The paper discuses the ways in which memory of the Second World War, as a foundational moment of Slovenian nationhood and simultaneously a point of division of Slovenian nation, is being negotiated in Slovenia after country's independence in 1991 and EU accession in 2004. Through the analysis of political discourses which commemorate important events from Slovenian recent history, the paper highlights mechanisms of the national essence making in the independent Slovenia and ways in which it deals with obstacles posed by ideological and historical divisions in the Slovenian society based on the opposed roles (partisans vs. domobranci/homeguards) in the WW2.
B.03 Paper at an international scientific conference
COBISS.SI-ID: 35772717Tanja Petrović was mentor for doctoral dissertation of Martin Pogačar. The dissertation deals with digital mediatisation of the Yugoslav past and highlights broader social consequences of mediatisation of memory and legacy enabled by digital communications technologies.
D.09 Tutoring for postgraduate students
COBISS.SI-ID: 2147579The lecture was about post-communist/post-socialist memory politics. Based on an analysis of the architecture and rhetoric of the new memorial landscape representing the World War II and postwar period in Slovenia, the author investigates how collective memories are mobilized for a radical reinterpretation of the past. In doing so, he thematizes the practice of transvaluing collaboration with the occupying Fascist and Nazi regimes into “anti-communist” patriotism. Addressing the practices that range from the pledge for reconciliation to radical reframing of resistance-collaboration, he focuses on the techniques of transforming perpetrators into victims and vice versa. What recently still appeared as a redistribution of guilt or one-way transformation of perpetrators into victims has turned in Slovene post-communist revisionist memory politics into a complete denial of the crimes committed by Nazi collaboration units and a categorical condemnation of the resistance movement.
B.04 Guest lecture
COBISS.SI-ID: 36543277Tanja Petrović was a fellow of the Berlin Institute for Advanced Studies in academic year 2010/2011. Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin is one of most prestigious and respected Centers for Advanced Studies. Its fellowship offers excellent working conditions and unique opportunity for work in an international high-quality academic community.
B.05 Guest lecturer at an institute/university
Drawing on Alexei Yurchak’s concept of “new sincerity”, the paper explores the potentials and limits of political mobilization of post-socialist nostalgia on the example of garage choirs currently active in the post‐Yugoslav countries. Their performances indicate specific revitalization of the Yugoslav musical legacy with the emphasis on the partisan and revolutionary songs from Yugoslav National‐liberation war (during The Second World War), using past as a reservoir for negotiating not only the post-socialist transformations but also current global moment, posing a critical challenge to the established relations of power and late‐capitalist dominant discourses. The association with post-socialist nostalgia/Yugo‐nostalgia in the performances of self-organized choirs is positioned in an opposition with the active political engagement. On the other hand, the sonic affect and its interrelation with other elements of affective environment can produce unintended outcomes and cause paradoxical responses. Thus, despite their attempts to escape from sentimental attachments to Yugoslav past, their performances are perceived as an aesthetic experience of collective nostalgic recollection by the most of their audience/performance participants. The paper engages in the role of choirs’ performances in new ways of political participation and a potential they have for an affective politics.
B.03 Paper at an international scientific conference
COBISS.SI-ID: 35770157