DOI: 10.3986/Traditio2021500105 TRADITIONES, 50/1, 2021, 53–77
In southern Carinthia (Kärnten/Koroška), a conflict over 
the rights and oppression of the Slovenian-speaking minority 
has been smoldering for one hundred years, since the military 
border conflict of 1918/19 and the plebiscite agreed upon in 
the Treaty of St. Germain. The plebiscite was on the question 
of whether southern Carinthia should join the rump state 
of the former Habsburg monarchy, German-Austria, or the 
newly created SHS. In 1920, the majority of the resident 
population (both the German Carinthians and the Slovenian 
minority) decided in favor of Austria. In the following 
decades an unrelenting struggle for language and memory 
was waged by German-nationalist-minded representatives 
of the German Carinthian majority against the minority. 
This article1 analyzes the thematization of linguistic and 
territorial demarcations in the dispositif Kärnten/Koroška. 
Keywords: dispositif, Kärnten, nationalism, contentious 
cultural heritage
Na južnem Koroškem (Kärnten/Koroška) že sto let tli konflikt 
o zatiranju in pravicah slovensko govoreče manjšine, to je 
vse od vojaškega obmejnega spopada 1918/19 in plebiscita, 
dogovorjenega s senžermensko pogodbo. Plebiscit se je 
nanašal na vprašanje, ali naj se južna Koroška pridruži 
okrnjeni nekdanji habsburški monarhiji ali novoustanovljeni 
državi Srbov, Hrvatov in Slovencev. Leta 1920 se je večina 
tamkajšnjega prebivalstva (tako nemške kot slovenske skupnosti) 
odločila za Avstrijo. V naslednjih desetletjih so se nemško 
nacionalistično usmerjeni zastopniki nemške koroške večine 
neusmiljeno borili za jezik in spomin proti manjšini. Članek 
analizira tematizacijo jezikovnih in teritorialnih razmejitev 
z vidika dispozitiva Kärnten /Koroška. 
Ključne besede: dispozitiv, Koroška, nacionalizem, sporna 
kulturna dediščina
TERRITORIAL AND LINGUISTIC DEMARCATIONS IN  
THE DISPOSITIF KÄRNTEN/KOROŠKA
ROLAND W. PEBALL AND KLAUS SCHÖNBERGER
1
In southern Carinthia (Kärnten/Koroška), a conflict over the rights and oppression of the 
Slovenian-speaking minority has been smoldering for one hundred years. This dispute is 
particularly centered on the remembrance and commemoration of the military border conflict 
of 1918/19 and the plebiscite agreed upon in the Treaty of St. Germain. When the successor 
states of Austria-Hungary emerged after the First World War, this military conflict was 
fought out between irregulars sympathetic to the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes 
(SHS) and German Austrian private paramilitary groups (Freikorps) as well as local defense 
companies (Heimwehr) or social democratic workers’ battalions (cf. Lagger, 1930: 129). The 
plebiscite was on the question of whether southern Carinthia should join the rump state 
of the former Habsburg monarchy, German-Austria, or the newly created SHS. In 1920, 
the majority of the resident population (both the German Carinthians and the Slovenian 
1 This article is based on the results of the Austrian FWF-funded project “Performing Reality: Dis- 
and Re-Articulation of the Carinthia/Koroška Dispositif. A Co-Production between Arts-Based and 
Cultural Science Research on the Occasion of the Centenary of the Carinthian Plebiscite” (http://
volksabstimmung2020.aau.at). We would like to thank Fabian Ziemer (Hamburg) and especially Ute 
Holfelder (Klagenfurt) for the discussion and critical comments at the “Kolloquium in der Kammer” 
at the Institute for Cultural Analysis at the Alpen-Adria-University of Klagenfurt.
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TERRITORIAL AND LINGUISTIC DEMARCATIONS IN THE DISPOSITIF KÄRNTEN/KOROŠKA
minority) decided in favor of Austria. In the following decades, up to the era of Jörg Haider 
(as Carinthian governor), an unrelenting struggle for language and memory was waged by 
German-nationalist-minded representatives of the German Carinthian majority against 
the minority. With the apology to the minority expressed by Austrian President Alexander 
van der Bellen in his speech on the centenary of the plebiscite on October 10, 2020 in the 
presence of the Slovenian president to the Carinthian Slovenians for non-compliance with 
legal claims as well as numerous deferrals and exclusions (Van der Bellen, 2020), a turning 
point might have been reached by now. This article analyzes the thematization of linguistic 
and territorial demarcations in the dispositif Kärnten/Koroška. In doing so, we also ask what 
analytical yield the theoretical concept of the dispositif Kärnten/Koroška proposed by us is 
able to provide for both the genealogy and transformations of the conflict.2
THE CONFLICT BETWEEN KÄRNTEN AND KOROŠKA
The conflict in Carinthia was (and still is) fought at various social levels. In the cultural 
field, the disputes concerned or concern, for example, language practices, clubs and societies, 
festive culture, and songs, and at the state level the conflict over Article 7 of the Austrian 
State Treaty of 1955,3 school policy, and state and municipal symbols of sovereignty such 
as place-name signs. Special importance is attached to the politics of remembrance and 
commemoration, as manifested in the occupation of public space and the landscape through 
commemorative plaques and the erection of monuments, and also in marking the provincial 
holiday on October 10.
The potency of the conflict became apparent in everyday life in ongoing disputes 
over the use of Slovenian at school and in public spaces (cf. Knight, 2020). In 2020, on 
the hundredth anniversary of the plebiscite, the “defensive struggle” was still commemo-
rated in numerous ceremonies on October 10. This day does not stand as a holiday for an 
act of plebiscitary democracy, women’s suffrage, or polyphony through multilingualism 
(and this is still passionately debated), and the controversies surrounding October 104 can 
be read as an example of contentious cultural heritages (Hamm, 2021a: 130 ff.).5 This 
designation refers to an asymmetrical relationship in which the memory of the minority 
2 The argumentation on the concept of the dispositif presented in this text builds on a previous article 
in German, which, however, has a different thematic orientation (cf. Peball, Schönberger, 2021).
3 Article 7 of the Austrian State Treaty of 1955 concerns the “rights of the Slovenian and Croat minori-
ties” (cf. BGBl no. 152/1955, https://www.ris.bka.gv.at/eli/bgbl/1955/152/A7/NOR12005177).
4 Cf. the brochure by Klubs slowenischer Student*innen (2020), and the identically named series of 
events and counterdemonstration on October 10, 2020. Cf. ORF-Kärnten (Chronik): Gegendemo 
und Reaktionen auf Festakt, October 10, 2020 (https://kaernten.orf.at/stories/3070801/).
5 In the context of heritage research, the term contentious cultural heritages attempts to operationalize 
the implications of Chantal Mouffe’s concept of agonism: “The proposal to make heritage conten-
tious aims at unsettling dominant discourses that silence, exclude, or marginalize certain positions by 
55
ROLAND W. PEBALL AND KLAUS SCHÖNBERGER
is systematically made invisible.6 It is such politics of memory (cf., e.g., Nemec, 2012), 
led by means of heritage discourses, that establishes conflictual negotiation processes and 
constantly feeds them anew.
A central theme in this conflict was, for example, the assertion of threatening 
Slovenianization and the invention of an alleged “primal fear” (Urangst) of the German 
Carinthian population in this context. This threat was justified by the military border conflict 
of 1918/19 and the invasion of the Yugoslav Army (i.e., Tito’s Partisans) in 1945. However, 
the invasion in 1945 was preceded by war crimes (e.g., in Begunje) and annexations by the 
Nazi armed forces (Wehrmacht). Given the deportation of the Carinthian Slovenians (1942), 
this is a classic victim–perpetrator reversal. The assertion of the threat to the territorial 
border is one of the constitutive elements for the legitimization of an everyday linguistic 
civil war against the Carinthian Slovenians. Bernhard Perchinig speaks of the fact that, 
after the plebiscite, downright revenge was taken and thus the democratic idea was denied: 
Thus, the democratic character of a plebiscite was reduced to absurdity! In a 
plebiscite, both parties campaign with equal right for their goals; the voters 
vote with equal rights for one or the other alternative. If those who lost the vote 
are persecuted afterwards, the democratic character of the vote is disregarded. 
(Perchinig, 1984: 94; also cf. Knight, 2020: 17)7
In terms of memory politics, this persecution sometimes takes on the dimensions of a 
damnatio memoriae: the share and participation of the Partisans from the Slovenian minor-
ity as the only noteworthy military factor in the resistance against the Nazi armed forces 
and in the liberation from Nazism on the side of the Yugoslav Army is still banished from 
German Carinthian memory (cf. Schönberger, 2021a). This memory (or non-memory) and 
the sometimes systematic disparagement of the anti-Nazi resistance, as well as the repeat-
edly burgeoning dispute over (linguistic) minority rights, point to a network of discourses, 
practices, and institutions. Actors of remembrance such as the Kärntner Geschichtsverein 
(Carinthian Historical Society), the Kärntner Abwehrkämpferbund (KAB: Carinthian 
Defence Fighters’ Association) or the Kärntner Heimatdienst (KHD: Carinthian Homeland 
Service), as well as municipal administrations, schools, and associations on the one hand, 
combining research, practical heritage work, and creativity.” Marion Hamm (2021a: 145) emphasizes 
that the aim must be to do justice to the political dimension of contested cultural heritage.
6 Central to the discussion of a dispositif Kärnten/Koroškais Marion Hamm and Janine Schemmer’s 
observation that the conflicts inscribed in power relations are not necessarily public in the hege-
monic discourse: “Conflicts inscribed in the power-relations between silencing and un-silencing are 
not necessarily articulated in public discourse, and the selective silencing of heritages is not always 
openly contested – but they are always present in strategies of silencing and un-silencing” (Hamm, 
Schemmer, 2021).
7 German quotations have been translated into English by the authors. In the case of Michel Foucault, 
an attempt was made to use English-language editions.
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TERRITORIAL AND LINGUISTIC DEMARCATIONS IN THE DISPOSITIF KÄRNTEN/KOROŠKA
and minority activists on the other hand, attract each other and at the same time repel 
each other. They form a conflicting network that is interrelated in many ways, which we 
refer to and examine below as the dispositif Kärnten/Koroška (cf. Liepold-Mosser, 2020).
THE DISPOSITIF AS AN ANALYTICAL INSTRUMENT OF KNOWLEDGE
We use the term dispositif according to Michel Foucault’s8 intention “of not—of no 
longer—treating discourses as groups of signs […] but as practices that systematically form 
the objects of which they speak” (Foucault, 1972: 49). In an oft-cited definition, Foucault 
identifies three characteristics of the concept of the dispositif. First, a dispositif consists of 
a heterogeneous ensemble of elements “consisting of discourses, institutions, architectural 
forms, regulatory decisions, laws, administrative measures, scientific statements, philo-
sophical, moral and philanthropic propositions—in short, the said as much as the unsaid” 
(Foucault, 1980: 194). Second, he characterizes a dispositive as a network (or system) of 
relations between these elements, whereby his aim is to focus on the nature, the quality of 
these connections and relationships, between which (whether discursive or not) there is an 
“interplay of shifts of position and modifications of function” (ibid.: 195). Third, Foucault 
understands a dispositif as a strategic formation, “which has as its major function at a given 
historical moment that of responding to an urgent need” (ibid.).
Following Magdalena Nowicka (2013: 51), we find the concept of the dispositif fruitful 
as an analytical instrument of knowledge when it is a matter of making visible multilayered, 
historically evolved connections and relationships (networks) between linguistic (discursive) 
and material (non-discursive) elements, as well as the links between practices, artefacts, 
institutions, and knowledge about them, which would otherwise be lost from view.
The openness of the concept of the dispositif, however, bears the risk of arbitrariness 
in its use. For us, the concept of the dispositif seems particularly informative in the sense 
of a research perspective (Bührmann, Schneider, 2008: 14–21), from which we try to link 
hegemonic and subaltern minority narratives, practices, and “institutional materializations” 
(Keller, 2011: 138) and to consider them as a complex. The dispositif Kärnten/Koroška does 
not refer to Carinthia in its entirety as a geographical, cultural, or social space, let alone 
8 The concept of the dispositif is part of Foucault’s later discourse theory, in which he increasingly turned 
to the material level of discourse and subjects. In The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969) and earlier 
texts, Foucault had consciously neglected subjects in their function as productive instances (i.e., as 
active and intentionally acting social actors) and dealt with the “excavation” and reconstruction of 
orders of knowledge and the systems of rules of the discursive formations of past epochs. As a result, 
his attitude toward the subject changed. He began to concern himself with complexes of power and 
knowledge, in which both are directly and constitutively connected. According to him, this deter-
mines the forms and areas of all knowledge (Foucault, 1995: 27 ff.). In the course of re-accentuating 
his theoretical program, Foucault’s focus shifts from the level of discursive formations and proposi-
tional systems to the mode in which discourses unfold their effect in the world (cf. Keller, 2011: 138).
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ROLAND W. PEBALL AND KLAUS SCHÖNBERGER
in its visible and invisible manifoldness. The dispositif Kärnten/Koroška denotes a complex, 
multilayered, and often contradictory ensemble of real and abstract elements, of contexts 
that entwine around an eidolon of what or how Carinthia was, is, or should be. Carinthia 
takes on partly obscure, inconsistent, and contradictory forms. The aim of our approach 
is to analyze these misperceptions and illusions, their consequences, and their implications 
for both individuals and groups.
THE DISPOSITIF KÄRNTEN/KOROŠKA
DEFINITION AND GENESIS
We understand the dispositif Kärnten/Koroška as “ensemble of elements”—of discourses, 
practices, and artefacts—as well as the network of relations between these elements that 
responded to the “urgent need” that arose in the course of the so-called Carinthian defensive 
struggle of 1919/20 and the plebiscite of 1920. The institutional and discursive manifesta-
tion9 of the conflicts around identity and difference in relation to borders and language, 
among other things, contained in the term dispositif Kärnten/Koroška refer to both their 
genesis and their currently impending demise.
In order to examine the analytical substance of this specific dispositif, it is necessary to 
describe how it functions: First of all, we can determine its main purpose and the historical 
moment at which it emerged. According to Bernd Liepold-Mosser, the dispositif Kärnten/
Koroška “came into the world” as a historical a priori with the events in Carinthia after 1918 
(Liepold-Mosser, 2020: 10). Central elements of the dispositif are the narratives about the 
plebiscite of 1920 as a consequence of the military border conflict that took place beforehand, 
which on the part of the hegemonic German Carinthians, in large part German-nationalist 
(see below) historiography (Kärntner Wissenschaft ‘Carinthian science’),10 are described as 
the Carinthian defensive struggle or struggle for freedom.
THE DISPOSITIF AS A MANIFESTATION OF DISCOURSES
Subsequently, various discourses wrestled over the interpretation of these historical events. 
Already during the plebiscite, massive propaganda battles were fought between the pro–
German Austrian and pro-SHS sides. Already at this point, the dispositif began to emerge 
as the discourses’ “material and ideal infrastructure” (Keller, 2011: 235). This can be seen 
in the establishment of the national policy committee of the Carinthian parliament in 
9 By the term manifestation, we mean the becoming visible of discourses in the sense of what Keller 
describes as the “materiality of discourses” or their “manifest appearance” (Keller, 2011: 252 ff.).
10 On the concept of Carinthian science, see Fritzl 1992 and Kuehs 2020.
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TERRITORIAL AND LINGUISTIC DEMARCATIONS IN THE DISPOSITIF KÄRNTEN/KOROŠKA
August 1919 with the Provincial Propaganda Directorship (Landesagitationsleitung, LAL), 
an organ that was to organize propaganda on the German Austrian side (Pluch, 1957). 
Later, the LAL gave rise to the initially cross-party association Kärntner Heimatdienst or 
KHD (Carinthian Homeland Service). After the Social Democrats left the association 
in 1925, it was renamed the (Kärntner Heimatbund, oder KHB, Carinthian Homeland 
Association). In the interwar period, the KHB was not only the driving force behind the 
Germanization policy, but it also served as a rallying point for the supporters of the Austrian 
NSDAP, which was illegal from 1933 to 1938. After the State Treaty of 1955, the associa-
tion was re-established under the name Kärntner Heimat Dienst or KHD; Fritzl, 1990), and 
it still exists today. This organization can be seen as an element of the dispositif Kärnten/
Koroška. Likewise, it is evidence for the persistence of the dispositif to the present day. The 
operationalization of the propaganda of the KHD and KHB further clarifies the strategic 
function originally underlying the dispositif.
After the plebiscite,11 the discourse that we call “German nationalist” became hegemonic 
in official German Carinthian historiography. Its “mythical” narrative structure as well as 
its inherent intertwining of historiography and politics were explained by Wilhelm Kuehs 
(2020). The German nationalist variant of the German Carinthian discourse states that 
both the participation in the military border conflict and the result of the plebiscite were 
caused by the commitment to Germanness. From this was derived the legitimization for 
the repressive (linguistic) assimilation pressure against the minority.
The manifestation of the German nationalist discourse—in other words, the formations 
of the underlying dispositif—can be seen, for example, in the multilayered interweavings 
between the continued existence of so-called traditional associations such as the KHD, 
the KAB, and the Kärntner Landsmannschaft (Carinthian Patriots) and the (ritualized) 
commemorative practices practiced by them. The corresponding interweavings are also 
evident during the annual October 10 celebrations (cf. Holfelder, 2021a), in specific histori-
cal events such as the signage dispute (Ortstafelsturm; Hamm, Schönberger, 2021b), and 
in the everyday hostile practices of parts of the majority population against the minority 
language as well as in related political ordinances and their interpretation (the constitu-
tion, official language, school, etc.). They also constitute the network that makes up the 
dispositif. They show how specific, historically “evolved” relations exist between ritualized 
celebrations of the anniversary of certain historical events, organizations of civil society 
(clubs and associations), and the official provincial policy, historiography, and political 
agenda. The power and knowledge relations are inscribed in this, by means of which the 
ideas and imaginations of Carinthia are invoked.
Another manifestation of the manifold links, interweavings, and strategic function of 
the dispositif Kärnten/Koroška is the “occupation of the landscape” (Holfelder, Schönberger, 
11 See the new election analysis by Tiemann (2020), which diagnoses above all economic causes for these 
decisions.
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ROLAND W. PEBALL AND KLAUS SCHÖNBERGER
2020) or the occupation of public space with street names, monuments, and commemorative 
plaques. Ute Holfelder (2020: 7) has shown the extent to which street names fulfill such a 
strategic function in the provincial capital of Klagenfurt: “The symbolic occupation of the 
formerly contested territory was also carried out by naming—mostly centrally located—
streets in Carinthian towns and municipalities.” Tellingly, it was Hans Steinacher12 that 
summed up this function in 1959: “Steinacher paid tribute to Maier-Kaibitsch’s13 work 
in the Kärntner Heimatbund, as he had achieved a great deal with his ‘folklore work in 
Carinthia’—through the ‘erection of historical commemorative signs from Carinthia’s time 
of struggle, such as the affixing of commemorative plaques to all buildings in the “zone” in 
which the polling stations had been located on October 10, 1920.’”14 It is not surprising that 
it is precisely such monuments and commemorative plaques that have become the target 
of those actors in the Carinthian dispositif that are to be made invisible by the hegemonic 
German Carinthian politics of remembrance (cf. Schönberger, 2021c).
SUBJECTIFICATION AND SUBJECTIVATION IN THE DISCOURSE AND COUNTER-
DISCOURSE OF THE DISPOSITIF KÄRNTEN/KOROŠKA
The potency of the dispositif is also evident in its impact on subjects. As Magdalena 
Nowicka (2013: 48 ff.) suggests, the concept of the dispositif opens up further possibilities 
in analyses of the production of subjectivity, alluding to the duality of subjectification 
(Fr. assujettissement) as an expression of power over the individual and subjectivation (Fr. 
subjectivation) in the sense of a person’s relationship to himself or herself. Subjectivity in 
the context of the concept of the dispositif, according to Foucault, always means two things: 
namely, both subjugation and individuation.
This ambiguity of the concept of the subject and its connection to power—respectively, 
the ambivalence between subjectification as subjugation on the one hand and subjectivation 
as a process of individuation on the other, whereby the one does not exclude but rather 
complements or even conditions the other—is already apparent in Foucault’s work: “There 
are two meanings of the word ‘subject’: subject to someone else by control and dependence; 
and tied to his own identity by a conscience or self-knowledge. Both meanings suggest a 
form of power which subjugates and makes subject to” (Foucault, 1981: 781).
Considering the ambivalent relation of subjectification and subjectivation in Foucault’s 
concept of the subject, it becomes possible to explain how the discourses associated with 
the dispositif Kärnten/Koroška are interwoven. It becomes explicable how these discourses 
12 On the person of Hans Steinacher, see Schönberger (2021b).
13 Alois Maier-Kaibitsch was the central figure of the Nazi ethnic cleansing in 1942 (Fritzl, 1990: 21 
ff.) and was sentenced to life imprisonment as a war criminal in 1947, but then released early in 1956 
(cf. Elste, 1997).
14 Rundbrief des Alpenländischen Kulturverbandes 1959 (6), 1st letter/March 1959, 3 ff., quoted in Holfelder 
(2020: 7).
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not only constitute their objects in relation to each other, but to what extent they also 
condition persons and groups in their understanding of themselves and others, as well as 
including them in their actions (as actors) in the dispositif.15 Both in the German nationalist 
German Carinthian discourse and in the counter-discourse of the minority and its respec-
tive manifestations, there are connections and links that point to a unity of discourse and 
counter-discourse, which create a connection that “defines” the subjects and seems almost 
impossible for the participants to circumvent. Thus, discourses manifest themselves in the 
actions and performances of individuals and groups that identify with and are identified by 
them—both individuals (German Carinthians or Carinthian Slovenians) and, for example, 
the actors of the German or German nationalist traditional associations on the one hand. 
On the other hand, there are those of the Carinthian Slovenian interest groups, such as the 
Council of Carinthian Slovenians (Narodni svet koroških Slovencev) or the Association of 
Slovenian Organizations (Zveza slovenskih organizacij). In the process, persons and actors 
mutually refer to each other as well as to the discourses and their manifestation in the 
dispositif Kärnten/Koroška. For this reason, discourse and counter-discourse in the dispositif 
Kärnten/Koroška can be understood as two sides of the same coin. This interweaving of 
discourse and counter-discourse in turn has direct repercussions on the self-understanding 
of the subjects.
The context that defines the subjects clearly emerges in the effectiveness of the 
hegemonic German nationalist discourse of the dispositif Kärnten/Koroška, to which the 
discourse of the minority must orient itself as a counter-discourse.
In the hegemonic discourse, subjectivizations of identities and differences were con-
structed and offered with political calculation and alongside institutional legitimations (such 
as those of the Carinthian Provincial Archives or the History Association for Carinthia, 
which as organizations are constitutive for “Carinthian science” and for the dispositif itself 
(cf. Kuehs, 2020).
In this context, internal boundaries—illustrated here by the example of the conflictual 
negotiation of language and identity within the dispositif—and external boundaries (hence, 
territorial borders and their construction) play an important role: 
Every demarcation is an act of differentiation, which implies the constitution 
of meaning, just as every definition is based on the principle of bordering. The 
border differentiates, categorizes and hierarchizes and puts the differentiated 
units into relation with each other […]. The establishment of borders is therefore 
of paramount importance for forming symbolic and social orders. It is through 
borders that units are determined as supposedly homogenous units and also put 
in relation to other units. (Doll, Gelberg, 2016: 17)
15 On the relationship between subject and discourse, see, e.g., Keller 2011: 209–223.
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ROLAND W. PEBALL AND KLAUS SCHÖNBERGER
The term Grenzland ‘borderland’, which one stereotypically encounters in German 
nationalist discourse,16 does not become a constitutive element of self-description there 
by chance because the invocation of collective identities requires acts of demarcation and 
limitation in the sense of differentiation.
Alexandra Schwell notes that the concept of identity necessarily contains a boundary 
marking because “through mechanisms of categorization and self-categorization, a distinction 
is created between ‘us’ and ‘the others’” (Schwell, 2008: 26). Accordingly, identity-forming 
processes are based on the drawing of borders 
because it is only through these that difference can arise, that distinctions and 
categorizations can be made. And only by drawing borders can we distinguish 
ourselves from others and define something of our own. Borders are therefore 
inextricably linked to collective identities. (Schwell, 2021: 268)
LANGUAGE POLICIES AS INTERNAL DEMARCATION AND THE INVOCATION OF 
COLLECTIVE IDENTITIES
Within the dispositif, the delineation of internal borders runs primarily along the “diacriti-
cal feature”17 of language. At the same time, through its adaptive changeability during the 
period of Nazism in Carinthia, this interpretive pattern illustrates the connection between 
German Carinthian–dominated (Nazi German) “Carinthian science” and Nazi cultural 
and Germanization policies. After October 10, 1920 and with the increasing hegemoni-
zation of German nationalist discourse and the establishment of the dispositif, speaking 
Slovenian became a criterion of social exclusion, but at the same time one of inclusion 
in or subjectification under the collective identity known as the Slovenian ethnic group.
Collective identities, however, are generally sui generis contradictory and, according to 
Lutz Niethammer, tend towards essentialism because they attempt to construct homogeneous 
collectives that are claimed to be natural but do not exist in this form (cf. Niethammer, 2000).18
From the perspective of discourse theory, such a collective identity can therefore 
be seen as a powerful (discursive) attribution or specification that results in processes of 
subjectification in the dispositif.19 External attributions become the starting point and the 
16 See, for example, the numerous publications with the term Grenzland in the title (cf. Feldner, 1982).
17 The notion of overt “diacritical features” as the “cultural content” of ethnic dichotomizations comes 
from Fredrik Barth (1998 [1969]: 14).
18 For Niethammer, one of the main contradictions in the semantic field of the concept of identity is 
that between an “asserted identity of essence of a collective, which objectifies it into a collective sub-
ject, and the […] continuity of a differentiated and unique subject” (Niethammer, 2000: 54).
19 An example of such an attribution or fixation by the hegemonic discourse in the dispositif Kärnten/
Koroška by a representative of “Carinthian science” is Martin Wutte’s Windisch theory (cf. Fischer, 
2016).
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source of friction. The individuals that are subject to these attributions also appropriate 
them and reproduce them through their everyday actions. Because this appropriation always 
requires interpretation and is thus quite obstinate, it not only leads to constant changes in 
the discourses and in the dispositif, but it can also be used specifically as a “technology of 
the self”20 to sublimate or even counteract attributions by others.
Counter-discourse becomes the minority’s means of generating agency in delimiting 
(self-)descriptions, whereby an essential moment of counter-discourse—hence the name—is 
that it conflicts with the attributions and invocations of hegemonic discourse as well as 
its practices and rituals.21 When we point out that the dispositif Kärnten/Koroška is also 
co-created by the actions of the Slovenian minority, this in no way ignores the different 
power relations and the considerably smaller options for action of the Slovenian-speaking 
minority compared to the German Carinthian majority. The crux for the minority, however, 
is that those German nationalist forces that have a great interest in the social and political 
divisions underlying the dispositif Kärnten/Koroška need the self-confident and vocal action 
of the minority in the counter-discourse to be able to perpetuate the dichotomy.
CONFLICTS OVER LANGUAGE BETWEEN NAZI TERROR AND PRESSURE 
TO ASSIMILATE
Immediately after the plebiscite of 1920, the pressure to Germanize was increased (cf. 
Grafenauer, 2016) and the expulsion and exodus of Slovenian-speaking intellectuals began. 
This policy reached its climax under Nazism, when 1,217 Carinthian Slovenians were 
forcibly deported and the commitment to Slovenian was threatened in Styria in 1944. 
Gauleiter Siegfried Uiberreither announced: “Whoever professes to be a Slovenian must 
expect to lose his family, home, shelter, and bread, and ultimately to be persecuted as an 
enemy of the state” (quoted in Moser, 1982: 20).
Within the framework of the “policy of assimilation” (Knight, 2020), the “destruction 
of bilingual elementary schools” (ibid.: 289 ff.) in the 1950s was a very central means of 
the German nationalist forces to push back Slovenian: “The Carinthian speaks German” 
was a slogan spread by the Nazis (Larcher, 1988: 8), but it was still widely propagated after 
1945. Through numerous measures, the use of Slovenian was banned from the public 
20 Foucault understands “technologies of the self” as those practical procedures and methods of indi-
vidual mastery “which permit individuals to effect by their own means or with the help of others a 
certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being, 
so as to transform themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfec-
tion, or immortality” (Foucault, 1988: 18).
21 See, for example, the counterdemonstrations by young Carinthian Slovenians at the anniversary events 
on October 10, 2020, who protested against a “one-sided German nationalist culture of remembrance” 
and the disappearance of Slovenian in Carinthia (Brunner, 2020).
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ROLAND W. PEBALL AND KLAUS SCHÖNBERGER
sphere. It was mainly in the areas of family and church that Slovenian could still be spoken 
(Jodelbaur, 1996: 127).
In fact, parts of the minority themselves internalized—more or less voluntarily—the 
disdain for their own language: “For a long time, German was regarded as the language 
of progress and Slovenian as backward.” Bernard Sadovnik remembers what his sister and 
father had to experience: when he wanted to enroll his daughter in Slovenian lessons at 
school, his employer threatened him: if he did so, he would lose his job and his rented 
apartment (May 2020). There are numerous accounts from contemporary witnesses 
that remember the way in which the public use of Slovenian led to violent reactions 
and exclusions. It is above all former pupils of the Slovenian high school that remember 
many such situations.
In the conflict over bilingual place-name signs (from the early 1970s until 2011), 
the dispute over Slovenian became particularly manifest. Whereas multilingualism is 
often considered normal in the European context, it was stylized as a threat in Carinthia: 
“Carinthia’s multilingualism is part of the entire European picture. The problem is not 
that Carinthia is multilingual; the problem is that many in Carinthia do not want to be 
multilingual” (Pelinka, 2004: 107).
Even if, in the meantime, the attitude toward bilingualism has changed in a large part 
of the German Carinthian population, as is shown by increasing enrollment in bilingual 
preschools and primary schools, there are still signs of the rejection of Slovenian in the 
public sphere, which, however, have become fewer overall due to the loss of importance of 
Slovenian in general.22
The student film project Sledi – Spuren (2020) explores this issue. On the one hand, 
the relentlessness of the historical pressure of Germanization is revealed in the interviews 
with contemporary witnesses, but also a continuing lack of understanding and the pain 
of a younger generation of Carinthian Slovenians due to the massive loss of language that 
can be observed.23
CONSTRUCTING THE NATURAL “GEOGRAPHICAL UNITY” OF 
CARINTHIA
While the focus so far has been on internal demarcations using the linguistic aspect as an 
example, the following section deals with external demarcations, territorial and geographical 
borders, and their construction. We cannot assume a dichotomous separation here beca-
use, in the case of Carinthia, language or language policy and geography coincide in the 
22 See the field reports in Klubs slowenischer Student*innen (2020: 80–85).
23 ORF Volksgruppenradio: Let’s go viral! Dem Sprachverlust in einem Roadmovie auf der Spur. 3.1.2021. 
The film is available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKSlDvBpwag&t=9s.
64
TERRITORIAL AND LINGUISTIC DEMARCATIONS IN THE DISPOSITIF KÄRNTEN/KOROŠKA
sense of a “linguistic landscape.”24 This can be seen in the aforementioned occupation of 
public space and the place-name sign conflict, as well as, for example, in the toponomastic 
work of the dialectologist Eberhard Kranzmayer, who headed in the Institut für Kärntner 
Landesforschung (IKLF: Institute for Carinthian Regional Research at the University 
of Graz). The IKLF had been founded as part of Heinrich Himmler’s ancestral heritage 
(NS-Ahnenerbe) think tank—appropriately enough on the anniversary of the referendum 
in Klagenfurt, on October 10, 1942.
For Klemens Wagner and Jan David Zimmermann, Kranzmayer’s linguistic cartography 
in his unfinished Dialektatlas Österreichs und seiner Nachbarländer (Atlas of the Dialects 
of Austria and Neighboring Countries) and its connection to Nazi spatial politics must be 
viewed in a differentiated manner and in the light of ‘völkische Wissenschaft’ (‘völkisch 
science’). This means taking into account the social circumstances of its creation, whereby 
völkisch ‘racial, ethno-nationalist’ covers a broader (and longer-term) spectrum than National 
Socialist. Wagner and Zimmermann point to the disciplinary relation between dialect 
research and cultural geography, especially in their focus on research on peoples and their 
supposed cultural rootedness in the soil (Volks- und Kulturbodenforschung; cf. Wagner, 
Zimmermann, 2020).25
As noted above, the last ten years have also seen a lot of movement at the government 
level in Carinthia, the ossified fronts are losing their power of orientation, and the histori-
cally grown order of knowledge, as it was and still is expressed in the Carinthian dispositif 
Kärnten/Koroška, is in the process of crumbling. Nevertheless, certain “interpretive patterns,”26 
which already have their origins in the völkisch-oriented and German Carinthian or German 
nationalist science in Carinthia after 1920 and thus the beginnings of the dispositif, persist.
An example of such an interpretive pattern and the territorial demarcations in the 
dispositif Kärnten/Koroškais that of the naturalization of Carinthia’s (external) borders, whereby 
Carinthia in its present form is described as a naturally limited, indivisible space, analogous 
to the motto of the commemorations of October 10: “Carinthia free and undivided.” At the 
same time, through its adaptive changeability during the period of Nazism in Carinthia, 
24 The term linguistic landscape “refers to the visibility and salience of languages on public and commercial 
signs in a given territory or region. It is proposed that the linguistic landscape may serve important 
informational and symbolic functions as a marker of the relative power and status of the linguistic 
communities inhabiting the territory” (Landry, Bourhis, 1997).
25 “This line of research designated […] as ‘German national soil’ all those geographical areas wherever 
‘Germans’ settled and interpreted as German cultural soil all those regions where ‘Germans’ had 
once settled. This could also be eastern Europe, for example, and the Germanic peoples were also 
considered ‘Germans’ in this context” (Wagner, Zimmermann, 2020).
26 The term interpretive pattern is used here in its sociological and discourse-analytical definition fol-
lowing Reiner Keller. Basically, it refers to “figures of interpretation that are used in concrete acts 
of interpretation and are manifested in different linguistic-material forms. Furthermore, the term 
pattern also means that several quite different elements of knowledge or interpretation and evaluative 
components are linked here” (Keller, 2011: 240).
65
ROLAND W. PEBALL AND KLAUS SCHÖNBERGER
this interpretive pattern illustrates the connection between German Carinthian–dominated 
(Nazi German) “Carinthian science” and Nazi cultural and Germanization policies.
In his commemorative speech on October 10, 2018, the mayor of Völkermarkt, Valentin 
Blaschitz (Social Democratic Party of Austria, SPÖ), emphasized that the Carinthians 
had drawn their strength for the “heroic fight for freedom” and the successful referen-
dum, among other things, from their love for Carinthia and its “beautiful landscape, so 
clearly delineated by nature and created as one unit.”27 He reminded Carinthia of this 
supposedly natural and indivisible unity by quoting the Carinthian journalist and writer 
Herbert Strutz, an illegal Austrian NSDAP member of the 1930s: “Consider that, if the 
Carinthians had decided to separate, the border would have gone right through the heart. 
The border would have severed a natural unity that had grown over centuries.” Blaschitz 
concluded: “Carinthia, ladies and gentlemen, is a naturally grown homeland. Lined by 
mountains, like a nut in its shell, whoever wanted to divide the kernel—and the danger 
was immense—would destroy the whole.”
Even if such an idea is still present in public discourse in Carinthia, it can be pointed 
out with regard to contemporary border studies that these kinds of ideas about the supposed 
nature of a border are socially constructed. Alexandra Schwell (2008: 28) notes: “Borders 
are social practice and discourse, they are never naturally given. Even seemingly natural 
borders, such as mountain ranges or rivers, may represent an obstacle, but they only become 
borders through political, historical, cultural, and social decisions.” Borders are thus under-
stood as social and changeable constructs that only emerge as a result of social processes 
and cognitive distinctions. Peter Weichhart puts it more functionally: “Distinctions, and 
thus the drawing of boundaries, are not based on the ‘nature’ of that which is different 
and its attributes, but are at the discretion of the distinguisher” (Weichhart, 2018: 51).28
The assertion of Carinthia’s natural and indivisible unity was established in “Carinthian 
science” after 1920. In 1923, Franz Lex, Viktor Paschinger, and Martin Wutte described 
“Carinthian unity” in their Landeskunde von Kärnten (Regional Studies of Carinthia) with 
the following sentence: “In the mountain wall that surrounds it and closes it off from the 
neighboring countries, Carinthia has a clear, simple, everywhere easily recognizable and 
sharply separating natural border” (Lex, Paschinger, Wutte, 1923: 224).
Although this argumentation must be considered in the context of the science of its time, 
it can be understood from the perspective of discourse or dispositif analysis in the specific 
case as a resource for legitimizing interpretations within German nationalist discourse, which 
changes with its diachronic course and adapts to its strategic orientation. Thus, during the 
27 From Valentin Blaschitz’s speech at the 2018 October 10 Celebration in Völkermarkt (authors’ record-
ing from minute 3:28).
28 State territories are, in Weichhart’s words, a “significant and consequential special case of a socially 
constructed and constituted space […]. State territories were also brought into the world at some point 
through an act of distinction. The distinguishers were powerful actors that were able to enforce their 
valuation against political rivals” (ibid.: 54).
66
TERRITORIAL AND LINGUISTIC DEMARCATIONS IN THE DISPOSITIF KÄRNTEN/KOROŠKA
Nazi period, there was a short-term reversal of previous assertions or “scientific” descrip-
tions and the “border written in blood”29 was shifted in the face of political and military 
facts (in this case, the annexation of Upper Carniola by the Nazi armed forces in 1941).
Martin Fritzl, for example, points to this in his work on the IKLF when he refers 
to the involvement of the geographer Viktor Paschinger (cf. Fritzl, 1992: 137, 171). In an 
article published in 1931 in a series in Deutsche Hefte für Volks- und Kulturbodenforschung, 
Paschinger described the Karawank Mountains as a “structural border” separating two 
landscapes as “geographically independent spaces” (geochores). The border belt of the 
Karawanks was functionally by no means a “border mediating traffic and the economy,” 
but it exercised “to a greater degree a necessary protective function” for the north-facing 
landscape (Paschinger, 1931: 148 ff.; see also Fritzl, 1992: 137). Paschinger’s objective in 
this text, although he explicitly removes the “political point of view” (ibid.: 131) from his 
analysis, is to classify the division between Carinthia and Carniola (and thus also Yugoslavia) 
as a natural, transhistorical constant.30
After the annexation and incorporation of Upper Carniola into the Nazi Gau of 
Carinthia, Paschinger’s argumentation changed. In a small volume on Upper Carniola from 
1942, he refers to the Karawanks, which he had previously called a “structural border” and 
an “advanced wall against another world” (Paschinger, 1932: 149), “with astonishing flex-
ibility” (Fritzl, 1992: 137), as a “sustainable bridge between two landscapes” (Paschinger, 
1942: 7). In this volume, the interpretive pattern of the natural border is still preserved: in 
the next sentence, Paschinger explains the “political border of Upper Carniola” as “for the 
most part […] natural, given by the terrain itself.”
Before the annexation of Upper Carniola and the founding of the IKLF, as well as after 
1945, the argumentation is similar, at least in the 1937 and 1949 editions of Landeskunde 
von Kärnten. There the “geographical unity” and individuality of Carinthia and its “natural 
uniformity” are invoked (cf. Paschinger, 1937: 324 ff., 1949: 401 ff.).
29 The fourth verse of the Carinthian anthem (“Kärntner Heimatlied”: “Wo man mit Blut die Grenze 
geschrieben” ‘Where the border was written in blood’) is not only sung at all commemoration cer-
emonies by the German Carinthian commemoration activists in the KHD or the KAB together with 
visitors at the end of each event, but it is also sung at numerous other official and semi-official occa-
sions. Ute Holfelder has reconstructed the controversies in the politics of remembrance associated 
with this song and has shown how the dispositif Kärnten/Koroškais created through the function of 
the Carinthian anthem “as a carrier of meaning for German nationalist interests,” but also with the 
counter-movements in the form of parodies (Holfelder, 2019: 223 ff.).
30 In fact, Paschinger’s argumentation in this article, which can be assigned to the cultural geography 
of his time and was at the height of the same, sounds in places very similar to the festive speech from 
Völkermarkt quoted above, when Paschinger writes about the special unity of the Carinthian landscape 
and considers: “Just as the geographical unity of Carinthia finds general expression in the concentric 
shell-like arrangement of the geographical districts around this central landscape, so a study of the 
landscape structure of Carniola that takes all geo-factors into account would also have to address this 
land as such a unity” (Paschinger, 1931: 148). However, neither the “geographical unity” of Carinthia 
nor that of Carniola, which Paschinger still considered worthy of investigation in 1931, are mentioned 
directly in the 1942 volume on Upper Carniola.
67
ROLAND W. PEBALL AND KLAUS SCHÖNBERGER
Fritzl also refers to an article by Paschinger in a commemorative publication of 
Kulturnachrichten aus Kärnten (Cultural News from Carinthia) published by the Verband für 
Kultur- und Heimatpflege (Association for the Preservation of Culture and Local History), 
which was published in 1960 on the fortieth anniversary of the plebiscite. There, without 
explicitly naming the Karawanks, Paschinger describes the mountain ranges surround-
ing Carinthia as a “border wall” and evokes the “geographical unity” of Carinthia once 
again and in analogy to the Landeskunde of 1937 and 1949 (cf. Paschinger, 1960). Fritzl 
comes to the conclusion that Paschinger belongs to that group of scholars “who interpret 
their research with astonishing elasticity according to the prevailing political conditions. 
Whereas in 1942 the aim was to geographically annex Upper Carniola to Carinthia, now 
the naturalness of the borders—especially those with Slovenia—had to be emphasized 
again and a national consciousness built on geographic foundations had to be created” 
(Fritzl, 1992: 172).
What is referred to here as “consciousness” can be described as an interpretive pat-
tern of the natural and indivisible boundary of Carinthia, which has persisted to this day 
in the hegemonic discourse of the dispositif Kärnten/Koroška, as the quoted 2018 speech 
in Völkermarkt shows. It is exemplary for many similar statements around the October 
10 celebrations in Carinthia. Fritzl also identifies the strategic function at this point: it is 
about legitimizing the territorial claim against Yugoslavia and Slovenia, at least as long as 
this is part of the respective (in this case, political and military) agenda.
When we observe a liquefaction of the dispositif Kärnten/Koroškawith regard to 
the present, the historical initial situation plays an essential role, as does its change, or 
rather its historical development. This historical development has contributed to the fact 
that the Grenzland discourse about a possible threat to the territorial border has lost its 
effectiveness.
LIQUEFACTION OF THE DISPOSITIF KÄRNTEN/KOROŠKA
Notwithstanding some notable incongruities,31 the connections and links in the dispositif 
Kärnten/Koroška have become fragile. Because the historical, political, and socioeconomic 
initial situation in Carinthia has changed significantly, we are currently experiencing its 
liquefaction. The SHS and communist Yugoslavia can no longer be invoked as external 
threats that allegedly call the territorial border into question. Slovenia, like Austria, is part 
of the European Union.32
31 On the difficulties of this process, see also Fikfak 2015.
32 In fact, the questioning of the border had already been shelved in 1947, in 1949, and at the latest with 
the co-signing of the State Treaty by Yugoslavia in 1955 (Hellwig, 2001: 14 ff.).
68
TERRITORIAL AND LINGUISTIC DEMARCATIONS IN THE DISPOSITIF KÄRNTEN/KOROŠKA
Figures: 1. Street name in Klagenfurt/Celovec (photo by Gabriele Brunner); 2. First Lieutnant 
Ludwig Hugo Hulgerth (photo by Jurij Fikfak); 3. Cover page of magazine Zur Zeit; 4. “Dies 
Land bleibt frei!.” St. Jakob in Rosenthal (photo by Klaus Schönberger).
2
1
3
4
69
ROLAND W. PEBALL AND KLAUS SCHÖNBERGER
Figures: 5. Exhibition CarinthiaJa - Controversial memories (photo by Jurij Fikfak); 6. Cover 
page of the book Dispositiv Kaernten/Koroška; 7. Animal Festival Train - Pull Faktor - Unikum 
Production (photo by Jurij Fikfak); 8. "smrt fašizmu" Sticker in Klagenfurt/Celovec 2020.
5
7
6
8
70
TERRITORIAL AND LINGUISTIC DEMARCATIONS IN THE DISPOSITIF KÄRNTEN/KOROŠKA
Figure 9. Das Andere Land - Performance (photo by Roland W. Peball).
Figure 10. Hundred Years - Nothing to Celebrate! AntiFa demonstration, 10.10.2020 
(photo by Jurij Fikfak).
71
ROLAND W. PEBALL AND KLAUS SCHÖNBERGER
The idea of the Alps–Adriatic region,33 which includes Slovenia, Istria, Styria, Trieste, 
and the Italian region of Friuli, was already a political project that was able to substantially 
take the wind out of the sails of the “borderland” discourse. As a result, the dispositif Kärnten/
Koroškahas noticeably lost its and has tended to become obsolete as a strategic formation; 
the external territorial border has thus lost its power of identification and differentiation. 
Even in parts of the extreme right-wing spectrum, a redefinition is taking place here: “The 
German Carinthians, on the other hand, with eight million German-speaking people in 
Austria and almost one hundred million in central Europe behind them, can only harbor 
irrational fears toward Slovenia. Rationally, there is no longer any real reason to fear any 
‘Slovenification’ of the Carinthian lowlands or even territorial claims” (Mölzer, 2011). 
However, this is by no means a step toward reformation. The Austrian Freedom Party 
(FPÖ) ideologist Andreas Mölzer is only trying to get up to speed here when he proposes 
migration as a substitute in the same text.34
The alleged threat of bilingualism has also noticeably lost its mobilizing power. With 
regard to the minority language, the discourse of the current state government aims at 
recognition and at least a symbolic appreciation of the second national language in terms 
of a symbolic ethnicity (Gans, 1979), even if its existence as an everyday language remains 
massively endangered. Non-migrant multilingualism—in whatever form—now has predomi-
nantly positive connotations with regard to professional success and educational advance-
ment. On the one hand, Slovenian is in the process of disappearing (Kolb, 2018), and on 
the other hand the well-educated part of the Slovenian minority has experienced noticeable 
social advancement (Obid, 2021). Bilingualism is no longer a stigma, but a qualification.
The weakening or the slow dissolution of the dispositif Kärnten/Koroška does not mean 
that the conflict has ended. Rather, the antagonisms have remained, but they have lost 
their force of orientation and their former potency (cf. details in Peball, Schönberger, 2021). 
These changed circumstances mean that today the strategic function of the dispositif is only 
relevant where it is still useful for the legitimization of one’s own history or is indispensable 
as an ideological orientation for a clientele strongly connected to the antagonistic discourse 
(such as in the FPÖ).
This circumstance also confronts those actors of the counter-discourse within the 
Slovenian minority, who in turn need recourse to the discursive definitions by the “hostile” 
discourse for their own identity designs in order to be able to preserve their uniqueness 
33 See the statements of the former SPÖ governor Hans Sima in 1968, who argued “that the existing 
difficulties can only be overcome by a large-scale politics without violence” (quoted in Hellwig, 2009: 
9 ff.).
34 Cf. Mölzer 2011: “In the Republic of Austria, where there have long been immigrant ethnic groups 
from culturally completely foreign areas, unwilling to integrate and socially very difficult to tolerate, 
the native Slovenians should have long been regarded without any unease as an integral part of one’s 
own population and one’s own culture. There are probably more Chechens and Nigerians in this 
republic than Carinthian Slovenians.”
72
TERRITORIAL AND LINGUISTIC DEMARCATIONS IN THE DISPOSITIF KÄRNTEN/KOROŠKA
(Eigenart) from their point of view.35 Discourses about creeping Germanization, but also 
about the migration of well-educated young people from the Slovenian ethnic group, shift 
the scales in the discursive field.36 Relaxation occurs when Slovenian acquires an increas-
ingly insignificant role in everyday life. Its current recognition and the general appreciation 
of multilingualism does not change the quasi-assimilation of a large part of the minority. 
Whereas the ethnic group used to be divided along the lines of Catholic versus left, today this 
division is shifting toward a confrontation between “reconciliation based on improvements 
that have occurred” versus “insistence on the realization of the minority rights of Article 7 
of the State Treaty that still have not been respected” (Klubs slowenischer Student*innen 
2020). Another relevant factor is the demand for an anti-fascist consensus (e.g., in the form 
of the still outstanding adequate appreciation of the anti-fascist Partisans), which—in 
view of the fact that in Carinthia there still has been little reappraisal of its involvement in 
Nazism—represents a major obstacle to a democratic culture of remembrance in Kärnten/
Koroška . The persistent refusal of a fundamental confrontation with the occupation of 
public space in the form of street names, plaques, or monuments, or with the instrumen-
talization of folk culture (e.g., the anthem) and so on in the context of Nazism, remains an 
unrelieved burden in view of the multiple traumatizations of the minority. These are the 
factors that could keep the dispositif Kärnten/Koroška alive in the foreseeable future. The 
dichotomy between Kärnten and Koroška cannot be dissolved or even “abolished” in the 
Hegelian sense. However, the analytical tools of the dispositif open up the possibility of 
contentious cultural heritages in the Austrian province of Kärnten/Koroška to understand 
the interconnectedness of the antagonistic discourses and to think about how an “other 
country” (Holfelder, 2021c) could be shaped.
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TERITORIALNE IN JEZIKOVNE RAZMEJITVE  
V DISPOZITIVU KÄRNTEN/KOROŠKA
Na južnem Koroškem (Kärnten/Koroška) že stoletje tli konflikt o zatiranju in pravicah slovensko 
govoreče manjšine. Spor se osredinja predvsem na spomin in komemoracijo vojaškega obmejnega 
spopada 1918/19 in plebiscita, ki ga je potrdila senžermenska pogodba. Ko so se po 1. svetovni 
vojni pojavile države naslednice Avstro-Ogrske, je ta vojaški spopad potekal med silami, lojalnimi 
Kraljevini Srbov, Hrvatov in Slovencev (SHS), nemško-avstrijskimi zasebnimi paravojaškimi 
skupinami (Freikorps) in lokalnimi obrambnimi paravojaškimi skupinami (Heimwehr) ali 
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socialdemokratskimi delavskimi bataljoni. Plebiscit se je nanašal na vprašanje, ali naj se južna 
Koroška priključi okrnjeni habsburški monarhiji, tj. nemški Avstriji, ali novoustanovljeni 
državi SHS. Leta 1920 se je večina tamkajšnjega prebivalstva (tako pripadniki nemške kot 
slovenske skupnosti) odločila za Avstrijo. V naslednjih desetletjih, vse do Jörga Haiderja (kot 
koroškega glavarja), so se nemško nacionalistično usmerjeni zastopniki nemške koroške večine 
neusmiljeno borili proti jeziku in spominu slovenske manjšine. Z opravičilom manjšini, ki ga 
je avstrijski predsednik Alexander van der Bellen v govoru ob stoletnici plebiscita 10. oktobra 
2020 v navzočnosti slovenskega predsednika izrekel koroškim Slovencem zaradi neupoštevanja 
pravnih zahtev, številnih odlogov in izključevanj, se morda zdaj nakazuje prelomnica. Članek 
analizira tematizacijo jezikovnih in teritorialnih razmejitev z vidika dispozitiva Kärnten/
Koroška. Eno od vprašanj je, kakšno analitično moč ima predloženi teoretski koncept tega 
dispozitiva tako za genealogijo kot za transformacije konflikta.
Roland W. Peball, Alpe-Adria University, Klagenfurt/Celovec, roland.peball@aau.at
Prof. Dr. Klaus Schoenberger, Alpe-Adria University, Klagenfurt/Celovec, klaus.schonberger@aau.at