The Unbearable Ease of Depoliticization

 I think its safe to say that most of my colleagues felt a certain rage, frustration, disappointment, or disbelief while reading about how these monuments we have come to know through our whole lives have been stripped away from their intrinsic meaning. This rage and frustration is the exact emotion I feel Sonja Leboš communicating in her article The Unbearable Ease of Depoliticization.

To depoliticize, according to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, means to remove the political character of or take out of the realm of politics. Through the various examples Leboš presents in her piece, we not only see how these monuments have been depoliticized, but how they've been diminished into shells of what they've been created to express initially. It is one thing to view art purely for the sake of art (such was the case with the l'art pour l'art movement), but to turn a blind eye to the monumental message and history these monuments stand for is infuriating.

Take for example how Jan Kempenaers went out of his way to not call his book Monuments, the literal translation of our word spomenik, but opted to call it Spomeniks. This is how he furthered his depoliticization of these landmarks of remembrance in socialist-Yugoslavian history. Not only does he foolishly decide to focus exclusively on the aesthetic of the structures, but even goes as far as to strip them of their basic semantic meaning, and therefore imposing ignorance onto his readers. The same could be said of CNN who listed the Monument to the Revolution of the people of Moslavina as one of the ugliest monuments in the world. Of course they could make such a statement when they are so detached from what these structures mean. I can only imagine what the reaction would be if someone from the Balkans claimed the Statue of Liberty was an atrociously constructed statue, without taking into consideration what it represents. However, the most insulting depoliticization to take place when it comes to these monuments is with the online based store Yunicorns takes the bastardization of these historical landmarks to the next level, equating the country they originate from to non-existent fantastical beasts, in turn claiming Yugoslavia itself was a non-existent country. Moreover, what this website does is take the sculptures and starts to monetize them, sizing them down into small pins and models to have on your nightstand. This in and of itself isn't a problem, Leboš herself mentions how merchandizing was around during the socialist era, but the way in which it is done here is a spit in the face to all the people who have fought hard and given their lives to create a better society for their children and the nation they believed in. Using capitalist society and the profit maximization strategy of synergy to exploit the history of a country (they claim never exited) is cruel.

To conclude, the frustration Sonja Leboš exhibits throughout this article is more than more than understandable. It is hard not to feel as if the region you come from is being looked at as nothing more than a joke, when an important part of your history is being disregarded so easily. It is rather peculiar that these, we could presume, educated individuals, for reasons whatsoever, would decide to ignore these facets of the art they are portraying when I believe its aesthetic beauty could only be heightened by including this same political dimension.