Phantom rebellion: performing the state in a Montenegrin village and beyond

Authors

• Klāvs Sedlenieks Rīga Stradiņš University https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1751-2956

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30676/jfas.v45i1.90978

Abstract

The article is centred around an event in Njeguši, a small village in Montenegro, whereby a group of people tried to honour their ancestor by inauguration of a small church and a commemorative building. Unexpectedly, the event was forbidden, the police showed up as if to prevent violence. I interpret this event through reference to various phantoms that one could have encountered in this process and argue that people in Njeguši, just as well as elsewhere, perform the state through reference to and interaction with such phantoms. They make conscious decisions about alliances with particular forms of phantoms. I argue that when it comes to state, phantoms are not simply imaginative discrepancies from reality, but form actual content of the state, they are part of the process through which the state is performed.