Antifascist culture among Sarajevo’s youth in the context of Dayton Bosnia

Abstract

This thesis explores the culture of antifascism among youth in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). Based on a two-month fieldwork in Sarajevo, I demonstrate how the participants in this study navigate Dayton Bosnia—which they describe as a nationalized, dysfunctional, corrupt, and unaccountable state that cannot be easily challenged—through antifascism. When one looks at the question of hope in BiH, ‘all roads lead to Dayton’—the city where the peace agreement was finalized and has been shaping ordinary lives of people since then. The Constitution of BiH, contained in Annex 4 of the Dayton Peace Agreement that ended the Bosnian War in 1995, mandates equal representation of the three major ethnic groups at all levels of government. This requirement accounts for the existence of a three-member presidency representing Bosnian Muslims, Croats, and Serbs. While the Dayton Agreement aimed to end ethnic conflict, it ironically contributed to the entrenchment of a political system based on ethnic divisions. The Western-backed neoliberal modernity—expected to bring prosperity, democracy, and eventual accession to the EU—has instead left many young people feeling alienated and powerless. Despite never having lived in Yugoslavia, these youth view its antifascist legacy as a period when their predecessors had more agency, dignity, and freedom than they do today. During a two-month period in the field, I collected 26 in-depth ethnographic interviews, with most participants being young antifascist activists whom I primarily encountered at Društveno-kulturni centar (DKC). The building, formerly a house of writers in Yugoslavia and later abandoned, was eventually reclaimed by young antifascists as a space for gatherings and cultural activities. I also sought to immerse myself in my participants' lifestyle by actively engaging in events organized by DKC. This included helping with repairs and cleaning the center—since it was still in the process of reclaiming the abandoned space—as well as attending events such as dance courses, lectures on graffiti, flea market, cultural gatherings, punk concerts, and many others. A focus on antifascism helps to illuminate how young Sarajevans navigate the unequally distributed societal hope in Dayton Bosnia and attempt to generate it themselves through their daily activities at DKC. This thesis focuses on what my antifascist interlocutors hope for, how they hope, why they hope in particular ways, and how they navigate a situation of unequally distributed societal hope in Dayton Bosnia. I explore this by examining how they understand and perceive the Yugoslav and antifascist past, how they juxtapose it with present-day Dayton Bosnia, and how they consequently envision a desirable and dignified future. Antifascism is a significant collective element of Bosnian culture that proved effective in the past and remains relevant today. It provides my interlocutors with a moral framework for opposing what they perceive as the immoral politics of Dayton Bosnia—through daily adherence to antifascist values. According to them, this immoral politics consists of the nationalization of political discourse and the revisionism of the antifascist and Yugoslav past, which in turn sustains the power of political elites and obstructs alternative forms of political engagement. Participants oppose this revisionism and nationalization of the past, viewing such memory manipulation as a continuation of the war. A prevailing belief is that the war never truly ended; consequently, the Dayton post-socialist era is seen as a failed modernity—one not worth pursuing. I demonstrate how an antifascist stance in opposition to Dayton Bosnia functions as an alternative to nationalized politics in the private lives of my participants, allowing them to live in truth and pursue genuine freedom despite the oppressive system imposed by the Dayton Peace Agreement.