Nietzsche, Historiography and Yugoslav Nationalism

DOI10.1111/j.1467-9256.2004.00206.x
AuthorTim Jacoby
Published date01 February 2004
Date01 February 2004
Subject MatterArticle
© Political Studies Association, 2004.
Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
Nietzsche, Historiography and Yugoslav
Nationalism
Tim Jacoby
University of Manchester
In The Use and Abuse of History Friedrich Nietzsche warned of the dangers of separating history from
the irrationality of nature and establishing it as a science. Increasingly individualised, spiritually
adrift and soulless, Man, he suggests, will become a prisoner of an excess of history imposed upon,
and external to, life itself. This article will argue that contained within Nietzsche’s polemic, par-
ticularly his elaboration of an alternative effective methodology, is a useful framework for the analy-
sis of historiography’s construction of the past. The development of nationalist mythologies within
the politics of the former Yugoslavia is then discussed in light of this interpretation of Nietzsche’s
position.
‘The verdict of the past is always an oracle: only as architects of the future, as
knowers of the present will you understand it’.1
In The Use and Abuse of History Friedrich Nietzsche warned of the dangers of
separating history from the irrationality of nature and establishing it as a science.
Increasingly individualised, spiritually adrift and soulless, Man, he argues, will
become a prisoner of an excess of history imposed upon, and external to, life itself.
Separated from history’s actual irreconcilability with the present we, as excessive
history’s modern inheritors, can be convinced by this historiographic self-
exploration that ours is a uniquely idiosyncratic community struggling to progress
along extraneous historical lines away from an unworthy present. Made aware of
progress’s abandonment of our once great nation, we can thus be obligated to
restore the past in order to pursue future political contingencies. This article will
argue that contained within Nietzsche’s polemic, particularly his elaboration of an
alternative effective methodology, is a useful framework for the analysis of histori-
ography’s construction of the past. The development of nationalist mythologies
within the politics of the former Yugoslavia will then be discussed in light of this
interpretation of Nietzsche’s position.
Nationalism and historiography
The continuing conf‌lict in the former Yugoslavia has been regarded as further evi-
dence of the degeneration of Western models of nationalism from what Anthony
Smith describes as ‘a pristine reasonableness into an inf‌lammation and thence into
a madness’ (Smith, 1971, p. 194). This form of extreme right-wing nationalism
‘characterised by an ideological and programmatic emphasis on “restoring”
supposedly traditional values of the nation or community and imposing them
upon a nation or community’ can, for some scholars, be distinguished from the
POLITICS: 2004 VOL 24(1), 65–71

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