Why the Boys Go to War. Emotions and aesthetics at the beginning of ethnic conflicts

Abstract

The author spend more than two years as an anthropologist and war reporter in ethnic conflicts in Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya, Georgia, Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Nagorno-Karabakh, where he was interested by questions of the origin of the conflicts and the motivation of the actors for joining the conflict. He devoted particular attention to the role of political aesthetics, pre/war performativity and ecstasy.

Keywords

• ethnic conflicts
• nationalism
• national characteristics
• Former Yugoslav republics