linked to “language”. The “breakup” of Serbo-Croat into several national languages and the determination of Slovenes and, to a lesser extent, Ma­cedonians to restrain the influence of Serbo-Croat on their respective languages ​​was a prelude to the country’s political breakup. Military violence was carefully prepared by linguistic means: hate speech, which quickly turned into war speech, dominated the words of politicians, media, culture and everyday conversation. This would not have been possible without resorting to the past and to the mythologized history of the warring parties (the Battle of Kosovo Polje, Yugoslavia before the Second World War, the Second World War itself). The analysis of the political and media discourses carried out in this study revealed three major types of semantic inversions on which the underlying discursive mechanisms largely rely: diachronic inversions (the resurgence of the terms “Ustashe”, “Chetniks”, “Turks”), semantic and logical travesties (in which terms such as “defend” and “liberate” lose their primary meanings) and semantic asymmetries (the enemy is an inhuman “aggressor” and “slaughterer”, while “our” side is made up of “innocent victims”, “martyrs” or “heroes”). As a result, the terms and utterances used lose their semantic and referential “basis”, so that they can no longer fully function except within the discursive universe that generated them.

Meštrović’s political activity, reflected in his sculpture and architecture, was closely tied to the idea of a political union of the South Slavs which culminated on the eve of and during the First World War. As a political idealist and a person who always emphasized that he was first and foremost an artist, Meštrović had no inclination for classic political activism which meant that he was not interested in belonging to any contemporary political faction. Since his political activism was not tied to a specific political party and since, unlike the politicians with whom he socialized, he did not have a prior political life, Meštrović cannot be defined either as a supporter Ante Starčević and an HSS man, or as a unionist Yugoslav and royalist. He was passionate about politics, especially during the time when the idea about a single South Slavic state took centre stage in politics, and he actively promoted this idea through his contacts with politicians, kings, cultural workers, and artists. He never acted as a classic politician or a political negotiator on behalf of a political party but as an artist who used his numerous local, regional and international acquaintances for the promotion of a political interest, that is, of a universal political platform of the entire Croatian nation as part of a Slavic ethno-political framework. Even within the political organization he himself founded, the Yugoslav Committee, Meštrović did not present a developed political manifesto but, being an artist and an intellectual, ‘encouraged the ideology behind the idea of unification through his activism and especially through his works’ (N. Machiedo Mladinić). The very fact that he was not a professional politician enabled him to ‘learn directly about some of the intentions of the political decision makers at informal occasions he attended as a distinguished artist, particularly in those situations when a direct involvement of political figures would have been impossible due to diplomatic concerns’ (D. Hammer Tomić). For example, he was the first to learn from the report of the French ambassador to Italy Camillo Barrera that Italy would be rewarded for joining the Entente forces by territorial expansion in Dalmatia. Equally known is Meštrović’s attitude towards the name of the committee because, unlike Trumbić and Supilo, he did not hesitate to use the word ‘Yugoslav’ in the name. He believed that a joint Yugoslav platform would render Croatian interests stronger in the international arena and that this would not happen had the committee featured ‘Croatian’ in its name and even less so if it started acting under the name of wider Serbia as Pašić suggested. Meštrović’s political disappointment in the idea of Yugoslavia went hand in hand with the distancing of Croatian and Serbian politics which followed the political unification. The increasing rift between him and the Yugoslav idea was becoming more and more obvious after the assassinations of Stjepan Radić and Aleksandar Karađorđević between the two Wars. His reserve towards the Republic of Yugoslavia, augmented by his political hatred of communism, was such that Meštrović never seriously considered going back to his native country and after his death, he did not leave his art works to the state but to the Croatian people. This article focuses on the most politicized phase in Meštrović’s work when he even changed the titles of the art works between displays at two different exhibitions: the works that bore the neutral names, such as ‘a shrine’, ‘a girl’, or ‘a hero’, at the 1910 exhibition of the Secession Group in Vienna were given the names of the heroes of the Battle of Kosovo the very next year and displayed as such in the pavilion of the Kingdom of Serbia at the exhibition in Rome. Special attention was given to the idea of the Vidovdan shrine, a secular temple to the Yugoslav idea, and the so-called Kosovo fragments intended to decorate it. The heightened controversy surrounds the sculpture and architectural projects Meštrović created during the period in which his political activism in the Yugoslav political and cultural arena was at its peak and he himself did not hide the intention to contribute to the political programme with his art works. This is why critical remarks which were expressed against or in favour of Meštrović’s sculpture during the early twentieth century are inseparable from the contrasting opinions about the political ideas from the turbulent time surrounding the First World War, and all of this, being a consequence of Meštrović’s political engagement, pulled him as a person into the political arena of the Croatian, Serbian and Yugoslav cause. The closest connection between Meštrović’s sculpture, architecture and politics occurred during his work on the Vidovdan shrine and the so-called Kosovo fragments. At the same time, there was a marked difference between Meštrović’s architecture which is eclectic and referential in its style and bears no political message, and sculpture which strongly personified the political programme based on the Battle of Kosovo and expressed in monumental athletic figures. Meštrović opposed the desire of the political establishment to depict his figures in national costumes so that they may witness ‘historical truth’ and, instead, continued with his idea of universal values and not historical and political particularism. Believing that only the passage of time could assess the historical protagonists best, he deemed that some of them would vanish while the others would remain, ‘so to speak, naked’ and acquire ‘supernatural dimensions’ (I.Meštrović). By depicting his figures as having torsos stripped of any sign of national identity, Meštrović wanted to provide them with a ‘general human meaning and not a specific one of this or that tribe’ (I.Meštrović). Aside from the Vidovdan Shrine and the Kosovo Fragments, the article discusses a number of other works onto which Meštrović grafted a political programme such as the Mausoleum of Njegoš on Mount Lovćen, the funerary chapel of Our Lady of the Angels at Cavtat, the equestrian reliefs of King Petar Karađorđević and ban Petar Berislavić, and the sculptures of the Indians at Chicago as ‘ahistorical’ pinnacles of his monumental Art Deco sculpture. The article argues that, based on the consideration of Meštrović’s ‘political’ sculpture, it can be said that the best achievements are found in the works in which political agendas and historical evocations (for example the caryatids, kings and bans, and even the portraits of Nikola Tesla and Ruđer Bošković) gave way to the naked ahistorical physis of a number of Kosovo heroes, female allegorical figures and, most of all, the pinnacle of the Art Deco equestrian sculptures of the Chicago Indians. What matters in the Chicago statues is the contraction of the muscles which accompany the movements of the Bowman and the Spearman and not the type of their weapons which are absent anyway, because this feature indicates that Meštrović focused on what he was best at: the naked human body relieved of the burden of costume, signs of civilization, and the pomp of political, ideological and historical attributes. This is why the politics of Meštrović’s sculpture is at its strongest when it is at its most general or, in other words, when it embodies an ideal and not a political pragmatism or a specific historical reality.

The beauty of dying: A vision of heaven the relationship with death in medieval Serbian literatureDeath presents a major topic in the medieval Serbian literature, the manner of dying being crucial for gaining eternal life. There are three stages in the schematized description of death: announcement, transition and vision of what the hero may expect in eternal life. At each stage there are images and symbols of the world beyond that present death as something pleasant and desirable. In terms of death, it is Saint Simeon as the founder of the dynasty of Nemanjici and the first national saint and Czar Lazar Hrebeljanovic that drew most of the attention, the former being described by four authors in five pieces of work, the latter due to his heroic end against the infidels in the Battle of Kosovo. It is not long before the three-stage scheme is disturbed in early hagiographies, with the 13th and 14th century heroes embracing death in most cases there are saints in question, whereas it is already in the following century in poetry, for instance, that there emerge not so favourable accounts of death. Красота умирания — видение рая отношение к смерти в средневековой сербской литературеСмерть является одной из центральных тем в средневековой сербской литературе. Ключом к обретению вечной жизни является способ умирания. Описание смерти схематизировано, состоит из трех частей: предупреждение, переход и видение того, что персонажа ожидает в вечной жизни. На каждом этапе появляются картины и символы потустороннего мира, на которых смерть изображена красивой и желанной. В сербской средневековой литературе внимание обращено прежде всего на смерть Св. Симеона, родоначальника династии Неманичей, первого национального святителя, а также на смерть Св. князя Лазаря, умершего в борьбе против неверующих, вместе со своими войнами. Наблюдаются отступления от установленной трехкомпонентной схемы первых житий. Герои житий и слов XIII и XIV вв. святые воспринимают смерть как переход в вечную жизнь, в XV в. появляются иные изображения смерти представленные в негативном ключе, например, в поэзии.

1988 and 1989 have been vintage years all over the world for centenary celebrations. People have celebrated the centenary of the Eiffel Tower, the bicentenary of the French Revolution, the bicentenary of Australia, the bicentenary of the American Bill of Rights, the quatercentenary of the defeat of the Spanish Armada, the sexcentenary of the battle of Kosovo (this one may have escaped your notice, but it brought over a million people to a gathering in the city of Pristina in Yugoslavia in June 1989), and, of course, the tercentenary of the English Revolution of 1688–89, with which I am concerned tonight. You will have no trouble believing that I have been “concerned with” and “celebrating” the Glorious Revolution for two years now, but I want to confess to you in the intimacy of this festive occasion that it has really been at least ten years, and that sometimes it feels more like three hundred!How did centennial observances start? Why do people go to trouble, take time, and spend money to call to mind an event that happened one, two, or three hundred years ago? What is it about centennial moments that turns serious-minded, scholarly-inclined historians like ourselves into “party people”? What do celebrations tell us about the uses of the past in successive “presents”? The fact is that celebrations, each varying in character, have attended the Glorious Revolution from its beginnings on through each centennial anniversary thereafter — in 1788–89, 1888–89, and 1988–89. The observances at these centennial moments not only celebrated the Revolution itself, but also served, even as they reflected, current political, cultural, and/or economic ideas and goals. In a long perspective, the celebrations are an important part of the political and cultural history of the Revolution of 1688–89 itself. They illustrate how high and low politics may intersect, show how political ideas circulate through society and undergo transformation, and offer an index of changing ideological and cultural assumptions and aspirations over three hundred years.

Background/Aim. According to the number of active smokers, Serbia occupies a high position in Europe, as well as worldwide. More than 47% of adults are smokers according to WHO data, and 33.6% according to the National Health Survey Serbia in 2006. Smoking physicians are setting a bad example to patients, they are uncritical to this habit, rarely ask patients whether they smoke and rarely advise them not to smoke. These facts contribute to the battle for reducing the number of medical workers who smoke, as well as the number of smokers among general population. The aim of the study was to determine the smoking behavior, knowledge and attitudes and cessation advice given to patients by healthcare professionals in Serbia. Methods. A stratified random cluster sample of 1,383 participants included all types of health institutions in Serbia excluding Kosovo. The self administrated questionnaire was used to collect data about smoking habits, knowledge, attitudes and cessation advice to patients given by health professionals in Serbia. Results. Out of 1,383 participants, 45.60% were smokers, of whom 34.13% were physicians and 51.87% nurses. There were 46.4% male and 45.4% female smokers. The differences in agreement with the statements related to the responsibilities of health care professionals and smoking policy are significant between the ?ever? and ?never? smokers, and also between physicians and nurses. Twenty-five percent of nurses and 22% of doctors claimed they had received formal training. However, only 35.7% of the healthcare professionals felt very prepared to counsel patients, while 52.7% felt somewhat prepared and 11.6% were not prepared at all. Conclusions. According to the result of this survey, there are needs for more aggressive nationwide non-smoking campaigns for physicians and medical students. Experiences from countries where physicians smoke less and more effectively carry out smoking cessation practices need to be shared with Serbian physicians in order to improve their smoking behavior and smoking cessation practices.

Patriarch Ephrem, monk and hermit, writer and saint, Bulgarian-born but twice the leader of the Serbian Church (1375-78 and 1389-92), is an outstanding figure of the late medieval Balkans. His "life and works" are discussed here in the light of hagiological texts and the information provided by various types of sources with the view to drawing some historically relevant conclusions. The main source of information about Ephrem's life and activity are the eulogies, Life and service composed by bishop Mark, his disciple and loyal follower for twenty-three years. Making use of hagiographical topica combined with plentiful data of undoubted documentary value, he relates the story of Ephrem's life through all of its major stages: from his birth and youth to his withdrawal from the world and taking of a monk's habit. Of formative influence were his years on the Holy Mount Athos, where he experienced different styles of monastic life, coenobitic, as well as solitary, which he practiced in the well-known hermitages in the heights of Athos. The further course of Ephrem's life was decided by the turbulent developments in the Balkans brought about by the Ottoman conquests. In that sense, his biography, full of forced and voluntary resettlements, is a true expression of the spirit of the times. Forced to flee Mount Athos, Ephrem made a short stay in Bulgaria and then, about 1347, came to Serbia, where he spent the rest of his life. An eminent representative of the monastic elite and under the aegis of the Serbian patriarch, he spent ten years in a hesychastria of the Monastery of Decani. For reasons of security, he then moved to a cave hermitage founded specially for him in the vicinity of the Patriarchate of Pec. It was in that cell, where he lived for twenty years powerfully influencing the monastic environment, that his literary work profoundly marked by hesychast thought and eschatology, was created. Ephrem twice accepted the office of patriarch in the extremely complex, even dramatic, political and social circumstances created by the conflict between the patriarchates of Serbia and Constantinople, on the one hand, and rivalries between local lords, on the other. There is a difference of interpretation as to his role as the holder of patriarchal office. The latest findings appear to suggest that Ephrem, as an exponent of Mount Athos, loyal to the Patriarchate of Constantinople and close to Vuk Brankovic, was unacceptable to the Lazarevic dynasty who emerged victorious in the power straggles in Serbia. Their victory was crowned with the creation of the cult of the holy prince Lazar, a Kosovo martyr. Although a supporter of the defeated side, patriarch Ephrem, as an unquestionable spiritual authority and very deserving personage, was included among the saints shortly after his death. His cult, however, had never been made complete. He was given a Life and service, but the attempted elevation of his body, i.e. creation of the cult of his relics, was thwarted. The reasons, political in nature, were given in the form of a coded hagiographical message in his Life composed by bishop Mark, an active protagonist in all the events. .

The concept of “the beginning and end of history” in Serbian historiosophy. Dominant problematic and methodological featuresIn this study, the most representative and (importantly) not easily methodologically categorised historiosophical concepts of the Serbian state and nation are taken into consideration. Among these, the most elementary point of reference is that of “the beginning and end”. On the one hand the Serbian philosophy of history – dependant both on common historiosophical concepts and native ideas – demonstrates its connections with orientations of a post-Hegelian background; while on the other connections can be seen with the Providentialist historiosophy dominant in the first part of the 20th century in Serbia and, nowadays, taking into account history in Soteriologic and Eschatological terms – Christian historiosophy (more strictly: the Orthodox theology of history based on the Russian pattern), as well as eclectic historiosophy referring to the contamination of indigenous folk tradition and ethicised Orthodoxy (which in turn synthesises mythic and messianic elements). Within all perspectives and methodological practices, the very thought enabling the whole history of Serbia and the Serbs to be grasped – referring at the same time either to constant casual mechanisms concerning the national consciousness or to the variously-defined national psyche – is co-constructed and present in all ideas: the concept of “the beginning and end”. Within this concept, several events and historical figures – forming a constitutional and basic domain of meaning with its potential as loci communes – are grasped: the beginning of Nemanjić’s state, St. Sava as the “Serbian beginning and end”, and the very central event – the Battle of Kosovo – within the transcendental frame – as the beginning of the cyclically repetitive “holy history”, etc. Kategorie początku i końca dziejów w serbskiej historiozofii – dominanty problemowe i metodologiczneArtykuł omawia najbardziej reprezentatywne i – co istotne – wymykające się jed­noznacznej kategoryzacji metodologicznej ujęcia historiozofii dziejów państwa i narodu serbskiego, w których kategoria „początku i końca” stanowi elementarny i stały punkt odniesienia. Zależna od ogólnych koncepcji historiozoficznych, ale także oparta o refleksję rodzimą, serbska filozofia historii ujawnia związki z nurtami o rodowodzie postheglowskim, nade wszystko jednak z dominującą tu w I poł. XX wieku historiozofią prowidencjalistyczną i – także współcześnie – ujmującą historię w perspektywie soteriologicznej i eschatologicznej – chrześcijańską (a dokładniej – wzorowaną na rosyjskiej – prawosławną teologią historii) oraz ukształtowaną w oparciu o tradycję ludową i zetnizowane prawosławie eklektyczną historiozofią syntezującą pierwiastki mityczne i mesjanistyczne. Niezależnie od perspektyw i strategii metodologicznych historiozoficzną refleksję umożliwiającą ogarnięcie całości dziejów Serbii i Serbów, a przy tym wskazującą na stałe mechanizmy sprawcze lokalizowane w sferze świadomości, bądź też rozmaicie rozumianej psychiki narodowej, współtworzy elementarna – obecna we wszystkich koncepcjach – kategoria „początku i końca”. W jej obrębie mieszczą się konstytuujące podstawową sferę sensów i mające status loci commu­nes najważniejsze wydarzenia i postaci historyczne (początek państwa i świętej dynastii Nemanjiciów; św. Sava jako „serbski początek i koniec”; centralne wydarzenie – bitwa na Kosowym Polu – w wymiarze transcendentnym – „początek” cyklicznie powtarzającej się „historii świętej”, itd.).

(francuski) L'auteur de ce travail consid?re les rapports des Dragas avec certains monast?res athonites: Saint-Pant?l??m?n, Chilandar, Iviron, Kutlumus et Vatop?di. En l'occurrence, on sait qu'outre la confirmation d'anciens privil?ges fonciers, ils ont octroy? de nouveaux droits ? ces ?tablissements ? travers la donation de nombre de villages et d'?glises sis sur le territoire de leur Etat, tr?s agrandi apr?s la bataille de la Maritsa (26 septembre 1371), et, le cas ?ch?ant, ont r?solu les litiges fonciers les opposant entre eux. Cette activit? est attest?e par plusieurs documents d?livr?s ? ces monast?res, dont les indications chronologiques subsistant sur les originaux endommag?s ne sont pas toujours fiables, alors qu'elles font totalement d?faut sur les copies. L'auteur estime que Chilandar et Saint Pant?l??m?n sont les premiers monast?res athonites ? avoir sollicit? l'intervention des nouveaux ma?tres de la r?gion de la Strumica, tout d'abord pour r?soudre un litige concernant le village de Breznica, qui opposait ces deux ?tablissements depuis approximativement 1364. On sait que ce village est vraisemblablement ?chu au monast?re russe un peu apr?s juin 1374. A cette ?poque, d'apr?s des copies conserv?es, les fr?res Dragas ? le despote Jovan et gospodin Konstantin ? ont offert ? Saint-Pant?l??m?n une dizaine de villages sis dans la r?gion de la Strumica, dont la majorit? existent encore aujourd'hui, ainsi qu'un ou deux hameaux; la donation de ces villages incluait celle de neuf ?glises patrimoniales, auxquelles ils ont ?galement ajout? une ?glise situ?e ? Strumica et deux respectivement ? P?trie et dans les environs de cette ville. Pour sa part, le gospodin Konstantin semble avoir rattach? ? Saint-Pant?l??m?n jusqu'? 18 villages, 3 hameaux et 6 ?glises sis dans la r?gion de Tikves. En fait, nous poss?dons uniquement une seule copie faisant ?tat de la donation ? cet ?tablissement de l'?glise Saint-Georges sise ? Polosko avec les villages de Polosko, Kosane et Dragozelj. Cependant cette donation pourrait justement ?tre mise en doute compte tenu que nous savons que l'empereur Dusan a rattach? cette ?glise avec les trois villages mentionn?s au monast?re de Chilandar en f?vrier 1340. L'auteur attire toutefois l'attention sur le fait que l'?glise Saint-Georges avec ces villages, dans ce cas, se serait retrouv? comme une possession isol?e de Chilandar, entour?e de possessions de Saint-Pant?l??m?n de sorte qu'il n'exclut non plus la possibilit? qu'il soit question d'une donn?e digne de foi. Par cons?quent, une solution serait que Chilandar s'est peut-?tre vu d?dommag?e la perte de ces villages et de cette ?glise sis ? Polosko par la cession de villages sis dans une autre r?gion. Finalement, Konstantin a ?galement offert au monast?re athonite russe deux autres ?glises ? une sise ? Stip et la seconde ? Zletovo avec les droits leur appartenant. Les litiges apparus entre les moines de Chilandar et ceux de Saint-Pant?l??m?n au sujet de leur possessions limitrophes, sises sur la rive droite de la Strumica ont ?t? r?solus, sur ordre du gospodin Konstantin et du conseil de ses seigneurs par les ?v?ques de Strumica et de Vodoca en 1375/76. Puis, vers 1376/77, les fr?res Dragas avec leur m?re, l'imp?ratrice Evdokija, ont confirm? ? Saint-Pant?l??m?n la possession de villages sur la seule rive droite de la Strumica, ce faisant leur acte consigne de fa?on pr?cise les droits de ces villages tr?s probablement aux fins de pr?venir tout nouveau litige avec les voisins de ces biens dans la jouissance de ceux-ci. Les donations des fr?res Dragas en faveur de Chilandar s'av?rent ?galement tr?s nombreuses. Par un acte dat? du 1er juin 1377 le despote Jovan et le gospodin Konstantin ont confirm? ? Chilandar la possession durable et inali?nable de l'?glise Saint-Biaise ? Stip et de trois villages sis dans les environs de cette ville. Ensuite, vers 1379 ou en 1380/81, l'imp?ratrice Evdokija et le gospodin Konstantin ont donn? ? Chilandar leur ?glise patrimoniale d?di?e ? la Vierge sise au lieu dit Arhiljevica et 19 villages avec leurs droits; au printemps 1380, Konstantin, ? la demande des moines de Chilandar, a rattach? ? leur monast?re quelques villages sis dans la r?gion de Vranje; une seconde importante possession de Chilandar sise ? Lesnovo, en l'occurrence l'?glise du Saint-Archange (Michel), a ?t? restitu?e par Konstantin ? ce monast?re le 15 ao?t 1381, ? la demande de ses moines et par l'interm?diaire du milosnik vo?vode Dmitar. L'?glise du Saint-Archange a ?t? remise avec 10 villages, 5 hameaux, 4 villages abandonn?s, ainsi qu'avec tous leurs droits dans la r?gion de Lesnovo, de Bregalnica et de Stip; parall?lement, Konstantin a confirm? ? l'?glise du Saint-Archange une donation de Dusan, en l'occurrence un revenu annuel de 100 hyperpres provenant du march? de Zletovo. Enfin vraisemblablement vers la fin de la neuvi?me d?cennie du XIV?me si?cle satisfaisant une requ?te du vo?vode Dmitar alors entr?e en religion Konstantin a rattach? ? Chilandar trois autres villages sis dans les environs de Stip. En plus des villages offerts par les fr?res Dragas ou par Konstantin seul, les monast?res se sont vu attribuer tous les imp?ts et corv?es rattach?s ? ces biens. Pour tout ce qu'il a fait pour leur monast?re les moines de Chilandar reconnaissants ont rang? gospodin Konstantin au nombres des fondateurs de leur ?tablissement. Les fr?res Dragas ?taient en relation avec le monast?re d'Iviron par le biais de son m?toque d?di? ? la Vierge El?oussa, situ? non loin de Strumica, auquel ils ont c?d? (le 13 janvier 1380) deux importants privil?ges, exemptant pour toujours ses hommes de l'obligation de la bigla (bigliatikori) et de la moisson de froment (zetva zitna) ? corv?es au profit de l'Etat, dont les souverains serbes exemptent d'habitude les habitants des villages appartenant ? des monast?res. Une donn?e (juin 1393) nous apprenant que le gospodin Konstantin ?tait un bienfaiteur de Kutlumus appara?t toute ? fait digne de foi; ce seigneur y est mentionn? comme son 'protecteur et fondateur'. Toutefois, nous ne poss?dons aucune information sur les donations, assur?ment importantes pour justifier ces titres honorifiques, faites par Kontantin ? cet ?tablissement. A la diff?rence des actes par lesquels les Dragas ont proc?d? ? des donations ? Saint-Pant?l??m?n, Chilandar et Iviron, et qui, par leur formulation, sont tr?s proches des actes imp?riaux, ce qui pourrait attester qu'ils sont issus de la chancellerie de souverains ind?pendants, l'acte par lequel Konstantin a confirm? ? Vatop?di, en octobre 1393, le monast?re de la Sainte-Vierge Pantanassa sis ? Melnik, petit ?tablissement gravement d?labr?, montre clairement que le donateur a une position de vassal par rapport au sultan ottoman, qu'il mentionne comme. Pour cette raison l'auteur en conclut que le despote Jovan, jusqu'? son entr?e en religion un peu apr?s 1377, et le gospodin Konstantin, vraisemblablement jusqu'? la bataille de Kosovo (13 juin 1389) ont prot?g? les int?r?ts des moines hagiorites, ? ce qu'il semble en qualit? de souverains ind?pendants satisfaisant ? leur requ?tes. Si le gospodin Konstantin s'est trouv? dans quelque position d?pendante par rapport au sultan ottoman, il est toutefois certain que celle-ci n'atteignait pas le degr? que sugg?re notre acte d'octobre 1393. .

For most of the last millennium, the Balkan region, has been associated with conflicts, wars and instability. Indeed, even today, the situation is very tense. Finding the causes of it, is imperative, but that still does not resolve the deep divisions that are ingrained. The aim of this study is to explore what the Western literature reveals about Balkan enmities, more specifically Albanian-Serbian hostilities throughout past centuries, by focusing at certain periods or events that had a great impact in historical context. The study focuses extensively on Kosovo myth, but also on other specific episodes of Albanian- Serbian interaction, namely Serbian Empire, 1389 Kosovo battle, the description event of Murat I death, and 1806 Serbian Revolution among others. One must bear in mind that Albanians and Serbs presented a united front in certain battles and fights (namely in 1389 and 1806), but later turned guns against each other, resulting in thousands unnecessary deaths. This occurred not because their respective citizens wanted so, but was largely incited through government myths and insincere propaganda. Taking exclusively the Western perspective in this context, whose exploration of events in the Balkans is pretty detailed, only enriches the quality of this study. This research concludes that the region should and must learn from past mistakes that living with myths, wars and propaganda leads to nowhere. The Balkan more than ever needs proactive and creative leaders that shift the minds of Balkan people towards elimination, or at least diminishing, of both physical and mental boundaries against each other.

The year 1989 marked the six hundredth anniversary of the defeat of the Christian Prince of Serbia, Lazard I, at the hands of the Ottoman Empire in the “Valley of the Blackbirds,” Kosovo. On June 28, 1989, the very day of the battle’s anniversary, thousands of Serbs gathered on the presumed historic battle field bearing nationalistic symbols and honoring the Serbian martyrs buried in Orthodox churches across the territory. They were there to hear a speech delivered by Slobodan Milosevic in which the then-president of the Socialist Republic of Serbia revived Lazard’s mythic battle and martyrdom. It was a symbolic act aimed at establishing a version of history that saw Kosovo as part of the Serbian nation. It marked the commencement of a violent process of subjugation that culminated in genocide. Fully integrated into the complex web of tragic violence that was to ensue was the targeting and destruction of the region’s architectural and cultural heritage. As with the peoples of the region, this heritage crossed geopolitical “boundaries.” Through the fluctuations of history, Kosovo’s heritage had already become subject to divergent temporal, geographical, physical and even symbolical forces. During the war it was to become a focal point of clashes between these forces and, as Anthony D. Smith argues with regard to cultural heritage more generally, it would be seen as “a legacy belonging to the past of ‘the other,’” which, in times of conflict, opponents try “to damage or even deny.” Today, the scars of this conflict, its damage and its denial are still evident. However, there are initiatives that are now seeking to use heritage – architectural and otherwise – as a way of fostering respect and dialogue between the cultures still reeling from the effects of the conflict. Having been seen as an originating factor in the conflict and made into a target for attack during the war, heritage is now seen as a facilitator for peacekeeping. As is to be expected, this is a complex, polemic, fraught and contested process.

SummaryMarko Kraljević is the central figure of South Slavic epic poetry, the protagonist of hundreds of poems and legends, and epic traditions in general. In the frameworks of Serbian and South Slavic folklore (beside the legend of the Battle of Kosovo) the epic legend of Kraljević Marko is certainly best known and, nevertheless, most complex. For this reason, in the course of the last 150 years, it has been the research subject of numerous folkloristic, literary, ethnological, ethno-mythological and other studies. In this paper we shall address the historical and mythical roots of the epic character of Marko Kraljević, drawing from the works of other researchers of this subject. Our preliminary assumption is that the epic character of Marko Kraljević was not based exclusively on the historical figure of King Marko Mrnjavčević, rather it included other prototypes of historical and mythic personalities as well. Some of them are associated with distant periods in ancient history.

The pop cultural moment that most typifies the social psychology of invasion for many of us is Orson Welles's 1938 coast to coast CBS radio broadcast of Invaders from Mars, a narration based on H.G. Wells's The War of the Worlds. News bulletins and scene broadcasts followed Welles's introduction, featuring, in contemporary journalistic style, reports of a "meteor" landing near Princeton, N.J., which "killed" 1500 people, and the discovery that it was in fact a "metal cylinder" containing strange creatures from Mars armed with "death rays" which would reduce all the inhabitants of the earth to space dust. Welles's broadcast caused thousands to believe that Martians were wreaking widespread havoc in New York and Jersey. New York streets were filled with families rushing to open spaces protecting their faces from the "gas raids", clutching sacred possessions and each other. Lines of communication were clogged, massive traffic jams ensued, and people evacuated their homes in a state of abject terror while armouries in neighbouring districts prepared to join in the "battle". Some felt it was a very cruel prank, especially after the recent war scare in Europe that featured constant interruption of regular radio programming. Many of the thousands of questions directed at police in the hours following the broadcast reflected the concerns of the residents of London and Paris during the tense days before the Munich agreement. The media had undergone that strange metamorphosis that occurs when people depend on it for information that affects themselves directly. But it was not a prank. Three separate announcements made during the broadcast stressed its fictional nature. The introduction to the program stated "the Columbia Broadcasting System and its affiliated stations present Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre on the Air in The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells", as did the newspaper listing of the program "Today: 8:00-9:00 -- Play: H.G. Wells's 'War of the Worlds' -- WABC". Welles, rather innocently, wanted to play with the conventions of broadcasting and grant his audience a bit of legitimately unsettling, though obviously fictitious, verisimilitude. There are not too many instances in modern history where we can look objectively at such incredible reactions to media soundbytes. That evening is a prototype for the impact media culture can have on an audience whose minds are prepped for impending disaster. The interruption of scheduled radio invoked in the audience a knee-jerk response that dramatically illustrated the susceptibility of people to the discourse of invasion, as well as the depth of the relationship between the audience and media during tense times. These days, the media itself are often regarded as the invaders. The endless procession of information that grows alongside technology's ability to present it is feared as much as it is loved. In the current climate of information and technological overload, invasion has swum from the depths of our unconscious paranoia and lurks impatiently in the shallows. There is so much invasion and so much to feel invaded about: the war in Kosovo (one of over sixty being fought today) is getting worse with the benevolence and force of the UN dwindling in a cloud of bureaucracy and failed talks, Ethiopia and Eritrea are going at it again, the ideology of the Olympic Games in Sydney has gone from a positive celebration of the millennium to a revenue-generating boys club of back scratchers, Internet smut is still everywhere, and most horrifically, Baywatch came dangerously close to being shot on location on the East Coast of Australia. In this issue of M/C we take a look at literal and allegorical invasions from a variety of cleverly examined aspects of our culture. Firstly, Axel Bruns takes a look a subtle invasion that is occurring on the Web in "Invading the Ivory Tower: Hypertext and the New Dilettante Scholars". He points to the way the Internet's function as a research tool is changing the nature of academic writing due to its interactivity and potential to be manipulated in a way that conventional written material cannot. Axel investigates the web browser's ability to invade the text and the elite world of academic publishing via the format of hypertext itself rather than merely through ideas. Felicity Meakins's article Shooting Baywatch: Resisting Cultural Invasion examines media and community reactions to the threat of having the television series Baywatch shot on Australian beaches. Felicity looks at the cultural cringe that has surrounded the relationship between Australia and America over the years and is manifested by our response to American accents in the media. American cultural imperialism has come to signify a great deal in the dwindling face of Aussie institutions like mateship and egalitarianism. In a similarly driven piece called "A Decolonising Doctor? British SF Invasion Narratives", Nick Caldwell investigates some of the implications of the "Britishness" of the cult television series Doctor Who, where insularity and cultural authority are taken to extremes during the ubiquitous intergalactic invasions. Paul Mc Cormack's article "Screen II: The Invasion of the Attention Snatchers" turns from technologically superior invaders to an invasion by technology itself -- he considers how the television has irreversibly invaded our lives and claimed a dominant place in the domestic sphere. Recently, the (Internet-connected) personal computer has begun a similar invasion: what space will it eventually claim? Sandra Brunet's "Is Sustainable Tourism Really Sustainable? Protecting the Icon in the Commodity at Sites of Invasion" explores the often forgotten Kangaroo Island off the coast of South Australia. She looks at ways in which the image of the island is constructed by the government and media for eco-tourism and how faithful this representation is to the farmers, fishermen and other inhabitants of the island. Paul Starr's article "Special Effects and the Invasive Camera: Enemy of the State and The Conversation" rounds off the issue with a look at the troubled relationship between cutting-edge special effects in Hollywood action movies and the surveillance technologies that recent movies such as Enemy of the State show as tools in government conspiracies. The depiction of high-tech gadgetry as 'cool' and 'evil' at the same time, he writes, leads to a collapse of meaning. This issue of M/C succeeds in pointing out sites of invasion in unusual places, continuing the journal's tradition of perception in the face of new media culture. I hope you enjoy this second issue of the second volume: 'invasion'. Ben King 'Invasion' Issue Editor Citation reference for this article MLA style: Ben King. "Editorial: 'Invasion'." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.2 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9903/edit.php>. Chicago style: Ben King, "Editorial: 'Invasion'," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 2 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9903/edit.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Ben King. (1999) Editorial: 'invasion'. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(2). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9903/edit.php> ([your date of access]).

History is not over and that includes media history. Jay Rosen (Zelizer & Allan 33) The media in their reporting on terrorism tend to be judgmental, inflammatory, and sensationalistic. — Susan D. Moeller (169) In short, we are directed in time, and our relation to the future is different than our relation to the past. All our questions are conditioned by this asymmetry, and all our answers to these questions are equally conditioned by it. Norbert Wiener (44) The Clash of Geopolitical Pundits America’s geo-strategic engagement with the world underwent a dramatic shift in the decade after the Cold War ended. United States military forces undertook a series of humanitarian interventions from northern Iraq (1991) and Somalia (1992) to NATO’s bombing campaign on Kosovo (1999). Wall Street financial speculators embraced market-oriented globalization and technology-based industries (Friedman 1999). Meanwhile the geo-strategic pundits debated several different scenarios at deeper layers of epistemology and macrohistory including the breakdown of nation-states (Kaplan), the ‘clash of civilizations’ along religiopolitical fault-lines (Huntington) and the fashionable ‘end of history’ thesis (Fukuyama). Media theorists expressed this geo-strategic shift in reference to the ‘CNN Effect’: the power of real-time media ‘to provoke major responses from domestic audiences and political elites to both global and national events’ (Robinson 2). This media ecology is often contrasted with ‘Gateholder’ and ‘Manufacturing Consent’ models. The ‘CNN Effect’ privileges humanitarian and non-government organisations whereas the latter models focus upon the conformist mind-sets and shared worldviews of government and policy decision-makers. The September 11 attacks generated an uncertain interdependency between the terrorists, government officials, and favourable media coverage. It provided a test case, as had the humanitarian interventions (Robinson 37) before it, to test the claim by proponents that the ‘CNN Effect’ had policy leverage during critical stress points. The attacks also revived a long-running debate in media circles about the risk factors of global media. McLuhan (1964) and Ballard (1990) had prophesied that the global media would pose a real-time challenge to decision-making processes and that its visual imagery would have unforeseen psychological effects on viewers. Wark (1994) noted that journalists who covered real-time events including the Wall Street crash (1987) and collapse of the Berlin Wall (1989) were traumatised by their ‘virtual’ geographies. The ‘War on Terror’ as 21st Century Myth Three recent books explore how the 1990s humanitarian interventions and the September 11 attacks have remapped this ‘virtual’ territory with all too real consequences. Piers Robinson’s The CNN Effect (2002) critiques the theory and proposes the policy-media interaction model. Barbie Zelizer and Stuart Allan’s anthology Journalism After September 11 (2002) examines how September 11 affected the journalists who covered it and the implications for news values. Sandra Silberstein’s War of Words (2002) uncovers how strategic language framed the U.S. response to September 11. Robinson provides the contextual background; Silberstein contributes the specifics; and Zelizer and Allan surface broader perspectives. These books offer insights into the social construction of the nebulous War on Terror and why certain images and trajectories were chosen at the expense of other possibilities. Silberstein locates this world-historical moment in the three-week transition between September 11’s aftermath and the U.S. bombings of Afghanistan’s Taliban regime. Descriptions like the ‘War on Terror’ and ‘Axis of Evil’ framed the U.S. military response, provided a conceptual justification for the bombings, and also brought into being the geo-strategic context for other nations. The crucial element in this process was when U.S. President George W. Bush adopted a pedagogical style for his public speeches, underpinned by the illusions of communal symbols and shared meanings (Silberstein 6-8). Bush’s initial address to the nation on September 11 invoked the ambiguous pronoun ‘we’ to recreate ‘a unified nation, under God’ (Silberstein 4). The 1990s humanitarian interventions had frequently been debated in Daniel Hallin’s sphere of ‘legitimate controversy’; however the grammar used by Bush and his political advisers located the debate in the sphere of ‘consensus’. This brief period of enforced consensus was reinforced by the structural limitations of North American media outlets. September 11 combined ‘tragedy, public danger and a grave threat to national security’, Michael Schudson observed, and in the aftermath North American journalism shifted ‘toward a prose of solidarity rather than a prose of information’ (Zelizer & Allan 41). Debate about why America was hated did not go much beyond Bush’s explanation that ‘they hated our freedoms’ (Silberstein 14). Robert W. McChesney noted that alternatives to the ‘war’ paradigm were rarely mentioned in the mainstream media (Zelizer & Allan 93). A new myth for the 21st century had been unleashed. The Cycle of Integration Propaganda Journalistic prose masked the propaganda of social integration that atomised the individual within a larger collective (Ellul). The War on Terror was constructed by geopolitical pundits as a Manichean battle between ‘an “evil” them and a national us’ (Silberstein 47). But the national crisis made ‘us’ suddenly problematic. Resurgent patriotism focused on the American flag instead of Constitutional rights. Debates about military tribunals and the USA Patriot Act resurrected the dystopian fears of a surveillance society. New York City mayor Rudy Guiliani suddenly became a leadership icon and Time magazine awarded him Person of the Year (Silberstein 92). Guiliani suggested at the Concert for New York on 20 October 2001 that ‘New Yorkers and Americans have been united as never before’ (Silberstein 104). Even the series of Public Service Announcements created by the Ad Council and U.S. advertising agencies succeeded in blurring the lines between cultural tolerance, social inclusion, and social integration (Silberstein 108-16). In this climate the in-depth discussion of alternate options and informed dissent became thought-crimes. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni’s report Defending Civilization: How Our Universities are Failing America (2002), which singled out “blame America first” academics, ignited a firestorm of debate about educational curriculums, interpreting history, and the limits of academic freedom. Silberstein’s perceptive analysis surfaces how ACTA assumed moral authority and collective misunderstandings as justification for its interrogation of internal enemies. The errors she notes included presumed conclusions, hasty generalisations, bifurcated worldviews, and false analogies (Silberstein 133, 135, 139, 141). Op-ed columnists soon exposed ACTA’s gambit as a pre-packaged witch-hunt. But newscasters then channel-skipped into military metaphors as the Afghanistan campaign began. The weeks after the attacks New York City sidewalk traders moved incense and tourist photos to make way for World Trade Center memorabilia and anti-Osama shirts. Chevy and Ford morphed September 11 catchphrases (notably Todd Beamer’s last words “Let’s Roll” on Flight 93) and imagery into car advertising campaigns (Silberstein 124-5). American self-identity was finally reasserted in the face of a domestic recession through this wave of vulgar commercialism. The ‘Simulated’ Fall of Elite Journalism For Columbia University professor James Carey the ‘failure of journalism on September 11’ signaled the ‘collapse of the elites of American journalism’ (Zelizer & Allan 77). Carey traces the rise-and-fall of adversarial and investigative journalism from the Pentagon Papers and Watergate through the intermediation of the press to the myopic self-interest of the 1988 and 1992 Presidential campaigns. Carey’s framing echoes the earlier criticisms of Carl Bernstein and Hunter S. Thompson. However this critique overlooks several complexities. Piers Robinson cites Alison Preston’s insight that diplomacy, geopolitics and elite reportage defines itself through the sense of distance from its subjects. Robinson distinguished between two reportage types: distance framing ‘creates emotional distance’ between the viewers and victims whilst support framing accepts the ‘official policy’ (28). The upsurge in patriotism, the vulgar commercialism, and the mini-cycle of memorabilia and publishing all combined to enhance the support framing of the U.S. federal government. Empathy generated for September 11’s victims was tied to support of military intervention. However this closeness rapidly became the distance framing of the Afghanistan campaign. News coverage recycled the familiar visuals of in-progress bombings and Taliban barbarians. The alternative press, peace movements, and social activists then retaliated against this coverage by reinstating the support framing that revealed structural violence and gave voice to silenced minorities and victims. What really unfolded after September 11 was not the demise of journalism’s elite but rather the renegotiation of reportage boundaries and shared meanings. Journalists scoured the Internet for eyewitness accounts and to interview survivors (Zelizer & Allan 129). The same medium was used by others to spread conspiracy theories and viral rumors that numerology predicted the date September 11 or that the “face of Satan” could be seen in photographs of the World Trade Center (Zelizer & Allan 133). Karim H. Karim notes that the Jihad frame of an “Islamic Peril” was socially constructed by media outlets but then challenged by individual journalists who had learnt ‘to question the essentialist bases of her own socialization and placing herself in the Other’s shoes’ (Zelizer & Allan 112). Other journalists forgot that Jihad and McWorld were not separate but two intertwined worldviews that fed upon each other. The September 11 attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center also had deep symbolic resonances for American sociopolitical ideals that some journalists explored through analysis of myths and metaphors. The Rise of Strategic Geography However these renegotiated boundariesof new media, multiperspectival frames, and ‘layered’ depth approaches to issues analysiswere essentially minority reports. The rationalist mode of journalism was soon reasserted through normative appeals to strategic geography. The U.S. networks framed their documentaries on Islam and the Middle East in bluntly realpolitik terms. The documentary “Minefield: The United States and the Muslim World” (ABC, 11 October 2001) made explicit strategic assumptions of ‘the U.S. as “managing” the region’ and ‘a definite tinge of superiority’ (Silberstein 153). ABC and CNN stressed the similarities between the world’s major monotheistic religions and their scriptural doctrines. Both networks limited their coverage of critiques and dissent to internecine schisms within these traditions (Silberstein 158). CNN also created different coverage for its North American and international audiences. The BBC was more cautious in its September 11 coverage and more global in outlook. Three United Kingdom specials – Panorama (Clash of Cultures, BBC1, 21 October 2001), Question Time (Question Time Special, BBC1, 13 September 2001), and “War Without End” (War on Trial, Channel 4, 27 October 2001) – drew upon the British traditions of parliamentary assembly, expert panels, and legal trials as ways to explore the multiple dimensions of the ‘War on Terror’ (Zelizer & Allan 180). These latter debates weren’t value free: the programs sanctioned ‘a tightly controlled and hierarchical agora’ through different containment strategies (Zelizer & Allan 183). Program formats, selected experts and presenters, and editorial/on-screen graphics were factors that pre-empted the viewer’s experience and conclusions. The traditional emphasis of news values on the expert was renewed. These subtle forms of thought-control enabled policy-makers to inform the public whilst inoculating them against terrorist propaganda. However the ‘CNN Effect’ also had counter-offensive capabilities. Osama bin Laden’s videotaped sermons and the al-Jazeera network’s broadcasts undermined the psychological operations maxim that enemies must not gain access to the mindshare of domestic audiences. Ingrid Volkmer recounts how the Los Angeles based National Iranian Television Network used satellite broadcasts to criticize the Iranian leadership and spark public riots (Zelizer & Allan 242). These incidents hint at why the ‘War on Terror’ myth, now unleashed upon the world, may become far more destabilizing to the world system than previous conflicts. Risk Reportage and Mediated Trauma When media analysts were considering the ‘CNN Effect’ a group of social contract theorists including Anthony Giddens, Zygmunt Bauman, and Ulrich Beck were debating, simultaneously, the status of modernity and the ‘unbounded contours’ of globalization. Beck termed this new environment of escalating uncertainties and uninsurable dangers the ‘world risk society’ (Beck). Although they drew upon constructivist and realist traditions Beck and Giddens ‘did not place risk perception at the center of their analysis’ (Zelizer & Allan 203). Instead this was the role of journalist as ‘witness’ to Ballard-style ‘institutionalized disaster areas’. The terrorist attacks on September 11 materialized this risk and obliterated the journalistic norms of detachment and objectivity. The trauma ‘destabilizes a sense of self’ within individuals (Zelizer & Allan 205) and disrupts the image-generating capacity of collective societies. Barbie Zelizer found that the press selection of September 11 photos and witnesses re-enacted the ‘Holocaust aesthetic’ created when Allied Forces freed the Nazi internment camps in 1945 (Zelizer & Allan 55-7). The visceral nature of September 11 imagery inverted the trend, from the Gulf War to NATO’s Kosovo bombings, for news outlets to depict war in detached video-game imagery (Zelizer & Allan 253). Coverage of the September 11 attacks and the subsequent Bali bombings (on 12 October 2002) followed a four-part pattern news cycle of assassinations and terrorism (Moeller 164-7). Moeller found that coverage moved from the initial event to a hunt for the perpetrators, public mourning, and finally, a sense of closure ‘when the media reassert the supremacy of the established political and social order’ (167). In both events the shock of the initial devastation was rapidly followed by the arrest of al Qaeda and Jamaah Islamiyah members, the creation and copying of the New York Times ‘Portraits of Grief’ template, and the mediation of trauma by a re-established moral order. News pundits had clearly studied the literature on bereavement and grief cycles (Kubler-Ross). However the neo-noir work culture of some outlets also fueled bitter disputes about how post-traumatic stress affected journalists themselves (Zelizer & Allan 253). Reconfiguring the Future After September 11 the geopolitical pundits, a reactive cycle of integration propaganda, pecking order shifts within journalism elites, strategic language, and mediated trauma all combined to bring a specific future into being. This outcome reflected the ‘media-state relationship’ in which coverage ‘still reflected policy preferences of parts of the U.S. elite foreign-policy-making community’ (Robinson 129). Although Internet media and non-elite analysts embraced Hallin’s ‘sphere of deviance’ there is no clear evidence yet that they have altered the opinions of policy-makers. The geopolitical segue from September 11 into the U.S.-led campaign against Iraq also has disturbing implications for the ‘CNN Effect’. Robinson found that its mythic reputation was overstated and tied to issues of policy certainty that the theory’s proponents often failed to examine. Media coverage molded a ‘domestic constituency ... for policy-makers to take action in Somalia’ (Robinson 62). He found greater support in ‘anecdotal evidence’ that the United Nations Security Council’s ‘safe area’ for Iraqi Kurds was driven by Turkey’s geo-strategic fears of ‘unwanted Kurdish refugees’ (Robinson 71). Media coverage did impact upon policy-makers to create Bosnian ‘safe areas’, however, ‘the Kosovo, Rwanda, and Iraq case studies’ showed that the ‘CNN Effect’ was unlikely as a key factor ‘when policy certainty exists’ (Robinson 118). The clear implication from Robinson’s studies is that empathy framing, humanitarian values, and searing visual imagery won’t be enough to challenge policy-makers. What remains to be done? Fortunately there are some possibilities that straddle the pragmatic, realpolitik and emancipatory approaches. Today’s activists and analysts are also aware of the dangers of ‘unfreedom’ and un-reflective dissent (Fromm). Peter Gabriel’s organisation Witness, which documents human rights abuses, is one benchmark of how to use real-time media and the video camera in an effective way. The domains of anthropology, negotiation studies, neuro-linguistics, and social psychology offer valuable lessons on techniques of non-coercive influence. The emancipatory tradition of futures studies offers a rich tradition of self-awareness exercises, institution rebuilding, and social imaging, offsets the pragmatic lure of normative scenarios. The final lesson from these books is that activists and analysts must co-adapt as the ‘War on Terror’ mutates into new and terrifying forms. Works Cited Amis, Martin. “Fear and Loathing.” The Guardian (18 Sep. 2001). 1 March 2001 <http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4259170,00.php>. Ballard, J.G. The Atrocity Exhibition (rev. ed.). Los Angeles: V/Search Publications, 1990. Beck, Ulrich. World Risk Society. Malden, MA: Polity Press, 1999. Ellul, Jacques. 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War of Words: Language, Politics and 9/11. New York: Routledge, 2002. Wark, McKenzie. Virtual Geography: Living with Global Media Events. Bloomington IN: Indiana UP, 1994. Wiener, Norbert. Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1948. Zelizer, Barbie, and Stuart Allan (eds.). Journalism after September 11. New York: Routledge, 2002. Links http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0 Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Burns, Alex. "The Worldflash of a Coming Future" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0304/08-worldflash.php>. APA Style Burns, A. (2003, Apr 23). The Worldflash of a Coming Future. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 6,< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0304/08-worldflash.php>