Abstract

Zhidas Daskalovski

The triple burden of the intellectual

The "triple burden" is pressuring intellectuals to take one-dimensional stances on the whole Kosovo issue, either one is pro-NATO or one is pro Milosevic, either on is pro-KLA or one is pro-Serbian army, either one is pro-bombing or one is pro-Serbia's genocide.

As a few independent thinkers have observed, Kosovo crisis is most frequently viewed in quite simplistic terms and characterized as the fight between the 'good' NATO and the 'evil' Serbia, or as the battle for the lives of the Kosovo refugees and against Milosevic's genocide.

To do justice to a handful of authors, like Noel Chomsky (The New Military Humanism: Lessons from Kosovo Common Courage Press, 1999, Slavoj Zizek ("Against the Double Black Mail" New Left Review 234) or Boris Buden ("Saving Private Havel", The Official ARKZIN statement on the War in Yugoslavia found at http://www.arkzin.com/bastard/new) I must admit that these oversimplifications have been widely criticized. However, none of the analysts, or none that I am aware of, has so far presented a view on the issue that is completely critical and therefore, intellectual. None of the commentators of the war in Yugoslavia have been able to identify the triple trap in which intellectuals might fall thinking about the issue.

To clarify these traps, I present to you another story of "why I am against" or, the "three 'barbarians' and the not so innocent victims."

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