"Bogdan Bogdanović, the great Serbian architect and former dean of the Faculty of Architecture in Belgrade, philosopher, essayist, mayor of Belgrade in the 1980s, once wrote," he shouts from the highest tower of Raonić's impregnable Public Media Service - none other than, fanfare please: Duka Hor(K)hajmer - a respected intellectual from Podgorica and social activist of the widest range of interests, par excellence erudite and excellent publicist - one of the few authorities who create the academic environment at our given moment - and above all: a God-fearing humanist - whose comprehensive engagement greatly exceeds the narrow framework of both this rugged and mountainous place and this godless time, "that a man's strongest identification is the city in which he exists and to which he belongs, and not the state or nation."
"I went to my own," says the old song, "I was my mother"...
Provided, of course, that this Hor(K)heimer man exists in the city itself - and not in some less attractive location outside the hard city walls - which would refer, in particular, to when the old joker Heidegger (Martin Heidegger, Was ist das - die Philosophie?) - puts things in their place with that (small) "das" before "Sein" - because if we start from "Es ist nämlich Sein" - then we have no choice but to agree with Heidegger when Aristotle's - with the necessary remark that Aristotle was also a very versed joker - and also very prone to all kinds of (metaphysical) exaggerations - "das Seiend-sein des Seienden" - where many a translator of Heidegger's sublime thought to this unfortunate so-called the four-name language - “being-being of the being” - interprets it as “das Seiende als das Seiende” - because it is precisely this Aristotle's being - das Sein - that which makes a being a being - das Sein gemeint sein muß, welches jegliches Seiende zu einem Seienden macht - says Buder (Heribert Boeder, 1928 - 2013, Weshalb “Sein des Seienden”?) - and not the place of being (mother) - or, God forbid, citizenship or national affiliation.
I am tempted to refer to the typical Hor(K)heimer dichotomy of “state or nation” - but that would, I fear, take us too far - I will only say (that it seems to me) that the so-called Hor(K)heimer people are closer and dearer to the nation than this and that state - and to us, on this side of the border, we seem to prefer the state to the nation - because our national project has been at its lowest ebb since 1918 - solely through our merit - and as for the state, in that field - by chance, not through our merit - we are not so bad - while the Hor(K)heimer people are the opposite - their national project is moving in an upward direction - bigger and stronger - a cynic would say that it is actually metastasizing - and on the issue of the state, the Hor(K)heimer people are, at this moment, quite ambivalent...
***
OK, I don't know the character and work of Bogdan Bogdanović very well - but I know enough about the Cursed Neimar that the elements of the aforementioned Hor(K)haimer construction: the city - not the state or nation - wouldn't seem suspicious to me...
“Twenty years ago,” says Bogdanović (Milan Milošević, Interlocutor of “Vreme”: Bogdan Bogdanović, “Podsticaji uspaljene mašte”, “Vreme” No. 96 - August 24, 1992), “that in the modern world, cities are becoming more important than nations that emerged during the industrial revolution and that still weigh so heavily on the minds of every smart person today, and that city affiliation, ever since there have been real cities and real citizens, has been more important than ethnicity.”
I tried to dig up where Bogdan Bogdanović wrote about cities becoming more important than nations - and it turns out that it's not the title "Urban Mythologemes" from 1966 - which I have at hand - but the title "Urbs and Logos: Essays on the Symbology of the City", (Gradina), Niš, 1976 - which, unfortunately, I don't have at hand...
***
In the preface to Ivan Đurić's book “Power, Opposition, Alternative” (Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia, 2009), Latinka Perović says that as early as 1979, Bogdan Bogdanović “sensed the danger, locating it in the intellectual model of culture” - and refers to a conversation that Bogdanović had with Boro Krivokapić (“Evil Souls”, NIN, 12 August 1979) - “... so”, says Latinka Perović, “before the death of Josip Broz Tito, the end of state socialism and the political monopoly of communist parties, Bogdan Bogdanović turned things upside down. In other words, the consequences will not differ as long as they have the same cause. That cause needs to be identified in order to be able to change” - and then, for the sake of illustration, she cites excerpts from that conversation: "What the radical intellectual model of culture can't stand the most is an independent man, a man who thinks for himself...", "The Serbian people are threatened, but from potential stupidity. They are primarily at risk of dementia. It is the ultra-nationalists who help that process.", "Nationalism is something sick, demented. A world of minimal ideas, minimal concepts, worn-out slogans, transformed dogmas. I have the impression that nationalism is the privilege of the poor and small communities, narrowness of spirit" - and finally states: "These diagnoses were received as insults: that's why the disease progressed".
Bogdan Bogdanović in his analyses, says Latinka Perović in the preface to the book “Mud and Blood” (Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia, Testimonies No. 9 2001), recognizes this cultural model - “a political and cultural pattern that has dominated Serbia for more than a century. He (Bogdanović - ed.) calls it radical, populist. Only the essence of this pattern changed, the method remained the same. A semi-intelligence was created on this pattern, which, in turn, maintained this pattern. He identified as its main characteristics: a tendency towards simplification; a hostile attitude towards everything special and individual; fear of Europe; a focus on Russia, which was never known - “an endemic and absolutely incurable disease” (Laza Kostić, On Literature. Memoirs, II, 1992). In particular, the failure to distinguish between history and tradition. Instead of the precise language of knowledge and critical thinking - rhetoric that acts “on the soul of the masses” and is transformed into a political program. On this basis, nationalism becomes the content of the populist political and cultural pattern. Because - “The non-objective and ignorant handling of history encourages parahistory, the construction of phantom images of former greatness and imposed failures, and leads to the search for historical injustices and world conspiracies”.
And as for religion (as such)... "My only true religion was the religion of numbers and signs, and I never deviated from its rules," writes Bogdanović ("Odysseus in the Kingdom of Hades", "Glib and Blood", 2001) "And everything else was a matter of assessing to what extent one would consciously participate in human follies on this earth."
***
"What does the Stone Flower symbolize?"from Jasenovcu - op.a.)?” - asks Bogdan Bogdanović Ljubo Ruben Weiss (“You will continue to build, architect Bogdanović…”, virovitica.net, 2010.) - “I could write an essay about it, Bogdanović answers, but in short - faith in life”.
In Jasenovac, therefore, life triumphed over death...
Bonus video:
