Sustaining the Desire for the Social

This article analyses how war-time logic persists in post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina through an examination of environmental violence and the art-activist practices that challenge it. It demonstrates that the Dayton Peace Agreement has ushered in an era of antisocial peace characterised by extractivism and the wasting of socio-environmental relations. Through close reading of two graphic novels produced by the Zemlja-Voda-Zrak platform, the article reveals how art-activist interventions make visible multisensory economies of care, attention, and proximity typically relegated to the private sphere. The article demonstrates how these practices sustain the desire for the social despite ethnic authoritarian elites’ production of antisociality. By exposing the continuation of war-time logic in environmental violence and the hidden economies of care and solidarity, these art-activist practices provide crucial resources for imagining and enacting more just and sustainable futures in Bosnia and Herzegovina.