On the Margins of a ‘Terminological Cleansing’

Abstract

After the death of Muhsin Rizvic the editors of new editions of his earlier published studies and unpublished books carried out a sort of „terminological cleansing“ of the original names for Bosniak literature used by Muhsin Rizvic. This postponed the critical approach to his studies. Denominating Bosniaks as Muslims and/or Bosnian Muslims, as well as denominating Bosniak literature as Muslim and/or Bosnian-Muslim literature was the most obvious evidence how a national literary-science developed, with all its methodological, conceptual, content-related and cultural issues, but also with its achievements, considerations, ideological compromises, and even the oversights made by its deserving individuals, one of whom was certainly Muhsin Rizvic. In this context one must bear in mind the anti-colonial matrix of the official socialist historiography and long-term disinclination of the ideology towards the idea of Bosniak ethno-cultural autochthony and Bosnian integrity, which were carelessly and almost automatically discredited as legacy of Kallay's governance, which substantially determined the coordinates of Rizvić's „hermeneutical condition“.