The Common Language of Discipline: 'Nesting Pedagogy' and Alternative Subject Positions in Power in Serbia

Abstract

This paper explores the complexity of the discourses surrounding the choice of Ana Brnabić as Serbian PM in the context of Serbia’s EU accession process. In my analysis I focus on several key concepts: leveraged pedagogy, homonationalism and sexual citizenship. I rely on recent work by scholars who have proposed and explored the dynamic interplay of these concepts (Kahlina 2013; Butterfield 2013; Kulpa 2014, Kahlina 2014). I highlight structural parallels between the disciplinary mechanisms that characterize both wider discourses of Europeanisation and the rhetoric of pro-European political elites in Serbia. My central argument is that the “morphosyntactic” parallels between the two discourses coalesce into a common language of discipline that produces an alternative subject position in power whose agency is essentially cancelled. In conclusion, I propose that the similarities between the disciplining regimes of the two discourses could be understood in terms of a “nesting pedagogy.” For the purposes of this essay, I use this term to denote disciplinary regimes emanating from the EU which, as they cascade south-eastwards toward the bloc’s periphery, produce nested hierarchical binaries marked by the pedagogic and infantilizing treatment of the Other.