Bursting of the ulcer of trauma that we carry for a long time

A few days have passed since the two tragedies that befell Serbia, one after the other. We search for the right words, trying to understand what happened to us and how we got there. The government, for the most part, has not changed the way it addresses and behaves, even in these moments.

We talk to Ivan Čolović, anthropologist, essayist, founder and publisher of "Biblioteke XX Vek", about grief and regret, society and trauma, about divisions that do not subside, about the responses of relevant political actors.

IVAN COLOVIĆ: The best advice I heard these days was: let's shut up, let's cry, and then think, let's ask ourselves what this is and where it came from. I also went that way, together with my lifelong companion Dubravka Stojanović and our daughter Ana. Both are former students of the "Vladislav Ribnikar" school, for both of them this was the real end of the world, their world in which this school was one of the most beautiful places they remember. I also remember Dragan, the school guard who died together with the children he was guarding, from the time when I used to come to parents' meetings. In front of my eyes is the table where the "on-duty" people are sitting, at one such table sat the two girls who died together with Dragan. So, I have personal reasons for crying and grieving, as well as company in the house, and I wonder if I have cried enough and remained silent enough to now be able to say something coherent about what you are asking me.

"WEATHER" Major traumas like the one that happened usually unite the community, at least in the first days of disbelief, shock and sadness. It is natural for a person to seek answers and responsibility for a tragedy, trying to find an explanation, but after that period of common mourning. Why didn't that kind of unity emerge in our society even in the hours and days immediately after the tragedy, a deep division was already visible there?

That is a difficult question. Indeed, where does division come from when people spontaneously come together to share unrest, to share trauma with others, leaving aside everything that normally separates them? I will try to say something about it. But, before that, I would like to testify that in this case spontaneous togetherness, togetherness of shock, togetherness of sadness, really manifested itself in a strong way. I was in a procession of people with flowers and candles in their hands who were walking towards the school where the crime took place. I myself felt the need to get out, to get out of myself and out of the room, as Marko Šelić Marcello said so beautifully. It didn't resemble any of the gatherings that normally take place on a daily basis, neither a protest walk, nor a rally, nor a rally. That's how it was simply called - gathering.

And when it comes to divisions, political and ideological divisions, they are really inappropriate at a moment like this. The one who reminds us of them in the moment of general mourning, talks about them, does not actually participate in the mourning, he insults that mourning. He excludes himself from the community spontaneously gathered in shock and grief, which feels and perhaps knows that it should be unique and - as it is professionally said, inclusive - in front of the dead and in front of their loved ones. This community of grief knows how to behave, it has its own silent language, it knows which gestures are appropriate in such a situation, it knows which flowers, it knows which candles to bring, it spontaneously finds an appropriate ritual.

The community of grief showed that it knows what can and should be done even when this unprecedented tragedy happened. She didn't need a mentor and a leader. She did not wait to be led and directed by some authority, but was open to everyone, including political and church leaders. Some were smart enough to understand that and joined in the mourning of the spontaneously gathered people, adhering to the unwritten rules that were valid there. That's what Patriarch Porphyry did, he appeared among the people gathered in front of the school, lit a candle, said a few words and left.

Who would, in your opinion, were examples of a healthy response to (extended) collective trauma?

Healthy answers, real answers, were first found by those whom the nationalists accuse of not understanding and not loving the people, but of knowing only cynicism and irony. And the right words came to the people from that side. Marcello found them in "Danas", I mentioned that. They were found by Marko Vidojković and Teofil Pančić, and they in "Danas", they were found by Dejan Ilić and Svetlana Slapšak in Peščanik, they were found by Andrej Ivanji in "Vremen", and other supposedly reborn "other Serbians" in some other "anti-Serbian" ones. and "tycoon" media. I did not notice that some comforting, some good word, some encouragement, some shoulder to cry on came to the people from the so-called Serbian point of view. As if - viewed from that point of view - it's really nothing to us.

It is worth noting and remembering that people in many places of the so-called "region", i.e. Yugoslavia, also felt the need to gather and pay their respects to the fallen, which testifies to the lively and widespread feeling of post-Yugoslav togetherness that was otherwise suppressed. But, well, this tragedy was the reason for the whole of Yugoslavia to cry. I will also remember something that our daughter Ana told us. She was in front of her former school for hours with her school friends in tears. At one point, the policeman who was stationed there approached them, also in tears, and hugged them without saying a word.

How do you assess the reaction of the relevant political and social factors to the tragedy that occurred??

President Vučić ignored these spontaneous mourning gatherings. In my opinion, precisely because they were spontaneous, because they were out of his control. He judged that he should not appear in front of people who burst into tears and went out into the street without his invitation. And maybe he was afraid that all that could turn against him, that all those crying people could wipe their tears and come to his door and ask him why the country he has been governing for years has become a country with bloodied school desks. In any case, he started his media machine to show himself as the master of our lives and our deaths in this situation as well. Remaining within himself and in the room, surrounded by his ministers, he invited the sad and bereaved to mourn with him, as he tells them.

And where is the problem? It is perfectly fine for the head of state to address the people when a tragedy like this happens. I also understand the need of the head of state and his government to control and channel the collective emotions of sadness and fear, so that they do not cause even greater disturbances and problems than those who caused those emotions. But did we see it, did we hear it when Vučić addressed the people on television to tell them about the death of children in an elementary school? No, none of that, nothing like a soothing address to a traumatized nation worthy of a president.

Instead, we got Vučić's one-hour presentation about the child killer and his parents, with the information he received from the doctor and the police, a presentation in which he also reached Kosovo. It was one of his daily excruciating monologues, to which Milan Rakić, if by some miracle he was listening, would cry: "Oh, close your lips, don't speak, be quiet!" For something better, something more suitable, Vučić does not know. He never addressed us in Serbia the way a real president addresses citizens, but always as an angry inn owner who shouts at waiters, cooks and other staff and threatens them. And that shows what he really thinks about all of us, whether we were called people or citizens. And what does he feel when he sees us. There is not even an iota of empathy, to use this term that is in vogue today. No mercy, no compassion.

That is why Vučić's intention to be the one who will gather people in moments of general mourning cannot succeed. He, lost in a too long and in fact unbearable monologue, panting and rolling his eyes as if he were the greatest victim in the whole tragedy, and the ministers lined up behind him are not a sight that can be connected at all with the unforgettable image of people arriving in processions to the places where they will be laid to rest. flowers and light a candle. These two recordings, these two scenes, show two worlds.

What does that say about our condition today or, first of all, What kind of tomorrow awaits us?? Will we even be able to talk and what will we talk about??

It speaks about exactly what you are noticing, about the deep division of Serbian society. The chance to overcome it, to forget it, to postpone it even for a moment in the moment of shock due to a tragic event was not used. People have shown that they are capable of it, that they need it. But the government was afraid to go after the people, used to them going after it, that it gathers them and brings them to meetings, and not to humiliates and approaches people who have spontaneously gathered to cry together. This is how this mourning is divided, into national and state, spontaneous and controlled, silent and narrated. And, as Andrej Ivanji noted, at the commemoration and counter-commemoration.

Do you see a way for Serbian society to get out of the destructive division in which we find ourselves??

It should be said that the commonality of grief is indeed a valuable experience, but that social and political commonality cannot be built on it, at least not when it comes to democratic states. The divisions that bereavement abolishes must be restored when the bereavement is over, they are - should we even say - of vital importance to a democratic society. Such a society knows how to articulate them. That's why there are parties, that's why there is a parliament. That is why it is called society.

But, if we do not have a democratic society in which the divisions are articulated and institutionalized, but we have an autocratic and authoritarian government that passes itself off as a democratic one, we are left with other types of divisions - the dominant and unwanted elite, the two Serbias, the culture of violence and the culture of resistance, to murals with war criminals and Korax caricatures, to "Impression of the Week" and "Hit Tweet". These divisions are painful, and even unfortunate and dangerous. But in Serbia, in a country with a pseudo-democratic government, it is important that we have such divisions, that we can still choose, although the price of the "wrong" choice is getting higher and higher. Someone loses their job, someone's car burns down, someone's house burns down, someone is beaten by thugs, someone has to leave the country. That's why I say: let's preserve this precious and still possible division. We don't have anything better.

How do we normally deal with (grafted) collective traumas that have lasted intensively for more than 30 years?

Yes, you are right, even before this trauma, and without this trauma, we were a traumatized society. As someone noted, we've been carrying a trauma ulcer for a long time, it bleeds occasionally, but now it's burst. He surprised those who believe that time heals everything and that he does not need our help. Others have guessed that it is not, in fact, our domestic ulcer, but a Western ulcer, that through the Internet and games this insidious ulcer reached us and happened to burst here as well, as it regularly happens at home in the West. .

Otherwise, as the government explained to us, the system did not fail. The system is healthy, why should we change it. On the contrary, he should be guarded even better and protected with additional measures, because if there are some of his failings, it is that he did not realize that he had to defend himself even more vigorously against the enemy. And these are first of all those who know and not only know but also say that the government system in Serbia is based on the denial of crimes, those who know and say where and by what means the government that does not let us separate ourselves from war criminals came from. These are the ones who know and say that the CVs of today's power holders and war criminals intersect in several places. These are the ones who don't ask, because they know where and why the murals with the figures of war criminals Draža Mihajlović and Ratko Mladić come from, and where and why the graffiti calling for a new war in Kosovo and all that in the immediate vicinity of the unfortunate "Vladislav Ribnikar" school.

When I am in the text about criminals as war heroes, which ends the third edition of my book A brothel of warriors, from the year 2000, wrote that the wars of the XNUMXs in Serbia ended with the victory of the hooligan revolution, and I wondered if I might not have exaggerated. For years now, I have received confirmations that I am not.