Nation by Negation: Apophatic and Cataphatic National Identity after Yugoslavia

Introduction

1.

The construction of national identity has long occupied a central place in the scholarship of political science, sociology, anthropology, and history, drawing attention to the ways in which collective self-understandings are produced, maintained, and contested (Rusciano 2003; Wodak 2009; McLean 1998; Berger 2009; Bacova 1998). It is commonly agreed that “nationhood engenders meaningful narratives of belonging, solidarity and transhistorical significance” (Malešević 2025). From the primordialist insistence on ancient ethnonational continuities to the modernist view of nations as recent inventions tied to industrialization and state centralization, theories of nationalism have persistently grappled with the ontological status of the nation. Scholars such as Benedict Anderson, Ernest Gellner, and Anthony Smith have offered divergent accounts of how and why nations come into being, but they converge on the idea that national identity is a fundamentally discursive and political phenomenon: an outcome of narrativization, symbolic boundary-making, and the institutional codification of belonging (Gellner 1983; Anderson 2020; Smith 1993). However, while this literature has emphasized the importance of positive symbols (shared myths, common languages, and historical continuity) it has perhaps insufficiently accounted for the role of negation as a primary force in identity formation, particularly in societies shaped by the trauma of conflict, collapse, and disintegration.

Nowhere is this oversight more conspicuous than in the successor states of former Yugoslavia, where the assertion of national identity in the wake of state collapse was an act of violent differentiation. In Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro (the three cases at the heart of this study) nation-building has proceeded through a logic that is less about the affirmation of coherent national values than about the negation of Serbian identity (Sokolić 2019; Vishnyakov 2022; Sokcevits 2022; Troch 2014; Mulalić & Adilović 2018). In the context of civil war, ethnic cleansing, contested sovereignty, and the overlapping legacies of imperial and socialist pasts, these states developed national identities by insisting on what they are not. The central contention of this article is that the post-Yugoslav moment inaugurated a mode of national identity formation that is best understood as apophatic: a term borrowed from negative theology, where knowledge of the divine proceeds by negation rather than positive description.

By adapting this theological concept to political analysis, we propose a theoretical distinction between apophatic and cataphatic national identities. Apophatic national identity (ANI) refers to a self-understanding rooted in rejection and disavowal, defined against an internal or external Other, and operationalized through symbolic purging, semantic policing, and legal-executive differentiation. In contrast, cataphatic national identity (CNI) is articulated affirmatively, through a shared narrative of historical continuity, cultural essence, civic ideals, or political values. This typology allows us to see how certain states, especially in post-conflict or post-imperial settings, rely heavily on symbolic and institutional forms of negation to distinguish themselves from a proximate adversary. Importantly, these two forms of national identity are not mutually exclusive, as they exist in dynamic tension, with the apophatic mode often preceding and potentially impeding the emergence of a more stable cataphatic framework.

The post-Yugoslav space offers a particularly revealing site for developing this analytical distinction. Following the violent dissolution of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, national identity became a high-stakes terrain for symbolic demarcation and political legitimation. In Croatia, this took the form of an assertive Western European self-image, constructed in opposition to a Balkanized and Orthodox Serbian Other; a move encapsulated in both linguistic reforms and geopolitical alignment with the European Union (Trkulja 2022; Gerdesics 2016; Ceh & Harder 2004). Bosnia and Herzegovina, fractured along ethnonational lines but nominally committed to a civic model of statehood, became a paradigmatic case of identity-by-disavowal, particularly for Bosniak Muslims whose identity was framed as neither Croatian nor Serbian (Đurović 2022; Friedman 2000; Cirkovic 2014). In Montenegro, the smallest and most ambivalently independent of the three, identity politics has turned sharply in recent years toward a negation of Serbian linguistic, religious, and political influence, culminating in the formal recognition of Montenegrin as a distinct language and the reconfiguration of church-state relations (Zupancic 2010; Jovanović 2018a,b; Raković 2021; Cattaruzza 2004).

These three cases are not chosen arbitrarily, and each represents a distinct trajectory of post-Yugoslav identity formation: Croatia, as a state with a clear nationalist uprising and European path; Bosnia and Herzegovina, as a site of ethno-political entanglement and institutional fragmentation; and Montenegro, as a liminal polity suspended between fraternal kinship with Serbia and the assertion of sovereign distinctiveness. Taken together, they offer a comparative spectrum of apophatic and cataphatic strategies, allowing us to assess the prevalence of negation in identity formation and the challenges and limits of building a positive national narrative in a region still haunted by war and contested memory.

This article aims to contribute to a reorientation in the study of nationalism; one that recognizes negation as a constitutive mechanism of identity itself, perhaps drawing as well from Dahlstrom’s noticing that negation is fundamental to our understanding of what it means to exist (Dahlstrom 2010). In so doing, it aims to elucidate both the explanatory power and the political risks of apophatic national identity in a world where identity continues to be forged in the crucible of difference.

Apophatic and Cataphatic National Identity as a Conceptual Framework

2.

Methodology and Case Selection

3.

This study adopts a qualitative case study methodology in order to develop, refine, and properly apply the proposed analytical distinction between apophatic and cataphatic national identity. The case study method is particularly well suited to theoretical elaboration in contexts where causal relationships are complex, historical legacies are deeply embedded, and discursive structures are relevant to political formation. Rather than seeking statistical generalizability, this approach enables a thick, context-sensitive interpretation of how national identity operates within specific cultural and institutional configurations. Following the interpretivist tradition in social science, identity is treated as a historically situated discourse that must be read in light of the symbols, exclusions, and oppositions through which it is enacted (Schwartz-Shea 2014; Deaux 1993).

The selection of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro as comparative cases rests on a logic of both similarity and difference. These states share a common institutional inheritance as republics within the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, as well as overlapping ethnic, linguistic, and religious affiliations. All three experienced the dissolution of Yugoslavia as a cultural and existential crisis that necessitated a redefinition of collective identity (Milivojević 1994; Cohen & Dragović-Soso 2008). Each has been profoundly shaped by the legacies of war, displacement, and contested sovereignty, which rendered questions of national belonging especially salient. At the same time, the trajectories of identity formation in these three polities diverge in significant and instructive ways, allowing for a comparative analysis of the different forms that apophatic and cataphatic identity can assume.

Croatia, the first of the three to achieve internationally recognized independence, has pursued a relatively linear path of national consolidation marked by a strong ethno-nationalist revival in the early 1990s, followed by a gradual alignment with Western institutions such as the European Union and NATO (Vukas & Dagen 2019; Asaturov & Martynov 2020). Its identity discourse has oscillated between exclusionary nationalism and European liberalism, with the former providing the emotional and symbolic charge of difference from Serbia, and the latter serving as a source of aspirational legitimacy. Bosnia and Herzegovina, by contrast, remains a deeply divided and structurally fragmented state, governed by an internationally supervised power-sharing arrangement that institutionalizes ethnic division while proclaiming a civic national ideal (Bieber 2008). It is the paradigmatic site of identity instability, where national belonging is simultaneously over-determined and under-defined, and where apophatic negation coexists with the aspiration to a pluralist cataphatic identity that remains largely unrealized. Montenegro represents a more ambivalent case. For much of its post-Yugoslav history, it remained in political union with Serbia, only achieving formal independence in 2006. Since then, it has embarked on a project of symbolic distancing from Serbia (redefining its language, religious institutions, and historical narratives, see: Jovanović 2018b) while simultaneously grappling with the internal ambivalence of a population that remains divided on questions of ethnic and linguistic affiliation.

This selection allows us to observe how shared structural conditions—imperial legacies, conflict trauma, and post-socialist transformation—interact with divergent political trajectories and identity strategies. Each case provides a distinct articulation of apophatic and cataphatic impulses, shaped by historical contingency, institutional design, and external pressures. Taken together, they form a comparative matrix through which the theoretical framework can be tested, extended, and refined.

It is important to clarify that this analysis primarily examines institutional and elite-driven processes of nation-building, rather than the full spectrum of identity as experienced by citizens. National identity, as understood in social psychological and sociological research, is negotiated across multiple levels, including everyday practices, local communities, and individual self-identification. Particularly in complex cases such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, divergences between top-down identity constructions and bottom-up understandings are pronounced, with different groups articulating competing and sometimes incompatible visions of national belonging. The framework developed here should therefore be read as an analysis of dominant discursive and institutional strategies, rather than as a comprehensive account of how national identity is uniformly internalized by populations.

Case Study I: Croatia

4.

The formation of Croatian national identity in the post-Yugoslav period provides one of the clearest instances of an apophatic trajectory: a nation emerging through the structured repudiation of an unwanted association, primarily with Serbia. The violent dissolution of the Yugoslav federation in the early 1990s, the War of Independence (1991–1995), and the subsequent political reorientation of Croatia toward the West created fertile ground for a national identity predicated on exclusion (McDowell et al. 2014). As McConnel wrote, “not only did the European project of memory miserably fail in Croatia, but that it provoked a counter-effect that pushed nationalist sentiments forward” (McConnel 2020, 51) Yet, in parallel to this apophatic impulse, there emerged a cataphatic aspiration: an attempt to craft an affirmative identity grounded in European belonging, Catholic tradition, and an idealized medieval past (Ceh & Harder 2004). These twin forces, negation and affirmation, exist in dynamic tension in the Croatian case, with the former shaping the urgency of the nation’s post-conflict identity and the latter informing its long-term ideological trajectory.

Croatia declared its independence from Yugoslavia in June 1991, a move met with armed resistance by Serb-dominated federal forces and local Serb militias who opposed the secession. The war that followed was brutal and prolonged, involving large-scale displacement, ethnic cleansing, and the siege of major cities such as Vukovar and Dubrovnik (French & Kovačević 2016; Pavković 2000). It was during this formative period that Croatian national identity was forged in the crucible of war; an identity articulated less through internal coherence than through violent separation from the Serbian Other. Franjo Tuđman, the first president of independent Croatia, cast the national struggle for civilizational survival, contrasting a Western, Catholic, and “European” Croatia with an Eastern, Orthodox, and “Balkan” Serbia (Wawrenczak 2007; Ceh & Harder 2004). This Manichean framework would have lasting effects on the structure of Croatian nationalism.

One of the most striking (and heavily examined in scholarship) manifestations of this apophatic logic was the linguistic purification undertaken during and after the war. The Croatian language, long considered mutually intelligible with Serbian (and previously treated as a unified Serbo-Croatian), underwent a deliberate process of differentiation (Kordić 2010). Lexical choices associated with Serbian usage (referred to as “Serbisms”) were purged from official documents, media, and educational materials. New Croatian neologisms were introduced or revived from older, more “authentic” sources to replace these terms, even where the Serbian variants had been widely used by Croatian speakers prior to independence within the paradigm of “linguonationalism” (Jovanović 2018b; 2020). This process was linguistic as much as it was ideological: it asserted the separateness of the Croatian nation by purging what was deemed alien or imposed. Language became a battleground on which the politics of memory, trauma, and differentiation were fought.

This linguistic differentiation coincided with a broader disassociation from the term “Balkan,” which had become inextricably linked in Western media with images of violence, irrationality, and ethnic hatred, characteristics Croats increasingly sought to disown. Public discourse, particularly in the 1990s and early 2000s, saw an increasing insistence that Croatia was not a “Balkan” country and a Central European one instead, historically tied to the Habsburg and Roman Catholic world. Rasza wrote how there was a “sense of optimism shared by most Croatians, who believed that independent Croatia would soon ‘sail’ into Europe, leaving their primitive Balkan neighbors and communist past behind” (Rasza 2004, 635). Geographical and civilizational self-positioning became part of the symbolic architecture of the state. In academic, media, and governmental discourses, “Balkan” became shorthand for a regressive identity, against which a modern Croatian identity could be constructed. This distancing operated on multiple registers (cultural, religious, political, and historical) and functioned as a tool of symbolic elevation in the international sphere.

Equally powerful in the construction of apophatic identity was the memorialization of the war. Commemorations such as Victory and Homeland Thanksgiving Day and the annual remembrance of the Vukovar massacre reinforce a narrative of national martyrdom at the hands of a Serbian aggressor. War museums, public monuments, and school textbooks enshrine the idea of a Croatian people who suffered and endured, whose statehood was paid for in blood, and whose moral superiority was proven through resistance (Koren 2015). These commemorative practices leave little room for ambiguity or nuance, cementing a national identity in which Serbia figures as the historical antagonist, and in which Croatian virtue is affirmed primarily through its contrast with Serbian violence and betrayal.

Yet alongside this apophatic structure runs a cataphatic aspiration: an effort to define Croatia by more than what it is not, but by what it is. This affirmative identity has several components. First is the invocation of European-ness. Croatia’s accession to the European Union in 2013 (Sicurella 2020) was more than a legal or economic milestone; it was the symbolic consummation of a long-standing narrative that Croatia is, at its core, a European nation: rational, democratic, and culturally refined. This narrative draws on historical links to the Habsburg Empire and the Catholic Church, as well as on Enlightenment ideals that place Croatia within a Western civilizational frame. The image of Europe functions as a geopolitical goal and a moral telos, a way of affirming Croatian identity through association with an idealized West.

Second, the Croatian national narrative draws heavily on Catholicism as a source of symbolic coherence and cultural continuity; as Bellamy wrote, “for many, the church was a bastion of radical nationalism which promoted intolerance towards Croatia’s Serbian minority and failed to speak out against human rights abuse” (Bellamy 2002, 45). While Yugoslavia had promoted a secular and socialist identity, post-independence Croatia witnessed a strong resurgence of religious symbolism in public life. The Catholic Church played a significant role in the war effort, both materially and spiritually, and has since been instrumental in shaping educational policy, cultural events, and national rituals (Sokolić 2019). Saints, bishops, and Marian apparitions have become part of the symbolic fabric of the nation, offering positive markers of belonging that transcend mere negation of the Other.

Third, Croatian national discourse frequently invokes a medieval golden age, especially the Kingdom of Croatia in the 10th and 11th centuries, to assert the longevity and legitimacy of Croatian statehood. Figures such as King Tomislav are celebrated as founders of the nation, their historical images resurrected in statues, currency, and civic ceremonies (Cepulo 2023). These references serve to inscribe the Croatian nation within a longue durée of sovereignty and continuity, an implicit rebuttal to the claim that Yugoslavia was its only viable political form.

Despite these cataphatic efforts, there remains a palpable tension between the urgency of apophatic identity and the ambition of cataphatic coherence. The anti-Serbian discourse of the 1990s remains a latent force in Croatian politics, periodically revived in electoral campaigns, football chants, and public controversies (Sokolić 2019; Žanić 1995). Even as the European narrative gains ground, especially among younger and urban populations, the foundational trauma of war and the lingering specter of Serbia continue to shape the symbolic boundaries of the nation. The cataphatic mode, though increasingly institutionalized through EU membership, education reform, and cultural diplomacy, often struggles to displace the emotive power of the apophatic narrative.

This tension suggests that the Croatian case exemplifies the transitional nature of national identity in post-conflict settings. The apophatic mode offers immediate clarity, mobilization, and solidarity, but at the cost of perpetuating antagonism and limiting the horizon of civic inclusion. The cataphatic mode, by contrast, requires a long-term investment in narrative construction, institutional trust, and symbolic pluralism; conditions that are only partially met in contemporary Croatia. The persistence of apophatic markers alongside emerging cataphatic forms puts emphasis onto the incomplete and contested nature of national identity in a state still negotiating its place between past enmities and future aspirations.

Case Study II: Bosnia and Herzegovina

5.

Bosnia and Herzegovina represents the most complex and ambivalent of the post-Yugoslav identity formations, not least because it lacks a single, consolidated national identity in the conventional sense. The legacy of ethnic conflict, the power-sharing architecture of the Dayton Peace Agreement, and the continued presence of three deeply embedded ethno-national communities—Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs—have rendered the state an institutional expression of contradiction. In Bieber’s words: “the years following the Dayton Peace Accords (DPA) have brought peace, but only limited success in fundamentally improving interethnic relations and establishing a functioning system of joint decision-making between the three predominant national groups of the country” (Bieber 2002, 205). If Croatia’s national identity was forged through symbolic exclusion and Montenegro’s through tentative differentiation, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s identity exists in a state of perpetual contestation, where apophatic logic manifests in the rejection of others’ monopolistic claims. It is here, perhaps more than in any other post-Yugoslav state, that we witness the paradox of apophatic pluralism: a civic identity built through the refusal to be reduced to ethnonational binaries.

The historical context is both familiar and unique. Bosnia and Herzegovina declared independence from Yugoslavia in March 1992, a move that was swiftly followed by one of the most brutal and complex conflicts in modern European history. The Bosnian War of 1992–1995 involved territorial claims by Bosnian Serbs and Croats (each supported by Serbia and Croatia, respectively) against a Bosnian state largely defended by Bosniak forces (Cetinich 2002). Ethnic cleansing, genocide, and the systematic destruction of cultural and religious institutions marked the war, culminating in the massacre at Srebrenica and the prolonged siege of Sarajevo (Hoare 2014). The Dayton Agreement, signed in 1995 under intense international pressure, ended the conflict but entrenched a system of ethnic division that institutionalized rather than resolved the identity crisis (Paczula 2005; Slye 1996).

At the core of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s post-Dayton identity dilemma is the position of the Bosniaks, the Muslim-identifying community that emerged from Yugoslav ambiguity with a newly formalized ethnonational label. Historically referred to variably as “Muslims” or “Muslimani” in the ethnic rather than religious sense, the Bosniak identity was consolidated during the war and has since been deployed in an attempt to assert a national narrative distinct from both Serb and Croat claims (Friedman 2000). But unlike their Croat and Serb counterparts, who see themselves as part of broader transnational nations with mother states, Bosniaks lack an external homeland and must therefore assert Bosnia and Herzegovina itself as their nation-state. This gives rise to a mode of identity that is fundamentally apophatic: Bosniaks are not Serbs, not Croats, not Orthodox, not Catholic, not aligned with Belgrade or Zagreb. They are the custodians of a Bosnian state that is imagined as a pluralist, multi-ethnic republic in which all groups can coexist.

This pluralism, however, is itself shaped by negation. The civic identity promoted by Bosniak elites (particularly in Sarajevo) functions as a repudiation of the ethnonationalist visions advanced by Republika Srpska and the Croat-majority cantons of the Federation. Discourses of civic Bosnian identity, particularly as articulated by segments of Bosniak political and intellectual elites, insist that the state should not be divided, that identities should not be reduced to ethnicity, and that Bosnia’s history is one of coexistence rather than partition (Nicolosi 2023; Vanderwerf 2009). Yet this insistence gains its symbolic force primarily through contrast with the divisive rhetoric and separatist tendencies of the other two constituent peoples. The refusal of division becomes itself an identity: a negative orientation that valorizes unity by opposing fragmentation. In this sense, civic pluralism operates as a form of apophatic nationalism, in which the integrity of the state is asserted through the rejection of ethnic exclusivity.

This strategy, while morally compelling and rhetorically powerful, suffers from serious cataphatic deficiencies. Bosnia and Herzegovina has struggled to generate shared, positive symbols that transcend ethnic divisions. The flag, chosen under international supervision, features neutral geometric motifs devoid of historical reference. The national anthem has no lyrics. Public holidays are celebrated along ethnic lines. School curricula diverge sharply by entity and canton, often presenting mutually exclusive narratives of the past. Even the capital, Sarajevo (once touted as a beacon of multiculturalism) has become increasingly monoethnic in practice, as postwar displacement and demographic shifts have eroded its pluralistic character.

The result is a national space in which no community fully identifies with the whole. For Bosniaks, the state is theirs in principle but contested in practice. For Bosnian Serbs and Croats, the state is at best a compromise, at worst an imposition. Attempts to craft a cataphatic identity around a shared Bosnian civic ideal thus falter on the terrain of symbolic representation. There is no widely accepted founding myth, no consensus on a national hero, no common vision of the future. The cataphatic materials that might serve as the scaffolding of national identity—such as literature, history, religion, even sport—are all ethnically coded, reinforcing the fragmentation they are meant to transcend.

The fragility of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s identity lies precisely in this imbalance: apophatic pluralism can sustain a minimal consensus on statehood, but it cannot substitute for the affective depth and symbolic coherence that cataphatic identity provides. This is evident in the repeated failure of constitutional reforms, the stalling of EU accession, and the persistent threat of secessionist rhetoric from Republika Srpska. The Bosnian state persists, but its legitimacy is constantly undermined by its inability to produce a narrative that binds its citizens beyond the pragmatic imperative to avoid renewed conflict.

Moreover, the very structure of the Dayton Agreement reinforces apophatic tendencies. By recognizing three “constituent peoples”, it entrenches a political logic that privileges ethnic belonging over civic participation; “the agreement significantly contributed to the creation of divided society (and political community) composed of three ‘constituent peoples’ and others. Neither social nor political community stood the test of time” (Seizović & Šimić 2016, 28). Power-sharing mechanisms, while preventing domination, also inhibit political innovation, as parties are incentivized to represent ethnic blocs rather than articulate universal programs. In this context, even the most well-intentioned efforts to build civic identity are filtered through a matrix of negation: a Bosnian citizen is one who refuses to be reduced to Serb or Croat, but the positive content of that citizenship remains elusive.

Some cultural interventions have sought to break this cycle. Literature, film, and popular music occasionally gesture toward a post-ethnic vision of Bosnian identity, but these remain subcultural currents rather than hegemonic forces. International organizations and NGOs have promoted interethnic dialogue and civic education, but their influence is limited by the dominance of local political elites invested in maintaining ethnonational categories (Jeffrey 2007; Evans-Kent & Bleiker 2004). Without a robust cataphatic framework—without symbols, rituals, and narratives that positively affirm a shared identity—the apophatic mode risks collapsing into mere anti-politics, a politics of negation without substantive cohesion.

In other words, Bosnia and Herzegovina demonstrates both the possibilities and the limits of apophatic national identity. Its civic discourse, driven largely by Bosniak elites, rejects the exclusivist nationalism of its neighbors and constituent groups, promoting instead a vision of pluralism and shared statehood. But this vision remains largely reactive, defined by what it opposes rather than what it affirms. The absence of cataphatic coherence—of a unifying narrative capable of transcending ethnic divisions—renders this identity structurally fragile, constantly vulnerable to the centrifugal forces of ethnic grievance and geopolitical manipulation. If the apophatic mode has allowed Bosnia and Herzegovinato survive as a state, the cataphatic failure may yet prevent it from fully becoming a nation.

Case Study III: Montenegro

6.

Among the successor states of Yugoslavia, Montenegro occupies a singular position: historically intertwined with Serbia through language, religion, dynastic union, and political allegiance (Roberts 2007), yet increasingly insistent on a separate national trajectory since its formal independence in 2006. Unlike Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro did not experience widespread armed conflict in the 1990s, and its path to statehood was achieved through referendum rather than war. Yet despite the absence of physical violence, the symbolic and political struggle over identity in Montenegro has been no less intense. This contest is defined by a stark tension between apophatic and cataphatic impulses: between a national identity grounded in negation of Serbian cultural and religious dominance, and an emerging, if still inchoate, effort to articulate a positive, sovereign Montenegrin selfhood rooted in historical uniqueness and cultural distinction.

The historical entanglement of Montenegro and Serbia cannot be overstated. For much of the 19th and early 20th centuries, Montenegro was seen as a kindred polity to Serbia, both Orthodox and Slavic, sharing dynastic ties through the Petrović and Karađorđević families, and engaged in similar military and national projects against the Ottoman Empire. After the First World War, Montenegro was incorporated into the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (later Yugoslavia), effectively losing its sovereignty, a moment still viewed by many Montenegrins as annexation rather than unification. Pavlović has, perhaps in overstatement, argued that it was a “Balkan Anschluss” (Pavlović 2008). During the socialist period, Montenegro was granted republican status, but its distinctiveness was largely subsumed under the broader Yugoslav identity. Following the disintegration of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, Montenegro remained in federation with Serbia until the 2006 referendum, in which 55.5% of voters opted for independence (Oklopčić 2016), a decision that laid bare the deep and unresolved ambivalence at the heart of Montenegrin identity.

The post-independence period has witnessed a gradual but deliberate articulation of an apophatic national identity, one that defines Montenegro primarily through its rejection of Serbian cultural hegemony. Central to this has been the contestation over the Serbian Orthodox Church (SOC), which maintains considerable influence in Montenegro through property holdings, clerical networks, and historical prestige. The Montenegrin state, particularly under the rule of the Democratic Party of Socialists and President Milo Đukanović, has sought to displace the SOC by supporting the revival of the Montenegrin Orthodox Church, a religious institution unrecognized by most Orthodox bodies but symbolically crucial for asserting spiritual sovereignty. This conflict reached a peak with the 2019 Law on Freedom of Religion, which aimed to transfer ownership of certain religious properties to the state, sparking mass protests led by SOC clergy and politically mobilized Serb-identifying Montenegrins. The symbolic stakes were clear: the church, far from being a neutral religious actor, was a battleground for national legitimacy and historical ownership.

Another key pillar of Montenegro’s apophatic identity construction has been the codification of the Montenegrin language as distinct from Serbian (Čirgić 2011). While Montenegrin is mutually intelligible with Serbian, and historically considered a variant or dialect thereof, the post-2006 period has seen efforts to formalize it as a separate standard language. In 2009, the Montenegrin language was officially introduced into the education system, and in 2010, a new orthography was published that included two additional letters that are understood as phonemes—Ś and Ź—absent from the Serbian Latin or Cyrillic alphabets (Nikčević 2008). This linguistic differentiation, while modest in structural terms, was politically charged, signaling a symbolic break from Serbian linguistic dominance and asserting Montenegrin distinctiveness as a nation with its own phonemic and orthographic logic. Critics have dismissed this as artificial, overblown, or unnecessary (Jovanović 2018a; Glušica 2011), but supporters argue it is a necessary act of cultural decolonization.

Montenegro’s political distancing from Serbia extends beyond religious and linguistic reform. Since independence, the country has consistently oriented itself toward Euro-Atlantic structures, joining NATO in 2017 and pursuing European Union accession with greater consistency than Serbia. This geopolitical alignment serves as both a practical and symbolic means of self-definition. To be Montenegrin, in this emerging framework, is to belong to a progressive, sovereign, Western-leaning polity; not a subordinate province of a Greater Serbian vision. The politics of memory have also been revised accordingly: official narratives celebrate Montenegro’s royal statehood prior to 1918, foreground anti-fascist resistance during the Second World War, and marginalize moments of union with Serbia (Zečević 2021). School textbooks, public monuments, and national commemorations increasingly reflect this historiographical shift, reinforcing an identity that is no longer embedded in Serbhood but increasingly opposed to it.

Yet these apophatic strategies, though effective in asserting Montenegro’s difference, have not produced a unified or uncontested national identity. The post-independence period has been marked by persistent identity bifurcation, with a significant portion of the population continuing to identify as Serb (around 32% according to the recent census, Radio Slobodna Evropa 2024) and rejecting the legitimacy of the new Montenegrin symbols. The 2020 parliamentary elections saw a dramatic shift in political power, with a coalition of pro-Serbian and opposition parties unseating the long-dominant DPS. This political reversal was accompanied by renewed efforts to reassert Serbian cultural and religious presence, including the cancellation of some language and education reforms. The identity conflict is symbolic as well as electoral, demographic, and institutional, with each new government facing the challenge of either deepening or moderating the apophatic project.

It is against this backdrop of contestation that we can detect emerging cataphatic efforts to craft a more affirmative Montenegrin identity. One strand of this effort involves the reclamation of pre-Yugoslav sovereignty, particularly the independent Montenegrin kingdom of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Figures such as King Nikola Petrović have been rehabilitated in public discourse, statues have been erected, and royal imagery repurposed in state iconography (Felberg 2012; Marković 2015). This turn to monarchic history is strategic: it offers a non-Yugoslav, non-Serbian precedent for Montenegrin statehood that affirms continuity rather than rupture. In this framing, independence in 2006 is a restoration of a legitimate and sovereign order.

A second cataphatic vector lies in the affirmation of a unique Slavic identity, one that is neither subsumed by Serbian pan-Slavism nor wholly Westernized. This includes the promotion of Montenegrin folklore, epic poetry, traditional dress, and local dialects that distinguish the highland and coastal populations. Cultural festivals and state-funded media increasingly foreground these vernacular elements, attempting to assemble a coherent national narrative rooted in place, myth, and memory. These efforts are nascent and often overshadowed by the louder politics of negation, but they indicate a desire to move beyond reactive nationalism toward a more rooted and internally generated sense of nationhood.

Nevertheless, the cataphatic turn remains constrained by the strength of the apophatic legacy. The symbolic infrastructure of Montenegrin identity is still largely dependent on differentiation from Serbia. Efforts to define a Montenegrin culture, language, and religion often appear defensive or derivative, shaped more by the imperative to negate than the freedom to create. Furthermore, the demographic reality of ethnic division and the continued salience of pro-Serbian political parties render any unitary cataphatic identity difficult to sustain. The political oscillation between parties that promote Montenegrin sovereignty and those that champion Serbian cultural integration ensures that the identity debate remains open, polarized, and subject to reversals.

Montenegro exemplifies the possibilities and limitations of apophatic national identity in a post-imperial, post-socialist context. Its rejection of Serbian religious, linguistic, and political dominance has provided the scaffolding for a distinct national project. But this project, while successful in securing formal sovereignty and geopolitical alignment, has not yet produced a stable or widely accepted cataphatic identity. The turn toward pre-Yugoslav history and vernacular cultural affirmation offers a potential path forward, but it remains precarious: contested from within and vulnerable to political shifts. As long as identity remains defined by what it is not, rather than what it is, Montenegro will continue to inhabit the liminal space between negation and affirmation, between historical entanglement and national self-definition.

Synthesis and Discussion

7.

The preceding case studies reveal a spectrum of national identity strategies shaped by the collapse of Yugoslavia, the legacy of shared statehood with Serbia, and the political necessities of post-conflict or transitional governance. While each state—Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro—exhibits distinct historical trajectories and internal dynamics, they are united by the centrality of the Serbian Other in their symbolic and political architectures. The apophatic mode of identity construction (national self-definition through negation) emerges in all three, though with differing intensities, temporalities, and consequences. These differences, in turn, illuminate the broader theoretical contours of apophatic and cataphatic national identity and suggest pathways for comparative analysis beyond the Balkans.

Croatia demonstrates the most consolidated and institutionalized form of apophatic national identity. The “War of Independence” (1991–1995) against Serbian forces was more than just a conflict over territory (where “the regions, i.e. the border areas of Croatia, which during the Croatian Homeland War … were the scene of war conflicts and destruction, trauma, suffering and migration of the population, are still, some twenty years later, ‘problematic’ and ‘controversial’ in many aspects”, Lončar 2014, 161). It was a crucible in which Croatian identity was reasserted through the purging of “Balkan” associations and the rejection of Serbian cultural, linguistic, and political influence, commonly by linguistic purism (Prsir 2013; Kordić 2010), not to mention the ethnic cleansing of the Serbian population during Operation Storm (Coleman 2023). The symbolic infrastructure of Croatian nationhood (its language reforms, its war memorialization, and its civilizational orientation toward the West) was shaped by this imperative of differentiation. At the same time, Croatia has made significant progress in articulating a cataphatic national identity, through narratives of Catholic continuity, medieval statehood, and European belonging. The coexistence of ANI and CNI here suggests that apophatic identity can serve as a foundational phase, ultimately giving way to more affirmative constructions of selfhood. Yet the enduring rhetorical potency of anti-Serbian tropes and the political instrumentalization of war memory indicate that ANI remains a latent force, capable of resurgence in moments of perceived threat.

Bosnia and Herzegovina, by contrast, occupies the most unstable position in this typology. Its civic identity, promoted primarily by Bosniak elites, is avowedly pluralist, rejecting ethnonational division and affirming the sovereignty of a multiethnic state. However, this pluralism is largely apophatic in structure. It defines itself against the exclusivist claims of Serb and Croat nationalisms and seeks legitimacy through negation: of partition, of monoethnic hegemony, of separatist discourse. The absence of a shared symbolic language, a unified historical narrative, or widely accepted national institutions has stymied the development of a robust cataphatic identity. Bosnia’s identity remains minimal and defensive, sustained more by the international community’s insistence on unity and the trauma of wartime fragmentation than by any positive national consensus. Here, ANI is an enduring structural condition, a strategy of symbolic survival in the absence of cataphatic cohesion.

Montenegro presents a liminal case. Having remained in political union with Serbia until 2006, it has only recently embarked on a project of differentiation. Its apophatic strategies (rejection of the Serbian Orthodox Church, codification of the Montenegrin language, and reorientation toward NATO and the EU) are relatively recent and still contested. Unlike Croatia, Montenegro has not undergone a major war with Serbia; its identity crisis stems more from internal division than from violent rupture. This has produced a uniquely volatile scenario in which apophatic nationalism is at once emergent and reversible, depending on the political party in power. While cataphatic elements have begun to surface (particularly through the rehabilitation of pre-Yugoslav sovereignty and vernacular cultural traditions), they remain vulnerable to challenge by a sizeable Serb-identifying population and regional actors. In Montenegro, ANI functions less as a foundational myth than as a battleground for ongoing cultural and political hegemony.

Taken together, the three cases suggest that ANI functions most effectively as a short-term cohesive strategy in moments of transition, rupture, or perceived external threat. It enables the rapid mobilization of symbolic boundaries, the consolidation of political legitimacy, and the generation of emotional solidarity. Yet its long-term utility is limited. ANI is inherently unstable, reliant on the perpetual presence of an antagonist and ill-equipped to foster inclusive civic identities or to navigate internal diversity. Its persistence tends to deepen polarization, delay reconciliation, and undermine democratic consolidation, particularly when harnessed by political elites for populist ends.

By contrast, cataphatic identity serves as a marker of political maturity and cultural self-confidence. It requires the slow accumulation of symbolic capital, the development of inclusive narratives, and the establishment of institutions capable of managing difference without reducing it to antagonism. CNI is harder to achieve, especially in societies emerging from conflict or facing irredentist pressures. But where successful, it offers a more sustainable basis for national cohesion: one that depends on shared aspiration.

The theoretical framework developed here (apophatic vs. cataphatic national identity) also offers analytic utility beyond the post-Yugoslav context. In Ukraine, the construction of national identity has increasingly assumed an apophatic character in response to Russian aggression (Kulyk 2024; 2016). The war has accelerated the symbolic severing of ties to Russia (linguistic, historical, ecclesiastical) while simultaneously prompting cataphatic efforts to affirm a unique Ukrainian culture, language, and civic statehood. Similarly, in Ireland, nationalist identity historically developed through apophatic opposition to British colonialism, yet over time evolved into cataphatic narratives of Gaelic revival, Catholic solidarity, and republican sovereignty (Kane, 2000). In both cases, the transition from ANI to CNI marks a trajectory from resistance to affirmation, from survival to self-articulation.

Future research might extend this typology to other regions undergoing decolonization, secession, or post-conflict reconstruction, examining how identity is structured through absence or affirmation. It may also be productive to investigate the interplay of ANI and CNI within diasporic communities, supranational entities (such as the EU), or federal polities where identity must operate across multiple registers. Methodologically, this framework invites more systematic analysis of symbols, discourse, and political institutions as sites of identity production: an inquiry that bridges cultural studies, comparative politics, and historical sociology.

The apophatic-cataphatic distinction thus offers a conceptual lens for understanding how nations come to know themselves and how they stabilize or unravel. It foregrounds the relational nature of identity, the role of negation in shaping political belonging, and the enduring challenge of moving from what we are not to what we are. As the cases of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro show, this movement is fraught, uneven, and contingent, but essential for the possibility of national coherence beyond the horizon of historical antagonism.

Conclusion

8.

This article has introduced and developed a theoretical distinction between apophatic and cataphatic national identity as a means of understanding how nations define themselves in contexts of rupture, transition, and contested sovereignty. Drawing inspiration from theological and post-structuralist traditions, the apophatic-cataphatic typology offers a conceptual lens for analyzing the ways in which identity is formed either through the negation of an Other or through the affirmation of internally coherent myths, symbols, and ideals. In the context of the post-Yugoslav states, this framework elucidates the symbolic, institutional, and discursive mechanisms through which national identity has been constructed primarily against Serbia and its perceived hegemonic presence.

The empirical analysis demonstrates that apophatic identity dominates the early phases of national rearticulation following Yugoslavia’s disintegration. In Croatia, this took the form of linguistic purification, anti-Balkan rhetoric, and war memorialization that excluded Serbian associations as a means of reaffirming sovereignty and civilizational alignment with the West. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, civic pluralism emerged as a negation of Serb and Croat exclusivism, while failing to generate a widely accepted cataphatic alternative capable of bridging ethnic cleavages. Montenegro, in turn, has constructed its post-2006 identity through the rejection of Serbian religious and linguistic institutions, but remains internally divided and politically volatile, with its cataphatic aspirations (anchored in pre-Yugoslav sovereignty and vernacular culture) still embryonic and contested.

What these cases reveal is that apophatic national identity can serve as an effective short-term mechanism for differentiation, mobilization, and symbolic consolidation, particularly in the wake of conflict or imperial collapse. It provides clarity in moments of existential uncertainty, enables the drawing of firm boundaries, and satisfies the psychological imperative of othering in times of national anxiety. However, the utility of ANI is constrained by its own limitations. Defined by negation, it often lacks the internal richness necessary for enduring political and cultural cohesion. It encourages reactive nationalism, sustains antagonistic political cultures, and risks solidifying essentialist binaries that hinder reconciliation and inclusive state-building. Its emotional force is considerable, but its capacity to sustain a democratic and pluralistic polity is profoundly limited.

We shall conclude with a call for deeper interdisciplinary inquiry into the phenomenon of identity as negation. The apophatic mode, while often dismissed as derivative or secondary, is in fact a fundamental structure of collective self-understanding, especially in contexts marked by trauma, dependency, or contested recognition. Political scientists, historians, anthropologists, and critical theorists alike have much to gain from engaging with this mode as a constitutive feature of how nations emerge, defend themselves, and seek to narrate their difference. Future research would do well to trace how apophatic and cataphatic identities interact over time, how they are institutionalized in legal and cultural forms, and how they shape the possibilities for political transformation in post-conflict and post-colonial societies.

The distinction between what a nation is and what it is not may seem semantic, but as the post-Yugoslav experience shows, it is the semantic difference on which wars are fought, states are constituted, and futures are imagined.