Srećko Horvat

Srećko Horvat (born 28 February 1983) is a Croatian philosopher,

author and political activist. The German weekly Der Freitag called
Srećko Horvat
him as "one of the most exciting voices of his generation"[1] and he
has been described as a "fiery voice of dissent in the Post-Yugoslav
landscape".[2] His writing has appeared in The Guardian, Al Jazeera,
Der Spiegel, Jacobin, Newsweek and The New York Times.

Contents
Srećko Horvat in January, 2014
Life
Born 28 February 1983
Political thought and activity Osijek, SR Croatia,
Subversive Festival Yugoslavia
Philosophical Theatre (now Osijek, Croatia)

Cancellation of Sane Society television programme Era Contemporary

Bibliography philosophy
In English Region Western philosophy
In French School Continental philosophy
In German Main Poststructuralism ·
In Croatian interests Ideology · Political theory
In Spanish · Film theory · Marxism
Articles
References

Life
Horvat was born in Osijek, Croatia but lived for the first eight years of his life in Germany before returning to
Croatia in 1991.[3] After returning to Croatia, he was involved in the hardcore punk scene of the 1990s,[3]
graduated philosophy and general linguistics at the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb,[4] started writing for
Croatian magazines such as Zarez and, prior to his twenty-sixth birthday, published two books, Protiv političke
korektnosti (Against Political Correctness) and Znakovi postmodernog grada (Signs of the Postmodern City)
in Croatia and Serbia.[3] Since then, he has written multiple books in both Croatian and English (Poetry from
the Future, The Radicality of Love and Subversion!), many of which have been translated into other languages,
among them Chinese, Korean, Spanish, Turkish and German. In 2008, he co-founded the Subversive Festival,
where he served as programme director until 2013. In 2016, he co-founded, with Yanis Varoufakis, the
Democracy in Europe Movement 2025[5], on whose Coordinating Collective he presently sits as a member.[6]

Political thought and activity

Horvat is regarded as one of the "central figures of the new left in post-Yugoslavia".[7] He has participated in
different activist movements across the world, including the 2009 student protests in Croatia, Occupy Wall
Street in 2011 and World Social Forum in Senegal and Tunisia.[8] He has visited the 2017 G20 Hamburg
summit which he described as a "dystopian nightmare", claiming that "the real problem is the dogmatic
slumber of the leaders of the free world, represented at this G20 summit by Merkel, May and others, which is
the origin of our current dystopian nightmare (wars, terrorism, the refugee crisis and climate change)".[9] Since
2016, he has claimed that "the need for a progressive international movement was never as urgent as
today".[10] Asked about what the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal meant for the future of
politics, he claims that "in the near future this will be remembered as the early days of a much more radical
transformation of what we understand under politics".[11] In 2017, Horvat signed the Declaration on the
Common Language of the Croats, Serbs, Bosniaks and Montenegrins.[12]

Subversive Festival
Horvat was one of the founders of the Subversive Festival in 2008,[13] an annual festival which included
Oliver Stone, Alexis Tsipras, Aleida Guevara, Slavoj Žižek, Tariq Ali, Zygmunt Bauman, David Harvey and
Saskia Sassen, among others. In 2013, he along with the programme team left the Subversive Festival "due to
differences in understanding the goals and direction of the activist platforms within Subversive Forum and,
more generally, the general purpose of Subversive Festival".[13][14] The influence and significance of the
Subversive Festival was often paralleled to the Praxis School, the Marxist humanist philosophical movement
that originated in the SFR Yugoslavia during the 1960s. In 2017, Horvat published the book Subversion!
which the American linguist and social critic Noam Chomsky praised as a book "based on rich personal
experience and participation in constructive subversion, along with wide reading from classics to the latest
dreams of artificial intelligence".[15] According to Chomsky, "Horvat leads us on a whirlwind tour of the
maladies and discontents of modern civilization and the many ways to right what is wrong and achieve a better
future".[15]

Philosophical Theatre
In 2014, Horvat launched a project called Philosophical Theatre (Filozofski Teatar) at Croatian National
Theatre in Zagreb. The underlying idea was to re-establish the close relationship between philosophy and
theatre.[16] It is a monthly series of public debates with thinkers and artists. His guests included M.I.A.,
Vanessa Redgrave, Margarethe von Trotta, Adam Curtis, Herta Müller, Hito Steyerl, Mladen Dolar, Julia
Kristeva, Eva Illouz, Tariq Ali, Bobby Gillespie, Thomas Piketty and others. According to the Croatian
National Theatre, the number of visitors of the programme from 2014 to 2018 was around 20,000.[17]

Cancellation of Sane Society television programme

In 2013, Horvat was the host and author of an intellectual TV show on Croatian National Television called
Zdravo Društvo (Sane Society) which tried to recreate the Balkan cultural space and hosted many intellectuals
such as Renata Salecl, Rade Šerbedžija, Andrej Nikolaidis and Viktor Ivančić, among others. Officially, it was
called off by the management because of "austerity measures". However, the Bosnian writer Miljenko
Jergović wrote that the TV show likely would not have been removed if not for an opinion piece Horvat wrote
in The Guardian that criticised an anti-gay-marriage referendum and more generally the movement of Croatian
society in a culturally conservative if not fascistic direction.[18] Jergović wrote: "If he had written it in 1942 he
would've ended up in Jasenovac concentration camp. If he had written it in 1972 he would've ended up in
Lepoglava prison. But in 2014 he only lost his TV show because he wrote the truth about Croatia".[19]

Bibliography
In English
Poetry from the Future, Penguin, 2019
Subversion!, Zero Books, 2017
The Radicality of Love, Polity Press, 2015
Welcome to the Desert of Postsocialism (with Igor Štiks), Verso, 2014
What does Europe want? The Union and its Discontents (with Slavoj Žižek), Istros Books,
2013[20]

In French
"Sauvons-nous de nos sauveurs", Éditions Lignes, 2013

In German
Nach dem Ende der Geschichte Laika-Verlag, Hamburg, 2013
Was will Europa? – Rettet uns vor den Rettern (with Slavoj Žižek) Laika-Verlag, Hamburg,
2013

In Croatian
Što Europa želi? (with Slavoj Žižek), Algoritam, Zagreb, 2013
Pažnja! Neprijatelj prisluškuje Naklada Ljevak, Zagreb, 2011
Pravo na pobunu (with Igor Štiks), Fraktura, Zagreb, 2010
Ljubav za početnike Naklada Ljevak, Zagreb, 2009
Budućnost je ovdje Svijet distopijskog filma, HFS, Zagreb, 2008
Totalitarizam danas Antibarbarus, Zagreb, 2008
Diskurs terorizma AGM, Zagreb, 2008
Znakovi postmodernog grada Jesenski i Turk, Zagreb, 2007
Protiv političke korektnosti. Od Kramera do Laibacha, i natrag", Biblioteka XX. Vek, Beograd,
2007.

In Spanish
La radicalidad del amor Katakrak, Iruñea-Pamplona, 2016.

Articles
"Godot arrives in Sarajevo" (https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/19/opinion/godot-arrives-in-saraj
evo.html?_r=0), The New York Times, February, 2014
"It's the Libidinal Economy, stupid!" (http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/01/it-libidin
al-economy-stupid-201411991730302886.html), Al Jazeera, January, 2014
"Why are the Balkans boiling again?" (http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/02/why-
are-balkans-boiling-again-201421291050358518.html), Al Jazeera, February, 2014
"First World War: was Gavrilo Princip a terrorist or freedom fighter?" (https://www.theguardian.c
om/commentisfree/2014/apr/15/first-world-war-gavrilo-princip-terrorist-freedom-fighter-revisioni
sm), The Guardian, April, 2014
 "Ukraine's fallen statues of Lenin" (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/16/u
kraine-lenin-statues-rejection-russia-eu), The Guardian, March, 2014
"Croatia - a sign of the rotten heart of Europe (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/201
3/dec/04/croatia-gay-marriage-vote-europe-rotten-heart), The Guardian, December, 2013
"Croatia - the latest member of the EU periphery" (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/
2013/jul/01/croatia-latest-member-eu-periphery), The Guardian, July, 2013
"Welcome to the Desert of Transition" (https://monthlyreview.org/2012/03/01/welcome-to-the-de
sert-of-transition), Monthly Review, March, 2012

References
1. Der Freitag, "Occupy ist Lifestyle", 2014 https://www.freitag.de/autoren/der-freitag/occupy-ist-
lifestyle
2. "Five contemporary Croatian icons" (https://www.timeout.com/croatia/art/five-contemporary-cro
atian-icons). Time Out Croatia.
3. Nikacevic, Galeb (16 May 2016). "Srećko Horvat Is Creating New Worlds EK" (https://www.vic
e.com/en_au/article/exq84m/profile-srecko-horvat-876).
4. "SREĆKO HORVAT 'Da, ja sam lud! Jer danas u ovakvoj Europi, koja je u ratu, koja se
raspada, u kojoj se guše slobode, bilo bi ludo ne biti lud' " (https://www.jutarnji.hr/globus/srecko
-horvat-da-ja-sam-lud-jer-danas-u-ovakvoj-europi-koja-je-u-ratu-koja-se-raspada-u-kojoj-se-gu
se-slobode-bilo-bi-ludo-ne-biti-lud/4046088/). Jutarnji list (in Croatian). 8 April 2016. Retrieved
27 December 2018.
5. acTVism Munich (2016-02-10), Press Conference: Yanis Varoufakis & Democracy in Europe
Movement 25 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcptJkd87uQ), retrieved 2016-02-17
6. https://diem25.org/cc/
7. "Für manche Serben ist Europa eine Bedrohung", Stuttgarter Nachrichten, January 2014
http://www.stuttgarter-nachrichten.de/inhalt.eu-beitritt-fuer-manche-serben-ist-europa-eine-
bedrohung.ca9e72c4-d5fb-4ab0-9e62-c3893781146b.html
8. "Srecko Horvat: why we urgently need to restore democracy in Europe" (http://espresso.repubbl
ica.it/attualita/2016/03/21/news/srecko-horvat-why-we-urgently-need-to-restore-democracy-in-e
urope-1.254619). l'Espresso. 21 March 2016.
9. Horvat, Srećko (6 July 2017). "We came to Hamburg to protest about G20 – and found a
dystopian nightmare - Srećko Horvat" (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/0
6/hamburg-protest-g20-dystopian-nightmare-security-disunity-politics) – via
www.theguardian.com.
10. editor, Slawek Blich Digital; journalist; articles <, webmaster at Krytyka Polityczna/Political
Critique > see other (10 November 2016). "The need for a progressive international movement
was never as urgent as today" (http://politicalcritique.org/world/usa/2016/srecko-on-trump/).
11. "Protesting In the Age of Social Media" (https://magazine.areweeurope.com/silentrevolutions/st
ories/ellyn-valkengoed-protesting-in-the-age-of-social-media). Are We Europe Magazine.
12. Derk, Denis (28 March 2017). "Donosi se Deklaracija o zajedničkom jeziku Hrvata, Srba,
Bošnjaka i Crnogoraca" (http://www.vecernji.hr/hrvatska/deklaracija-o-zajednickom-jeziku-iz-za
greba-donosi-se-30-ozujka-u-sarajevu-1159142) [A Declaration on the Common Language of
Croats, Serbs, Bosniaks and Montenegrins is About to Appear] (in Serbo-Croatian). Zagreb:
Večernji list. pp. 6–7. ISSN 0350-5006 (https://www.worldcat.org/issn/0350-5006). Archived (htt
ps://www.webcitation.org/6qg0sFVHO?url=https://www.vecernji.hr/vijesti/deklaracija-o-zajednic
kom-jeziku-iz-zagreba-donosi-se-30-ozujka-u-sarajevu-1159142) from the original on 23 May
2017. Retrieved 5 June 2019.
13. "SUKOB NA ZAGREBAČKOJ ALTERNATIVNOJ SCENI Srećko Horvat napustio Subversive,
no festival ide dalje" (https://www.jutarnji.hr/kultura/film-i-tv/sukob-na-zagrebackoj-alternativnoj-
sceni-srecko-horvat-napustio-subversive-no-festival-ide-dalje/899566/). Jutarnji list (in
Croatian). 14 October 2013. Retrieved 27 December 2018.
14. "Open letter to friends of Subversive Festival", 2013
http://www.subversivefestival.com/newsiteml/3/262/en/open-letter-to-friends-of-subversive-
festival
15. "Advancing Conversations: Srećko Horvat - Subversion! -- Zero Books -- Book Info" (http://ww
w.zero-books.net/books/advancing-conversations-srecko-horvat). www.zero-books.net.
16. https://festival.bitef.rs/Side-program/734/Philosophical-theatre.shtml
17. "Filozofski teatar" (https://www.hnk.hr/hr/filozofski-teatar/). HNK.
18. Horvat, Srećko. "Croatia's vote forbidding gay marriage: a sign of the rotten heart of Europe" (htt
ps://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/04/croatia-gay-marriage-vote-europe-rotte
n-heart). The Guardian. Retrieved 21 March 2014.
19. Miljenko Jergović, "Cinizam Gorana Radmana", Jutarnji list, 2013
http://www.jergovic.com/sumnjivo-lice/cinizam-gorana-radmana-protivan-je-zdravom-drustvu/
20. Slavoj Žižek; Srećko Horvat (2013). What Does Europe Want? (http://istrosbooks.com/products/
books/what-does-europe-wantg-union-and-its-discontents-35/). Istros Books, London.
ISBN 978-1908236166.

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