Re-rigging Othering: Subversive Infantilisation in Contemporary Bosnian-Herzegovinian Prose

Abstract

In this article I put forward the concept of subversive infantilisation to designate a phenomenon in contemporary Bosnian literature, which by using a certain kind of childish outlook on the world undermines paternalistic and balkanist Western discourse on Bosnia and Herzegovina. By analysing primarily the portrayal of the role of mass media in a few literary texts, principally books by Nenad Veličkovié and Miljenko Jergovié, I highlight the way in which these texts 're-rig' and by means of irony and exaggeration illuminate the problematic logic inherent in the subject position from which one represents the other. Textual characteristics of subversive infantilisation are contextualised further and seen as a discursive continuation of experiences of the 1990s war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Keywords

• Subversive infantilisation
• balkanism
• Bosnian literature
• Jergovié
• Velič
• kovié
• Samardž
• ic