A brown bag talk based on a chapter from an upcoming edited volume titled 'Disinformation in Memory Politics' (Florin Abraham, Bartosz Dziewanowski-Stefańczyk, eds).
Ivan Nikolovski co-wrote this chapter with Naum Trajanovski who is an assistant at the Faculty of Sociology, University of Warsaw. He is a Ph.D. graduate from the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He also serves as a co-chair of the MSA South-East Europe regional group.
Abstract /
In this chapter, we argue that in situations when intellectuals perceive states to have inadequately responded to security threats to their titular nation’s identity narrative, they constitute the key societal line of defense through societal security seeking, that is, by (re)securitizing this narrative’s foundational history, memory, and identity-related aspects. Our argument speaks to the intersection of ontological and societal security whose relationship has been undertheorized despite their common referent object of security, that of identity. We posit that intellectuals can be that empirical bridge between the two securities, providing an avenue for theorization. To fill the gap, we use the Copenhagen School Securitization Theory to conceptualize intellectuals as securitizers, the national intellectual practice theory to theorize intellectuals’ securitizing ability as “articulators of the nation”, and memory politics theory to identify the intellectuals-securitizers as mnemonic warriors. We illustrate our argument with the role of the Macedonian intellectuals in the Bulgaria-North Macedonia dispute, focusing on the period between 2017 and 2022.
Speaker bio /
Ivan Nikolovski has an academic upbringing in Political Science and a professional background in EU and Western Balkan affairs, with a special focus on the EU enlargement policy, as well as the regional cooperation and rival powers' competition in the Western Balkans. His Ph.D. project deals with the Europeanization of North Macedonia's memory politics and the Macedonian national identity narratives amid the country's EU accession process.