RINGVORLESUNG AM 19. November 2024, 18.30 UHR (BERLIN)
Gal Kirn: Contested Heritage of Yugoslav Liberation Struggle in Reverse: From Postsocialist Primitive Accumulation to Partisan Self-Reflexivity of Counter-Archive
The destruction of socialist and federal Yugoslavia did not follow a typical transition process of the 1990s: there was no happy and peaceful transition from socialism to capitalist democracy. Rather, as Boris Buden once claimed, the (post)Yugoslav transition can only be described in one word: a catastrophe. For our focus on »identity and heritage«, I will show how this catastrophe unfolded in the »mnemonic wars« of the late 1980s, which succeeded in weaponizing and nationalising ethnic victimhood and decontextualizing the liberation struggle. The anti-fascist legacy and the memory of the Second World War were increasingly called into question by revisionist ideology. This ideological shift was not only a matter of academic practise (Historikerstreit ala Yugoslave), but prepared the ground for the ethnic wars of the 1990s. What I called a process of »primitive accumulation of nationalist memory« (Kirn, Partisan Counter Archive, 2020) preceded the Marxist hypothesis of the neoliberal transformation of capital. The right-wing revisionism of history and memory led to a massive iconoclasm of everything related to the anti-fascist and Yugoslav past, to changes in school textbooks and museums, and to an open rehabilitation of local fascism.
In contrast to these terrible developments, I would like to invite us to reflect on the material, anti-fascist/partisan struggles of the past through Benjamin’s lens of the »tradition of the oppressed« and to rethink the emancipatory struggles of the past. In the second part of the lecture, I will give an overview of the Yugoslav liberation struggle during the Second World War, which was not only a negative struggle – against the fascist occupation – but rather a transformative struggle that took place on a military, political and cultural level. Mass cultural activities in the liberated territories brought the masses onto the stage of history, and what is fascinating for our purposes, already created a series of artistic works, from poems, songs, graphics to photographs and even films -that we will look into-, which developed a highly self-reflexive modality that responded to the question: how can such a (partisan) rupture/revolution be remembered? At a time when such cultural activities were considered impossible and only served propaganda purposes, we can discover an impressive Partisan counter-archive that combated the specific (non-) »identity«, the heterogeneous and multiple belongings of Partisan subjectivity. The new Partisan Yugoslavia was not based on the formula of a nation in one state where an ethnic identity dominates over minorities (mind you, Yugoslavia was neither a language nor a nation), but on multinational anti-fascist solidarity. This characteristic can play an important role when we reconsider and reflect on the materiality of the partisans inscribed in selected commemorative practices and monuments that emerged after liberation.
Dr. Gal Kirn (1980) is a research associate and assistant professor of sociology of culture at the University of Ljubljana, where he leads a project Protests, artistic practices and culture of memory in the post-Yugoslav context (2021-2025) and also works on a project of digital archive of resistance of Ljubljana. He is alsoaffiliated with Södertörn University (Sweden) with a research project Distrusting Monuments. He published two monographs: Partisan Ruptures (Pluto Press, 2019) and Partisan Counter-Archive. Retracing the Ruptures of Art and Memory in the Yugoslav People’s Liberation Struggle (De Gruyter, 2020). Kirn also recently co-edited (with Natasha Ginwala and Niloufar Tajeri) a volume Nights of the Dispossessed. Riots Unbound (Columbia Press, 2021), and with Marian Burchardt Beyond Neoliberalism (Palgrave, 2017).
Vortragsort:
Universitätsbibliothek der TU und UDK Berlin
Fasanenstraße 88
Raum Bib 014
Videokonferenz-Link:
https://tu-berlin.zoom.us/j/66001454281?pwd=gzHbq0tKpCu73RKathtuN6d7jMZfOx.1
Meeting ID: 660 0145 4281
Passcode: 123456 |
