The article discusses cultural and social practices that approach the Yugoslav socialist past positively and represent a potential source of emancipation, reflection, and resistance, a call for collectivity and solidarity in various post-Yugoslav worlds, as well as across ethnic boundaries. In particular, it discusses the cultural practices of self-organized youth choirs that sing songs from the Yugoslav socialist period. The phenomenon of self-organized choirs in the former Yugoslavia is considered a paradigmatic example of a way to approach the socialist Yugoslav past in a pro-active, autonomous and emancipatory manner, which, the author argues, is a precondition for imagining and negotiating a “decent”, “normal”, “European” future in the post-Yugoslav space.
COBISS.SI-ID: 33284141
The chapter is a comparative analysis of two Great War memorial landscapes which each in its own right testify of the final nationalisation of collective memory. Methodologically, comparing the Salonika military cemetery with Italian or Austro-Hungarian cemeteries/cenotaphs along the Soča River proves to be a deliberate comparison of two distinct commemorative strategies; “multicultural” Zejtinlik is a commemoration abroad and the Great War is not a constitutive myth of modern Greece. The analysis is divided into two parts, first, the author investigates the post-mortem differentiation of the Entente’s fallen soldiers while in the second part detects points where the Entente and Central Powers cemeteries differ. To do so the author compares Italian cenotaphs and Austro-Hungarian cemeteries along the Isonzo Front line.
COBISS.SI-ID: 33329197
The author argues that the symbolic geography of independent Slovenia is very much interspersed with remnants of the Yugoslav past (1941-91). The level of landscape, i.e. monuments, statues, street names, etc., figures as the material platform, from which the symbolic universe emanates. This level of mythscapes is predominantly constructed and maintained through mediatisation of audio-visual imagery. In other words, the argument goes, even though many aspects of (everyday) life have changed after 1991, a shared space of Yugoslav experience, the Yuniverse, has in a way survived the death of the country and it presents an non-negligible vehicle of cultural continuity in Slovenia today.
COBISS.SI-ID: 33478957