Naslov
Culture Wars as a Form of Democratic Violence and Constitutional Response: A Case of Croatia

Autori
Vrabec, Samir

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Sažeci sa skupova, neobjavljeni rad, znanstveni

Skup
4th International Re-Thinking Humanities and Social Sciences Conference - On Violence / Sveučilište u Zadru

Mjesto i datum
Zadar, Hrvatska, 05.09.2013. - 07.09.2013

Vrsta sudjelovanja
Predavanje

Vrsta recenzije
Nije recenziran

Ključne riječi
Culture War; Kulturkampf; Democratic Violence; Constitutional Process; Constitutional Court

Sažetak
Violent conflict arises from the individuals membership of communities and identities constituted through discursive and institutional dividing lines. The multiple identities of individuals come to be expressed in terms of one dominant identity, assumed to be inclusive of a community, whose unity is constructed upon an nation, religion, race, sexual orientation etc. criterion (for example what was WASP during drafting American Constitution). But some identities can't fully reveal its construction and exercise there social and political rights, on the basis upon which some forms of identity come to dominate others. Identities of Others can be implicated in democratic violence. One form of conflicts which prevail in today's societies, that don't obtain openly violent form on regular basis, but on the other hand can sometime assume even very violent outbursts are Culture Wars. For this argument we use Slavoj Žižek’s conception of “subjective” and “objective” violence where: “Subjective violence […] is seen as a perturbation of the ‘normal, ’peaceful' state of things. However, objective violence is precisely the violence inherent to this ‘normal’ state of things. Objective violence is invisible since it sustains the very zero-level standard against which we perceive something as subjectively violent.” As a term 'Kulturkampf' was coined to describe the campaign under Bismarck in the German Empire against the influence of the Roman Catholic Church, it interestingly coincides that Croatian Prime Minister Milanović recently used the very term for referendum initiative on definition of marriage as exclusive community of man and women in Croatian Constitution, and decision of Croatia's Constitutional Court of unconstitutionality of health-sexuality program of education in public schools, both welcomed by the Roman Catholic Church. With reference to the broader context and issues of cultural wars, author argues that both above mentioned cases in Croatia open door for democratic violence of dominant identity and exclusion of Others (in the first case, exclusion of members of LGBT community, and in the second, exclusion of citizens that don't share conservatively-traditional views of Roman Catholic Church on issue of 'sexual education' in contrast to 'abstinence only education'), which calls for application of Habermas's 'paradox of toleration': "In the case of competing worldviews, toleration mean accepting mutually exclusive validity claims", through analysis of expected constitutional process and solutions.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Pravo

POVEZANOST RADA