4 minute read
No Wo/man Is an Island
Observations by Sandra Bojanić
It takes time to reach an island. And it takes energy and will to name it. Then the name is hard to pronounce: Cres.
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Cres, a widespread name for ancient Greeks (Χέρσο, Chersos), just a dry land and haven for wanderers. A voiceless alveolar affricate, this “ts” (as in “tsar”), lacks more vowels to slide smoothly into the rolling “r”. The name resists, and it takes time to reach the island. Once in the place, it is hard to leave.
We inaugurated our Center for Advanced Studies Southeast Europe at Moise Palace in the city of Cres in October 2019, with a wonderful lecture by Bernard Stiegler . Before the pandemic, he presciently warned that “(f)aced with systemic risks, we need to invent systemic replies”. This is “possible only as a protection, cultivation and participation of knowledge”. The “systemic risks” Stiegler referred to were, and still are, the multiple and complex ecological, economic, political and health crises spreading through the globe, and accelerating, as a result of a flawed international institutional design which allowed the conditions conducive to such compound threats and injustices to flourish.
How do we change the system? What do we need to respond to its risks? Where are we heading? And what if, in line with the poet, being “a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea”, we feel and finally receive the message that we are “the less” . All this at once and on an island in the northern Adriatic, with a swift missive that it is necessary to stop, stay still for a very brief moment, in the Tramuntana labyrinth. To remain still in order to perceive movements of the Earth and all its shakes.
Cres is the biggest island in the archipelago and the least populated. Winters are windy and, like in Venice, acqua alta reminds us that before reaching dry land, swimming for a while provides good comfort. We came to the island from the mainland and brought with us the wish to redesign structure and function to enable the cosmopolitical community to emerge and cooperative heterogeneity to thrive.
This “we” includes over seventy young scholars that the centre has welcomed in more than six years since it was launched, allowing them to imagine renewed research and an engaged community. Sometimes this renewal was carefully planned and thought through in the form of an “anti-event”: like 2020’s proliferation of remote interaction and the corresponding isolation, passive viewing, and detachment, when we had intended to cherish this time together in person and use it to work together at Moise Palace on the island. The core of our anti-event was not presenting our research in its “best stage”, as one would at an important event, but using our time in one space and place to change works in progress for the better with the help of our colleagues and friends. We also went ahead, prudently responding to all that the epidemiological situation demanded; accepting, yet with a critical stance, the fact that the state decided on our behalf whether we were to move freely.
Constantly reminded that the “protection, cultivation and participation of knowledge” is not given but earned patiently, our community of young researchers, scholars, and activists practice all this at once: to live decently in a time that is out of joint and actively await the moment for the right action.
Moise Palace, a five-hundred-year-old patrician house in the historic centre of Cres, is a listed building. All photos on this double page: CAS SEE
Sanja Bojanić is a researcher immersed in the philosophy of culture, media, and queer studies, with an overarching commitment to comprehending contemporary forms of gender, racial, and class practices, which underpin social and affective inequalities specifically increased in modern societal and political contexts. She teaches at Rijeka’s Academy of Applied Arts.
The Center for Advanced Studies Southeast Europe (CAS SEE) was established in 2013 as an organisational unit of the University of Rijeka specialising in social sciences and humanities. The vision of the centre is to promote freedom of research and ensure the necessary prerequisites for innovative, intellectual, and scientific development. The CAS SEE is located at Moise Palace, a Renaissance building in the northern Adriatic, on the island of Cres. This registered heritage site, a five-hundred-year-old patrician townhouse, offers a singular venue for critical thinking and innovation.
ERSTE Foundation has multiple roles in relation to CAS SEE, being one of the main founding partners and supporters of the initiative, as well as actively participating in developing and steering the activities and programmatic development of the centre. Hedvig Morvai, ERSTE Foundation’s Director of Strategy and Europe, is the Chair of the International Board of Patrons of CAS SEE. We have supported the operations of CAS SEE since 2013 by contributing to its annual fellowship programme for young researchers. In 2021, we established our flagship seminar at Moise Palace in the framework of Europe’s Futures – Ideas for Actions (see page 86).
Center for Advanced Studies Southeast Europe
Moise Palace Zagrad 6, 51557 Cres, Croatia
