Gal Kirn: Contested Heritage of Yugoslav Liberation Struggle in Reverse: From Postsocialist Primitive Accumulation to Partisan Self-Reflexivity of Counter-Archive (EN)
Fuente:
Zenodo
Salvato in:
| Autore principale: | |
|---|---|
| Natura: | Recurso digital |
| Lingua: | inglese |
| Pubblicazione: |
Zenodo
2025
|
| Soggetti: | |
| Accesso online: | |
| Tags: |
Aggiungi Tag
Nessun Tag, puoi essere il primo ad aggiungerne!!
|
| _version_ | 1866901421752844288 |
|---|---|
| author | Kirn, Gal |
| author_facet | Kirn, Gal |
| contents | <p>The destruction of socialist and federal Yugoslavia did not follow a typical transition process of the 1990s: there was no happy and peaceful transition from socialism to capitalist democracy. Rather, as Boris Buden once claimed, the (post)Yugoslav transition can only be described in one word: a catastrophe. For our focus on »identity and heritage«, I will show how this catastrophe unfolded in the »mnemonic wars« of the late 1980s, which succeeded in weaponizing and nationalising ethnic victimhood and decontextualizing the liberation struggle. The anti-fascist legacy and the memory of the Second World War were increasingly called into question by revisionist ideology. This ideological shift was not only a matter of academic practise (Historikerstreit ala Yugoslave), but prepared the ground for the ethnic wars of the 1990s. What I called a process of »primitive accumulation of nationalist memory« (Kirn, Partisan Counter Archive, 2020) preceded the Marxist hypothesis of the neoliberal transformation of capital. The right-wing revisionism of history and memory led to a massive iconoclasm of everything related to the anti-fascist and Yugoslav past, to changes in school textbooks and museums, and to an open rehabilitation of local fascism.</p> <p>In contrast to these terrible developments, I would like to invite us to reflect on the material, anti-fascist/partisan struggles of the past through Benjamin’s lens of the »tradition of the oppressed« and to rethink the emancipatory struggles of the past. In the second part of the lecture, I will give an overview of the Yugoslav liberation struggle during the Second World War, which was not only a negative struggle – against the fascist occupation – but rather a transformative struggle that took place on a military, political and cultural level. Mass cultural activities in the liberated territories brought the masses onto the stage of history, and what is fascinating for our purposes, already created a series of artistic works, from poems, songs, graphics to photographs and even films -that we will look into-, which developed a highly self-reflexive modality that responded to the question: how can such a (partisan) rupture/revolution be remembered? At a time when such cultural activities were considered impossible and only served propaganda purposes, we can discover an impressive Partisan counter-archive that combated the specific (non-) »identity«, the heterogeneous and multiple belongings of Partisan subjectivity. The new Partisan Yugoslavia was not based on the formula of a nation in one state where an ethnic identity dominates over minorities (mind you, Yugoslavia was neither a language nor a nation), but on multinational anti-fascist solidarity. This characteristic can play an important role when we reconsider and reflect on the materiality of the partisans inscribed in selected commemorative practices and monuments that emerged after liberation.</p> |
| format | Recurso digital |
| id | zenodo_https___doi_org_10_5281_zenodo_15359489 |
| institution | Zenodo |
| language | eng |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| publisher | Zenodo |
| record_format | zenodo |
| spellingShingle | Gal Kirn: Contested Heritage of Yugoslav Liberation Struggle in Reverse: From Postsocialist Primitive Accumulation to Partisan Self-Reflexivity of Counter-Archive (EN) Kirn, Gal liberation struggle Yugoslavia Second World War counter-archive <p>The destruction of socialist and federal Yugoslavia did not follow a typical transition process of the 1990s: there was no happy and peaceful transition from socialism to capitalist democracy. Rather, as Boris Buden once claimed, the (post)Yugoslav transition can only be described in one word: a catastrophe. For our focus on »identity and heritage«, I will show how this catastrophe unfolded in the »mnemonic wars« of the late 1980s, which succeeded in weaponizing and nationalising ethnic victimhood and decontextualizing the liberation struggle. The anti-fascist legacy and the memory of the Second World War were increasingly called into question by revisionist ideology. This ideological shift was not only a matter of academic practise (Historikerstreit ala Yugoslave), but prepared the ground for the ethnic wars of the 1990s. What I called a process of »primitive accumulation of nationalist memory« (Kirn, Partisan Counter Archive, 2020) preceded the Marxist hypothesis of the neoliberal transformation of capital. The right-wing revisionism of history and memory led to a massive iconoclasm of everything related to the anti-fascist and Yugoslav past, to changes in school textbooks and museums, and to an open rehabilitation of local fascism.</p> <p>In contrast to these terrible developments, I would like to invite us to reflect on the material, anti-fascist/partisan struggles of the past through Benjamin’s lens of the »tradition of the oppressed« and to rethink the emancipatory struggles of the past. In the second part of the lecture, I will give an overview of the Yugoslav liberation struggle during the Second World War, which was not only a negative struggle – against the fascist occupation – but rather a transformative struggle that took place on a military, political and cultural level. Mass cultural activities in the liberated territories brought the masses onto the stage of history, and what is fascinating for our purposes, already created a series of artistic works, from poems, songs, graphics to photographs and even films -that we will look into-, which developed a highly self-reflexive modality that responded to the question: how can such a (partisan) rupture/revolution be remembered? At a time when such cultural activities were considered impossible and only served propaganda purposes, we can discover an impressive Partisan counter-archive that combated the specific (non-) »identity«, the heterogeneous and multiple belongings of Partisan subjectivity. The new Partisan Yugoslavia was not based on the formula of a nation in one state where an ethnic identity dominates over minorities (mind you, Yugoslavia was neither a language nor a nation), but on multinational anti-fascist solidarity. This characteristic can play an important role when we reconsider and reflect on the materiality of the partisans inscribed in selected commemorative practices and monuments that emerged after liberation.</p> |
| title | Gal Kirn: Contested Heritage of Yugoslav Liberation Struggle in Reverse: From Postsocialist Primitive Accumulation to Partisan Self-Reflexivity of Counter-Archive (EN) |
| topic | liberation struggle Yugoslavia Second World War counter-archive |
| url | https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15359489 |