THE

CULTURAL
LIFE OF

IN YUGOSLAVIA
(POST)SOCIALISM AND ITS OTHER
Edited by Dijana Jelača,
Maša Kolanović and Danijela Lugarić
The Cultural Life of Capitalism in Yugoslavia
 Dijana Jelača · Maša Kolanović
Danijela Lugarić
Editors

The Cultural Life

of Capitalism
in Yugoslavia
(Post)Socialism and Its Other
Editors
Dijana Jelača Danijela Lugarić
Department of Communication Department of East-Slavic Languages
  and Media Studies   and Literatures
Fordham University Faculty of Humanities
New York, USA   and Social Sciences
Zagreb, Croatia
Maša Kolanović
Department for Contemporary
  Croatian Literature
University of Zagreb
Zagreb, Croatia

ISBN 978-3-319-47481-6 ISBN 978-3-319-47482-3  (eBook)

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-47482-3

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To the lost Yugoslav generation
 Acknowledgements

Our foremost gratitude goes to the Palgrave editor Shaun Vigil for his
support in seeing this project through to publication. We are also grate-
ful to all contributors for their intellectual dedication and exciting contri-
butions to the volume.
The book is dedicated to the “lost Yugoslav generation,” which we see
ourselves a part of. All three of us were born in 1979, and consequently
only experienced Yugoslavia as children. The country’s disintegration
simultaneously marked the end of our childhoods. As a result, we belong
to a generation that is neither here nor there, neither last nor first, but
rather “lost.” But lost to whom, or to what, remains an open question.
Thinking of “being lost” as a site of opportunity rather than deficit is
something that influences our scholarship and intellectual allegiances.
This book is a result of our myriad conversations across distances in
time and space. More than anything, we want to thank our families for
providing emotional safety nets and logistical support structures that
make it possible for us to do what we love. Our daughters, Nika, Sava,
Ema and Neva, continue to be the source of our greatest inspiration.

vii
 Contents

1 Introduction: Cultural Capitalism the (Post)

Yugoslav Way   1
Dijana Jelača, Maša Kolanović and Danijela Lugarić

Part I  Capital(ism) and Class Cultures

2 The Strange Absence of Capital(ism)   23

Stipe Grgas

3 Fictions of Crime in a State of Exception   43

Tatjana Jukić

4 Rethinking Class in Socialist Yugoslavia: Labor,

Body, and Moral Economy   61
Tanja Petrović and Ana Hofman

5 The Restoration of Capitalism After Yugoslavia:

Cultural Capital, Class and Power   81
Breda Luthar and Maruša Pušnik

6 Class and Culture in Yugoslav Factory Newspapers   101

Sven Cvek

ix
x  Contents

7 Post-Yugoslav Notes on Marx’s Class Theory

and Middle-Class Classism   121
Primož Krašovec

Part II Trajectories of Capitalism: Culture

and Everyday Life

8 On Yugoslav Market Socialism Through Živojin

Pavlović’s When I Am Dead and Pale (1967)   139
Gal Kirn

9 Against Capitalism from the Stalinist Cellar:

The Balkan Spy in the Post-Yugoslav Context   159
Ivan Velisavljević

10  The Contested Place of the Detached Home

in Yugoslavia’s Socialist Cities   173
Brigitte Le Normand

11  Yugoslavia Looking Westward: Transnational

Consumer Contact with Italy During the 1960s   191
Francesca Rolandi

12  Popular Hybrids the Yugoslav Way:

What a Girl Would Buy for Her Pocket Money   209
Reana Senjković

Part III  Cultural Struggles and Social Movements

13  Protesting for Production: The Dita Factory

Occupation and the Struggle for Justice in Bosnia
and Herzegovina   225
Damir Arsenijević, Jasmina Husanović and Vanessa
Vasić-Janeković
 Contents   xi

14  The Politics of (Post)Socialist Sexuality:

American Foreign Policy in Bosnia and Kosovo   243
Piro Rexhepi

15  The Strange Case of Yugoslav Feminism: Feminism

and Socialism in “the East”   263
Adriana Zaharijević

16  Cultural Politics in (Post)Socialist Croatia:

The Question of (Dis)Continuity   285
Maciej Falski and Tomasz Rawski

17  Neoliberal Discourse and Rhetoric in Croatian Higher

Education   303
Anera Ryznar

18  Yugoslavia After Yugoslavia: Graffiti About Yugoslavia

in the Post-Yugoslav Urban Landscape   323
Mitja Velikonja

19  Afterword: And so They Historicized   345

Boris Buden

Index  
351
 About the Editors

Dijana Jelača  is Adjunct Professor in the Department of

Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University. Her areas
of inquiry include feminist film and media studies, critical ethnic stud-
ies, trauma and memory studies, and South Slavic film cultures. Jelača’s
work has appeared in Camera Obscura, Feminist Media Studies, Studies
in Eastern European Cinema, Jump Cut, and elsewhere. Her book
Dislocated Screen Memory: Narrating Trauma in Post-Yugoslav Cinema
(2016) focuses on trauma narratives as cultural memory in cinema after
Yugoslavia. She is the co-editor of The Routledge Companion to Cinema
and Gender (2017).
Maša Kolanović  is Assistant Professor in the Department for
Contemporary Croatian Literature at the University of Zagreb. She is
the author of numerous articles and books (both non-fiction and fic-
tion), focusing on literature and popular culture during the Cold War
and postsocialist period, including Underground Barbie (2008, 2012),
Worker! Rebel? Consumer… Popular Culture and Croatian Novel from
Socialism till Transition (2011), Comparative Postsocialism: Slavic
Experiences (ed., 2013), and JAmerica: trip (2013). She was a Herder
Stiftung fellow at the University of Vienna (2005), JFDP fellow at the
University of Texas, Austin (2012), and Trinity Long Room Hub
Research Fellow at the Trinity College Dublin (2017).

xiii
xiv  About the Editors

Danijela Lugarić  is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Humanities

and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb and Director of the Institute of
Literary Studies. She teaches courses on the history of Russian literature,
the culture of late Soviet socialism, and Russian critical theory. She trans-
lates from Russian (Bakhtin). She is the author of Russian Bards: Popular
Aspects in the Author’s Song of Bulat Okudzhava and Vladimir Vysotsky
(2011), and of numerous scholarly articles. She is the editor of Biblioteka
L series of monographs in literary criticism, and co-editor of Myth and
Its Discontents: Precarious Life of Memory and Trauma in Central and
Eastern European Literature (with M. Car and G.T. Molnár, 2017) and
The Future of Post-Socialism (with D. Jelača and J.F. Bailyn, forthcom-
ing). She was a DAAD fellow at Konstanz University (2004) and JFDP
fellow at the University of California, Berkeley (2011).
 List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Vlada Divljan as a socialist superhero

(courtesy of artist Branko Gavrić) 14
Fig. 4.1 The assembly of striking miners, Raša 1987.
Photo by Boris Cvjetanović 68
Fig. 4.2 The interior of a miner’s house, Raša 1987.
Photo by Boris Cvjetanović 70
Fig. 4.3 Folk singer Lepa Brena on the cover of the magazine
Sabor, January 4, 1988  72
Fig. 18.1 The sinking ship named Yugoslavia (Ljubljana, 2013) 324
Fig. 18.2 Tito is alive, Tuđman is not (Rijeka, 2015)  329
Fig. 18.3 The day of the republic (Maribor, 2015)  333
Fig. 18.4 Born in Yugoslavia, educated in Slovenia,
unemployed in Europe (Maribor, 2015)  337

xv
 List of Tables

Table 5.1 Cultural ideal-types and class  89

Table 18.1 A quantitative overview of graffiti occurrences  332

xvii
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Cultural Capitalism the

(Post)Yugoslav Way

Dijana Jelača, Maša Kolanović and Danijela Lugarić

Capitalism: A Restructured Feeling

In recent years, capitalism has increasingly become a “bad object” of ever
more critical academic scrutiny. As the neoliberal reality of late capitalism
becomes a growingly urgent concern post-2008 global economic crisis,
it is worth rethinking what we mean by capitalism, in order to avoid sta-
bilizing its meaning into a singular transhistorical constant, or to avoid
“the tendency to constitute ‘the’ economy as a singular capitalist system
or space rather than as a zone of cohabitation and contestation among
multiple economic forms” (Gibson-Graham 2006a: xxi). This is where
the (post)socialist experience comes to play a very significant role, as a
way to avoid thinking about capitalism as a transhistorical or economic
given, by attempting to understand it through the prism of its seemingly
opposite, or antagonistic “Other.” Because “cohabitation and contesta-
tion among multiple economic forms” is contingent on locality and con-
text, we converge in this volume on the (post-)Yugoslav experience as
one worth exploring in further depth, in order to uncover the intersec-
tions (cultural, social, economic, and political) where malleable forms of
socialism and capitalism exist on a seemingly fluid scale, rather than as
the polar, or mirror opposites of one another.

© The Author(s) 2017 1

D. Jelača et al. (eds.), The Cultural Life of Capitalism in Yugoslavia,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-47482-3_1
2  D. JELAČA ET AL.

The volume at hand therefore offers a collection of essays that explore

the shifting cultural life of capitalism in socialist and postsocialist times
in the geopolitical context of the former Yugoslavia. Troubling standard
understandings of both capitalism and socialism, our guiding premise is
that, in this context, different cultural practices nowadays firmly associ-
ated with capitalism were always already embedded as “a structure of
feelings” (Williams 1977) in various cultural forms and material practices
during socialism, thereby rendering both socialism and capitalism as het-
erogeneous systems rather than singular entities. In capitalism’s currently
dominant neoliberal form, the tropes of individualism, meritocracy, suc-
cess and failure serve to mask the ruthlessness of the free market and the
growing material gap between the privileged and underprivileged. Thus,
another reason for putting this volume together is a perceived lack of
political willingness to avoid the all too easy naturalization of capitalism
as inevitability, which has been the dominant discourse around the fall
of socialism in Eastern Europe. As Stipe Grgas notes, “if the reality of
capitalism was once camouflaged by different ideologies, and if for most
of the twentieth century there was restraint in directly naming it, then
in the post-Cold War era we are witnessing a glorious enthronement of
capitalism as a seemingly natural production of life” (2014: 128).
We aim in what follows to offer a deeper, interdisciplinary and com-
parative analysis of different spheres of everyday life and cultural pro-
duction in the context of Yugoslav and post-Yugoslav times in order to
offer a case study with wider-reaching implications.1 Namely, we seek
to illuminate how capitalism—as a mode of production and consump-
tion, but also as a particular affective economy that informs a society’s
outlook about its own present and future—has been present in social-
ist Yugoslavia’s cultural field long before the socialist system collapsed
and the country disintegrated into war. This is due to Yugoslavia’s pecu-
liar position as a fairly open socialist country that introduced a market
economy early on, which made it an anomaly with respect to the rest
of the Eastern Bloc. “The Yugoslav model of socialism,” writes Susan
Woodward, “was an attempt to combine socialist ideals and policies at
home with openness to the world economy—above all to foreign trade,
aid, and supplements to the capital needs of their strategy for industri-
alization and national sovereignty” (2003: 74). Yugoslavia’s self-manage-
ment, developed after Tito’s break from Stalin and initially implemented
in the early 1950s, sought to differentiate Yugoslav socialism from its
more rigid counterparts primarily embodied by the Soviet Union. The
 1  INTRODUCTION: CULTURAL CAPITALISM THE (POST)YUGOSLAV WAY  3

implementation of the socialist workers’ self-management gave rise to a

socialist market economy, and produced a curious economic and politi-
cal hybrid—the “Third Way” of socialism (Kanzleiter 2011; see also
Verdery 1996)—whose cultural and material reverberations extend into
the present and are the subject of the volume at hand. And while the
Yugoslav workers’ self-management was closely studied and frequently
praised from the outside, within Yugoslav borders it was an ambivalent
experience that failed to decentralize and redistribute power. Quite the
contrary, it deepened socioeconomic divides, and contributed to the
1968 political dissent (Kanzleiter 2011). Subsequently, material factors
played a crucial, if often overlooked role in the violent disintegration of
the country (Woodward 1995).2 The criticism leveled by the Yugoslav
New Left in the 1960s—whose most notable intellectual branch was
the Praxis group of philosophers—was largely focused on the failure of
the self-management system to truly make the working class into social
agents in charge of their own path. Nowadays, some Marxist analyses of
Yugoslav self-management claim that Yugoslavia was without a doubt
a capitalist country (Katalenec 2013), or, as Darko Suvin insightfully
observes, a country of “capitalism without capitalists” (2015). However,
to make claims about capitalist Yugoslavia entirely unambiguous is to
also elide the ways in which the supposed Yugoslav version of “capital-
ism” presented a curious amalgamation of socialist traditions, ideas and
structures, and therefore was an inherently hybrid system that could
not firmly and categorically be placed only under the capitalist tradition
either.
Igor Duda (2010, 2014) argues that the rise of mass consumer-
ism in Yugoslavia begun in 1958, after the Communist Party officially
requested easier accessibility of commodities for Yugoslav citizens, and
only a few years after the official introduction of the socialist workers’

in Yugoslavia and its aftermath, Uroš Čvoro observes that: “self-manage-

self-management. Moreover, in his study of neofolk and turbo-folk music

ment introduced a shift to market-based economy, which enabled the

growth of the entertainment industry and development of popular cul-
ture in Yugoslavia” (2014: 5). We can perceive here a seemingly clear
correlation between self-management and the rise of consumer culture,
but one that often uncritically assumes the classical Marxist base–super-
structure relationship. In this volume, we seek to trouble that one-
directional relationship by positing culture as one of the determining
factors of social and economic processes, rather than a mere reflection
4  D. JELAČA ET AL.

of the economic means of production. Culture and economy are here

understood as by no means autonomous entities, with a relationship that
is neither essentially oppositional, nor essentially deterministic (Du Gay
1997: 2).3
Nowadays, the former socialist system is alternatively viewed as eman-
cipatory, oppressive, and everything in between—a contested object of
memory subject to political manipulation. In the context of the omni-
present politico-historical revisionism, it is important to remember that
socialism is not a singular occurrence. Suvin argues that it is a useful
concept “only if understood as a field of forces polarised between a con-
geries of class society alienations and communist disalienation, connot-
ing dynamic and fierce contradictions on all levels” (2016: 17, emphasis
ours). The urgency of the project at hand rests in the growing precarity
of life under currently dominant neoliberal capitalist conditions, where
former state factories are largely shuttered or privatized under ques-
tionable circumstances, and where workers’ rights and worker’s culture
are ever diminishing, if not rendered entirely non-existent. In the post-
Yugoslav cultural context, capitalism becomes a restructured feeling: from
an optimistic, if ambivalent “love affair” with it during Yugoslav times,
it becomes recalibrated into a harsh reality whose promise of material
security appears increasingly unattainable (except for a select few). In the
process, socialism itself now becomes a renewed object of yearning for
some, whether through the well-documented practices of cultural nostal-
gia (see Todorova and Gille 2010; Luthar and Pušnik 2010), or through
the intellectual leftist efforts at rehabilitating the belief that socialism is
the only viable alternative to neoliberal capitalist exploitation.
But, as Gibson-Graham insightfully note, “If we want to culti-
vate new habits of thinking for a postcapitalist politics, it seems there
is work to be done to loosen the structures of feeling that cannot live
with uncertainty or move beyond hopelessness” (2006a: 4). To that end,
some questions that this volume tackles are as follows: How have differ-
ent capitalist tropes informed socialist and postsocialist life well before
the capitalist social, political and economic order officially entered the
region’s material reality? How do different cultural forms (re)articulate
class relations in a (post)socialist society? What hybrid structures of feel-
ings do the two seemingly oppositional systems evoke when they are put
in a hybrid and symbiotic relationship, as they have been in Yugoslavia
and its successor states? How have the meanings associated with capi-
talist culture(s) been (re)produced, (re)distributed and consumed in
 1  INTRODUCTION: CULTURAL CAPITALISM THE (POST)YUGOSLAV WAY  5

socialist societies? What counter-meanings circulate simultaneously—and

to what ends? It is our hope that, by utilizing critical cultural theories as
much needed interventions towards rethinking capitalism and social class
from the perspective of its (dis)location in socialism, Yugoslav and post-
Yugoslav cultural tendencies will uncover their transformative power to
reshape not only the cultural future in the region, but also its economies
and politics. At the same time, by bringing these tendencies into visibil-
ity as practices that reside at the complex intersections between socialist
and capitalist cultural traditions, it is our hope that “the binary hierar-
chies of market/nonmarket and capitalism/noncapitalism” (Gibson-
Graham 2006b: 15) will be displaced, and that both capitalism and
socialism will lose their abstract singularity as a result.

Cultural Hybridity and the Yugoslav State of (Non-)

Exception
In a coda to her insightful documentary From the East (1993)—about
everyday life in Eastern Europe in the years immediately following the
collapse of communism—iconic feminist director Chantal Akerman
observes that Eastern Europe had always had a “love/hate relation-
ship with the West (…), especially with America, that object of trou-
bled desire.” Noting the seemingly increasing “perversion” of Eastern
Europe with the markers of Western capitalist power such as McDonald’s
in Moscow’s Pushkin Square, Akerman eschews the standard lament
about the loss of a pure non-capitalist state by adding the following:
“But, of course, there is no pure ‘before’ that would now be perverted
or c­ ontaminated. Perversion was already there in the existence of these
two blocs that were not as contradictory as they seemed at first sight”
(emphasis ours).4 This evokes Deleuze and Guattari’s proposition that,
“There is no universal capitalism, there is no capitalism in itself; capital-
ism is at the crossroads of all kinds of formations, it is neocapitalism by
nature. It invents its eastern face and western face, and reshapes them
both—all for the worst” (1987: 20). Many cultural practices, structured
through an interplay between capitalist and socialist values, illuminate
irrevocable hybridity of categories of “economic“and “cultural”—and
this is where Yugoslavia’s exception in some ways becomes a state of non-
exception. Although cultural articulations of capitalism and socialism are
nearly always discursively formed by the seeming exclusion, or implicit
6  D. JELAČA ET AL.

negation of the other, that tension often carries traces of desire for that
particular Other, as an inevitable, if often invisible point of reference.
Yugoslav cultural hybridity, located on the tectonic and thoroughly
established (if worn-out) symbolic borderlands between the East and
the West, has been described by numerous historiographical metaphors.
Tvrtko Jakovina (2002) chooses the phrase “socialism on American
wheat” as the title of his book about Yugoslav foreign policy between
1948 and 1963, while Branislav Dimitrijević (2005) illustrates the cul-
tural condition of borderlands with a metaphor of Srđan Karanović’s
film Nešto između (Something in Between, 1983).5 In this film, one of
the protagonists, Marko, describes Yugoslavia to an American woman,
Eva, precisely as an amalgamation of the capitalist West and the exoti-
cized East. Marko says that Yugoslavia is “No East, no West. In the mid-
dle”—it has “open culture, different influences… Yugoslavia is Turkey,
Vienna and Venice… Budapest.” Marko’s borderline self-exoticizing, but
decidedly transnational depiction of Yugoslavia’s socialism as something
that resides at the intersection of competing influences concludes with
an observation about inauthenticity: “Everything here is like somewhere
else.” But at the end of the film, this seductive in-betweenness stands
for the crisis caused by the undecidability on both the political and inti-
mate planes. The film has a bitter ending: in the chaotic atmosphere of
Belgrade under power saving restrictions and war drills, Marko lucidly
and prophetically declares that “there is no peace ‘in between.’”
If we contextualize Marko’s final prophetic words with one of the
insightful Gibson-Graham claims in their pivotal study The End of
Capitalism (As We Knew It), we could contend that representations of
capitalist tendencies in Yugoslav culture give way to an array of capitalist
differences, and, consequently, “its noncapitalist other is released from
singularity and subjection, becoming potentially visible as a differen-
tiated multiplicity” (2006b: 16). As our understanding of capitalism is
influenced by the ongoing relevance of the cultural Marxism of Stuart
Hall and the Birmingham school, we particularly converge on the notion
that there are “no guarantees” of the ways in which the economic base
influences cultural superstructures. That absence of guarantees is here
reflected in the dialectical presence of cultural capitalism within social-
ist systems, and vice versa. Since they simultaneously represent and cre-
ate Yugoslav cultural hybridity between socialism and capitalism, one
could argue that the disintegration of Yugoslavia should not be seen
as an abrupt transition from state socialism towards capitalism. Rather,
 1  INTRODUCTION: CULTURAL CAPITALISM THE (POST)YUGOSLAV WAY  7

capitalist practices had been taking place not only during the socialist
period, but were—as essays in this volume aim to show—its very prem-
ise.6 Social class, and its socialist and postsocialist cultural life, emerges as
a major concept where these hybrid tendencies converge and take shape.
Contrary to the simplified understandings of socialism as a classless soci-
ety, where class hierarchies emerge only in the capitalist aftermath, this
volume takes as its point of departure an understanding that socialist
Yugoslavia was a classed society in its own right, albeit one whose com-
plexities have to be unpacked with close attention to local specificities.7
Another major focus of research presented here is the cultural life of
capitalism in the region’s postsocialist afterlife, which is often (all too)
easily cut off from its continuity with socialism. As Caroline Humphrey
(2002) has argued, there is never a sudden and complete emptying of
social phenomena followed by their replacement with new ones. This
insight is especially true when speaking of the post-Yugoslav “limbo” of
the unfinished past (Jelača and Lugarić, forthcoming), which is comprised
of a unique set of circumstances: neoliberalism, war, ethnonationalism,
and the ongoing political struggle over cultural memory, to name just a
few. Post-Yugoslav spaces are postsocialist, transitional regions like many
others, but also a post-conflict zone still reeling from the aftermath of vio-
lent wars. At the same time, it is a region partially integrated into the capi-
talist (and slowly crumbling) alliance of the European Union. Under these
complicated political and ideological circumstances, cultural memory of
socialism—although stubbornly present in artistic and everyday cultural
practices in the region (see Kolanović, forthcoming)—is often all too eas-
ily reduced to a caricature in the postsocialist public discourse and politics.
In post-Yugoslav times, we are witnessing a schizophrenic situation where
the memory of socialism not only exists parallel to the “cultural logic of
late capitalism” (Jameson 1991), but also significantly shapes the future in
the region in profoundly complex ways. As essays in this volume show, the
spectre of socialism haunts the future of the region, reflecting and produc-
ing disillusionment with the neoliberal present, and an active rethinking of
the shared past.

Notes Towards Cultural Capitalism

In developing the theoretical framing for this volume, we found it par-
ticularly engaging to think along the lines of scholars such as J.K.
Gibson-Graham, and their “determination to represent capitalism as a set
8  D. JELAČA ET AL.

of economic practices scattered over a landscape, rather than a systemic

concentration of power” (2006a: 2). In the (post)Yugoslav context, that
landscape is overdetermined by the aforementioned hybrid and uneasy
amalgamation of two seemingly opposing economic systems. Having the
potential for emptying the categories of both socialism and capitalism,
and for filling them up differently (Gibson-Graham 2006b: 22), that
overdetermination can also become a fruitful methodological tool and a
practice of rereading in order to discover that which might be hidden at
first sight:

Thinking overdetermination can be seen not only as a technique of onto-

logical reframing, but also as a technique of rereading—uncovering what
is possible but obscured from view. Rather than attending to the regu-
larities of discourse, overt or covert as these may be, an overdeterminist
reading fractures and disperses the object of attention, dislocating it from
essentialist structures of determination. Reading for contingency rather
than necessity situates essentialized and universalized forms of being like
“the market” or the “the self-interested subject” in specific geographical
and historical locations, releasing them from an ontology of structure or
essence. (Gibson-Graham 2006a: xxxi)

In that vein, we introduce the concept of cultural capitalism as a frame-

work within which locally specific class relations are always already over-
determined by the hybrid (post)Yugoslav cultures oscillating between,
and melding together capitalism and socialism in particular ways. In the
concept of cultural capitalism, culture is seen as the determining location
of heterogeneous, malleable capitalism in locally specific, yet transnation-
ally reverberating ways. As a concept, cultural capitalism is not applicable
to the former Yugoslav region only, but in this particular case, it reveals
cultural contradictions to be deeply reflective and determining of the
specific economic complexities that underlie its existence. It is important
to note that cultural capitalism in never fixated, homogeneous or static—
rather, it is a dialectic that is constituted by many moving parts, a process
rather than a state.
Cultural capitalism is approached here through an interdisciplinary
methodological framework of critical cultural studies, which makes pos-
sible an exploration of multiple processes involved in the construction of
meaning of capitalism in socialist and postsocialist times as a structure of
feelings that ranges from paranoia to nostalgia, and from cruel optimism
 1  INTRODUCTION: CULTURAL CAPITALISM THE (POST)YUGOSLAV WAY  9

(Berlant 2006) to pleasurable fetishism. Moreover, since our aim is to

challenge the uniform concept of “the Yugoslav successor states” by
releasing it from the neocolonial view that homogenizes the differences
within, we gathered scholars whose work is located both “inside” and
“outside” of this particular postsocialist locality in hope of inciting a dia-
logue from interdisciplinary and comparative perspectives that illuminate
new forms of situated knowledge attuned to the politics of concrete geo-
political location rather than generalization.
The first part of this volume, “Capital(ism) and Class Cultures,”
focuses on rethinking social class and the role of capital(ism) in
Yugoslavia and its aftermath. In his insightful challenge to the omnipres-
ent convergence between capital and capitalism, Stipe Grgas turns to
the prominent Yugoslav philosopher Vanja Sutlić and notes that “[t]he
necessity to differentiate between capital and capitalism is the most press-
ing methodological issue in the now intensive discussions of a world in
which capital has unconcealed its universalizing thrust. In Sutlić, that dif-
ference is implied in the contention that capital persists in socialism and
that it has a tendency to permanently expand and grow.” Tatjana Jukić’s
chapter on “Fictions of Crime in a State of Exception” stays analytically
sensitive to Yugoslav exceptionalism, especially when it comes to the
workers’ self-management. She probes the often-overlooked symbiosis
between capitalism and socialism by arguing that “socialism contributes a
kind of autoimmune response to capitalism, in critical terms.” Moreover,
Jukić highlights the role of Yugoslavia in the Non-Aligned Movement
as an analytical shift that orients politics towards the world rather than
towards a single state (of exception). Tanja Petrović and Ana Hofman’s
chapter argues that the notion of class is, in part, an outcome of cultural
representations and social imaginations, and of the moral and affective
economies alike. In this context, they analyze the hypercorporeality of
two iconic Yugoslav subjects—the miner and the female kafana singer.
Their analysis speaks not only to the inseparability of gender and class
relations, but also to the social fantasies which inform representational
practices of the working class in socialist Yugoslavia. Moreover, reflecting
on the particularities of post-Yugoslav geographical and historical loca-
tions, Luthar and Pušnik, in their chapter on the role of cultural capi-
tal and social class in postsocialist neoliberal times, claim that: “culture is
here not understood as a product of already existing class relations, but
as a field where class relations operate and cultural battles are recursively
10  D. JELAČA ET AL.

involved in class formation.” Importantly, this formation is further influ-

enced by the complicating factors of gender, ethnicity and age. In his
chapter, Sven Cvek writes about the Yugoslav factory newspapers and
finds that “the factory press was part of a class culture, and it was a cul-
tural form shaping a class. This does not mean it was in any simple way
an outgrowth or a reflection of some predetermined ‘class conscious-
ness,’ but rather the cultural articulation of social relations in which it
emerged” (emphasis ours). Cvek traces the roots of Yugoslav factory
print to both the pre-socialist, Fordist factory newspapers, but also to the
activist underground press that aimed to unionize workers and inform
them of their rights. Primož Krašovec’s theoretical insight in “Post-
Yugoslav Notes on Marx’s Class Theory and Middle Class Classism”
complicates standard understandings of class and interrogates the state of
the middle class in neoliberal capitalism from the post-Yugoslav, Marxist
perspective. He does so by showing how the materiality of class in late
capitalism is obscured by an ideological misrecognition of class relations
as cultural difference, which in turn derives its effectiveness precisely by
concealing the structuring class relations as such.
The mutually constitutive relationship between culture, economy,
and politics is at the core of the second part of the volume, “Trajectories
of Capitalism: Culture and Everyday Life,” where controversies around
Yugoslav self-management are brought into visibility in various cultural
patterns. Gal Kirn analyzes Živojin Pavlović’s When I Am Dead and
Pale (1967) as the first film to make an explicit display of the internal
contradictions of socialist industrialization after the market reform in
1965. Kirn claims that Pavlović’s film was not only “working through
and understanding major socialist contradictions,” but was also recogniz-
ing signs of postsocialism in socialist times by exposing the liminal spaces
which the system often concealed. Ivan Velisavljević’s analysis of the
iconic play and film The Balkan Spy (1982, 1984) focuses on its protag-
onist’s prophetic paranoia about the devastating consequences that the
introduction of capitalism through the small backdoor would have for
the Yugoslav state. Velisavljević’s chapter invites us to think about emo-
tions as cultural practices, and as a particular form of capital—since they
can be (and often are) used for political purposes.
The complex and multilayered relationship between consumer prac-
tices and the ways they articulate class relations and participate in the
processes of class and social stratifications are analyzed in Brigitte Le
Normand’s chapter on urban planning and single family housing in
 1  INTRODUCTION: CULTURAL CAPITALISM THE (POST)YUGOSLAV WAY  11

socialist Yugoslavia, and also in the contribution that follows, Francesca

Rolandi’s chapter about the rise of Yugoslav consumer society through
the lenses of transnational contacts with Italy. Le Normand observes that,
“[w]hile it is true that socialist consumer culture was not merely a ‘failed’
version of its capitalist counterpart, but rather, the outcome of a distinc-
tive economic and technological system, expressing values that were com-
patible with the socialist ideological framework, it is equally true that this
very framework was constantly being negotiated. Nowhere was this truer
than in Yugoslavia, the land of perpetual socialist re-invention.” Rolandi
examines how an illegal, self-organizing practice of travelling across the
border in order to purchase commodities became a part of the ever devel-
oping politics of class differentiation and class transformation in 1960s
Yugoslavia. This popular form of grey economy (in)formed social and
labor relations in Yugoslavia, and echoed in various cultural practices of
the time. Reana Senjković’s chapter on “Tina,” the only Yugoslav girls’
magazine, approaches the magazine through utilizing Angela McRobbie’s
(1978) insight into the British “Jackie,” pointing out the different layers
of cultural exchange, as well as modification of capitalist cultural patterns
in the Yugoslav context.
Within the framework of the tumultuous and shifting life of cultural
capitalism in the region, various mainstream tendencies and infrapolitics
amount to a richly diverse set of practices that perpetually reflect het-
erogeneity and cultural plurality of both socialism and capitalism. And
oftentimes, the infrapolitics (or politics from below) gradually amount to
wider-ranging social and cultural movements, which are the organizing
subject of the third part, “Cultural Struggles and Social Movements.”
Cultural activities “from below,” that work against repressive state prac-
tices (for instance, through street art and graffiti or in the proliferation
of plenums in the wake of the Zagreb student protests in 2009, or after
the widespread Bosnian workers’ protests in 2014) are analyzed in this
section alongside chapters that address politics “from above” (such as
the legislative documents regulating and financing culture in socialist
and postsocialist times, or the neoliberal reform of higher education).
Each cultural and intellectual tendency analyzed in this section leads to a
renewed understanding of the importance, as well as the political poten-
tial, of local self-organizing and self-management. To that end, Damir
Arsenijević, Jasmina Husanović and Vanessa Vasić Janeković take on the
fascinating case of the Bosnian factory Dita, where the workers’ “pro-
test for production” have taken over the management over the factory,
12  D. JELAČA ET AL.

appointed it as their “home” and (re)enacted a curious amalgamation of

capitalist/socialist practices that represent an active resistance to the local
ethno-capitalist elites. Piro Rexhepi’s chapter on the incorporation and
instrumentalization of LGBT rights as a US foreign policy in postsocial-
ist Southeastern Europe, and particularly in the former Yugoslavia, illus-
trates the role of identity politics as a form of cultural capitalism that
purports to reflect tolerance but, in actuality, merely reinstates the US
and the West as the “beacons” of civilizational progress. In her analysis of
the development of Yugoslav women’s movements, Adriana Zaharijević
probes the question of whether feminism arose from socialist politics and
cultural practices, or whether it remained perceived as something foreign,
or, more accurately, “Western”. Zaharijević poses intriguing questions
that lead to an insightful conclusion that “political volatility of the con-
cepts we use often curbs political imagery and negates portions of his-
tory—turning them into spurious ‘common knowledge.’”
In their contribution, Maciej Falski and Tomasz Rawski discuss the
role of cultural politics during and after Yugoslav socialism, focusing on
the Croatian example as a laboratory of post-Yugoslav specificity, due
to the country’s political, economic and cultural dynamics in the tran-
sition from socialist Yugoslavia to the capitalist European Union. By
analyzing the cultural politics “from above,” the authors show how cul-
ture after socialism remained a privileged field, an object of particular
concern for the state, and how it was excluded from market competi-
tion and taken under state protection particularly in areas where it could
serve the reconstruction of Croatian ethnonational identity in the 1990s.
Similarly addressing the politics “from above,” Anera Ryznar’s analysis
offers a critique of postsocialist cultural politics through the lens of neo-
liberal discourse in higher education. Her analysis aims to illuminate how
economic crises shape the body of knowledge in capitalism. Moreover,
the neoliberal discourse in postsocialist Croatia is pitted against the dis-
courses that framed the 1958 and 1974 education reforms in socialist
Yugoslavia. This comparison highlights the similarities between the two
educational policies (both were economy-driven), but also profound
differences. In his chapter on graffiti and street art after Yugoslavia,
Mitja Velikonja lucidly observes—on the basis of Fredric Jameson’s cri-
tique—that, in post-Yugoslav times, ethno-nationalism acts as the polit-
ical logic of neoliberal capitalism. He shows how Yugoslavia’s political
and social trajectories inform the post-Yugoslav street art and graffiti in
rich, and utterly provocative, ways. These modes of expression for the
 1  INTRODUCTION: CULTURAL CAPITALISM THE (POST)YUGOSLAV WAY  13

underrepresented social classes in postsocialist Yugoslavia illuminate both

a temporal and a spatial dislocation within the precariously transitional,
neoliberal times. Finally, in his Afterword, Boris Buden reminds us of the
critical importance of historicizing the particularities of past, present and
future. Buden also reiterates the centrality of the historical moment in
which this volume is assembled—namely, the global rule of neoliberal
capitalism that is ideologically, and troublingly, positioned as the only
“viable” option in postsocialism and beyond. Our volume perpetually
challenges that assumption of inevitability.
Through a diverse set of methodologies and scholarly approaches, all
chapters in this volume engage in what Gibson-Graham have elsewhere
described as “actively retheorizing capitalism and reclaiming the econ-
omy here and now in myriad projects of alternative economic activism”
(2006a: xxi), here carried out with rooted attention to the specificities of
the socioeconomic and geopolitical context of the former Yugoslavia. To
that end, we want to emphasize that the analytical focus of this volume
is both transnational and local—transnational because it refuses to com-
pletely disengage the case of the (post)Yugoslav region from the broader
contemporary flows of cultural and intellectual meanings and practices,
and local because it situates the project within the hybrid specificities of
local histories, their unique cultural and intellectual traditions, and lived
experiences.
And where the personal and the scholarly meet, it is of no lesser intel-
lectual importance to mention that the socialist Yugoslavia was a lived
experience to the editors of this volume. Around the time we were
born in socialist Yugoslavia dates the publishing of a poster that visually
inspired the cover of the volume at hand. The poster was originally the
cover of a Youth work action periodical from 1981, designed by Branko
Gavrić.8 The original image shows a socialist working hero cast as a
Superman—where “S” could also stand for socialism (perhaps even self-
management)—wearing a corporate suit and proudly standing in front of
a cosmopolitan cityscape (Fig. 1.1).
In the original image, the shovel is a seemingly incongruous but
important detail—the ground is tiled but the shovel manages to curi-
ously remain grounded, as if being a reminder of the socialist hero’s
improbable working-class roots amid this shiny modernist cityscape.
The graphic suggests that a socialist modernist utopia—curiously simi-
lar to a capitalist one, and coopting a capitalist superhero at that—is
achieved, if satirically so. The state of euphoric utopia is perhaps why our
14  D. JELAČA ET AL.

Fig. 1.1  Vlada Divljan as a socialist superhero (courtesy of artist Branko

Gavrić)
 1  INTRODUCTION: CULTURAL CAPITALISM THE (POST)YUGOSLAV WAY  15

socialist hero is framed by the psychedelic rays of light, in which pop art
and soc art comprise a harmonized totality. It is also important to note
that this socialist superhero is embodied by the New Wave icon Vlada
Divljan, of the Yugoslav band Idoli. One of the band’s most famous
songs, “Maljčiki” (Russ. boys), is about workers who enthusiastically
labor in the factory, celebrating the values of hard work and solidarity
in the spirit of socialist realism, but in the hybrid musical style of the
punk rock/New Wave generation of the 1980s. As noted by Dalibor
Mišina, “’Maljčiki’ is primarily a stylistic experiment through a symbiosis
of a particular Slavic non-rock music idiom (i.e. kosachok) and a particular
socialist-realist aesthetic in the context of a rock song” (2013: 145). The
stylistic experimentation of the hybrid song, along with Gavrić’s graphic
“pop art experiment” (Krištofić 2016), provide a fitting metaphor for the
“Yugoslav experiment” (Rusinow 1977) in which socialism and capital-
ism came together through a curious hybridity in the field of culture.
Echoing further transnational reverberations, Polish punk rock artist
Kazik recently covered “Maljčiki” in the context of the capitalist present:
the postsocialist, or rather capitalist maljčiki in Kazik’s interpretation are
now working hard for the exploitative firm, solidarity is replaced by com-
petition, while the accompanying video mixes socialist realist scenes of
the workers with those of capitalist aesthetics such as the stock exchange
and gym workouts. Kazik’s criticism of the capitalist condition, inspired
by the Yugoslav New Wave, distills Yugoslav hybridity from its historical
context and replaces it with bitter disillusionment–a growing postsocialist
emotion about capitalism in our times.
This volume is an attempt to interpret such transformations and cul-
tural reverberations in order to understand, to paraphrase Katherine
Verdery, what Yugoslavia was and what comes next. We conclude by
evoking Fredric Jameson’s lucid thought that “it seems to be easier for
us today to imagine the thoroughgoing deterioration of the earth and
of nature than the breakdown of late capitalism; perhaps that is due to
some weakness in our imagination” (1994: xii). More recently, Jameson
(2016) has asserted that Yugoslavia has much to say about both capi-
talism and socialism alike. It is our hope that this book will open up
discursive spaces in which economic, political, and cultural legacies of
Yugoslav socialism will be seen as a mutually intertwined registers within
which many contradictions converged in ways that blur fixed dichoto-
mies and systemic boundaries. Our aim has been to critically re-read
uneasy and complex contingencies of cultural life under dynamic and
16  D. JELAČA ET AL.

often experimental economic and political circumstances: after all, we

are direct descendants of Yugoslavia’s aberrations, passions and errors
(to evoke Nietzsche). And since socialist/capitalist displacements could
be applied to other economic, political, and cultural formations,9 this
volume will hopefully be approached as an important chapter of trans-
national cultural history. To that end, by rethinking the past and (re)
theorizing the present, this book aims to provoke our readers’ imagina-
tion, and—most importantly—offer possible alternative imaginaries for a
global post-capitalist future. In New Orleans, May 2017.

Notes
1. In recent years, there has been an increase of scholarly interest in rethink-
ing socialist experience from a consumerist culture point of view. See, for
instance, Reid and Crowley 2000; Bartlet 2010; Crowley and Reid 2010;
Duda 2010, 2014; Janjetović 2011; Patterson 2011; Bren and Neuburger
2012; Erdei 2012; Vučetić 2012. For broader-ranging philosophical per-
spectives on Yugoslavia, (post)socialism, capitalism and leftist movements,
see Horvat, Štiks’s edited volume Welcome to the Desert of Post-Socialism:
Radical Politics after Yugoslavia (2015).
2. P.H. Liotta notes that: “The failure of the Yugoslav state to provide such
necessary order during a time of variously attempted economic and dem-
ocratic reforms was a factor that allowed ultra-’nationalist’ forces to take
hold, forces that opposed the continuation of a ‘Yugoslav’ state” (2001:
2). On comparative aspects of the self-management legacy see Grdešić
2015.
3. In that vein, Branislav Jakovljević’s recent Alienation Effects: Performance
and Self-Management in Yugoslavia 1945–91 (2016) refreshingly looks at
artistic, political and economic performance in Yugoslavia as inseparable
and mutually constitutive rather than hierarchically positioned.
4. From the film’s DVD notes (Icarus Films).
5. Metaphors of this sort are continuously being coined—see Coca Cola
Socialism by Radina Vučetić (2012), on the Americanization of Yugoslav
culture in the sixties.
6. In this vein, see an insightful analysis of Dušan Makavejev’s W.R.: Mysteries
of the Organism by Buden (2008).
7. For a recent discussion of class divisions as a deeply ingrained phenomenon
in Yugoslav socialist culture, see also Archer, Duda, Stubbs (2016).
8. Design was, according to Dejan Kršić (2012), an important agent in devel-
oping the Yugoslav modernist agenda in the field of everyday culture,
 1  INTRODUCTION: CULTURAL CAPITALISM THE (POST)YUGOSLAV WAY  17

where self-management and design were not just chronologically congru-

ent but also deeply interconnected.
9. See, for instance, McCormack and Barclay (2013).

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Authors’ Biography
Dijana Jelača  is Adjunct Professor in the Department of Communication and
Media Studies at Fordham University. Her areas of inquiry include feminist film
and media studies, critical ethnic studies, trauma and memory studies, and South
Slavic film cultures. Jelača’s work has appeared in Camera Obscura‚ Feminist Media
Studies, Studies in Eastern European Cinema, Jump Cut, and elsewhere. Her book
Dislocated Screen Memory: Narrating Trauma in Post-Yugoslav Cinema (2016)
focuses on trauma narratives as cultural memory in cinema after Yugoslavia. She is
the co-editor of The Routledge Companion to Cinema and Gender (2017).

Maša Kolanović  is Assistant Professor in the Department for Contemporary

Croatian Literature at the University of Zagreb. She is the author of articles and
books (both non-fiction and fiction), focusing on literature and popular culture
during the Cold War and postsocialist period, including Underground Barbie (2008,
2012 in Croatian and German), Worker! Rebel? Consumer… Popular Culture and
Croatian Novel from Socialism till Transition (2011, in Croatian), Comparative
Postsocialism: Slavic Experiences (ed., 2013, in Croatian), and JAmerica: trip (2013,
20  D. JELAČA ET AL.

in Croatian). She was a Herder Stiftung fellow at the University of Vienna (2005),
JFDP fellow at the University of Texas, Austin (2012), and Trinity Long Room
Hub Research Fellow at the Trinity College Dublin (2017).

Danijela Lugarić  is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Humanities and Social

Sciences, University of Zagreb and Director of the Institute of Literary Studies.
She teaches courses on the history of Russian literature, the culture of late Soviet
socialism, and Russian critical theory. She translates from Russian (Bakhtin).
She is the author of Russian Bards: Popular Aspects in the Author’s Song of Bulat
Okudzhava and Vladimir Vysotsky (2011, in Croatian), and of numerous schol-
arly articles. She is the editor of Biblioteka L series of monographs in literary
criticism, and co-editor of Myth and Its Discontents: Precarious Life of Memory
and Trauma in Central and Eastern European Literature (2017, in English and
German) and The Future of Post-Socialism (forthcoming, in English). She was a
DAAD fellow at Konstanz University (2004) and JFDP fellow at the University
of California, Berkeley (2011).
 CHAPTER 19

Afterword: And so They Historicized

Boris Buden

What this book offers us is not just another look into the past. In fact,
the past is not at all what it is about. True, the object of inquiry of most
of the essays collected here seems to lie in the past, but only at first
glance. Already the title, The Cultural Life of Capitalism in Yugoslavia,
if properly understood, reveals the crucial conceptual shift: No, the
book does not deal with a peculiar—capitalist!?—form of cultural life
in a socialist country that perished in the 1990s. Rather, its true topic
is a form of a generally heterogeneous cultural life of contemporary
capitalism that found its historically particular realization in the former
Yugoslavia. The difference is crucial. It distinguishes between the form
of a past cultural life and the (continued) life of a past cultural form. In
other words, the book, in as far as it is concerned with the past, treats
this past in its presence, not in its pastness. This is what makes this col-
lection of essays exceptional not only among an ever-growing number of
cultural analyses and artistic practices that deal with the impressive cul-
tural production of socialist Yugoslavia, but in a much broader sense.
As a matter of fact, an extraordinary interest for the past is one of the
most remarkable features of our time. French historian Pierre Nora even
calls this time the “age of commemoration.” There is also a dominant

© The Author(s) 2017 345

D. Jelača et al. (eds.), The Cultural Life of Capitalism in Yugoslavia,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-47482-3_19
346  B. Buden

form in which this interest is articulated and in which the past appears
to us today. It is memory. Not history!, we should add. As Nora argues,
in our dealing with the past various forms of memory production have
replaced the old historiography long believed to exclusively possess the
truth of the past. One of the main reasons for this turn from history to
memory he saw in the general move away from the revolutionary tra-
ditions in which modern societies used to ground their historical legiti-
macy and articulate their sense of historical temporality. The latter also
provided for a relatively clear differentiation of the historical time into
three dimensions—past, present and future—as well as a decisive orien-
tation toward the future. A true modern society was believed to have
been born in an emancipatory historical event and to be heading toward
a better future. It meant a society in a constant progress both in terms of
welfare and emancipation. Yet at a certain moment in the twentieth cen-
tury—in the case of France, Nora situates it in the 1970s—the modernist
drive for a radical change and progression exhausted its energy. As a con-
sequence, future has lost its attraction. The past, suddenly, was promis-
ing more, and this, of all things, in a realm in which the future had been
traditionally the uncontested champion, in the realm of utopian imagina-
tion. Utopia was now looking back. The more a transformation of the
actual reality—the reality of the contemporary capitalism—became unre-
alistic, the more the dreams of a better world moved toward the past.
In this context, it is not a coincidence that the turn to the past occurs
at the same time—around mid- or late 1970s—when the infamous neo-
liberal turn also takes place, first in Margaret Thatcher’s Great Britain
and subsequently in the USA, Europe, China and elsewhere. The world
of late industrial modernity was collapsing, and turning its eyes away
from the future—a future in which there was no longer place for one
of its greatest political achievements, the institution of the democratic
social welfare state. Moreover, in this future there was no longer place
for society either. This brought about a change in the stakes of political
struggle. Both old and new political forces were no longer mobilized by
the ideals of social justice, but rather fought for the recognition of their
particular identities. The age of society was politically over. It is no won-
der that precisely a politician, the iconic figure of the neoliberal turn, the
then British prime minister Margaret Thatcher felt entitled to announce
it: “There is no such thing as society.” Again, this was a political state-
ment, and, as such, it was made fully in accordance with the temporal
logic of political rhetoric. As a reminder: Aristotle claimed that political
 19  AFTERWORD: AND SO THEY HISTORICIZED  347

rhetoric or oratory, which he also called deliberative, is concerned with

the future. He differentiated it from another two genres of rhetoric,
which he related to two other dimensions of time, respectively: the so-
called epideictic or ceremonial speeches focus on the present, while the
forensic or judicial rhetoric is focused on the past. Thus, society was dead
in the sense that politics didn’t see any use for it in making the future. In
other words, it disappeared from the words and deeds of those who were
addressing the future dimension of the social praxis. Alternatively, society
could have survived, as it has indeed, in cultural retrospection, or more
concretely, in various forms of cultural memory.
We might therefore say that society still exists, yet it does so as some-
thing of which one cannot shape the future but rather the past in the
form of memory. It resembles the famous work of British artist Rachel
Whiteread, a temporary public sculpture from 1993 named “House.”
This is a concrete cast of the inside of an abandoned three-story
Victorian house in East London. It shows the inverse side of its surfaces,
blank windows and doors, reversed fireplaces—in short, the negative
space of the house. While this cast was clearly not capable of inhabiting
an actual human life, as a monument to the past it perfectly memorized
the form of a former life. This is how we should envisage contemporary
society—as a sort of death mask made in the wake of its political death.
In its political post-mortem, society is a cultural artefact that no longer
hosts real life but provides commemoration.
If this is the present condition of both society and culture as its tex-
ture, then this book is obviously at odds with its time. This, however,
doesn’t make it less contemporary. Quite the contrary. As Giorgio
Agamben reminds us, relying on Nietzsche’s Untimely Meditations, one
becomes truly contemporary in being, in a way, disconnected from the
present. Contemporaneity, thus, implies certain anachronism. It is in this
sense that we might say that this book is contemporary. It deals with the
past in an anachronistic way. It treats it as though it is a history, and not
merely a matter of memory—a (cultural) heritage one takes care of, saves
for posterity, critically reflects upon, or presents in a new way. The book
is an attempt at “making historical experience.” This original German
expression (Erfahrung machen) has no corresponding equivalent in
English. Experience, accordingly, is something we cannot simply have
or gain but must make, create. Historical experience is never a given: it
is not a passively acquired knowledge of the past that can be practically
used in predicting historical development and thus help in navigating
348  B. Buden

our will throughout the reality of social life. Rather, it implies an active
engagement with the reality and contingency of social praxis that is
intrinsic to it. Only in performatively addressing historical praxis can one
“make” a historical experience, which is always already an experience of
historical contingency, not only prospectively but also retrospectively.
The meaning the past has for us is as open to change as is the future, and
depends on how we practically relate to the present. A critical interven-
tion into the present reality will “make” an experience of the past that is
different from the one that is already built into this same present reality
through apologetically serving its perpetuation. A world that is experi-
enced as wrong, unjust and foreign will always have a different past from
the one that is seen as the best of all possible worlds. Such a different
past, when it comes to the former Yugoslavia and the peculiar form of its
socialist system, is what this book is about.
The keyword in which most of its critical charge is concentrated is
brought out already in the title: capitalism. Today this word does not
attract any particular attention. Everybody speaks of capitalism, even its
most ardent proponents, but this was not always the case. After the col-
lapse of the historical communism in 1989/90, this word was nowhere
to be heard. One spoke only about democracy—concretely, about (a
Western) democracy that won the Cold War and defeated (an Eastern)
totalitarianism. The historical narrative of the so-called democratic revo-
lution of 1989/90 and the subsequent “transition to democracy” was
quite simple: one-party dictatorship is to be replaced by democratic par-
liamentarianism, command economy by free market, and totalitarian des-
potism by the rule of law. So the things that went wrong in 1917 were
brought back on track. A historical aberration, abnormal and unnatural,
was corrected so the post-communist East could catch up with its missed
historical development and finally become “normal.” Understandably,
the vocabulary of historical normalization didn’t need the word “capital-
ism.” It belonged to its metahistorical discourse reigning over the realm
of historical necessity, which was in flagrant contradiction to all the man-
ifestly proclaimed freedoms. Here only one rule applied: “There is no
alternative.” There was no alternative to the criminal privatization of the
former state or social property, no alternative to the surrendering of mil-
lions of workers of the collapsing socialist industries to the invisible hand
of the market, no alternative to the integration of the economies of the
former socialist countries into the global capitalism at all costs. The name
of these necessities was “the reality as it really is,” not capitalism.
 19  AFTERWORD: AND SO THEY HISTORICIZED  349

But the 2008 global economic crisis put an abrupt end to the posthis-
torical idyll. The reality suddenly appeared as a fragile historical construc-
tion haunted by fatal contradictions. The future, which since the end
of the Cold War had seemed to be fully determined, became uncertain
again. What is more, the genealogy of the now capitalist present had to
be told anew. The history was back on stage, no less uncertain than the
future.
The Cultural Life of Capitalism in Yugoslavia emerges from the
irreparable cracks that the crisis has left in the ideological edifice of con-
temporary capitalism. It is a powerful—and successful—attempt at a
rehistoricization of one of its core components: the narrative of a radi-
cal break between the communist past and the eternal present of liberal
democracy. Focusing its analysis on the case of the former Yugoslavia, the
book has not only re-established a traumatic historical continuity between
the past and the present, but also dissolved the ideologically essentialized
dichotomy between the system of an actually existing socialism, or his-
torical communism, and liberal democratic capitalism. In this respect, the
history of the former Yugoslavia reveals more than a historically contin-
gent case of hybridization of both systems, which elsewhere in the East
simply didn’t (or couldn’t) happen due to different historical, cultural or
economic conditions. This offers a vivid proof that a clear-cut difference
between the two systems as two—economically, politically, culturally—
different forms of life is generally impossible. Instead, the book confronts
us with a genuinely heterogeneous space of experience mapped by con-
temporary capitalism, which is at the same time a horizon of expectation
(both key elements of Reinhart Koselleck’s concept of modern history).
In other words, it confronts us with the experience of capitalism’s irrec-
oncilable contradictions and the struggles these contradictions necessar-
ily generate. Concretely, the book tells a story of the past that cannot be
reduced to a simple conflict between two different systems—socialism and
capitalism—a conflict that has finally been resolved by leaving the former,
the loser, to the past while heading with the latter, the winner, to a bright
future. This is the story of an ongoing struggle whose past is as undecided
as its final outcome. There is only one name for this story—history.
Finally, on a practico-political level, The Cultural Life of Capitalism
in Yugoslavia completely dismantles the teleology of the post-communist
transition, which has so far provided historical legitimacy for the political
forces that seized the power after 1989/90. From the perspective of its
350  B. Buden

authors, the transition not only leads to nowhere; it has never occurred
in the first place. In other words, the book is written from the perspec-
tive in which the historical logic of the post-communist transition makes
no sense whatsoever. Which, however, doesn’t mean that it has no ide-
ological function. Indeed, the logic of transition is grounded in a sort
of negative continuity with the socialist past. Whatever conflict arises on
the proclaimed path from communist totalitarianism to a full-fledged
democracy, it is always blamed on the remnants of the communist past,
which automatically makes the capitalist reality of the transitional process
appear as a genuinely conflict-free condition in which interests, however
disparate, never collide. How far the contributors in the book are from
this narrative is clearly indicated by the fact that the notion of totalitari-
anism is mentioned in their essays only three times, and each time criti-
cally, as a concept that misinterprets the reality.
The Cultural Life of Capitalism in Yugoslavia is a political state-
ment. It has become so by bringing two critical perspectives dialectically
together: culture and capitalism. The name of this unity is, again, his-
tory. It was more than three decades ago, at the time when the neoliberal
destruction of society, together with the epochal turn to the past, took
place, and when a thinker whose life’s work will be dedicated to the criti-
cal analysis of the politically explosive mixture of capitalism and culture,
Fredric Jameson, opened his The Political Unconscious with the famous
slogan: “Always historicize!” This is precisely what the authors of The
Cultural Life of Capitalism in Yugoslavia did.

Author Biography
Boris Buden is a writer, cultural critic, and translator. He received his Ph.D in
Cultural Theory from Humboldt University, Berlin. In the 1990s he was editor
of the magazine and publishing house Arkzin in Zagreb. He is a board mem-
ber of European Institute for Progressive Cultural Policies (eipcp), Vienna. His
essays and articles cover topics related to philosophy, politics, translation, linguis-
tics, the post-communist condition, and cultural and art criticism. He has co-
edited and authored several books, including: Zone des Übergangs: Vom Ende des
Postkommunismus [Zone of Transition: On the End of Post-communism] (2009);
Übersetzung: Das Versprechen eines Begriffs [Promises of a Concept] (2008);
and Der Schacht von Babel: Ist Kultur übersetzbar? [The Pit of Babel: Is Culture
Translatable?] (2004). He is currently Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Art and
Design, Bauhaus University, Weimar. Buden lives and works in Berlin.
 Index

A Base-superstructure relationship, 3
Academic reform, 311. See also
Bologna Declaration, the
Academic solidarity, 308
Adorno, Theodor, 167
Agamben, Giorgio, 46, 228, 229, 234,
347
Ahmed, Sara, 228
Albania, 247–250, 257, 308
Althusser, Louis, 123, 133
Anderson, Benedict, 108, 109
Antifascism, 328, 334, 340
Archer, Rory, 61, 105
Aristocracy, 126
Assemblage, 51, 331
Austria
Austria-Hungary, 50, 104. See also
Austro-Hungarian Empire
B Bosnia and Herzegovina
Balkan Spy, The, 10, 159, 161–163,
165, 167–169
Balkans, the, 85, 244–253, 256, 308
Barthesian, 332
Barthes, Roland, 324, 328, 341
Bata (factory), 103, 108, 113, 115
Bata, Tomaš, 103
Belgrade, 6, 144, 147, 149, 150,
160, 170, 174–177, 179–182,
184–186, 193, 266, 268, 279
Benjamin, Walter, 46, 52
Bentham, Jeremy, 47, 56, 57
Birmingham Centre for Contemporary
Cultural Studies, 219
Black Wave, the, 139–141, 146,
148–150, 154
Bled, 266–269
Bologna Declaration, the, 307. See also
Academic reform
Bologna Process, the, 304, 305, 307
Borovo (factory), 102, 103, 105, 108,
113–115
“Borovo” (factory newspaper), 103,
106, 108, 114, 115
Bosnia, 225–227, 235, 237, 238,
245, 246, 248, 249, 254, 255,
257, 336
Bourdieu, Pierre, 82, 87, 90, 127,
129, 130, 316

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 351

D. Jelača et al. (eds.), The Cultural Life of Capitalism in Yugoslavia,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-47482-3
352  Index
Bricolage, 218, 219
Buden, Boris, 13, 141, 152
Butler, Judith, 92, 246
C middle class classism, 10
Capital
cultural capital, 9, 62, 70, 82, 83,
85, 86, 91–94, 217
human capital, 304, 313
of human knowledge, 313
social capital, 90, 94
Capitalism
cognitive capitalism, 33
cultural capitalism, 6–8, 11, 12,
276, 278
neocapitalism, 5, 33
print-capitalism, 108, 109, 111
Cazi, Josip, 108, 109, 112, 113
Central Europe, 44, 93, 256
Chakrabarty, Dipesh, 58
China, 346
Class
bourgeois class, 66
class antagonism, 272, 332
class consciousness, 10, 107, 288
class division, 126, 127, 130, 132,
251, 328, 340
class exploitation, 286
class formation, 10, 83, 89, 109,
130
class identity, 74, 93
classism, 128, 131
class mobility, 65, 93
class relation, 4, 8–10, 31, 66, 74,
75, 83, 104, 106, 115, 122,
125–130, 132
class solidarity, 27
class struggle, 63, 104, 107, 109,
111, 113, 121–123, 125, 271,
335
class theory, 10, 122, 123, 127, 128
class voyeurism, 66
counter-class, 61
lower class, 88, 91
lower-middle class, 88, 91
middle class, 128
performance of class, 83
social class, 5, 7, 9, 88, 121, 123,
154
upper class, 88
upper-middle class, 88, 91, 92, 94
working class, 3, 9, 28, 61, 62, 64,
66, 67, 71, 73, 74, 88, 90–93,
105–111, 113, 146, 151, 174,
176, 214, 277, 288, 298, 311
Cold War, 2, 44, 45, 161, 173, 191,
204, 244, 246, 250, 253, 254,
348, 349
Colonialism, 54, 254
Commodity, 27, 218, 228, 230, 323
commodity exchange, 27, 230
commodity production, 156
Communism, 5, 161, 163, 237, 269,
276, 329, 348, 349
agrarian communism, 52
post-communism, 350
Communist International, the, 106
Communist Party, the, 3, 25, 103,
106, 161, 267, 309, 310, 336
Consumer choice, 188
Consumer(ist) society, 33, 192–194,
198
Consumerism, 3, 214–216, 220
Consumption, 2, 62, 70, 71, 81, 86,
90, 126–128, 168, 177, 191,
200, 213, 214, 219, 231
Crime fiction, 46–49, 52, 53, 55
Crisis. See Economic crisis
Croatia
Croatian nation, 289–291, 297
post-1990 Croatia, 285, 293
Socialist Republic of, 286

Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ),
290
Crvena Zastava, 195
Crvenkovski, Krste, 310
Cultural imperialism, 216
Cultural memory, 7, 347. See also
Memory
Cultural politics, 12, 285–288, 295,
298
Cultural sociology, 82
Cultural taste, 70, 86, 90, 91, 93
Cvjetanović, Boris, 68–70
Č
Čengić, Bato (Bahrudin), 140
Čvoro, Uroš, 4
D 128, 145, 165, 177, 183–185,
Deleuze, Gilles/Guattari, Pierre-Félix,
5, 47, 49, 52, 53, 130, 153
Deleuze, Gilles, 44
Democracy, 81, 174, 181, 187, 188,
303, 312, 317, 348, 350
Denationalization, 83
Discourse, 2, 8, 12, 24, 46, 61, 63,
73, 74, 82, 83, 85, 86, 93–95,
126, 132, 214, 216, 244–246,
252, 255–257, 265, 277, 303,
304, 306, 309–311, 313, 314,
316
art discourse, 87
folk discourse, 86, 88–90
neoliberal discourse, 12, 93, 256,
304–306, 312, 313, 317, 318
pop discourse, 90
public discourse, 7, 81, 84, 93, 193,
200, 249, 288, 306, 318
Distinction, 82–86, 91–95, 125–132,
168, 230, 233, 275
Index   353
Dita (factory), 11, 195, 203, 225–
228, 230, 232, 235–238
Divljan, Vlada, 14, 15
Djordjević, Puriša, 140
Docufiction, 141
Duda, Igor, 3, 61, 168, 192, 193,
195, 196, 198, 200
Du Gay, Paul, 4
E
Eastern Bloc, 2, 83, 174, 175, 250,
263
Eastern Europe, 2, 5, 23, 43, 81, 83,
84, 93, 173, 174, 191, 243, 244,
246, 250, 251, 253, 256, 257,
276, 285
Economy, 2–4, 10–13, 23, 27, 36,
43–45, 86, 114, 115, 124–126,
193, 202, 212, 213, 220,
227–235, 293, 305, 306, 308,
309, 313, 314, 316, 317, 348
economic crisis, 1, 71, 81, 83, 101,
147, 160, 165, 197, 202, 306,
313, 349
knowledge-based economy, 304,
313
market economy, 2, 3, 115, 145,
165, 167, 193, 194, 293
moral and affective economy, 76
political economy, 27, 44, 45, 47,
54, 121, 123–125, 127, 148,
317
Eco, Umberto, 328, 338
Education reform in Yugoslavia, 12,
310
Egalitarianism, 81, 85, 92, 193
Emancipation, 63, 103, 152, 235,
264, 265, 268–278, 346
homoemancipation, 245, 249, 250
Ethnicity, 10, 82–84, 88, 91–93, 111
354  Index
Ethno-nationalism, 12, 323, 335,
340. See also Ethnic nationalism;
Nationalism
European Union, 7, 12, 85, 95, 253,
255, 256, 305
Exceptionalism, 43, 45, 256
social exceptionalism, 256
Yugoslav exceptionalism, 9, 43, 45,
339
Existentialism, 141
F Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 37,
Factory newspapers, 10, 101, 105,
106, 108, 113, 114. See also
Borovo
Fascism, 108, 153, 329, 331, 334
Fashion, 49, 51, 54, 111, 194,
211–213, 216–220
Feminism, 12, 263–265, 267–269,
271–274, 276–278
neo-feminism, 271
socialist feminism, 276, 278
state-feminism, 269
Yugoslav feminism, 264, 265, 269,
273, 276, 278
Fetishism, 9, 125
First World War, 198
Fordism, 10, 103, 108
Ford, John, 51, 103
Foucault, Michel, 47, 233, 338
Free market, 2, 295, 304, 348
French Revolution. See Revolution
Freud, Sigmund, 48, 52
G
Gaj, Ljudevit, 110, 111
Gavrić, Branko, 13–15
Gender, 9, 10, 66, 82, 84, 88, 89,
91–94, 152, 230, 233, 235,
253–257, 275, 276
Gibson-Graham, J.K., 1, 4–8, 13, 84,
94
Girls’ magazines, 211, 216–218
Godina, Karpo, 140
Graffiti, 11, 330. See also Street art
Grgas, Stipe, 2, 9, 32, 142
Guest worker (gastarbeiter), 155
Guiraud, Pierre, 328
H
Hall, Stuart, 6, 92, 101, 328
141
Heralić, Arif, 66
Heterogeneity, 11, 54
History, 12, 16, 27, 30, 32, 34, 37,
45, 46, 48, 49, 53, 63, 84, 85,
102–104, 107, 108, 115, 123,
124, 142, 161, 165, 167, 184,
204, 210, 229, 231, 234, 250,
275, 278, 290, 336, 346, 347,
349, 350
historicizing, 13, 116
Homo economicus, 47, 227
Homonationalism, 244, 246, 257
Homophobia, 244, 254, 255, 257
Horvat, Branko, 45, 47, 114, 162
Housing Policy in Yugoslaiva
single-family housing, 173, 174,
176–188, 179
collective housing, 175, 176,
179–182, 184, 187
Humanitarianism, 246, 247, 251
Hybridity, 5, 6, 15, 84
Hypercorporeality, 9, 65
I
Identity, 12, 24, 38, 62, 66, 82, 84,
90, 122, 175, 218, 219, 232,
236, 246, 252, 255, 268, 336

Imperialism, 163, 168, 255
Industrial Revolution. See Revolution
Inequality, 81, 94, 152, 165, 238,
268, 272
Informbiro, 330
International Monetary Fund (IMF),
165, 167
Investigative journalism, 141
Iron curtain, 174, 175, 178, 191, 263,
264, 276, 278
Islam, 248, 249, 254, 257
Islamophobia, 246, 255, 257
J Lepa Brena, 72
Jaklin, Josip, 111
Jakovina, Tvrtko, 6, 23
Jameson, Fredric, 7, 12, 15, 39, 167,
340, 350
Jelača, Dijana, 7, 82, 84
K
Kafana singer, 9, 62–65, 71, 73, 74
Kangrga, Milan, 34, 35
Karanović, Srđan, 6
Kardelj, Edvard, 27, 177, 184
Katunarić, Vjeran, 295
Kidrič, Boris, 27
Kingdom of Yugoslavia, the, 103, 104
Kirn, Gal, 10, 140, 165, 234
Kolanović, Masa, 7, 71, 84, 192
Koselleck, Reinhart, 349
Kosovo, 149, 245–250, 252–255, 257
Kovačević, Dušan, 159, 163
Kragujevac, 195
Krleža, Miroslav, 140
''Kulturni radnik''
(“CulturalWorker”), 33, 35
Kusturica, Emir, 199
Index   355
L
Labor, 11, 15, 23, 25, 28–31, 33,
34, 36, 37, 39, 53, 54, 63–67,
69, 72–74, 101–115, 147–149,
155, 192, 201, 213, 227, 230,
231, 237, 254, 270, 272–274,
307–311, 313, 314
cultural history of, 101
emancipation of, 63, 103
labor movement, 117
League of Communists, 143, 145,
193, 266, 288, 333
Le Normand, Brigitte, 10, 11, 53, 70,
74, 174–176, 178, 180, 184, 192
Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 219
LGBT rights, 12, 244, 245, 247–253,
256, 257
Liberal democracy, 250, 263, 285,
286, 349
Liminality, 64, 65, 67, 71–73
LJ
Ljubljana, 86, 185, 324, 327, 330,
331, 333–337, 339, 340
M
Machiavelli, Niccolò, 232
Makavejev, Dušan, 140, 152
Maribor, 86, 333, 334, 337
Market reform, 10, 142–145, 149,
167, 177, 184, 244
Markotić, Božidar, 108
Marx, Karl (and Engels, Friedrich),
10, 24, 25, 124, 125, 127, 148,
287, 288
Marxism, 26, 31, 45, 46, 125, 292
cultural Marxism, 6
Masochism, 47, 48, 51–55
Materialism
356  Index
empirical materialism, 124
McRobbie, Angela, 11, 211–213, 216,
217
Melancholia, 56
Memory, 4, 7, 44, 47, 233, 317, 325,
330, 339, 346, 347
Mészáros, István, 38
Metaphor, 6, 15, 25, 44, 50, 53–55,
64, 71, 304, 313–315, 318, 335
Metonymy, 44, 50, 53–55
Migration, 94, 155, 168, 184, 192,
200, 201, 203, 204, 233
Miller, D.A., 46, 47
Mill, John Stuart, 47, 51
Miner/miners, 9, 62–71, 73, 74
Modernization, 50, 52, 54, 65, 103,
168, 175, 179, 192–195, 199,
203, 254
modernity, 46, 48, 103, 167, 182,
187, 194, 199, 233, 234, 249,
253, 256, 346
Multiculturalism, 244, 245, 250,
338–340
N I Am Dead and Pale
Nationalism, 95, 108, 162, 168, 250,
323, 333
National-Liberation Struggle, 288,
331. See also Peoples’ Liberation
Struggle, the
Nation-building, 110
Neoliberalism, 7, 61, 81, 85, 234,
303, 304, 318, 323, 335, 338,
340
neoliberal, 1, 2, 4, 7, 9–13, 81, 82,
84, 93, 121, 127, 132, 155,
232, 236, 238, 244–246, 249,
254–257, 303, 304, 306, 309,
311, 313, 315–318, 339, 340,
346, 350
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 16, 347
Non-Alignment Movement, the, 161
Nora, Pierre, 345, 346
Nostalgia, 4, 8
O
Obama, Barack, 243
October Revolution. See revolution
Oikos, 227–238
Operationalization, 304, 306
Other, 1, 6, 23, 25, 33, 106, 111
Othering, 252, 256
P
Panopticism, 45–47
Papić, Krsto, 74, 140, 276
Paranoia, 8, 10, 55, 162, 167, 169
Paris Commune, the, 234
Patriarchy, 233, 273, 276, 277
Patterson, Patrick Hayden, 173, 194,
214, 215, 220
Pavličić, Pavao, 48, 49, 51, 53, 55
Pavlović, Živojin, 10, 64, 139–141,
144, 148, 152, 154. See also When
Peoples’ Liberation Struggle, the
(narodnooslobodilačka borba
[NOB]), 234
Performance, 86, 88, 234, 315
Periphery, 64
semi-periphery, 103
Petrović, Aleksandar, 140
Petrović, Gajo, 27
Petrović, Tanja, 9
Pijade, Moša, 25, 26
Polis, 227, 229–233, 236, 238
Political struggle, 7, 95, 339, 346
Pop-culture, 210
Popular culture, 3, 70, 86, 88, 93, 94,
113, 130, 192, 202, 209, 216,
325

Populism, 81, 95, 101
Postsocialism, 10, 13, 81–84, 86, 141,
143, 203, 233
Praxis group, 3, 24, 292
Precarity, 4, 55, 148, 257
Privatization, 83, 101, 102, 166, 225,
226, 228, 235, 238, 255, 305,
309, 348
Production, the means of, 28, 30,
37, 177, 226, 238, 285. See also
Commodity production
Proletariat, 130, 151
proletarization, 109
Psychoanalysis, 47, 48, 52, 53, 268
Psychopolitics, 56
Puhovski, Žarko, 27, 273
Punk, 15, 169, 337
R Semiology, 327, 328
Racism, 151, 152, 251, 255, 257
Radnički Prijatelj ("The Workers
Friend"), 110
Raison d’État, 44, 46, 47, 52, 54
Ranciére, Jacques, 125, 140
Rebellion, 150, 317, 323. See also
Subversion
Receivership, 115
Recontextualization, 304
Reification, 84, 90
Representative democracy, 288, 289,
291, 317
Revisionism, 4, 168, 336, 339
Revolution
French Revolution, 47
industrial Revolution, 54
october Revolution, 234
Rhetoric, 94, 130, 163, 164, 243,
257, 289, 304, 312, 314, 316,
346, 347
Rhizome, 44, 50
Rijeka, 198, 199, 201, 204, 294, 330,
333, 339, 340
Index   357
Ritam zločina (Rhythm of a Crime), 48
Romania, 304, 308
Rusinow, Dennison I, 15, 192, 193,
210
S
de Sade, Marquis, 49
"Saradnik" ("The Associate"), 108
Sarajevo, 196, 247, 248, 334–336
Second World War, 44, 63, 65, 108,
112, 153, 161, 164, 168, 174,
175, 179, 187, 198, 267, 288
Self-management, 2, 3, 9–11, 13,
44–48, 51, 52, 54, 63, 102, 106,
114, 140, 145–148, 152–155,
161, 165, 167, 168, 188, 214,
265, 270, 273, 277, 286–292,
296, 298
Serbia, 114, 159, 160, 162, 168, 181,
217
Sexism, 275
Sexuality, 53, 67, 230, 233, 252, 255,
256, 268
Slavonia, 109
Sloterdijk, Peter, 56
Slovenia, 63, 81–87, 92, 128–130,
184, 198, 202, 203, 267, 309,
324, 325, 327, 330, 335, 337,
340
Social class, 9, 13, 69, 109, 121, 129,
166, 247, 269. See also Class
Socialism
laissez-faire socialism, 193
market socialism, 141, 147, 161,
167, 168, 174, 177, 181, 188,
210, 275
postsocialism, 10, 13, 82–86, 141,
143, 156, 233
state socialism, 7, 44, 45, 52, 173,
174, 213, 250, 285
358  Index
Yugoslav socialism, 3, 12, 16, 32,
45, 47, 51, 52, 54, 63, 64, 66,
68, 74, 103, 105, 106, 131,
140, 145, 159, 162–166, 168,
177, 188, 203, 264, 270, 273,
285, 286, 339
Socialist Alliance of Working People of
Yugoslavia, the, 267, 288
Socialist federalism, 333
Socialist modernism, 140, 154
Socialist realism, 15, 140
Socialist Workers’ Party, the, 103
Solidarity, 15, 27, 69, 111, 147, 164,
168. See also Class solidarity
Southeastern Europe, 12
Sovereignty, 2, 45, 254, 289, 290
Soviet Union, the (USSR), 2, 161,
192, 195
Spanish Civil War, 234
Stakhanovism, 65
Stalin, Joseph Vissarionovich, 2, 44,
140, 161, 162, 167, 168, 330
Stalinism, 145
Stasis, 226–229, 233, 234, 238
State socialism, 6, 44, 45, 52, 174,
213, 250, 285
Statism, 44, 54
Stojković, Danilo “Bata”, 160, 170
Street art, 11See also Graffiti
Stubbs, Paul, 61
Subversion, 218, 220. See also
Rebellion
Surplus
of labor, 28–31, 33, 34, 36–39, 64,
74, 102, 103
of value, 28
Sutlić, Vanja, 9, 24, 25, 27–33, 39
Suvin, Darko, 3, 4, 26, 27, 338
Š Verdery, Katherine, 15
Šuvar, Stipe, 311
Šuvar’s reform, 311
T
Tadić, Ljubomir, 27, 48–53, 55
Tadić, Zoran, 48
Tamás, Gáspár Miklós, 26
Technocracy, 145
Thatcher, Margaret, 346
"Tina", 11, 210. See also Girls maga-
zines
Tito, Josip Broz, 2, 44, 266, 330, 331,
334, 336, 337, 340
Titoism, 163
Totalitarianism, 141, 167, 348, 350
Transition, 6, 12, 51, 104, 114, 115,
122, 128, 131, 144, 145, 152,
246, 253, 293, 298, 305, 323,
338, 339, 348–350
Trieste, 195–198, 202, 215
Trnje, 50, 52, 53, 55
Tuđman, Franjo, 290, 294–296
Turbo folk
newly composed folk music
(NCFM), 75
Turković, Hrvoje, 58
Tuzla, 225, 237
U
Udine Agreement, 197, 198
Ugrešić, Dubravka, 294
United Nations (the UN), 267
United States (the US), 211, 243–
247, 249, 251, 253–257
Utilitarianism, 47, 51
Utopia, 13, 155, 178, 272, 338, 346
V
Vukovar, 103, 113
 Index   359

W Yugoslav neo-avant-garde, 142

Western Europe, 178, 179, 181, 192, Yugoslav New Left, 3
210, 255 Yugoslav Radio Television, 199
When I Am Dead and Pale (Kad Yugoslav Republic Day, 211
budem mrtav i beo), 10. See also Yugoslav socialism, 2, 12, 15, 32, 45,
Pavlović, Živojin 47, 51, 52, 54, 63–66, 69, 71,
Whiteread, Rachel, 347 73–75, 103
Williams, Raymond, 104
Woodward, Susan, 2, 107, 149, 184
Working people (radni ljudi), 28, 71, Z
146, 148, 155, 187, 267, 270, Zagreb, 11, 27, 35, 48–50, 53, 110,
286–290, 292, 297, 298 111, 183, 198, 215, 293, 294,
World Bank, the, 101, 102 308, 309, 312
Zlatar, Andrea, 295
Žilnik, Želimir, 114, 140, 141, 146
Y Žunec, Ozren, 36, 37, 307, 309, 310
Youth Day, the, 211
Yugoslavia
post-Yugoslav, 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10,
12, 36, 71, 81, 84, 94, 104,
132, 155, 159, 169, 228, 244,
286, 298, 311, 323, 325, 328,
338–340