The Balkanization of the West: The Confluence of Postmodernism and Postcommunism

ISBN-13: 9780415087551 / Angielski / Miękka / 1994 / 240 str.

Stjepan G. Mestrovic; S. Mestrovic;Mestrovic Stjep

Opis

From the perspectives of postmodernism and post-Communism - central to discussion in this work - the butchery in former Yugoslavia is a special case because this violence is occurring in the heart of Europe, a continent which had promised never to tolerate such a bloodbath again. Consideration of rational solutions seems incapable of getting to grips with the problem. The author argues that the media have reduced the world audience to a collective voyeur passively watching, monitoring, and observing crimes against humanity in former Yugoslavia. The Balkan war has produced the Balkanization of the West with the leading Western powers seemingly paralyzed by the spectacle of internecine warfare. Mestrovic claims that the Balkan war has derailed the movement for unification in Europe. The Islamic world has seen that the West is quite willing to bomb Muslim targets, from Iraq to Somalia, but absolutely unwilling to wage a just war to save the Bosnian Muslims.

Recenzje

`The Balkanization of the West is academia at its most provocative and committed, an attempt to pull postmodernism out of theoretical abstraction and invest it with the beginnings of political action.' - Langauge Intl

Spis treści

1 From the postmodern culture of fun to the grim realities of Postcommunism 2 Still hunting Nazis, and losing reality 3 Unwelcome alternatives 4 The postmodernist as voyeur 5 The end of morality? 6 What went wrong with the Enlightenment project? 7 What would a genuine post-Marxism be like? 8 Conclusions

O autorze

Stjepan Meštrovi? is Professor of Sociology at Texas A&M University.