School of Social and Political Sciences - Theses
Permanent URI for this collection
Search Results
1 - 1 of 1
-
ItemYugonostalgic against all odds: nostalgia for Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia among young leftist activists in contemporary Serbia( 2013)This thesis examines yugonostalgia – nostalgia for the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) – in contemporary Serbia. Yugonostalgia often has a negative reputation – both in academia and in everyday life – as an ‘unhealthy’ or even debilitating fixation on the socialist past. However, this thesis argues that yugonostalgia tells us not only about nostalgic subjects’ attitude towards the past but also about their current concerns. Contemporary Serbia is permeated by discourses privileging nationalistic and neoliberal values. This thesis explores how young people can develop nostalgic attitudes towards the socialist past, even in such an unlikely context. Yugonostalgia is an ambiguous phenomenon, and this ambiguity allows for positive dimensions and uses. To highlight the emancipatory potential of yugonostalgia, this thesis utilises ethnographic fieldwork among young leftist activists in Serbia’s capital, Belgrade. The focus on this milieu demonstrates how yugonostalgia is not simply reactionary but can overlap with and even energize a critical stance towards both nationalistic and neoliberal projects in contemporary Serbia. Additionally, this focus on young activists helps to counter popular negative stereotypes about Serbian youth as either passive victims of their situation or as a violent negative force. Finally, the thesis also adds to our understanding of how the meaning of the ‘left’ is negotiated in post-socialist conditions. Drawing on concept of lieux de mémoire developed by the French historian Pierre Nora, I examine four broad clusters of recurring themes that appear in the yugonostalgic narratives of my Serbian informants. These four themes of national unity, international cooperation, economic prosperity and cultural achievements once constituted the ideological foundations of the Yugoslav state. Today, they take on new significance among young leftist activists. The state ideology of the brotherhood and unity of the Yugoslav nations and the anti-fascist struggle was relevant for my informants in the context of the rise of nationalism in contemporary Serbia. Yugoslav internationalism took on a new significance in the context of Serbia’s relative international isolation and the loss of mobility for its citizens. The ‘Yugoslav dream’, the socio-economic comfort that the citizens of SFRY enjoyed, was attractive in the context of the increased precariousness of life in contemporary Serbia but for my leftist informants also provided a compelling example of a fairer and more prosperous economic model than what has resulted from current neoliberal reforms. Yugoslav culture was often portrayed as superior to the cultural life of contemporary Serbia, which has deteriorated under the influence of both nationalism and neoliberalism. Yugonostalgia, then, represents not a retreat from the present, but a rich cultural repertoire for progressive re-engagement with current political questions. In the imagination of these Serbian activists, remembering Yugoslavia is a selective process that reconstructs alternatives to both parochial Serb nationalist identity-making and to the supposedly inevitable and universal logic of neoliberal economic restructuring.