Forgotten Future The Politics of Poetry in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Forgotten Future: The Politics of Poetry in Bosnia and Herzegovina documents and crtically evaluates contemporary poetry within the dynamic field of cultural production in Bosnia and Herzegovina since the late 1980s. Its context spans three historico-political phases: firstly, the cusp on which socialism was already losing its primacy and ethno-nationalism was gaining dominance; secondly, the subsequent collapse of Yugoslavia and the ensuing war led by ethno-nationalist elites; and thirdly, the period of the aftermath of war-the so-called ''post-war transition''. This new approach to thinking about poetry in Bosnia and Herzegovina focuses on alternative cultural practices, which have articulated a more equitable organisation of Bosnian society. Such practices have the capacity not only to tell us how unfree we are, but also to shift the criteria of possibility of our freedom towards a more hopeful politics.

Arsenijevic takes us on a journey...to that cursed place where history and poetry interesect...we should look here for the political cause of the war-not to understand what happened but to learn how to resist. Boris Buden, author, European Institute for Progressive Cultural Policy

Literature's ethical and social responsibility, argued through this inspiring and intellectually exciting book, lies in an emancipatory poetics and politics that reflects otherness and the subtle interweavings of difference. Dr. Francis R. Jones, Newcastle University

Arsenijevic confronts Adorno: poetry MUST be written after wars, as it fixes a form of memories, which, in the standardised discourse of historiography, is deliberately distorted. Bosnian poetry about war...becomes the language of the concerned and conscious citizen of the world. professor Svetlana Slapsak, Dean of the Institutum Studiorum Humanitatis, Ljubljana