SOAS Research Online

Abstract

Set in southern Bosnia, in the enduring shadow of a genocidal project and its last escalation from the 1990s, this talk follows the meandering course of one sinking river, Trebišnjica, as it submerges into and emerges from the karst underground of the Dinaric highlands, to raise questions about repair and return. Along the way, I speak to super/natural chthonic protagonists torn out of their once-pervasive syncretic cosmological framework. Employing the karstic vocabulary, I pay attention to the evasive manoeuvres across the endangered more-than-human system: poniranje (submerging, sinking, diving), as a future-open tactic of tarrying on against a counterfeit world. I linger with the environments and cosmologies of the so-called 'human fish', proteus or olm, and its survival against the odds of Yugoslav energy projects, artificial accumulations, and nationalist economies since the 1990s. My bigger question is whether ‘underworlding' can be repurposed to inform wider projects of post-conflict revitalisation. This talk is based on ethnographic research conducted in 2022 in Popovo Pole and Trebinje for my forthcoming book, 'Underworlding'.