When Criticism Goes to War

A bold intervention into the lingering debates on Serbian writers Petar Petrovic Njegos and Ivo Andric in the late Yugoslav and post-Yugoslav period, which interrogates the political and moralizing (mis)use of literature. This open access study asks difficult questions about the relationship between literature, history, politics and ethics: Does representing something in fiction mean endorsing it? Should fiction be used to rewrite history? Should we weaponize legitimate ethical concerns while reading fiction and transform them into superficial moralizing? Should political misreading of fiction be opposed? Zoran Milutinovic examines a well-established, deeply rooted and widespread Bosniak nationalist discourse on Ivo Andric and, to a lesser extent, Petar Petrovic Njegos. This discourse claims that Nobel Prize winner Andric expounded a nationalist ideology in his works, which instigated, or at least justified, the genocide of Bosnian Muslims. Milutinovic argues that this Bosniak nationalist discourse is not really about Andric's works. It is a political discourse that uses Andric's works and career merely as a springboard, and as literary criticism and scholarship, it is harmful. Thi