ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates how 1990s post-Yugoslav evocations of cosmopolitanism projected openness in opposition to hegemonizing nationalisms, and which closures were encapsulated within this process. In the 1990s Serbia and Croatia violence against national others was banalized and war criminals were widely celebrated as national heroes. Lamont and Aksartova argued that the 'opposition of nationalism to cosmopolitanism conveys the fundamental tension between moral obligations to one's local origins and group memberships, on the one hand, and to the rest of the world, on the other'. Post-Yugoslav nationalisms keenly pointed out the red bourgeoisie background of some antinationalist activists to underpin their policies of intimidation. Such nationalist representations of communist nostalgics turned capitalist mercenaries, failed to add that this class was also prominent in the new nationalist elites, alongside the offspring of anti-Yugoslav families. Croatian nationalism distorted the dichotomy between barbarian Serbs and civilized Croats, particularly when juxtaposed with stereotypical images of the focus of Zagreb urban resentment: Croats from Herzegovina.
