4 6 1 n 1 n 2 56 Anthropos Revija za filozofijo in psihologijo Journal of Philosophy & Psychology issn0587-5161 | e-issn2630-4082 https://hippocampus.si/issn/2630-4082 Glavni urednik Editor in Chief Tomaž Grušovnik, University of Primorska, Slovenia, tomaz.grusovnik@pef.upr.si Sourednice Associate Editors Vesna Jug, University of Primorska, Slovenia Nejc Plohl, University of Maribor, Slovenia Reingard Spannring, University of Innsbruck, Austria Urednik recenzij in tajnik revije Book Review Editor and Journal Secretary Igor Cerne, Maribor Public Library, Slovenia Urednica tematske številke Editor of Thematic Issue Ksenija Vidmar Horvat, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia Uredniški odbor Editorial Board Kristian Bjřrkdahl, University of Oslo, Norway Nina Cvar, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia Petra Dolenc, University of Primorska, Slovenia Russell B. 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Anthropos is published by the Slovenian Philosophical Society and Slovenian Psychologists’ Association with the support of the Slovene Research and Innovation Agency and University of Primorska, Faculty of Education. Anthropos 56 (1) | issn0587-5161 | e-issn2630-4082 Kazalo Contents Rememorizing Memories Ksenija Vidmar Horvat ·5 Rememorising Memories of War and Transition Hypochondria as Collective Syndrome? Nationalist-Conservative Hegemony in the Balkans, and How to Fight It Igor Štiks ·15 Art and Revolt: From the Socialist Republic of Slovenia to Today Daša Tepina and Petja Grafenauer ·37 Postajanje tovarišev v boju: umetnost in skrb za necloveški svet ter partizanska subjektivnost v jugoslovanskem narodnoosvobodilnem boju Gal Kirn ·59 ‘Revolution is Learned Faster than Culture’: On the Amateur-Professional Relationship in the Artistic Legacies of the People’s Liberation Struggle Ana Hofman ·79 Literature Builds Children, Children Build Literature: Literary Education in Socialist Yugoslavia and Children’s Literary Agency Katja Kobolt ·97 Memorising through Comics/Graphic Novels Graphic Memories of Yugoslav Wars: Rat by Đo & Dju and Vojna by Goran Duplancic Tanja Petrovic ·127 Engaging Miki Muster’s Legacy: Remembering Zvitorepec (Slyboots) in ContemporarySlovenia Nina Cvar and Zora Žbontar ·151 Saudek and Macourek’s Muriel: (After)Lives of a Czechoslovak Anti-Normalisation Superheroine Robin R. Mudry ·171 Alan Ford Goes to Yugoslavia: From Tautology to Ideology Mirt Komel ·197 https://doi.org/10.26493/2630-4082.56_1 Miscellanea Effect of Cognitive Reflection on Escalation of Commitment Petra Rekar and Mitja Perat ·213 Baudrillard,Ballard, Virilio: potencial integralne nesrece vdobisimulacije Branko Žlicar · 227 In memoriam | Milestones in Nenad Mišcevic’s Philosophical Career (1950–2024) Janez Bregant ·237 Recenzija | Vita Poštuvan in Mojca Cerce (ur.), Psiholog v dilemi: eticne vsebine in eticna zavest v praksi Samanta Hervol in Lucia Rojs ·241 Ta številka je izšla z delno podporo raziskovalnega projekta Protesti, umetniške prakse in kultura spomina v post-jugoslovanskem kontekstu (arisj6-3144) Anthropos 56 (1): 5–12 | issn0587-5161 | e-issn2630-4082 Rememorizing Memories Ksenija Vidmar Horvat University of Ljubljana, Slovenia ksenija.vidmarhorvat@ff.uni-lj.si ©2024Ksenija Vidmar Horvat This edited volumepresents a diverse body ofworkdealing withcultural legacies of socialism. It covers a wide range of topics (from communist comics to partisan art, the avantgarde movement and children’s litera­ture,etc.)whichcouldbe,moreorlesscomfortably,insertedintothefield of(post-socialist)memorystudies.Post-socialistmemorystudies,afresh branchofthewell-situatedmemorystudies(AssmanandCzaplicka1995), itself has been an assorted conglomerate of (mainly) case studies of how, in different regions of the former socialist Eastern Europe, communities in transition towards Western-style democracy have remembered their immediate past (Berdahl 2010; Bernhard and Kubik 2014; Mihelj 2016). The quest for the memory itself has played a critical role in this intellec­tualendeavour. Early on,TodorKuljic(2017),aleadingscholarintheex­Yugoslavregion,warnedhowthecultureofremembrance wouldbecome a prime stage on which the emerging ideologies of nationalism and his­toric revisionism would play out their scripts. Considering the growing atmosphere of ‘anti-fascism as a useless past’ in the post-Yugoslav space, asKuljicobservantlyputit,aswellasapresentdaypan-Europeanculture of amnesia as concerns the lessons ofwwii, the early fears have proved to be far from a futuristic paranoia. In the last decade, they have formed the backbone of a new politicalcondition in Europe, and, with the rise of far-right authoritarianleaders, acrossthe globe. This new reality calls for arenewedchapterindealingwiththememoriesonsocialism.Indeed,we are in dire need of critically rethinking – and intellectually rememoriz­ing – the (post)socialist memory itself. This collection of essays provides some signals as how to embark on this task. The initialinterest for the socialistworldwhichfollowedthe fallof the Berlin wall focused predominantly on popular sentiments and daily life (Svašek 2006). Marginal, sometimes bizarre cultural practices of living behind the ‘Iron Curtain,’ asinDrakulic’s How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed (1992), debunked the monolithic view of the social­ist bloc;insome cases,asin Cinderella Goes to Market, the stereotypes https://doi.org/10.26493/2630-4082.56.5-12 Ksenija Vidmar Horvat persisted (Einhorn 1993). A rather brief period of this investigative en­gagement, with its focus on living with thrift but also on practices of re­sistance, coloured the previously grey zones of passivity and subjugation withbrushesofvitalityandagency(ReidandCrowley2000).Avantgarde artmovementsinsocialismformedanadditionalprovocativeinsightinto aWest-EastcriticaldialogueduringtheColdwarera(Bryzgel2017).Fora moment, it seemed that post-socialist studies could become a new cross-disciplinaryglobalparadigm(Forrester,Zaborowska,andGapova2004), open to combining its own research agenda with post-colonial studies, critical feminist theory, cultural studies and cosmopolitan/multicultural topics (Jansen 2008; Spasic 2011; Vidmar Horvat 2012). Soon,anewstrandofresearchfollowed,enmeshedintheinvestigation of collective yearning for the past. After the initial widespread eupho­ria collapsed into passages of disappointments, topics of nostalgia pre­vailed.Post-communistnostalgia(TodorovaandGille2010),Yugonostal­gia (Volcic 2007; Velikonja 2009), Titostalgia (Velikonja 2008), and Os-talgia(Boyer2006;2010)tookthecentre-stageofbothpopularandschol­arlyattention. Socialism,throughthisrevisit,emergedasanewpromised terrain, worthy to be re-claimed, re-imagined, refashioned: indeed, re-memorized. It appeared, though, that the appeal of the socialist past was limited to the region. While the West turned towards its own imagined past,animaginary land of retrotopia (Bauman 2017),in the East,we set­tled for a nostalgic constellation. The retrotopian citizen has dreamt of a nationalistfantasyofethno-racialpurityinadeglobalizedworldofsmall-town communities. Hoping to regain a sense of dignity and agency (Pil­brow2010),thepost-socialistnostalgiccitizenbeginstolookbacktopast promises of social justice and solidarity. This, of course, is a caricature reading of the emotional landscape which crystalized in both the West and the East once the fantasy of the end of history lost its persuasive political force. Regardless, it is a testi­mony of an impasse where the anxiety-ridden struggle for the future is replaced by regression into the idealization of the past. In this sense, if judged merely by their commitment to revisit social­ism, the contributions presented here could be read as yet another exer­cise to providecontenttopost-socialiststudiesin order torespondto the demand for alternatives. They explore, charged with the individual in­tellectual curiosity of the next generation, cases of cultural creativity and artistic sabotages of the socialist political regime of the previous genera-tion.Importantly,in the second aspect, they departfrom the main epis­temiccentreofpost-socialistmemorystudies,namelyitsambitiontoun-and re-cover aspects of past life to assure a more accurate picture of the post-wwiihistory of the region. To the contrary, the binding thread of the papers in this bloc is that they are neither concerned with the history as such,nor arethey explicitlyregional. To begin with the latter, a tangible predicament of the post-socialist memory has been that it appeared to be a region-specific research topic. Involuntarily, this reiterated the Cold War academic legacy of area stud­ies. A product of the 1950s, area studies compartmentalized the global geopolitical map with the ambition to make the world ideologically gov­ernable whenisolatedincapsulesofregionalidentities. Thesocialistbloc presented one such capsule, ‘frozen’ in its ownpoliticalhistoriesand cul­turalidiosyncrasies.Uponthe ‘defrosting’ decadeofthe1990s,thenarra­tiveof‘catchingup’totheWestwasborn,suggestinganevolutionaryview of global history whereby the East needed to let go of its own patholo­gies, developed during the socialist experiment (Štiks and Horvat 2015; Vidmar Horvat 2020). Retroactively, this view affirmed a perspective of post-wwiiEurope, divided into two halves with no cross-border com­munication nor critical exchange of ideas. TheWestand theEastof the Cold War era,asSlovene writer Marjan RožancindicatedsoonafterthecollapseoftheBerlinwall,bothstrivedto definethetypeofmodernitywhichwouldemancipatetheindividual.The research in this volume confirms the point. In their analyses of comics, Cvar and Žbontar (2024), Mudry (2024), and Komel (2024) uncover an intriguing terrain of a hidden politicalconversation performed by comic artists in either visual appropriation of Western cultural codes (comic books about Slyboots, Muriel) orbydirecttranslation of the comic book intoanewideologicalcontext(AlanFord). ImportingWesternreferences into the socialist cultural text allowed the artists to conduct a secretive debate with their respective socialist regimes. Considering his compli­cated relation with the socialist project, as Cvar and Žbontar refresh the memory, MikiMuster’svisual‘westernization’ ofhiscomiccharacters of­fered a subtle ground to open up as well as disturb the ruling political space. In Czechoslovakia, comic artists Saudek and Macourek, the au­thorsofthegraphicnovel Muriel, usedasimilarstrategyofappropriating American comics’ visual references to interfere with the communist jar­gon and its underlying cultural politics. It was the implicationof the dis­tance fromthestate-authorizeddiscourseofWesternbourgeoisdegener­ation, implicit in Saudek’s visual rephrasing of the American superhero Ksenija Vidmar Horvat plot (Mudry 2024). At approximately the same time, on the other side of the Yugoslav border with the West, Alan Ford by LucianoSecchiand Robert Raviola unravelled a satirical dialogue with capitalism. Yet, when translated for the Yugoslav publics, the same text of ridicule became a comic critique of socialism. ‘How can one satire of society become such an effective ironic critique of two such different ideologies?’ Komel asks (2024, 198). Through a detailed analysis of the work of the translation itself, the author argues that the perverse logic of capitalism, where the poor are exploited in favour of the rich, and the perverse logic of social­ism, where the poor are exploited by themselves, in a cross-border set­ting, encapsulate the ‘paradoxes or embodiment of class struggle itself’ (p. 201). Cross-border trafficking with cultural references allowed for the artic­ulation of politicaloppositionwhich disturbed the ideological landscape in a controlled way – and safely below the sensory system of the repres­sive state. In the Yugoslav translation of Alan Ford, it was only implicit that the comic book was a satire of socialist society, Komel writes (2024, 204) ‘as if the comic book enabled an indirect satisfaction of an uncon­scious desire to ridicule a system that allowed none.’ Unfolding under the historical contexts of the Soviet occupation, in a similar way, Saudek published a comic story ‘full of scathing socio-political and ideological criticism, [...] full of irony, inter-iconic and -medial citations and West­ern, mostly American references.’ Muriel’s universe includes versions of a different utopian future where communism seems to have been fully realised,’ Mudry (2024, 173) observes. Ifoneistoaccepttheauthor’spoint,theentanglementwithWesternvi­sualculturewasnotabouttheidealizationoftheculturalspaceacrossthe border, but a form of artistic exploitation to articulate a different utopia in the East. Tepina and Grafenauer’s (2024) mapping of activist aesthet­ics, starting in the 1960s, corroborates the point. ‘The majority of avant-garde poetics were based on the global desire to change the world and use art to establish a different system of both values and relationships,’ the authors write (p. 39). Again, global aesthetic avantgarde references were mobilised to critique bourgeois cultural and sexual hypocrisies of the ruling party (Šuvakovic 2007 in Vidmar Horvat 2020). In the post-socialist political constellation, the creative energies of the socialist ex-perimentationwithanalternativecommunistfuture,whichunfoldedvia the contact with the Western iconography, have been supressed under the overarching mantle of depoliticization and amnesia. Critical poten­tialsoftheevolvingalternativepublicsphereinpost-socialismhavefaced pop iconographic transformation into a cultural curiosity of past artistic struggles to survive amidst the socialist aesthetic regimes. Questions of how the creative art of the West and the East served each other as a refer­ence pointtocarryonthedialoguewithoneself,slipawayfromthe radar of remembrance. The cross-regional cooperation, be it deliberate or involuntary, in critiquing the two systems of political subjugation, sits uncomfortably amidst the narrative hegemony of the transitology discourse (Štiks and Horvat2015;VidmarHorvat2020).Itcomplicatestheclear-cutlandscape of the Cold War border and its post-socialist passage to the debordering towards the Western norm of emancipation. The same holds true when consideringthehistoricaltravelofthemodernEasternEuropeancitizens from their socialist to the post-socialist constitution. The contributions by Kirn (2024), Kobolt (2024), and Tepina and Grafenauer (2024) all speak of the legacies of civic engagement which stand in sharp opposi­tion tothemoral,politicaland cultural spaceofthe post-socialistneolib­eral subject. With her focus on children’s literary education, unfolding through practices of cultural participation and agency building, Kobolt contests the leading commemorative narrative of socialism, which relies on the stereotypical image of collectivization of the socialist youth. In literary education, Kobolt writes (2024, 118), ‘promoting literary agency does notappearonlyassomeactivity usefulineducation processes orin spare time, but as one of the vital aspects of literary systems and also of other cultural and artistic production fields and by that also for broader cultural and social development.’ By reflecting on the past modes of lit­erary education in reference to cultural agency, she adds a fragment to the understanding of the multiplicity of aesthetic education in socialist Yugoslavia as well as illuminating the focus on participatory politics in cultural production. Kobolt’spointisreinforced bybothKirn’s andHofman’sresearch. Kirn (2024) returns to the partisan legacy. He expands on his previous work on the partisan transformative politics of solidarity though creativity, thistime focusingonanonymous cultural voicesofoftenilliterate and/or poorly educated partisan artists. Engaged in multiple artistic practices, from theatre, drawings, poems and film scripts, the resistance fighters against fascist forces also developed a peculiar solidarity with nature and animals. Identified by Kirn as partisan ecology, this new poetics and ethics of co-habitation contributed to an evolution of political subjectiv­ Ksenija Vidmar Horvat ity which, Kirn proposes, could be re-integrated into present ecological struggles for global justice. Ana Hofman’s (2024) investigation of amateur cultural activities in the post-wwiisocialist context of cultural pedagogical work unveils a com­pelling picture of democratic participation of people across a social and cultural spectrum oftalent and skill, regardlessof educationbackground and professional artistic expertise. Considering the recent ‘rediscovery’ of the self-taught artists and indigenous art by the established museum across the globe, this socialist legacy of authenticity as concerns cul­turalexpression,coupledwiththeoverallprojectofthestate-runsocialist emancipation, provides an interesting entry point to confront the hege­monic boundaries of art, class and (cultural) capital. Last but not least, Tanja Petrovic(2024)and Igor Štiks(2024)observe theeclipseofsocialismintothepost-socialistideologicallandscape. Štiks callsithypochondria,aprofoundlyfearfulobsessionwithpurityandcon­tamination, which builds on racial and ethnic cleansing of both the eth­nic others, and the socialist identity which was built precisely on erasing ethnic, religious and cultural divisions. Tanja Petrovic (2024, 131) returns to the post-Yugoslav comics which complicatethe neat division between ‘good boys,’ modern, listening to rock music and having ‘western’ values, while ‘the enemy’ is homogenized, presented in a stereotypical, caricat­ural way as primitive, dirty, cruel and grotesque. Her analysis proposes the need for a nuanced approach to the experience of war trauma, suffer and sacrifice which cuts across the warring lines and, again, contest the purifying discourse of the post-socialist nationalism. To conclude, the present volume provides an entry into the annals of post-socialistmemory (studies) in a waywhichsurpasses the intellectual care for the historiographic complexity of socialism. By contesting the linesofdemarcationofbothspaceandtime,theyserveasapotentground tostartrememorizingthememory –awayfromthelegaciesofthetransi­tional narrative and back towards the chapters of socialist history which were concerned with the future: subversive, creative, and emancipated from both the West and the socialist East. References Assman,Jan,andJohnCzaplicka.1995.‘CollectiveMemoryandCulturalIden­ tity.’ New German Critique (65): 125–133. Bauman, Zygmunt. 2017. Retrotopia. Cambridge: Polity. Bernhard, Michael, and Jan Kubik, eds. 2014. Twenty Years after Communism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bryzgel, Amy. 2017. Performing Arts in Eastern Europe. Manchester: Manch­ester University Press. Berdahl,Daphne. 2010. OntheSocial Life of Postsocialism: Memory,Consump­tion, Germany. Bloomington,in: Indiana University Press. Boyer, Dominic. 2006. ‘Ostalgie and the Politics of the Future in Eastern Ger­many.’ Public Culture 18 (2): 361–381. ———. 2010. ‘From Algos to Autonomous: Nostalgic Eastern Europe as Post-Imperial Mania.’ In Post-Communist Nostalgia, edited by Maria Todorova and Zsuzsa Gille, 17–28. New York and Oxford: Berghahn. Cvar,Nina,andZoraŽbontar. 2024. ‘EngagingMikiMuster’sLegacy:Remem­bering Zvitorepec (Slyboots) in Contemporary Slovenia.’ Anthropos 56 (1): 151–169. Drakulic, Slavenka. 1992. How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed. London: Hutchinson. Einhorn, Barbara. 1993. Cinderella Goes to Market: Citizenship, Gender, and Women’s Movements in East Central Europe. London: Verso. Forrester,Sibelan,MagdalenaZaborowska,andElenaGapova,eds.2004.Over the Wall/After the Fall: Post-Communist Cultures through and East-West Gaze. Bloomington,in: Indiana University Press. Hofman, Ana. 2024. ‘“Revolution is Learned Faster than Culture”: On the Amateur-Professional Relationship in the Artistic Legacies of the People’s Liberation Struggle.’ Anthropos 56 (1): 79–95. Jansen, Stef, 2008. ‘Cosmopolitan Opening and Closures in Post-Yugoslav Antinationalism.’ In Cosmopolitanism in Practice, edited by Magdalena Novickaand MariaRovisco, 75–92. Aldershot:Ashgate. Kirn, Gal. 2024. ‘Postajanje tovarišev v boju: umetnost in skrb za necloveški svet ter partizanska subjektivnost v jugoslovanskem narodnoosvobodil­nem boju.’ Anthropos 56 (1): 59–78. Kobolt,Katja.2024.‘LiteratureBuildsChildren,ChildrenBuildLiterature:Lit­erary Education in Socialist Yugoslavia and Children’s Literary Agency.’ Anthropos 56 (1): 97–123. Komel,Mirt.2024.‘AlanFord GoestoYugoslavia:FromTautologytoIdeology.’ Anthropos 56 (1): 197–209. Kuljic,Todor.2017. Post-YugoslavMemoryCulture. BeauBassin:Lambert Aca­demic Publishing. Mihelj, Sabina. 2016. ‘Memory, Post-Socialism and the Media: Nostalgia and beyond.’ European Journal of Cultural Studies 20 (3): 235–251. Mudry, Robyn R. 2024. ‘Saudek and Macourek’s Muriel: (After)Lives of a CzechoslovakAnti-NormalisationSuperheroine.’Anthropos56(1):171–195. Petrovic, Tanja. 2024. ‘Graphic Memories of Yugoslav Wars: Rat by Đo & Đu and Vojna by Goran Duplancic.’ Anthropos 56 (1): 127–150. Pilbrow, Tim. 2010. ‘Dignity in Transition: History, Teachers, and the Nation-State in Post-1989 Bulgaria.’ In Post-Communist Nostalgia, edited by Maria Todorova and Zsuzsa Gille, 82–95. London: Berghahn. Reid, Susan E., and David Crowley. 2000. Style and Socialism: Modernity and Material Culture in Post-War Eastern Europe. Oxford and New York: Berg. Ksenija Vidmar Horvat Spasic, Ivana. 2011. ‘Cosmopolitanism as Discourse and Performance: A View From the Semiphery.’ Revija za sociologiju 41 (3): 269–290. Svašek, Maruška, ed. 2006. Postsocialism: Politics and Emotions in Central and Eastern Europe. Oxford and New York: Berghahn. Štiks, Igor. 2024. ‘Hypochondria asCollective Syndrome? Nationalist-Conser­vative Hegemony in the Balkans, and How to Fight It.’ Anthropos 56 (1): 15–36. Štiks, Igor, and Srecko Horvat. 2015. Dobrodošli u pustinjupostcocijalizma. Za­greb: Fraktura. Šuvakovic,Miško. 2007. ‘3 ×Triglav:kontroverznostiinproblemigledeTrigla-va.’In Triglav,exhibitionpublication,Mala galerija – Modernagalerija, 15th October–15th November 2007. Ljubljana: Aksioma. Tepina, Daša, and Petja Grafenauer. 2024. ‘Art And Revolt: From the Socialist Republic of Slovenia until Today.’ Anthropos 56 (1): 37–58. Todorova, Maria, and Zsuzsa Gille,eds. 2010. Post-Communist Nostalgia. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books. Velikonja, Mitja. 2008. Titonostalgija: študija nostalgije po Josipu Brozu. Ljub­ljana: Mirovni inštitut. ———. 2009. ‘Lost in Transition: Nostalgia for Socialism in Post-Socialist Countries.’ East European Politics & Societies 23 (4): 535–551. Vidmar Horvat, Ksenija. 2012. Kozmopolitski patriotizem: historicno-sociološki in eticni vidiki neke paradigme. Ljubljana: Znanstvena založba Filozofske fakultete. ———. 2020. Peripheral Europe: On Transitology and Post-Crisis Discourses in Southeast Europe. Translated by Jaka A. Vojevec. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Volcic,Zala.2007.‘Yugo-Nostalgia:CulturalMemoryandMediaintheFormer Yugoslavia. Critical Studies in Media Communication 24 (1): 21–38. Rememorising Memories of War and Transition Anthropos 56 (1): 15–36 | issn0587-5161 | e-issn2630-4082 Hypochondria as Collective Syndrome? Nationalist-Conservative Hegemony in the Balkans, and How to Fight It Igor Štiks University of Ljubljana, Slovenia Faculty of Media and Communications, Serbia igor.stiks@ff.uni-lj.si ©2024IgorŠtiks Abstract. The post-socialist and post-Yugoslav societies have under­gone a profound transformation under the influence of nationalist-conservativehegemony. I use hypochondria as a heuristic term to elu­cidate the mobilising force of nationalist-conservative ideology, and the pervasive feelings, emotions, perceptions and actions it generates. I argue that hypochondria manifests as an anxious fear of existen­tial threats, either internal or external to our being, and propose to analyse it as a collective syndrome. This approach allows us to ex­amine political narratives and practices that indicate an exaggerated, paranoid anxiety rooted in perceived threats to the political commu­nity. I draw on psychoanalytictheories to describe and examine social andpoliticalsymptomssuchasobservablesharedemotions,groupbe­haviours and collective actions. To support the main argument that hypochondria is essential for understanding nationalist-conservative hegemony, I apply Jean-François Bayard’s definition of the national-conservativerevolution,adaptinghissevenpointstothepost-Yugoslav context. Despite the strong grip of hypochondria on post-Yugoslav societies, I briefly present resistances that have challenged both the nationalist-conservative hegemony and the neo-liberal policies, and that offer hope for significant social and political change. Key Words: nationalism, hypochondria, Yugoslavia, post-socialism, post-Yugoslav states Hipohondrija kot kolektivni sindrom? Nacionalisticno­-konzervativna hegemonija na Balkanu in kako se z njoboriti Povzetek. Postsocialisticne in postjugoslovanske družbe so pod vpli­vomnacionalisticno-konzervativnehegemonijedoživeletemeljitopre­obrazbo.Hipohondrijouporabljamkothevristicnipojemzapojasnitev https://doi.org/10.26493/2630-4082.56.15-36 Igor Štiks mobilizacijske sile nacionalisticno-konzervativneideologije,vsepriso­tnih obcutkov, custev, percepcij in dejanj, ki jih le-ta ustvarja. Trdim, da se hipohondrija kaže kot tesnobni strah pred eksistencialnimi gro­žnjami, bodisi notranjimi bodisi zunanjimi, in predlagam, da jo ana­liziramo kot kolektivni sindrom. Ta pristop nam omogoca preuceva­nje politicnih narativov in praks, ki kažejo na pretirano, paranoidno tesnobo, ki temelji na percipiranih grožnjah politicni skupnosti. Pri opisovanju in analizi družbenih ter politicnih simptomov, kot so opa­zna skupna custva, skupinsko obnašanje in kolektivna dejanja, se opi-ram na psihoanaliticne teorije. V podporo glavnemu argumentu, da jehipohondrijakljucnazarazumevanjenacionalisticno-konzervativne hegemonije, uporabljam definicijo nacionalno-konzervativne revolu­cije Jeana-Françoisa Bayarda in prilagajam njegovih sedem tock po­stjugoslovanskemukontekstu.Kljubdominacijihipohondrijevpostju­goslovanskih družbah na kratko predstavim tudi odpore proti tako nacionalisticno-konzervativni hegemoniji kot tudi neoliberalnim po­litikam, ki dajejo upanje na pomembne družbene in politicne spre­membe v prihodnosti. Kljucne besede: nacionalizem, hipohondrija, Jugoslavija, postsociali­zem, postjugoslovanske države In Lieu of Introduction: The Diagnosis Over the past three decades, the post-Yugoslav societies have been pro-foundlyshapedbythenationalist-conservativehegemony. Oneofitscrit­ical and yet overlooked elements, I argue in this article, is hypochondria, which I use as a heuristic term to understand the mobilising potential of nationalist-conservative ideology, widely shared feelings, emotions and perceptionsaswell ascollective actions. I propose toanalyse it as asyn­drome, which The Oxford Dictionary of English (the one that is provided withmylaptop)defines ‘asgroupsofsymptomsor signsthatconsistently occur together, or a condition characterized by a set of associated symp­toms’ (2010). It also provides another important definition for my hy­pothesis on hypochondria as collective syndrome; it defines it as ‘a char­acteristic combination of opinions, emotions, or behaviour.’ In order to understand hypochondria, I will use various psychoana­lytic approaches that might help us to elucidate its functioning at both individual and collective levels. Through a cluster of symptoms ranging from nationalist narratives, religious revival, ethnic conflicts, and terri­torial obsessions to sexual practices, I will illustrate my argument that a certain collective hypochondria has been a neglected but central and en­duringaspectofthenationalist-conservativehegemony,understoodhere in Gramscian terms as the enduring intellectual, ideologicaland cultural dominancethathasunderpinnedtheprofoundsocio-economictransfor­mation of the post-socialist Balkans. Hypochondria is generally defined here as the anxious fear of some-thingthatthreatensone’sexistence,andthatcanbeinsidebutalsooutside oneself. Byframingitasacollectivelyshared syndrome,Iwanttoanalyse political ideologies and narratives as well as practices that testify to the exaggerated, paranoid anxiety based on the shared perception of threats and dangers coming from within and from without the political com­munity. The threatening other thusbecomes constitutive of what Iwould call hypochondriacal ideologies such as nationalism that, coupled with religious conservativism,hascometodominatethe post-socialistBalkan societies.Notonlyexternal ‘enemies’butalsonational,religiousorsexual minoritiesandgroups,orsimply ‘subversive’ citizens, couldallbeseenas dangerous, to be tolerated at best, but at worst to be expelled or annihi­lated for the survival of the group. Hypochondria within communities couldalsobeobserved asanexaggerated response to the‘infiltration’ of ideas that might threaten the hegemonic order in a particular commu­nity. The group is thus constantly threatened from within by traitors or minorities,aswellasfromwithoutbythehostileothers.Sonotonlyisthe possibility of polemos, as war with the external others, constantly on the table,butthe possibilityof stasis, orofa civilwarwithinthe group,is also a constant worry, requiring control, repression and occasional purges of undesirable people and ideas. To furthertestmy mainargument, Iwill use Jean-François Bayard’s definition of the national-conservative revolution and apply his seven points(2023,5–6)tothepost-Yugoslavcase.Iwillthenproposeacounter-hegemonic treatment based on the resistances that have (un)successfully challenged both the nationalist-conservative and the neo-liberal hege­mony. Finally,asitiscustomaryinmedicalpractice,Iwillofferaprogno­sisinlieu ofconclusion, situatingmyanalysis withinthe widerEuropean and global framework that today confirms the spread of hypochondria as a collective syndrome with potentially disastrous consequences, as we have seen in the recent history of the Balkans. Hypochondria as Collective Syndrome? As noted above, I use some psychoanalytic approaches developed to ex­plain hypochondria as an individual condition and disorder in order to Igor Štiks describe and examine social and political symptoms. Here I am aware of the potential risks of scaling up from the individual to the collective level. For this reason, I propose to understand hypochondria, when ap­pliedtogroups,asacollectivesyndromeratherthanadisorder.Syndrome is used here as a less rigid category encompassing behaviours, reactions and emotions shared by a sufficiently large number of individuals to be sociallyandpoliticallyrelevant. Iuseitfordescriptiveandanalyticalpur­poseswithoutpretendingtoestablishcausesortocoverallpossiblesymp­toms. In other words, I argue that the notion of hypochondria applied to the post-socialist and post-Yugoslav situation will help us to understand some enduring phenomena in this region, such as the continuing hege­monyofnationalist-conservativeideology,andtheconstitutionofalarge number of political and social actors and their actions, as well as certain socio-cultural habits and shared worldviews. Itakeasthereference pointFreud’sclassicarticle‘OntheIntroduction of Narcissism’ (2006; first published in 1914) in which he relates narcis­sism to hypochondria as a neurosis that occurs when the libido moves away from the objects in the external world and focuses on the body and its organs. Further developments in psychoanalytic theory help us to un­derstand hypochondria and its features such as a lack of interest in the external world and other people, splitting of the body into a healthy and a sick part – what Sandor Ferenczi called ‘autonarcissistic splitting’ (in Stathopoulos 2017, 363) – and paranoid fears of persecution comingfrom outside or inside when an internal organ is seen as a persecutor. Of particular interest for my argument is the theory of the ‘paranoid-schizoid’ and ‘depressive’ positions as developed by Melanie Klein (1975, 176–235). In the ‘paranoid-schizoid’ position, the child in very early in­fancy, through projective identification of its own libidinal and aggres­sive drives and omnipotent fantasies, splits external objects into ‘good’ and ‘bad.’ The ‘bad’ object, in turn, creates a strong fear of persecution and annihilation, as well as the anxiety of paranoia and hypochondria. The theory was later used to explain the roots of racism and hatred of different groups into which one projects the badness, while the goodness isprojectedintoone’sownidealisedgroup.Theinfantwillnormallyover-come this position and enter the ‘depressive’ one, where it begins to un­derstand the others as a whole and that good and bad are part of its own self as well as of the external objects. In this position, the child should be able to deal with their own ambivalent feelings and internal conflicts, as well as with consequences of their own aggressions, which cause in­ner grief and guilt. In order to develop more or less normally, the child shouldovercomethispositionaswell.Throughoutourlives,however,the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions remain in dynamic relation­ship and their various aspects can be reactivated. Racism, nationalism, and chauvinism are all based on group member­shipandthusonasharedworldviewaswellasonsharedemotionsoflove forone’sowngroupandfear,suspicionorevenhatredofothers.Itisobvi­ousherethatindividualhypochondriacalsymptomscouldbesharedwith others and thus influence collective behaviour such as collective rituals, mobilisation, action, and violence. Finally, we must ask ourselves why in so many nations, communitiesand groupsdowefind feelings and narra­tives that reflect the early paranoid-schizoid position at a collective level or in collective behaviour. Furthermore, how do certain ‘targets’ activate theelementsofthisposition,andprovideabasisfortheloveofone’sown nationandhatredofothers(Volkan1985;seealsoCaputi1996)?Howdoes a certain collectively shared hypochondria, as I argue here, develop from this paranoid-schizoid worldview, and how does it influence ‘the politics of fear’ (Wodak 2021)? Hypochondria, as underlined above, is understood here as an acute and even chronicawareness of threats and dangers,bothinternal and ex­ternal, shared collectively by a sufficiently large number of group mem­bers. They may perceive their group as being in a positionof ‘ontological insecurity.’ The notion of ontological security, and hence insecurity, was first defined by the Scottish psychoanalyst Ronald D. Laing in his book The Divided Self (1960) and later used in sociology by Anthony Giddens and,moreimportantlyforushere,fortheanalysisofcollectiveactorsand statesininternationalrelationsandsecuritystudies(seeMitzen2006;Ej­dus 2018; for a Lacanian perspective, see Vulovic and Ejdus 2024). Some entities (groups,nations, states) perceive their position as fundamentally endangered and threatened by others and actfrom a position of ontolog­ical insecurity. Moreover, ontological security might even conflict with physical security. As Mitzen explains, ‘even a harmful or self-defeating relationshipcan provide ontologicalsecurity, which means states can be­come attached toconflict’ (2006, 342).Forthe Balkan context, it is worth recalling that ‘states might actually come to prefer their ongoing, certain conflict to the unsettling condition of deep uncertainty as to the other’s and one’s own identity’ (p. 342). The use of hypochondria I suggest here encompasses the problem of ontological insecurity but casts the net more widely by covering more Igor Štiks than the behaviour of the states or political entities and their relations, and subsequent ontological crises. It concerns a significant number of social and cultural practices that involve constant vigilance and obses­sion with the ‘health’ and ‘purity’ of the collective ‘body,’ the pressure to achieveevergreaterhomogeneity,theactionsaimedatcleardemarcation and constant reinforcement of collective identity, and the use of symbols and rituals for these purposes. It is equally present in entities that do not have such an obvious problem of ontological insecurity but are nonethe­less subject to hypochondriacal reactions to anything that is perceived as threatening or corrupting their identity, and thus undermining their sta­bility,potentiallyleadingtodreadfuldisintegrationandeven,inthemost hypochondriacal visions, to extinction. The Clusters of Symptoms: From Religion to Sex From Brotherhood and Unity to the Threatening Other: The Violent Dissolution of Yugoslavia Throughout the 1980s, the general public in socialist and federal Yu­goslavia was inundated with hitherto marginalised or dissident narra­tives. After Tito’s death, as early as 1983, the influential Belgrade weekly ninnoted ‘the outburstofhistory!’ (serb. provala istorije)(DragovicSoso 2002, 77). But what kind of history was communicated in so many feuil­letons, articles, speeches, memoirs, novels, plays, and historiographies? Authors brought what they portrayed as ‘secret’ and repressed memories to a public hungry for such stories,especiallyif they had an aura of dissi­dence. Many of these stories, however, targeted the pillars of socialistYu­goslavia (see Stojanovic 2023): the official narrative of the Second World Warandtheanti-fascistliberationstruggle,aswellasthepolicyof‘broth­erhood and unity’ that was supposed to ensure the peaceful existence of the Yugoslav multi-national federation. The liberalisation of the Yugoslav public sphere in the 1980s did not lead to the desired pluralism and democratisation that liberals and liber-ally-mindedcommunistshad hoped for,but toa subversionofthe previ­ous social contract. Until the first multi-party elections in 1990, citizens were being told by local politicians (based in and operating from differ-entYugoslavrepublics)andnationalintellectualsthattheywereprimarily membersoftheirethnicnationswhoshouldputtheirownnational inter­ests first. These interests were portrayed as threatened to the point of ba­sicsurvivalbytheirveryneighbourswithwhomtheyhadshareddecades of communal, if not always harmonious, life. It was suggested that it was theirnationthathadpaidthehighestpriceforYugoslavia,eitherinterms of sacrificed lives (the Serbian version based on the human losses in two worldwars),independenceandidentity(theCroatianversion),or,finally, economy and prosperity (the Slovenian version). The narratives of ‘re­sentmentandblame,’asSabrinaRamet(2007)calledthem,focusedheav­ily on the Second World War and the inter-ethnic killings, especially the genocideagainstSerbsinHitler’spuppetregimeoftheso-calledIndepen­dentStateofCroatia,butalsotheSerbChetnikmassacresofMuslimsand Croats. This version of history directly undermined the significance and reputation of the multinational anti-fascist Partisan movement that had won the war against the Nazi-fascist occupiers and their local collabora­tors.Thisstruggleandvictorywerepartandparceloftheofficialnarrative of socialist Yugoslavia: the Yugoslav peoples overcame the crimes of the occupiers and local traitors and, through the common struggle, signed the pact to live together in the common (federal) state oriented towards a better (socialist) future. The proliferation of alternative narratives reopened old wounds and were fully exploited by nationalist politicians, whether from the ruling League of Communists of Yugoslavia or from newly formed movements and parties. The democratisation of the political sphere led to ethnici­sation and almost immediately to open conflicts between ethnic majori­ties and minorities in the Yugoslav republics. Through a series of hor­rible wars, many inter-ethnic crimes were indeed repeated, sometimes in exactly the same places as during the Second World War. Today, new woundsarethemainsourceofnationalistideologybasedonvictimhood, suspicion and hatred of neighbouring nations. In other words, the problem of ‘ontological insecurity’ dominated the late 1980s and, after the break-up of Yugoslavia in 1991, was used to justify ethnic cleansing, massacres, and even a genocide, as the one in Srebrenica. Often these acts were explained by past crimes committed againstone’sowngroup. ‘ThetimehascometotakerevengeontheTurks in this region,’ declared general Ratko Mladic after his forces captured Srebrenica in July 1995. Referring to the local Slavic Muslims as ‘Turks,’ he used almost five centuries of Ottoman rule to justify the execution of more than 8,000 men and boys. Religion, National Purity, and Ethnic Cleansing after Yugoslavia Religion played the crucial role in the consolidation of nationalist-con­servative hegemony in the contemporary Balkans. The churches were Igor Štiks in a sense predestined to lead the nationalist renaissance in opposition to communist atheist rule and Yugoslavia as an ‘artificial’ creation or a ‘prison house of the peoples’ which, so the story goes, the communists had robbed of their true identity, tradition and religion. The fact that among Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks, unlike among Albanians, the only solid marker of separate national identity is precisely their religious af­filiation made these organisations guardians of the national identity and ‘soul.’ Re-traditionalisation took the place of socialist modernisation and the glorious national past eclipsed the vision of a future classless society. Opportunistically,manyrushedtobebaptised(althoughthepracticewas never banned), religious insignia became a solid proof of national iden­tity, and showing up in churches or mosques an opportunistic sign of political conformity. If there is any doubt about the nationalist-conservative hegemony and the role of religion, one only has to take a look at the official calendar in Croatia. As well as Christmas and Easter, the calendar closely follows the Catholiccalendar, withas many as five special religious non-working holidays for St Stephen’s Day (26 December), Epiphany (6 January), All Saints (1 November), Corpus Christi (a movable feast) and the Assump­tion of the Virgin Mary (15 August). Meanwhile, in Serbia, the calendar seems to focus more on national history and identity: in addition to 11 NovembertocommemoratetheFirstWorldWar,Serbiaintroduced15–16 February to mark the adoption of its first constitution. Since 2019 Serbia also celebrates the ‘Day of Serbian Unity, Freedom and the National Flag’ as a working holidayon15 September (introducedin the Serb Repub­lic in Bosnia as well). Whilst St Sava’s and St Vitus’s day remain working holidays, almost all state institutions in the country, including schools, have introduced their own patron saint’s day (a tradition associated with families), which typically requires the presence of priests. The ideaof‘mixing’ and ofasharedYugoslav identitywas and still is hypochondriacally regarded as either a betrayal or a danger to the ge­netic purity of one’s own nation. The obsession with ‘pure blood’ was not only focused on separating men and women of different origins, but was disastrously applied to the soil as well. Moreover, the plan to create eth­nically pure territories was implemented not only through physical vi­olence and ethnic cleansing, but also through legal and administrative means. Following the dissolution of Yugoslavia, the newly formed in­dependent states introduced citizenship laws that prioritised individuals belonging to their ethnic majority or their co-ethnics in nearby regions (Štiks2015).Thisresultedinvaryingdegreesofdiscriminationagainstin­dividualsfromdifferent ethnicbackgroundsorofthoseoriginating from other republics. The acquisition of citizenship in the newly independent stateswaslinkedtoemployment,accesstohealthcare,eligibilityforprop­erty ownership, and the enjoyment of civil and politicalrights. Many full citizensweretransformedovernightintoforeigners,residents,orstateless persons.Asaresult,manylefttheirhomes,movedtootherpost-Yugoslav states where their origins offered greater security, or emigrated abroad. As an example of hypochondriacal citizenship policies, one should mentionthatinFebruary1992,theMinistryoftheInteriorofnewlyinde-pendent Slovenia secretly erased from the citizens’ register about 25,000 persons who had no proof of Slovenian citizenship at the time (Deželan 2012). Most of them had immigrated from other Yugoslav republics or their parents had previously settled in Slovenia. For a new country the idea of having so many minority members was unbearable and, in the context of Yugoslavia’s dissolution, they were perceived as undesirable and potentially dangerous. Their documents were confiscated and sub­sequently invalidated. Numerous deaths were recorded as a result of the loss of health care, along with several cases of suicide, and many simply left Slovenia. The case of the ‘erased’ (slov. izbrisani only came to light in the early 2000s. It tarnished the image of Slovenia’ssuccessfuland exem­plary ‘transition.’Itwasnotuntil2012thattheEuropeanCourtofHuman Rights in Strasbourg condemned Slovenia over this case. Ethnic Hypochondria Today: Symbols, Territory, Borders Ethnic killings and cleansings, repression and informal pressures on in­dividuals (such as loss of employment or exposure to insults, destruc­tion of property and physical assaults), together with the general atmo­sphere of fear, led to significant changes in the ethnic compositionof the post-Yugoslav states. They all homogenised around the ethnic majority, which included a general assimilation to the dominant ethnic identity regardless of complex family histories and origins. Even after the wars, the imperative of ethnic consolidation remains high on the agenda. Al-thoughBosnia-Herzegovinahassurvivedasamulti-ethnicstate,thepro­cessofethnichomogenisationhas taken placeatthe sub-state level (enti­ties andcantons)despite the significantrefugee return. Thishas been ex­acerbated by the ongoing ethno-centric migrations: Croats from Bosnia migrate across the border to Croatia, mainly to Split and Zagreb; Serbs fromBosniaandMontenegrotoSerbia,mainlytoBelgradeandNoviSad; Igor Štiks while Bosniaks from the Sandžak region (in Serbia and Montenegro) of­ten choosetocontinuetheir livesinSarajevo. Anyone who still doubts the use of terms developed to deal with in­dividual psychological disorders to explain political and thus collective processes and outcomes, need look no further than post-war Bosnia. Hypochondria there is even legally institutionalised through ethnic elec­toral participation and ethnically designed official positions. Bosnia was already condemned by the European Court of Human Rights back in 2009 for discriminating against citizens who are not Serbs, Croats, or Bosniaksbut Jews, Roma or the ‘others,’ who are legallybarred fromrun­ning for the state presidency and other ethnically marked positions. To no avail. There is even a special constitutional provision called the ‘vital national interest’ (serb. vitalni nacionalni interes)whereby any law could be stopped if the ‘national interest’ of one of Bosnia’s three constituent peoplesisdeclaredtobe vitally threatened. It has been used to block any unwanted reform and to paralyse the entire system until the inter­ests of Bosnia’s ethnic entrepreneurs were met. Predictably, this reduced the entire politicalsystem to the deals between ethnic leaders. Moreover, the system of ‘two schools under one roof’ institutionalised the educa­tional apartheid and the segregation of Bosniak and Croat children in municipalities where they live together. It is based on the ‘national sub-jects’suchaslanguage,history,andevengeography,whichmustbetaught separately. Children who speak the same language are taught different standard uses of that language in order to separate their written and oral expressionsas muchaspossible,and are taughtdifferent histories and, to make things even more absurd, different geographies. At the ground level, as in Northern Ireland, one can observe ethnic markingsoftheterritory.Thisisparticularlytrueinmulti-ethnicbutnow divided cities such as Mostar or Brcko, where football fans with strong links to nationalist parties and the criminal underworld are often in­volved in mural painting, and where monuments to the fallen soldiers, nationalflagsand symbolsclearly signalthe territorial ‘ownership.’Inthe absenceofphysicalbarriersor ‘peacewalls,’citizensusementalmapsand know exactly where the frontlines were inthe 1990s, which cafés to visit, and where not to go. Borders are constitutive of any nation building, especially when they could be culturally and linguisticallyporous. The re-drawingof the maps in the Balkans on the basis of ‘historical’ or ‘ethnic’ rights remains an in­evitable feature of the nationalist imaginary. It usually involves claiming parts of the territory of neighbouring countries and attempts to create a greater state (e.g. a greater Serbia, a greater Croatia, a greater Albania, a greaterHungary).Theideathattheexistingborderscouldbechanged(in ‘our’ favour),thusfinallyunitingallmembersof ‘our’ nationand drawing clear lines between ‘us’ and ‘them,’ still animates the political imaginary and mobilises the masses. InSerbia,forexample,thesituationstillseemsfluid,withnooneableto givetherightanswerastowhereexactlySerbia’sbordersare. TheKosovo issuecontinuestoplagueSerbianpoliticsandregionalrelations.Seenasa sacredland,Kosovoisconvenientforallpoliticianswhoclaimtobefight­ ingfor the ‘heart’ of Serbia. The story ishypochondriacalatits core:itre- calls the ‘Great Replacement’ theory (allegedly the Serbs lost Kosovo due to Albanian demographic superiority); it is full of mythology about the lost battle in 1389 against the Ottomans; it recalls Christian martyrdom at the hands of Muslim infidels; and it also imitates the Jewish tradition (‘Next year in Prizren,’ as nationalist banners often proclaim). On the other side, we also find the idea of creating a Greater Albanian state, consistingofAlbania,Kosovoand parts ofMacedonia. IfSerbna­ tionalistsinsistthatSerbshavebeenreplacedbyAlbanians,Albanianna­ tionalistsstresstheir‘autochthonous’presenceintheBalkans,longbefore Slavs settled in the region. In August 2023, inspired by the construction of a tunnel linking Tetovo in North Macedonia and Prizren in Kosovo, Kosovo’s prime minister Albin Kurti even tried to interpret God’s in­ tentions. He explained to the crowd how something had gone slightly wrong somewhere between God’s design and the earthly embodiment of His idea, and how this mistake should be corrected. He concluded that Albanian-populated Tetovo and Prizren should be united by the ongo­ ing infrastructure project because ‘in the eyes of God in the sky [they] have been one city and when they fell on earth, they were separated by Sharri Mountain, and became Tetovo here and Prizren on the other side.’ He concluded: ‘Let’s make Prizren and Tetova one with the road axis that connects us with this tunnel.’ą Obviously, there are borders that should be torn down to unite the membersofthesamenation–suchasthosethatseparateCroatsinCroa- ą The full statement is published on the official website of the Republic of Kosovo’s Office of the Prime Minister: https://kryeministri.rks-gov.net/en/blog/prime-minister-kurti -ending-his-visit-to-tetovo-lets-help-and-support-each-other-for-each-others-sake -not-against-anyone-else/. Igor Štiks tia from those in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbs from Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia, and Albanians scattered across three countries – and there are borders that must be built and patrolled. The Balkan route, used by tens of thousands of migrants and refugees every year, prompted an ethno-national counter-mobilisation. Like Hungary and Poland, Slove­ nia put up barbed wire, and Croatia was given the task of heavy policing of the tiny piece of land between Bosnia and Slovenia. In general, theeu has tasked the Balkan states with filtering migrants. Although migrants have no intentiontostayinthese countries,their very presence haspro­ vokedananxietyandbroughtusbacktohypochondriacaltropesof ‘great replacement,’ ‘infiltration,’ and even ‘danger.’ If Orban portrays refugees asbeingpaidbySorostoinvadeandunderminetheHungariannation,in Bosnia it is mostly Muslim migrants who are seen as a potential asset for Bosniaks and a threat to the fragile ethnic balances. In reality, migrants are mostly concentrated in Bosniak-dominatedareas where they are also unwelcome, especially in border towns. eumember Croatia faces another problem when it comes to its dwin­ dling population. It cannot sustain its economy (especially tourism and construction businesses) without a massive influx of foreign workers, brought these days from the Philippines and Nepal. It must open its bor­ ders, which means that ordinary Croats now have to confront, literally overnight, the cold mechanism of global economy and their own posi­ tion in such a world: in a country that has been generally allergic to dif­ ferent ethnicity, namely to Serbs, or to different accents of the same lan- guage,˛ the streets are now filled with very different people from those with whom Croats have lived in the past. Racist attacks are already tak­ ingplaceinbothCroatiaandSerbiaandthefarright,withitsstrongbase among footballfans and neo-Nazigroups inthese countries,presents the situation as a struggle for the purity of both blood and soil. Other Battlefields: Language, Memory, and Sex Despitetheachievementofnationalindependenceandethnicconsolida­tion,otherdangersstillseemtoloomoverthepost-Yugoslavnations.One is not only fighting against neighbours and external evils, but one must ˛ To illustrate this point, at the time of writing, a group of teenagers in Vukovar were vio­lently attacked by Croatian nationalist football fans because these hooligans thought the teenagers spoke with Serbian accents. It turned out that the beaten teenagers, like their attackers, were ethnic Croats (Milicic 2024). also be prepared to fight on the home front as well. In the post-Yugoslav space,languageremainstheoldbattlefieldwherethewaragainstcontam­ination and impurityis constantly beingwaged. Asrecentlyas ofJanuary 2024, for the first time in history, the Croatian Parliament adopted the Law on Croatian Language (‘Sabor usvojio Zakon o hrvatskom jeziku’ 2024). The law was drafted by major cultural institutions, dominated by nationalist intellectuals, with the aim of ‘protecting and cultivating’ the Croatianlanguage,andfightingagainstinternationalinfluence.Thelatter actually refers tothe eternal ‘danger’ posed by the simplefact that Croats, Serbs, Bosnians and Montenegrins share a common language. The ‘con­tamination’ lies not only in anglicisation but above all in the porosity of the linguistic borders between South-Slavic peoples: anyone could be contaminated by Serbianthroughtvseries, the Internet, YouTubeand TikTok, or simply through conversation! In Serbia, similar attempts at ‘protecting and cultivating’ the language are constantly being pushed by such institutions as the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Serbian Orthodox Church: there they focus on the use of the Cyrillic al­phabet, which supposedly has been endangered by the Latin alphabet. Most books and journals are indeed published in Latin script, including numerousnationalisttabloidssuchasInformer,KurirandAlo,andpeople use Latinscript more often in informal communication. Butthe problem only exists if one rejects and even finds threatening the established fact that modern Serbian society uses both scripts equally. History is another crucial battlefield where hypochondriacal vigilance is continuously required. Almost all post-Yugoslav societies adopted nationalist visions of their history based on two main premises: anti-Yugoslavism and anti-communism. Therefore, history textbooks are the preferred tool of this new interpretation of modern history based on nationalvictimhood,enmitywithneighbours,andhistoricalrevisionism whenitcomestotheSecondWorldWaranditsoutcome,namelythe vic­tory of the Partisans led by Tito and the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (Stojanovic2023).Historicalrevisionismusuallymeanstherehabilitation of Nazi-fascist collaborators who are branded as nationalist or simply as patriots who opposed the multinational communists. History textbooks are ethnicised and purged of others, with particular intolerance for the idea of South Slavic unity, Yugoslavia as a state project, and the socialist ideals of ‘brotherhood and unity.’ InCroatia,the fearofYugoslaviaissoacutethat thenameofthecoun-try to which Croatia belonged for almost 70 years is rarely publicly men­ Igor Štiks tioned, and then only with trepidation. It has become something of a taboo (Markovina 2018) in a country where the Yugoslav idea was born and where, as early as 1866, a bishop with the apparently non-Slavic sur­ nameofStrossmayerfoundedtheYugoslavAcademyofSciencesandArts in Zagreb as the future South Slavic cultural capital. Major Croatian cul­ tural and political figures of the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries fought for a Yugoslav state in which Croats would achieve independence together with other South Slavic peoples. Now all this history had to be reinterpreted without mentioning the huge Yugoslav elephant in the room.ł The powerful Althusserian ‘ideological state apparatuses’ such as the state and its media, the churchand schools,make itmucheasier to forget and learn the new ‘truths’ about the past. The Past is Coming (2023), to use the title of Serbian historian Dubravka Stojanovic’s latest book that analyses ideologicalmanipulations in Serbian history textbooks over the last hundred years. Battles are still raging there, and even the outcomes of the First and Second World Wars are still undecided. In other words, we do not yet know what might happen in the past! It will be, of course, dictated by current or future ideological hegemons. Finally, sex remains a hideous enemy and the privileged litmus test for hypochondriacal reactions. One must be vigilant about sexual minori­ ties, hybrid identities, gender fluidity, and female bodies. Accused of de­ stroying the family, emancipated womenandlgbtqi+persons under­ mine the ‘healthy’ body of the nation. Since its future existence depends onsexualpractices,theymustbecontrolledandshouldproduceasmany ethnically pure national members as possible. Education and moderni­ sation are blamed for undermining women’s role as protectors of home and tradition. The fight against women ranges from abortion bans, as in Poland, to collective prayers in public spaces in Croatia for the salvation of women. Sexual minorities are seen as further endangering the nation ł Two illustrations from the world of sport come to mind that show how hypochondria works onaneverydaylevel.ThebasketballclubCibonafromZagrebwasoneofthemost successful clubs in Yugoslavia, winning the Yugoslav championship several times. In its arena,theword ‘Yugoslavia’ issimplyreplacedbytheword ‘state’withoutanyfurtherdef­inition(e.g.Cibonawonthe ‘CupoftheState’),whilethetitleswoninindependentCroa­tia are clearly marked ‘Champion of the Republic of Croatia.’ Hajduk, the famous foot­ball club from Split, had their historical photos doctored to erase the red star, which was Hajduk’s emblem during the Second World War, when Hajduk represented anti-fascist Yugoslavia. The red star remained part of the club’s emblem until 1990. by killing it biologically and by indulging in forbidden sexual pleasures that know no bounds. Again, the demographic threat looms, as does the imageofthenationdisappearingunderattackfromexternal andinternal enemies. Conservative Revolutions and the Nationalist-Conservative Hegemony in the Balkans Havingpresentedtheclusterofhypochondriacalsymptomsandanalysed them asa necessary part ofthe nationalist-conservative hegemony in the Balkans, I will attempt to situate this hegemony in a broader historical framework. For comparative purposes, I use Jean-François Bayard’s arti­cleonconservativerevolutions in contemporary Africa (2023),inwhich he draws on the experience of the inter-war period in Europe to develop seven key points of conservative revolutions. I find them relevant for un­derstanding the post-socialist conservative revolutions (and subsequent hegemony), for which the inter-war period and the Second World War remain the crucial historical and ideological references. Bayard’s first point is that ‘the conservative revolution provides a na­tional identitarian repertoire at the moment of the shift from empire to nation-state.’ The end of socialism, or the shift from socialist multina­tional federations and the Soviet bloc to the independent nation-states, wasindeedmarkedbythereturnofnationalismwithitsconservative‘na­tional identitarian repertoire.’ The Velvet Revolutions were all about na­tional independence from Soviet influence and troops. Nationalism pro­videdasolidbasisformassmobilisationsintheformersocialistmultina­tionalfederationsaswellasacoherentandmassivelysupportednarrative for post-socialist societies, which in most cases looked back at the anti­communist nationalists of the 1930s and the 1940s for inspiration. Sincesocialismwaspresentedasanunwantedbreak,itwasfinallytime togobacktoexactlywherewewerestoppedwhentheSoviets‘kidnapped’ our part of Europe or, in the Yugoslav context, when cosmopolitan athe­ist communists denied us the right to enjoy our national identity and evenreligionin our ownindependent state. The affinitywiththe extrem­ist right-wing movements and regimes was and still is obvious. It could be observed in the open or silent rehabilitation of the Horthy regime in Hungary,the UstashasinCroatia,theChetniks in Serbia,the Lithuanian, Latvianand Estoniansstroops,the IronGuardinRomania,orBanderist nationalists in Ukraine. The removal of the socialistregimes was a gift to the far-right movements and their nationalist and conservative ideolo­ Igor Štiks gies as well as an opportunity for their historical rehabilitation, despite their affiliationwith Nazi Germany and the mass crimes they committed againstmembersofothernationalorreligiousgroups.Thisrehabilitation couldbeclearly seenintherenamingofthe streets inCroatiaand Bosnia after notorious Croat fascists, in the judicial rehabilitation of the Chet-nik leaders in Serbia, but also in today’s Ukraine where streets are often named after Stepan Bandera and his troops responsible for mass killings of Poles and Jews. Bayard argues that the conservative revolution is the fruit of the war. This point, together with the third point about attributing all political misfortunetotheOther, insideand outside,bothapplyto thecontempo­rary Balkans, with a specific addition: there the conservative revolution wasnotonlythefruitofthewarbut,asIhaveargued,itsessentialingredi­ent.Itwascrucialtothemobilisationforwarandwasconsolidatedduring thewarandthankstothewar. Itreigned supremeintheimmediatepost­warperiodandcontinuestoinfluencesocietieswiththewar-likerhetoric of threats, struggle for survival and hatred. The ‘new man’ promised by the old conservative movements (Bayard’s fourth point) simply becomes the ‘old man’ who must be resurrected as he supposedly was before the communist regime. Indeed, the theme of national resurrection, redemp­tionand ‘renewal’ isverymuchpresentinnationalist-religiousdiscourse. Furthermore, warlike machismo, patriarchal heteronormative atti­tudes and violence (which we find in Bayard’s fifth point) are part of the masculine post-socialistworldview, which often finds outlets in neo-fascist groups, football fans or in the conspicuous display of power and virility. The invention of tradition (Bayard’s sixth point), coupled with religious orientation regardless of the actual faith, is directly linked to historical revisionism as well as to the introduction of old or new na­tional symbols, holidays, myths and legends. The main media such as state or private television, films, documentaries and history textbooks are all involvedin disseminatingthe newly invented or reinterpreted tra­ditions. Finally, the fear and hatred of ethnic or religious minorities, people of different sexual orientations,and migrants is fullyinline withBa­yard’s seventh point of the inter-war conservative revolutions in Europe. The difference is that today, ‘cultural, social or national humiliation’ of­ten takesthe form ofglobal capitaland localcapitalist relationsthat have transformed the relative socio-economic equality of the socialist period into deeply divided societies. Frustration with a system that works for the few is, however, not channelled into struggles for social justice, but carefully directed against national enemies and traitors. In conclusion, the post-socialist nationalist-conservative hegemony has its specificities compared to the model proposed by Jean-François Bayard, but it still has dangerous affinities with the nationalist and con­servative right-wing movements of the 1930s and the 1940s. As shown above,manyhypochondriacalsymptomsuniteboththeinter-warperiod and our present. Treatment: Counter-Hegemonic Forces and Their (Un)Successful Subversions Since the late 1980s, the pendulum across the post-Yugoslav space has swungsharplytotheright.Forthepastthirtyyearsthecollectivelyshared hypochondriacalsymptomshavebeenshapingpoliticalsystems,ideolog­icalpositioningandvalues,andbroadlysharedviewsofnationalidentity. Chronicexistentialanxiety, coupledwith paranoia,constitutesa destruc­tivecollectivesyndromethathasmobilisedlargenumbersofcitizensand even led them to violent behaviour and crime. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, the weak resistance to the nationalist-conservative hegemony came mainly from liberals and so­cial democrats, whowerethemselvespreoccupied with howtofittheir agenda into the new ethno-national paradigm. They usually promised a more inclusive society, both for ethnic and sexual minorities, and the rule of law framework, with only occasional concerns for social rights and justice amid the ravages of post-socialist neo-liberal restructuring. Toillustrate,centristandcentre-leftpoliticianshaveneverdaredtoques­tion the role of the church, let alone the generous funding it receives from the state budget. Religious education in schools is a case in point. Brief social-democratic governments in Croatia never dared to question it(promotingciviceducationinstead),andinSerbiaitwasthedemocratic opposition, and its liberal prime minister ZoranĐindic, who opened the school doors to church officials. So, whatmight be suggestedasatreatmentinthissituation? Any be-haviour, ideas and practices that challenge and undermine nationalist­conservativeideologyandhegemonyaswellastheassociatedhypochon­driacal symptoms. Here I will briefly highlight some of the attempted ‘cures’ by individuals and activist groups to illustrate the repertoire of (un)successful counter-hegemonic treatments. The anti-war movement promoted the values of peace, tolerance and Igor Štiks coexistence even during the period of heavy fighting and numerous war crimes against civilians. It included an active anti-war movement in Ser­bia as well as anti-war networks in Croatia, involving a large number of liberal, left-wing and feminist activists and intellectuals who never stopped communicating across newly established borders. There were also many individual heroes who risked their lives to save their neigh-bours. Here I will only mention two cases: the ‘Schindler from Ljubuški,’ Nedjeljko Galic,aCroatfromHerzegovina, forgeddocuments to save more than a thousand Bosniaks from concentration camps; Srdan Alek­sic, a Serb from Trebinje, saved his Bosniak neighbour, only to be killed himselfbySerbsoldiers.Thememoryoftheirdeedsliveson,showingthe power of ‘goodpeople in an evil time,’ in the words of Tito’sgranddaugh­ter Svetlana Broz who collected many similar stories. Furthermore, the ‘anti-nationalist’ civil society sector was at the fore­front of the liberal challenge to the nationalist-conservative hegemony. Usuallybrandedas ‘traitors,’‘anti-warprofiteers’ and‘Soroshoids,’itwasa loosecoalitionofhumanrightsactivists,thefirstlgbtgroups,ethnicmi­nority and anti-fascist associations, and journalists who, often with the support of Soros’s Open Society Foundation, founded liberal-minded media outlets such as the weekly Vreme and Radiob92 in Serbia, and more openly left-wing magazines such as Feral Tribune, Arkzin and later Zarez in Croatia. During the war, they promoted the idea of a liberal, inclusive society based on human rights and the rule of law, within a broader framework ofeuintegration. In the 1990s, amidst the killings, these groups and outlets were the only progressive platforms. If in the 1990s they wereableto penetrate closed borders and inthe 2000s openly challenge the new nationalist-conservative hegemony, the subsequent events inthe2010shavemarginalisedandutterlytransformedthisscene. Immediatelyafter the death of Tudjmanin1999 and the fall of Miloše­vic in 2000, the political scene in Croatia was occupied by liberals and social-democrats, and in Serbia by right-wing and left-wing liberals, as well as by dissatisfied nationalists (disappointed by the outcomes of the wars, Serbian defeats and the loss of Kosovo). Once in power, they could not resist the temptation to at best flirt with patriotic sentiments and at worst continue to promote nationalist-conservative hegemony. In other words, throughoutthe 2000s, this hegemony was challengedto some ex-tent(forexample,withtheapologiestowarvictimsandattemptsatinter­ethnic and inter-state reconciliation) but never fully confronted. What was never questioned in the 1990s and the 2000s, but rather ac­ cepted as an inevitable fate by almost all political and social actors, was the capitalisttransformationofpost-Yugoslavsocieties. It wouldtakean­ otherdecadeandthefinancialcrashof2008toseetheriseoftheNewLeft across the region in the 2010s. It challenged the so-called ‘transition’ as well as the nationalist-conservative ideological hegemony. Furthermore, the New Left movements, organisations and groups openly promoted cross-border cooperation and shared knowledge on how to fight for ur­ ban and natural commons, and how to advance participatory democ­ racy. Social movements were formed from student rebellions (which in­ spired each other from Belgrade and Zagreb to Ljubljana and Skopje), the Bosnian citizens’ plenum movement demanding social justice across ethnic lines, the Right to the City protests that mobilised masses in Za- grebandBelgrade,tothestrugglesfornaturalhabitats(seeŠtiksandSto­ jakovic 2021). Despite many failures, this new left has had some signif­ icant electoral successes in the 2020s. It joined the liberal-left govern­ ment in Slovenia in 2022, it won the city of Zagreb in 2020, and it en­ tered the Belgrade and national parliaments in Serbia under the green- left umbrella in 2022 and 2023. They showed that it is possible to think and mobilise outside the contours of nationalist-conservative hegemony, andeventoopenlyconfrontitbychangingfocus,vocabulary,andactions. Predictably, this new left drew inspiration from the anti-fascist struggle oftheSecondWorldWar,socialistself-management,non-alignment,and the legacy of the Yugoslav supra-national framework.4 Lastly, one must mention the initiative that addressed head on one of the main hypochondriacal symptoms, namely language and its control. The Declaration on the Common Language signedin 2017bymorethan 200 leading intellectuals, artists and writers across the former Yugoslav region,andsubsequentlyfollowedbymorethan10,000individualsigna­ tories, causeda smallpolitical earthquake.5 It simply called for the free individual use of the common language of Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia and Montenegro, in all its standard variants, and for an end to the ethnic seg­ regationofschoolchildren.Itstruckattheheartofthenationalistprojects 4 Culture and art remain the privileged terrain where the nationalist-conservative hege­ mony is constantly questioned. There is not enough space in this text to do justice to numerous writers, artists, actors, film and theatre directors who are working intensively across the post-Yugoslav region to promote a different version of their societies, from inclusiveness to more radical social change. 5 The text of the Declaration is available at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_on _the_Common_Language. Igor Štiks that still operate within the nineteenth century Central and Eastern Eu­ropean fantasy that each nation must have its own separate language. By insisting on ‘commonality’ it openly provoked the dominant narra­tive of enmity and hatred between historically, culturally and linguisti­cally closely related peoples. The Declaration, one might add, moves be­yond the Kleinian ‘depressive’ position, which requires a more realistic and complex view of one’s self and the others, to another imaginary in which the other is someone with whom we might want to share more than just language. The protectors of the supposedly endangered Cyril­lic as well as the drafters of the Law on Croatian language could be seen as directly irritated not only by the Declaration as a public document, but also by everyday communication across borders. It is made possible precisely by the shared language and new technologies, leading to a new creative hybridity in the post-Yugoslav space. In Lieu of Conclusion: A Prognosis In thisarticleIsuggestedthathypochondriaasacollectivesyndromehas been an overlooked but crucial and enduring element of the nationalist-conservativehegemony in the post-socialistBalkans. This hegemony has led to devastating wars, the criminalisation of society, the primitive ac­cumulation of capital through plunder and privatisation campaigns, and massive emigration. It will continue to maintain a strong grip on post-Yugoslav societies through the ideological apparatuses such as religious institutions,thepoliticalsystemanditsparties,aswellastheexistingme­dia and the school curricula. However, this hegemony has many cracks through which light can en­ter and create subversive strongholds. Today, we can see the rise of social and political resistances and the search for alternatives. It is difficult to predict whether these counter-hegemonic practices could lead to signif­icant reversals, despite some important social and political victories in thelast decade. Thefuture will also dependon the European andglobal context where too many hypochondriacal symptoms are clearly visible, from extreme violence, brutal wars, the rise of the far right, the return to an obsolete model of national sovereignty to the spread of religious and ethnic intolerance.The Balkan ‘dark avant-garde’ ofthe 1990s, onemight say, ominously foreshadowed the world of the twenty-first century. Note Work onthispaper was supported by Social Contract in the 21stCentury, are-searchproject basedattheFacultyofArts,UniversityofLjubljana,andfunded by the Slovenian Research Agency (aris,p6-0400). A draft of this article was firstpresentedattheconference‘Religionetrévolutionconservatrice:perspec­tives comparatives’ at the Geneva Graduate Institute (23–25 October 2023). 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Anthropos 56 (1): 37–58 | issn0587-5161 | e-issn2630-4082 Art and Revolt: From the Socialist Republic of Slovenia to Today DašaTepina University of Nova Gorica, Slovenia dasa.tepina@ung.si Petja Grafenauer University of Ljubljana, Slovenia petja.grafenauer@aluo.uni-lj.si ©2024Daša Tepinaand PetjaGrafenauer Abstract. This contribution takes a closer look at visual art and protest anddevelopsacomparativeanalysisofactivistaestheticsthatwillcon­textualize the images of art and revolt from the Socialist Republic of Slovenia in the 1960s to today. It will focus on the representation of counter-powerimages,notonlyasasupportingvisualformbutalsoas an interweaving that can function as an independent element in mo­ments of social rupture. Beginning with the examples of the student movement from 1968 and the visual code of the student newspaper Tribuna, we follow the stories of the artist collectiveohoand the art commune established by some of its members; from there, follow the examplesofpunksubculture andthelegendaryspacesofDiscofvand theirvisualcodes;thenwetracetheanti-militarizationmovementand the storiesofthe occupationandtransformationof armyfacilitiesinto creative, cultural, social and political places, with the example of Au­tonomous Cultural Centre Metelkova City. The article concludes with thealter-globalizationmovement,thenewwaveofsquatting,andother contemporarysocial movementsoccurring fromthe endof the90’sto the 2020/21 anti-governmental protests. With comparative narration of different social movements and their creative force, we try to com­prehend the revolutionary aesthetic potential of the margins in revolt in different social contexts. KeyWords:visualcode,protests,socialmovements,aesthetics,counter-power Umetnost in upor: od Socialisticne republikeSlovenije do danes Povzetek. Prispevek se podrobneje posveca vizualni umetnosti in pro-testom ter razvija primerjalno analizo aktivisticne estetike, ki bo kon­tekstualizirala podobe umetnosti in upora od Socialisticne republike https://doi.org/10.26493/2630-4082.56.37-58 Daša Tepina and Petja Grafenauer Sloveniješestdesetihletdodanes.Osredotocasenareprezentacijopro­tioblastnihpodob,kijorazumemonelekotpodpornovizualnoobliko, temvectudikotprepletestetskihelementov,kilahkovtrenutkihdruž­benih prelomovdelujekotsamostojapoliticnapraksa. Takopo prime-rih študentskega gibanja iz leta 1968 in vizualnega koda študentskega casopisa Tribuna sledijo zgodbe umetniške skupineohoin umetniške komune,kisojo ustanovilinekateri clani tega kolektiva; nato sledijo primeri subkulture punk in legendarni kraji Discofvter njihovi vizu­alni kodi; nato sledi gibanje proti militarizaciji in zgodbe zasedb ter preoblikovanja vojaških objektov v ustvarjalna, kulturna, socialna in politicna sticišca na primeru Avtonomnega kulturnega centra Metel­kova mesto. Clanek se zakljuci z alterglobalizacijskim gibanjem, no-vimvalomskvotiranjaindrugimisodobnimidružbenimigibanji,kise odvijajo od konca 90. let do protivladnih protestov med letoma 2020 in 2021. S primerjalno analizo razlicnih družbenih gibanjih in njihove ustvarjalne moci skušamo razumeti revolucionarni estetski potencial obrobja v uporih znotraj razlicnih družbenih kontekstov. Kljucne besede: vizalni kod, protesti, družbena gibanja, estetika, proti­moc Introduction When the political breakthrough of art and the artistic praxes move be­yond theartisticframeworks andintersect withwidersocialmovements, it opens space for aesthetic revolutionary potential. Freedom and auton­omy within art had been buried under the pressures of neoliberalism, and as Danko Grlic (1988, 146) wrote, ‘the absolute freedom of art was only freedom in individual spheres; thus, it came into conflict with the enduring stateofnon-freedomas awhole.’ Thus,art wasalreadystuckin a desperate situation and, as Theodor Adorno (2002, 29) argued, ‘among the dangers faced by new art, the worst is the absence of danger.’ Socialmovementsoftenbearthepoliticalcharacterofacertainkindof vivid, living art, which has the potential to move beyond artistic frame­works. Within the diverse examples from the post-Yugoslavian context of Slovenia (former Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia), the article exam­ines aesthetic revolutionary potential and the recuperation practices of the power structures. We follow the student movement from 1968, the visual code of the student newspaper Tribuna and with it the works of the artist groupohoand the artist commune established by some of its members. After that, we focus on the examples of punk subculture and alternative spaces of Discofvand Škucand their visual codes. Besides subculture, we track the anti-militarization movement and the stories of theoccupationandthetransformationofarmyfacilitiesintocreative,cul­tural, social, and political places just after the dispersion of Yugoslavia, with the example of Autonomous Cultural Centre Metelkova City. The article concludes with the alter-globalization movement, a new wave of squatting, and other contemporary social movements happening from the end of the 90s to the 2020/1 anti-governmental protests. With com­parative narration of different social movements and their creative force, we try to comprehend the revolutionary aesthetic potentials of the mar­gins in revolt in a different social context. In addition, we also examine the mechanisms ofrecuperationin the existingsocialorderand how this potential is systematically neutralized through power structures and/or capitalist codification. Slovene art critic Brane Kovic (1990, 13) stated that ‘the majority of avant-garde poetics were based on the global desire to change the world and use art to establish a different system of both values and relation-ships.’Thelinkbetweenartandthepoliticalisespeciallyprominentwhen it comes to the avant-garde movements, as politically and aesthetically progressive. However,their strength iscontinuallydecreased by different political processes (recuperation, cultural codification, institutionaliza­tion, etc.) by power structures that are making such movements a part of the existingsocialorder. This,inturn, leads to aperpetualneedforthem to be redefined. The avant-garde has always strived for autonomy,in whichthe expres­sionoftheindividualbecomesthemeasureofpersonalfreedomandfree­dom in general. The concept of freedom and the attempts to define it bring art out of the realm of aesthetics and into the field of ethics no longer relegated to the private; art thus becomes public and social. Au­tonomy plays a key role in this. Adorno advocated for the autonomy of art, as art needs autonomy to open up an area of imagined freedom that is in opposition to the present and draws attention to its shortcomings. SamuelBeckettwentastepfurtherandproclaimedthatartonlybecomes autonomouswhenitdemands to becomeaworld ‘untoitself’ ratherthan reflecting the world (Belting 2010, 12). A similar positionwas adopted by Jacques Rancičre (2010, 117), who claimed that the question did not con­cern the autonomy of the work of art but rather the mode of experience. With such stipulationsinmind,this article explores the need to question the notion of freedom, which cannot exist without sufficient space for one’s own expression. Daša Tepina and Petja Grafenauer Freedom is neither final nor static. It does not exist without the desire or struggle for it, which makes it more of a guideline than an absolute state.Avant-gardemovementsareapartofaestheticrevolutions,forthey criticize the current situation, seeking and formulating alternatives. Of course, this takes place at the crossroads between aesthetics and politics. Accordingto Rancičre (2010, 119), social revolutionsare the daughtersof aesthetic revolutions. Revolution’s fundamental part originates from the emancipation of the individual in terms of the sensorium of which they are a part and which they can influence. Rancičre sees art as a part of the struggle for space, for what we are allowed to show and what we are not, believing that it belongs in the same domain as aesthetics. The ultimate alternative to politics lies in aestheticization, the creation of a new col­lective ethos. This starts when art becomes life and life becomes art (pp. 119–123). Terry Eagleton (1990, 3) argued that aesthetics is an eminently contradictoryphenomenon:ontheonehandattheveryheartofthemid­dle class’s struggle for political hegemony, while on the other providing an unusually powerful challenge to the dominant ideological forms. Theriseof broader social movementsopens a space for diverse art practices and an advancement of new social relations in which we can follow the aesthetic revolutionary potential as the social movements or culturalscenesareongoing.Tohighlightthemwechosesomeofthemost visible acts of revolt from below from the subculture movements in the former Yugoslavia’s Republic of Slovenia to social movements after in­dependence, and through them tried to show how visual practices are an inherent part of the social movements whatever the social context. Similarly, withthe responseofthe powerstructures,with similarmecha­nisms from recuperation, and with appropriation to institutionalization, the aesthetic revolutionary potentials are normalized back to the domi­nant social order. As James C. Scott (1990, 111) says: ‘[A]ppropriation is, after all, largely the purpose of domination.’ This contribution is based on interviews and materials already issued bygroupsandindividualsinvolved,newspaperarticles,andsecretservice reports. From the Student Revolts of 1968–1972 Forwards The student movements which arose in 1968 all around Europe also emerged insocialist Yugoslavia, first inBelgradeinJune1968, and in parallel in Zagreb and Ljubljana. Students were addressingthe socialcri-sis and demanding better living conditions. One of the most important achievements in Slovenia was the establishment of Radio Študent (Ra­dio Student) which still exists today. In 1971 Filozofska fakulteta (Faculty of Arts) in Ljubljana was occupied by students and some professors and many students’ manifestations took to the streets. Besides Radio Študent there was also another important propaganda and informative student newspaper called Tribuna, where the aforementioned group oho also had a large visual input. Besides the general social unrest in the 1970s, the first squatting ac­tions influenced by the Dutch movement took place with the occupation ofthevillaat29ErjavcevaStreet inLjubljana,whichlastedfromOctober 28,1977,toNovember9,1977.Theoccupationdrewattentionprimarilyto student and general housing problems but also had a symbolic purpose – to show the possibility of the functional use of unused spaces in gen­eral. The authorities evicted the squatters in a relatively short time under threat of coercive measures, and a kindergarten soon moved in. At the same time, communes were established all over the world to put libertarian ideas and theories into practice. In Ljubljana, it was Ko-munag7(Communeg7),which was founded in the suburbs of Ljubljana called Tacen under the influence of the hippie (sub)culture and the stu­dent movement. Communeg7was initially a small project, but it gained more public and international attention over time. The main ideas were self-organization, solidarity, and equality; in short, principles and meth­ods derived from anarchism. They also became acquainted with anar­chism, which was promoted by one of the most prominent figures of the Communeg7,FraneAdam.Thesecondimportantcommune,whosede­velopment and impact will be discussed below, was an artists’ commune by the art collectiveohoin the village of Šempas in 1970. ohoGroup In 1965, socialist Yugoslavia underwent comprehensive economic and fi­nancial reform. For the first time, the issue of convertibility of the cur-rency–thedinar,internationalcompetition,andtradewithforeigncoun-tries –wasraised. Thestate-sponsoredincreaseintheproductionofcon-sumer goods, industrial revenues, the development of a goods distribu­tion system, the development of tourism, and port activity (also because of membership in the Non-Aligned Movement) led to an increase in the standard of living. Between 1965 and 1968, per capita income increased by18percentand consumptionby20percent.Thelevelofeducationalso improved. The ‘look’ of Yugoslavia changed, especially in the urban cen­ Daša Tepina and Petja Grafenauer tres. The country’s borders were opened and the number of trips abroad increased. In daily life, there was the possibility of buying a car, new household appliances were introduced, more items were on the shelves, theadvertisingindustry expanded,thepresenceoftelevision,magazines, and photography was felt more strongly and links with Western Euro­ pean countriesbecame stronger. The artist Kostja Gatnik, who had a sig­ nificant influence on many branches of visual art (alternative as well as dominant) in the 1970s, says that he ordered many magazines to Ljubl­ jana through the Mladinska knjiga bookshop chain, mainly those about art, culture, and alternative lifestyles, but also those that taught how to brew synthetic drugs in your own kitchen, and the delivery never got stuck.ą In the 1960s, rock came to Slovenia, at first as a copy of foreign hits. Rock was not for Slovenian radio, but it was played in the youth clubs that wereopening around the country, followedby the first discotheques andRadioStudent(1969),andbythefirststudentdemonstrationsandthe bands of the Faculty of Arts (1968–1972). In the cultural sphere, students were still oscillating between elite and autonomous culture, drawing at­ tention to social inequality and other pressing problems of the time. At the sametime, thesocial climate wasbecoming morerepressive inthe 1970s. Some communes and broader familyand friendship communities were established, with a distinctive look, sensitivity to ecological prob­ lems, emphasis on a healthy lifestyle in nature, the practice of yoga, the study of Eastern philosophies, the smoking of marijuana, etc. All these factors aroused the interest of artists. ForeignpublicationstravelledmoreeasilytotheYugoslavartworldand the number of international connections and exhibitions increased. The President of the country, Josip Broz Tito, publicly warned against nega­ tive influences from abroad and against modern, especially abstract, art from the Westinaspeechatthe Seventh CongressofYugoslavYouth in January 1963 and in four speeches in the winter of 1964. The attitude of politics towards modern art was ambivalent, not least because of the mi- crophysicsofpower,whichisnotdiffusedfromthetopbutcirculates,and does not reproduce the general form of government at the lower levels and is therefore not a simple projection of central power. Federal policy itself had been ambivalent about the diminishing role of Western, espe- ą InterviewwithKostjaGatnikbyPetjaGrafenauer,conductedon15June2015(keptinthe authors’ personal archive). cially abstract art. Local politicians and bureaucrats, however, for vari­ ous reasons – different views on art, personal ties, political connections, financial and other benefits – tolerated and supported such art, except when there were serious prohibitions from the top, of a kind that could threaten the whole structure. The art world operated relatively indepen­ dently. It is of great importance that when Yugoslavia opened its doors to thecapitalistwestand itssocialismbecamesofteritopenedagapfornew development in the then-marginal art. Inthissituation,newpossibilitiesalsoopenedforcounter-institutional culture and art. Now it could develop further and pose some anticanon­ ical questions. Let us look at the example of theohogroup. Its core was already established in 1963 when, while still in high school in the city of Kranj, the students Marjan Ciglic, Iztok Geister, and Marko Pogacnikes­ tablished a school bulletin called Plamenica that was provocative in its content with a demand of a ‘merciless destroying of fusty peace,’ as was written in the editorial by Pogacnik (Zabel 1994, 19). They demanded a living experience in the arts and a breaking down of the dusty conven­ tions that ruled the Slovene art world. They were joining ‘hooliganism,’ a term in the mid-sixties used for young people who had long hair and unusual clothes and behaved in a way that broke the boundaries of the ‘normal’ socialist society: ‘Naturally, the “hooligan” movement involved a strongexistentialist element of dissatisfaction with the developing con­ sumer society and of protest of it,’ (p. 20). They wished to break the con­ ventions of the art. Theohomovement was born out of two groups. The first so-called Kranj group, which included Pogacnik, Geister, Ciglic, Naško Križnar, and Franci Zagoricnik, and had occasional contacts with Rudi Šeligo, who was a bit older and theoretically strong. They were influenced by the Slovene historical avant-garde magazine tank!, some of the then- unpublished historical avant-garde poems Kons’s˛ by the Slovene poet Srecko Kosovel, and other sources. When Geister and Pogacnik came to studyinLjubljana,they joinedLjubljana’s hooligans. They –AlešKer­ mavner, Naško Križnar, Milenko Matanovic, Matjaž Hanžek, Vojin Ko­ vac (Chubby), and Andraž Šalamun – were inspired by rock music and beatnik poetry and had a countercultural attitude. Pogacnik describes the sound of the reunited group as a mixture of Zen and Dada. oho ˛ Constructivist poetry also involves collage and some of those were also done by Srecko Kosovel and the historical avant-garde artist Avgust Cernigoj in the 1920s. Daša Tepina and Petja Grafenauer went through manyphases, namely pop art,reism,ł conceptualism, arte povera,landart,programmaticart,andcosmicconceptualism,finallyes­tablishing a commune in Šempas in 1970 and renouncing active collabo­ration with the art world. If you were to wander under the arcades at the corner of the Kaz­ina building on a certain day in the spring of 1966, you would see a young man, a student with long hair, drawing anti-Vietnam protestcomicson the wallsto the sounds ofthe RollingStones. This was Marko Pogacnik [...] whose core parts and satellites expressed themselves in poetry, visual poetry, drawing, performances, and shortfilms. They were students.Theywerehippies. Or asPogacnik says: ‘We listened to the Beatles, Bob Dylan, the RollingStones, and the who.Weworelonghairand necklacesmadefromdiscarded things,pinecones,or deerexcrement. Wewereextremely peaceful.’ Thethree,Pogacnik,IztokGeisterPlamen,andMilenkoMatanovic, were part of the editorial board of the student magazine Tribuna, which had itspremisesinthe building of Kazina in Ljubljanaatthe time. This led to various happenings in the neighboring Zvezda Park, such as tracing a person’s shadow with chalk or blowing up transparent plastic tubes with a vacuum cleaner. The pages of Tribuna were populated by their drawings, poems, visual poetry, theoretical treatises, nonsense, and stunts. The movement initially wanted to focuson film,but the mediumwas noteasilyaccessible, and visual poetry as typewriter art was cheap. They had their own stall under the arcades of the Casino, where they sold – matches. They bought boxes of matches, stuck their own batch of stickers on them, and resold them for the same price. Next to that, they sold diybooks,theso-calledohoEdition,hand-printed witha machine for printing partisan documents. [Oleami 2019] In the first half of 1970, the artists were preparing materials and later taking part in the exhibition Information (curated by Kynaston McShine ł The starting point of Reism is an anti-anthropocentric stance, starting from the whole-nessofbeingandunusuallyfocusedonthings,i.e. ‘thetruth’ –becausetheOhosawthem asthemostsubmissivetoman. Itcontraststhehierarchicalscalewiththeworldofequiv­alent existent entities forming horizontal relations with each other. The equation of the previously higher and lower is done through ‘reistic gazing,’ as a mere obscuring of what is sensually present –tothe eyes, tothe ears, tothe touch. and held atmomain New York between 2 July and 20 September 1970). Afterthat,theydecidednottotakepartintheartworldanylonger,there­fore four ofthem with their families and friends in April 1971 established a commune on an abandoned farm in a small village on the western side of Slovenia called Šempas (Zabel 1994, 134): The Šempas Family, as it was called, was founded on ideas that had been developed duringoho’s last period. The main idea was to dis­cover a way of life based on balanced relations within the family and between the group and its immediate contexts. [...] Nor did they stop making art. [...] The Šempas Family may be considered the conclusion ofoho. The group’s history came to an end when Matanovic, Nez, and Šalamun left Šempas about a year after the community was established. Discofvand Škuc Gallery Sincethemid-1980s,socialandpoliticaldevelopments havealsobrought significant changes to the field of art. In 1976, Yugoslavia, by re-estab­lishing self-management, attempted to establish direct democracy, still, of course, within the framework of the state’s one-party system. Because of self-management, the communist bureaucracy flourished, with each of the social structures operating semi-independently and participating in the decision-making chain. When enterprises, which were still state-owned,weregiventhepossibilityofself-determination, they preferred to invest the resources they had acquired in wages rather than in reinvest­ment. InternationalfundswerespentbytheYugoslavrepublicsonunproduc­tive mega-projects. These included investment in infrastructure for the 1984 Sarajevo Olympics, which did not live its own life after the event. The international debt grew and an economic crisis with rising infla­tion set in. This, together with the death of President Tito, who had led the country since its liberation in 1945, and the escalation of national issues among the country’s economically diverse nations and national­ities, led to new Serbian and Slovenian political programmes (Memoran­dum, Srpska akademija nauka i umjetnosti, Belgrade 1986 and Nova Re-vija 57, Ljubljana 1987). Both programmes envisaged finding solutions to the problems outside the borders of Yugoslavia, which Slovenia did with its independence in 1991. Civil society was awakening in the Slovene national space, heralded by Daša Tepina and Petja Grafenauer the alternative and subcultural scene. This emerged as the first alterna­tive mass movement in the history of the Slovene Republic (Borcic2013). The episode of art that did not follow the traditional art world patterns and developed twofold outside of them, repeated itself in the late 70s. WithitscoresintheškucGalleryand DiscofvinLjubljana,twogroups, one established mostly from students from the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana and Faculty of Humanities in Ljubljana inškucand the other coming mostly from the Faculty of Social Sciences in Ljubljana and the established Borghesia group and Discofv, fought the system again with adifferentkindofartrelatedtothepunkmovement,thatwasatthattime strongly sweeping over Slovenia. Intheearly1980s,theLjubljanasubculturalandalternativescenebegan to take shape, first within the student institutions that emerged because ofthe student movementin the 1970s, and then independently, atleast in termsofcontent. Likethehistoricalavant-gardeandtheneo-avant-garde ofohobefore it, it looked for inspiration mainly in alternative mass cul­ture, which also came from the West. The poles of 1980s visuality – the world of canonized fine art and the subcultural scene – operated largely separately.Therearemanydifferencesbetweenthemintheirmodesofor­ganization, ideologies, and expression. These differences are manifested in visuality on an extrinsic as well as intrinsic level. The alternative scene was established within institutional frameworks (škdForum,škuc), but these were smaller, more flexible organizations that reacted more easily and quickly to the demands of alternative con­temporaneity than the established galleries and museums, which were also more inthe sightsofthe authorities. The subcultural and alternative scene was established in spaces that were not only dedicated to fine art, but were also linked to other art genres and, above all, to culture more broadly. Special emphasis was placed on popular bands, which also pro­videdthescenewithamoremassanddifferentaudiencefromthatwhich frequentedthe ‘mainstream’ stateand municipalgalleries.Theartpartof thesubculturalscenewasinitiallydeliberatelyworkingwithintheframe­workofmasscultureandalwaysreflectedthesocio-politicaleverydaylife in which it was produced (Zabel 2003, 20): Thevisuallanguageofthe1980ssubcultureandthealternativescene made a conscious decision to contrast itself with traditional fine art and its conception. [...] The visual language so conceived is aware of the social conditionality of painting, sculpture, etc. [...] The re­jectionofPop Art and Hyperrealism was repeated in the 1980s, e.g., as a rejection of Neue Slowenische Kunst’s perverse strategies. Several factors are relevant forunderstanding the characteristics of the visual language of the alternative and subcultural scene of the 1980s and its causes. The visuality reflected and was based on the specific socio- political situation of the Slovene space, but it was also established as a reaction to the specific situation in Slovene visual art. The art system, in exhibition practice, art criticism, theory, and history, was, despite some exceptions,ratherclosedtootherformsofthinkingaboutartandculture. Artworksordiscoursesthatradicallylinkedarttoeverydaylife,masscul­ ture, humour,marginalized groups,politics,orthe economicsituationin the country were almost non-existent. Fine art institutions operated in a self-containedsystemthatallowedforoccasionalexhibition‘excesses,’but the dominant discourse obscured the interconnectedness of art, society, politics, and capital by excluding certain issues. One of the purposes of subculture andalternative culture, whichbegantodevelop inSloveniain the late 1970s, was precisely the link between artistic and socio-political goals. Itseems that the distinction betweenthe productionofthe subcultural scene and established fine art is not so easily made by emphasizing the useofaparticularmedium. Onthe onehand,subcultureandalternatives have produced works that can be placed within the (extended) notion of paintingorprintmaking (graffiti,graffiti painting,posters,etc.), whileon theotherhand,themediumofvideohasalsobeenusedbyfineartistsand has already entered art institutions. The 1979 survey exhibition of Slove­ nian art, Miha Vipotnik’s video installation Videogram 4, was exhibited at the Jakopic Gallery, and Borghesia released its first videocassette Tako mladi in 1985 in co-production with the institution of Cankarjev dom, where the first public presentation of the project was also held. More im­ portantthanthechoiceofmediumfortheanalysisofthetwoscenesdeal­ ing with visuality is where and how the work was made, where it was shown, who watched it, and how and what ideology it served. The alternative and subcultural scene was the first alternative in the then-socialist republic of Slovenia that grew into a social movement in the national space.4 In the second half of the 1970s, there was a collabo­ ration between the visual art ofškucGallery and the Museum of Mod­ 4 BarbaraBorcic (1994,51)hasdescribed ‘fv,orthebroaderLjubljanaalternativeandsub-cultural scene as the most massive cultural movement in Slovenia to date.’ Daša Tepina and Petja Grafenauer ern Art, but with the departure of Taja Brejc in 1980, a new generation came toškuc. Dušan Mandic began to run the gallery and introduced a programme of ‘new conceptual practice,’ but when the artist co-founded the Irwin group in1983, he was replacedatškucbyBarbara Borcic and Marina Gržinic. The alternative and subcultural scene evolved mostly aroundfv112/15, better known as Discofv:5 We chosethe namebytaking theDictionaryofForeignTerms from France Verbinc and each person wrote 2 numbers on a piece of pa­per. Then we decided that the first number was the page, and the second number was the dictionary entry on that page. So, it came out112through15,so 112the pageand 15thedictionary entry, which was ‘c’est la guerre.’ But that is irrelevant. The important thing was thatfv112/15 was an acronym, which was a trend among the punk bands, anditdidn’t evenreallymatter what it meant. From1981,agroupofstudents,togetherwiththenewwaveofthepunk scene, created a plural and autonomous scene that included theatre ac­tivities, dances, concerts, video recordings, the formation of their own bands,andmultimediaartactions.Inthebasementofthefourthblockin thestudenthousing,thescenedevelopedaroundtheDiscofv,6 whilethe second part was occupied byškuc.7 Both spaces developed a large-scale multimedia production, which (especially infv) was linked to popular band music. A ‘second scene’ emerged, where visual art was only one of the possible expressionsand which,withits own institutions and its own way of working, lived a parallel life. It was only at the beginning of the new century, with artefacts and documentation, that this became part of the canon of visual art, something that the protagonists themselves did not wantinthe early daysofthe movement. Theactors in thescene used a diverse rangeofvisualmedia.Whatwas producedinDiscofvwasverymuchconnected to the theatreand music scene, but also transcended it. A particularly important element of the 5 Interview with Neven Korda by Daša Tepina, conducted on 24 May, 2022 (kept in the authors’ personal archive). 6 ZemiraAlajbegovic,DraganColakovicŠilja,GoranDevide,SergejHrvatin,AldoIvancic, NerinaKocjancic,NevenKorda,AnitaLopojda,MirelaMiklavcic,DarioSeravalandoth­ers. 7 Video production manager Marijan Osole-Max, Borders of Control No. 4 (Barbara Borcic, Dušan Mandic, Marina Gržinic, and Aina Šmid), Keller (alias Andrej Lupinc), Peter Vezjak, Igor Virovac, Kollaps (Bojan Štokelj, Venko Cvetkov, and Darja Prelec), Emil Memon and others. artistic aspect offvwas the space of the disco, which could be described inarthistoricalterminologyasacollective,holisticartwork(Vidmar1983, 44): A special component – and an unusual attraction – of thefvDisco is the walls of the corridor in the anteroom of non-dance commu­nication: these walls, covered with a multitude of scribbled, spray-painted, painted, lacquered and xeroxed words, band names, mean­ingful and nonsensical phrases, ‘classic’ street and new anarcho-punk, even political calls, slogans, signs and texts, all this colourful chaos offvwalls is one of the most fascinating memorials of this space – it is similar to the famous spray-painted compositions of the New York Metro [...] with fewer aesthetics – and mythology, of course – and more ‘politics’:this givesthe spacean additional,sym­bolic meaning, which has been especially felt in the last year – after the police crackdown on street graffiti. [...] The Student disco is a spatial-visual variant of punk as a ‘symptom that has spoken’ – or rather, has drawn itself, painted itself on the wall in an elemental, emotional, often polarized desire to mark its presence. Already towards the end of the 1970s, the first graffiti had appeared on the walls of Ljubljana. These were mainly slogans, names of punk bands, and signs. When the city authorities carried out a campaign to clean the walls and act against graffiti writers, graffiti inhabited the walls of Disco fv.Inthis‘ghetto,’ theartists weresafe from persecutionand thefvcor­ridor became a substitute for urban space (Bavcar 1984, 103–463). In1982,graffitipaintingappeared.WiththescreeningofthevideoIcons of Glamour – Echoes of the Death of the group Borders of Control No. 4 and an evening of selected music in December 1982, Dušan Mandic, as a member of the group, decorated the corridor of Diskofvwith photo­copies of graffiti, 5 × 2 m, drawn on paper, based on a photograph of a graffiti image of four homosexuals, taken from the Art Press magazine. Also,onthe occasion ofanother project, Borders of Control No. 4, agraf­fiti image appears with the stencil-painted text ‘Hey you man watch me, you might be right I am a tool, but why don’t you tell me, if you know a better tool’ (Gržinic 2003, 170). Mandic exhibited the graffiti with the image of homosexuals during a sexualactagain inAugust1983atthefvinŠiška, andin November of the same year, he exhibited a photocopy of the graffiti and a graffiti im­ageofared male sexual organmadewith stencils aspartofthe sympo­ Daša Tepina and Petja Grafenauer sium What Is the Alternative on the Dance Floor. This was also a time of homosexuality outspokenly stepping into the world. In the same month, Roman Uranjek, Marko Kovacic, Andrej Savski, and Dušan Mandic or-ganizedanexhibitionofSv.Urhgraffitionthefvdancefloor.Thegraffiti, whichdepictedpartisansbeingbrutallytorturedandshot,werebasedon templates – photographs from a book containing documentary material about the events at Sv. Urh during the Second World War. In a text for RadioŠtudent,twooftheauthorsmentionedtheconnectionbetweenthe exhibition and the ritual of dancing on the same premises. It was there­fore a way of thinking about visual art that went beyond the visual and considered the specificity of the space in which the work is presented. TheKollapsgroupalsoproducedgraffiti,whichwasondisplayatthefv inNovemberandDecember1983;in1984,theRIrwinSgroup(BorutVo­gelnik, Roman Uranjek, Dušan Mandic, Andrej Savski, Marko Kovacic) organized the exhibition Erotic Graffiti with Pornographic Motives. These finallyestablishedthepornographiccontentthatwaspresentinthepost­cards of Soldier D.M. (Dušan Mandic), The placement of pornography in the image, and thus in the field of ideology, was a radical intervention that represented the specificity of Ljubljana’s subcultural production at thetimeinrelationtothemarket-regulateddividebetweenpornographic and artistic production in the West (Španjol 2003, 87). Infvandškuc, the content and visuality, the way of production and presentation have definitively erased the difference between popular and high culture. Subcultural and alternative art production was aimed at an audience very different from that attracted by gallery exhibitions. Those whocametoDiskofvandškucwerethosewholikedtolistentodifferent music – mainly punk, hardcore, and new wave, but also those who did not feel at home in the established cultural institutions and who wanted different, critical thinking and a different cultural offer. The proverbially closedworldoffineartwasopenedforafewyearsintheframeworkoffv Disco precisely because of the mixing of expressive forms, even to those whowouldotherwisehaveremainedoutsidetheworldofthose ‘initiated’ into fine art. Inthe1980s,thesubculturalandalternativemovementinLjubljanain­volved projects that combined several media. Often, painting and video, photography, and installation were exhibited to the accompaniment of punk, hardcore, ornew wave.fvmixedgallery culture, massculture, and what was coming from the street. The subculture offered motifs, themes, and the use of media that were still largely unacceptable in the context of fine art as it waspresented in galleryspacesatthe time. Itintroducedthe previously taboo themes of crude sexuality, marginalized social groups, violence,differenthumour,lifestyles,andimages.Anewaestheticwases­tablished–anaestheticoftheugly,thedilettante,themarginal,thecrude, thecollaged,andthemass.Thematerialandideologicalpossibilitiesgave rise to thediyPrinciple, which is the main principle of self-organization as a core principle for establishing counter-power relations which pro­voke the hierarchical relations in the established order. This has led to a crudelookinwhich,inconjunctionwithdirect,oftenpoliticalmessages, and with technological possibilities – the use of the photocopier and of pre-existing images whose meaning is perverted by their transfer into a new context – photographs and images from the mass media have been welcomed with open arms. We can speak of a key principle of creation: theprincipleofcollagingpre-existingimages.Posters,graffiti,videos,etc. arejigsawpuzzlesofpartstakenoutoftheiroriginalcontextandinserted into new contexts. Changing the context in whichan imageappears adds a new way of reading it, and this is often used by subcultures to criticize existingsocialreality.Theprincipleofcollagehasbeenbroughttoitspeak by Borghesia’s multimedia projects, which are themselves collages. They consist of pre-existing independent video works, inserts of theatre per­formances, samples of music, pre-existing visual material, etc. Themotivesofthevisualmaterialproducedbythealternativeandsub­culture are highly explicit and include political images, images of vio­lence, catastrophes, or pornography; the latter was itself a political state­ment in this period, as it spoke of political bondage that forbids and re-pressesanddoesnotallow,forexample,imagesofdifferentsexualityeven inthefield ofmassculture. Thesceneconstantlypointstoarepressedbut existing society of prohibition. The message is often on the surface and easytoread,butthematerials,inadditiontotheoriginalclarity,oftenof-fer details that the art material uses to further reinforce, and sometimes subvert,theoriginalstatement. InhisessayCome,CloseClosetoMe,ITell YouManYou WillSee... DušanMandic (1983,38–39)enumerated the characteristics of video in the descent from high to mass culture. Many of them can be applied to the entire visual expressiveness of alternative and subcultural art of the 1980s. This artistic production was interested in ‘entertainment rather than hermetic seriousness,’ yet it cannot be ac­cusedofnotexpressingimportantpoliticalandsocialideas.Mandicgoes on to say that in the works ‘political action rather than political rhetoric is evident and inherent.’ The visuals of subculturalproduction ‘are comic Daša Tepina and Petja Grafenauer (mocking)ratherthantragic.’Manyofthemarecharacterizedbyhumour, which ranges from the momentary quirks of early posters to the subtle statements with which punk ‘subverts the cynical workings of ideology’ (Žižek 1984, 122–129). The creator of the art material can be anyone, a trained artist editing a video or a disco-goer with an incomplete primary school degree who writesgraffitionthewall.Bothareequal,bothworkswere –atleastinthe earlyphaseofthefvDisco–equallyondisplaytothevisitor.Itisalsotrue thatmanyoftheprotagonistsofthescene,especiallythosewhotrainedas artists, later entered the art system. This abandoned another ideal – the ideal of the creativity of the individual, which was only possible within the framework of subculture and alternative culture as a broader social movement.Inthemid-1980s,moreprominentnamesemergedwithinthe subculture,notablythensk,andwithintheIrwingroup,whichsoonafter its foundation crossed over into the field of ‘high art.’ Anti-Militarismand Squatting of Metelkova Theendofthe1980sandtheearly1990swereaperiodofgreattensionand drastic social changes, from the socialist transition to capitalism to the growing nationalist tendencies that fuelled the Yugoslav wars. As men­tioned above, in the early 1980s, the subculture was very pronounced and was further strengthened by the new wave of punk and hardcore scenes in Ljubljana. In addition to the scene in Ljubljana, the alternative scene also developed in Maribor, where it formed in circles around the Radio Marš initiative, the Katedra newspaper,mkc,agdGustaf, Front Rock, and so on. These subcultures often overlapped in their practice of anti-authoritarian ideology ranging from systemically promoted self-organization to more autonomous practices such as critique of institu­tionalization, assembly decision-making, etc. A 1982 Analytical report of rsnz(RepublicanSecretariatforInternalAffairsoftheSocialistRepublic of Slovenia) stated, ‘It is no accident that in this world of thought, full of naiveté and speculation, punk is used as a synonym for the true progres­siveyouthwhorejectallorganizedpoliticalactionbecauseitexcludeshu­manfreedom,rejects authority,and acceptsan “anarchism thathas never compromised itself in social practice”. Punk is currently the most vital part of the youth subculture that represents a resistance to real socialism and young Stalinism’ (Arhiv Republike Slovenije, 1931,ma-701_108, 9). Undertheseconditions,therewereverystrongpacifistandanti-milita­ristictendencies insideofthese subcultures,whichcame tothe forefront, especially in the 1990s, when they focused on the struggle to turn mil­itary facilities into cultural ones which would be autonomous. One of the mostwidelyknown wasthe 1993 occupation of Metelkova inLjubl­jana, a former military barracks that remained in the centre of Ljubl­jana after independence as an empty reminder of militarization and the tragedy of the Yugoslav wars. A diverse multitude of associations, groups, and individuals, united in a common association, the Network for Metelkova, decided to use the occupation to draw attention to the strong anti-militarist agenda of the time and to demand that military fa-cilitiesbetransformedintospacesforcultureandart(moreinBibic2003; Pavlišic 2013). At the same time, various collectives were formed. These were mainly concerned with anti-militarism and ecology, partly because of the war in the former Yugoslavia (e.g. Kolektiv anarho-pacifisticne akcije (The Collective of Anarchist Pacifist Action) (k.a.p.a.), the punk collectivet.o.t.a.l.i.t.a.r., Škrati (The Elves collective), and the Eco­logical Anarchist Initiative) (Crnkic and Tepina 2014, 25).8 The occupa­tion of the former military bakery in Maribor is also worth mention­ing here. Like the occupation of Metelkova, the protagonists of the oc­cupation founded an informal organization, the Magdalena Network, which tried to acquire premises and organize the individual actors into a whole.. In the 1990s the anarcho-punk subculture was based ondiyculture. This had a significant impact not only on the aesthetics of the subcul­ture but also on self-publishing, where a strong culture of fanzine pub­lishing developed alongside the proliferation of music production.ą° The 8 TheiractionsincludecriticalfairsanddemonstrationsagainstMcDonald’sgreed,nuclear weapons, andgmoproducts. The opening of thefirst anarchistinfo point, Škratovacital­nica (the Dwarf Reading Room), was a co-production betweenk.a.p.a.and the Dwarfs, who founded thekudAnarhiv in 1999, organizing discussions, meetings, and presenta­tions, while Škratova citalnica was responsible for the distribution of radical, libertarian and anarchist literature (Crnkic and Tepina 2014, 25). . Later, in 1996, the organization was formalized asthe PekarnaInstituteof the Magdalena Network. For more information on Pekarna and its structure, principles, etc. see their webpage (Pekarna Magdalenske mreže Maribor n. d.). ą° This led to the publication of numerous magazines and fanzines, such as Svojtok and 13. brat (13thbrother).AlsoworthmentioningistheKolektivnenasilnegadelovanja(Collec­tive for Nonviolent Action) (k.n.d.), which was active from 1989 to 1998, during which time it disseminated anarchist ideas and was involved in the publication of the newslet­ter Preporod – casopis slovenskih anarhistov za svobodno družbo (Preporod – Newspa­per of Slovenian Anarchists for a Free Society) as well as numerous leaflets and other propaganda materials on topics such as antimilitarism,ecology, antifascism, criticism of parliamentary democracy, sexism, etc. (Federation for Anarchist Organising2009, 8). Daša Tepina and Petja Grafenauer late 1990s are particularly important for the emergence of a new wave of squatting, which was also linked to the emergence of new social move­ments. Forexample, in1999 the Cukrarna squat took placeinLjubl­jana, which was followed by social, political, and cultural squats known as Vila Mara,acMolotov, and Galicia. Similar autonomous spaces be-gantoemergein other partsof Slovenia.ąą The squatting movement was on many levels always interconnected with the wider social and politi­calstruggles,fromtheparticipationinthealter-globalizationmovements andNo-natocampaigntodemonstrationsagainstthewarinIraq,which was followed by student revolts (2006–2007, 2009–2010), solidarity with workers and syndicalist struggles, and many others. Autonomous spaces and squatting had an important interconnection withartandrevolutionaryaesthetics.Inthehistoryofsocialmovements, wecanobservethestrongrelationshipbetweenthestrengthofthemove­mentsandthedevelopmentoftheirownculturalbase –thedevelopment ofthecounterculture,whichischaracterized byaspiritofresistance. The creation of its own cultural base was a starting point and an agency of counter-power for building diverse social movements. One of the most important crossroads was creating autonomous social and cultural cen­tres, which were a consequence of direct actions of occupationsof empty buildings, called squatting. In squatted spaces art and visual image had an importantoreven focal role.Wecould emphasize three points:art has a central role in the creation of the aesthetics of the place, and au­tonomous places are laboratories for experimenting with utopian social activityandrelationshipsthatarebuiltbeyondexistingnormsandvalues. Secondly,alsoconsequently,artandautonomyarefocalpointsasaesthet­icsbecomesawayoflife.Andthethirdimportantroleisthepreservation of the spaces; as we can see in the example ofaccMetelkova, it playedan importantroleasthe buildingshavebeenpreserved with recognition of the place as one of significant cultural value. Autonomous Factory Rog and Contemporary Social Movements In 2006, the projecttempwas also the basis for the occupation of the old, abandoned bicycle factory Rog in Ljubljana, which was established ąą Izbruhov kulturni bazen in Kranj and later TrainStation Squat, Mostovna and Ideal bar in Nova Gorica, Ambasada Štefana Kovaca Marka (Štefan Kovac Marko’s Embassy) in Beltinci, Sokolc (the Sokol House) in Novo Mesto, Inde in Koper, Argo in Izola, and others. on the anarchist ideas of Hakim Bey and the concept of a Temporary Autonomous Zone. A temporarily occupied space of freedom, creativity, and action was created and was used for various projects, concerts, artis­tic activities, a social centre, etc. under the common name Avtonomna tovarna Rog (the Autonomous Factory Rog) – at Rog. Rog also be­came an important meeting point for political struggles, from Nevidni delavci sveta (the Invisible Workers of the World,iww) to Izbrisani (the Erased), who eventually found a space for community and resistance in the RogSocialCentre. The autonomousspaces,akcMetelkova andat Rog, played an important role in struggles rising from the broader so­cial ruptures, as did the global economic crisis, which was countered by thelocalmass movement 150.Thiswasfollowedbywidespreaduprisings that took place in all major Slovenian cities between 2012 and 2013. Af­ter this period another rupture followed one of the biggest social crises that emerged on the borders of the European Union in 2015. One of the central spacesforthe struggle againstthe racistmigrationpoliciesatthat timewasatRog,whichalsohostedmanygatheringsofthebroadercoali­tion of social movements and initiatives united in the Anti-Racist Front that was activein2015–2016.Thisfront brought together various anti-authoritarian collectives and individuals who were working on migra­tion and refugee issues at the time with information sharing, fieldwork, communityevents, etc. After thisveryintensemomentum,anattempt to evict of the entire Rog area followed in 2016, but the eviction was halted, and a court case began between the municipality and the community ofatRog. With its numerous collectives, activities, and political-social actions, Autonomous Factory Rog also represented the struggle against gentrification until January 19, 2021, when the municipality evicted the areaafterfifteenyearsofexistence,despitestrongresistance. Theeviction coincided withthecovid-19pandemic and ahighlevelofsocialdisinte­gration due to strict and rigid government health measures. When there was the firstcovid-19 lockdownin May2020, diverse anti-authoritarian collectives, activists, and artists started bicycle protests in front of the governmental buildings, which led to regular protests, sit-ins, protest assemblies, and themed actions (actions of Aktiv kulturnih delavk in delavcev –addk(Active of Cultural Workers) in front of the Ministry of Culture; a coalition of ecological initiatives carried out many diverse actionsbytherivers,outsideoftheMinistryoftheEnvironmentandSpa­tial Planning and other institutions), etc. (Grafenauer and Tepina 2022, 409–428). Daša Tepina and Petja Grafenauer Conclusion As can be deduced from this short overview and series of visual exam­ples from different periods in the context of the area of one of the post-Yugoslavian republics, there has been a strong connection between art, autonomous spaces, and social movements reacting to political develop­ments. This tangle created a space for the development of critical politi­cal culture, both through the broader intertwining of the art scene with social movements and through the strong presence of visual and perfor­mativeimagesinthemovements.Atcertainhistoricalmoments(e.g. Ko­muna 7, Šempas, Diskofv,accMetelkova,atRog) we can also speak of the counterculture, when it goes beyond the artistic frameworks such as culturalinstitutions,galleries,etc.,andestablishesitsown,basedonnon-dominant discourse and self-organization principles. Artinsocial movements hasanenormouspotential forrevolution­izing aesthetics, which is also one of the essential elements of achiev­ing fundamental social change. Together with other elements such as anti-authoritarian politics, which has a wider social impact, values, au­tonomous spaces, music, fashion, etc., it forms the basis for the forma­tion of a counter-power. However, if the field of aesthetics is not com­pletely decoded from the existing social codes, no fundamental change takesplace. Hierarchicalpowerrelationseasilyintegrateinsideofartand activist movements and influence their dynamics to the extent that they become subordinated to systemsofpower and capital. As we observe the period of transition to capitalism, we can recognize that always when there is a gap, the code of capital inscribes it and takes control of the dy­namics. These mechanisms of recuperation of anti-authoritarian politics and aesthetics allow capitalism to become an all-embracing system inte­grated in every pore of political and social life. Wecanfollowthechangesinthemethodsandmodesofpressurebythe authorities and institutions, and the response to it, which is reminiscent of that shown by avant-garde movements in the past (with manifestos, rebranding/detournement, street art, and performative actions as a form of protest and art as a demand for a different collective life). We can also observe the attempt to invent alternative social relationships, which have beenaddressedbythisprotestmovementonseveraloccasions,butwhich have failed to find roots in the broader social dynamics. The main obsta­clescanbefoundintherepetitionoftheprotests,normalizationofradical actions,andrecuperationofartistsandrebelliousactionsinthesystemof power structures. When they become a repetitive routine, they lose their potential counter-power and their strength to think beyond the imag­inable. With the reduction of the protests to only demands, the protests became predictable, and the creative political space begins to shrink. The capitalist recuperation of praxis is one of the strongest elements of contemporary suppression of revolutionary aesthetic potential and the building of political counter-power from below. It is also one of the key elements of capitalist flexibility, thus it is important to differentiate be­tween the alternative praxis decodified through alternative social rela­tions (horizontality, solidarity, mutual aid, etc.) and those praxes that are not or are mere simulacrums of the first (Baudrillard 1999). Numer­ous art projects with socially critical and aesthetically conspicuous con­tent have their recognition or/and popularity incorporated by economic value, with which they are easily re-appropriated into the existing social order. The aesthetic revolutionary potential achieves dispersion momentum but is closed by reduced demand. Capitalism has an intensely flexible spectrum that can, through constant crisis, adapt to new social circum­stances. However, it is possible to observe the point at which capitalism needs to brutally adapt to the new realm. The older and more sophisti­catedmethodsofrecuperationandreificationofevery aspectof the indi­vidual’slifearenolongersufficient,thuswearefacingthemoreautocratic phase, which is on the rise. References Adorno, Theodor W. 2002. Aesthetic Theory. Translated by Robert Hullot-Kentor. London and New York: Continuum. Bavcar, Igor, ed. 1984. Punk pod Slovenci. Ljubljana: Republiška konferenca zsms, Univerzitetnakonferencazsms. Baudrillard, Jean. 1999. Simulaker in simulacija; Popoln zlocin. Translated by Anja Kosjek in Stojan Pelko. Ljubljana:šou, Študentska založba. Belting, Hans. 2010. ‘Absolutna umetnost kot utopija.’ Likovne besede (92): 12–21. Bibic,Bratko.2003.HrupzMetelkove:tranzicijeprostorovinkulturevLjubljani. Ljubljana: Mirovni inštitut. Borcic, Barbara. 2013. Celostna umetnina Laibach: fragmentarni pogled. Ljubl­jana: /*cf. Crnkic, Adin, and Daša Tepina. 2014. ‘Misliti anarhizem v slovenskem pros-toru: kronologija in zgodovinski razvoj.’ Casopis za kritiko znanosti 42 (257): 13–29. Eagleton, Terry. 1990. The Ideology of the Aesthetic. Oxford: Blackwell. ‘Federation for Anarchist Organising.’ 2009. Autonomija 1:8. Daša Tepina and Petja Grafenauer Grafenauer,Petja, and Daša Tepina. 2022. ‘Art and Rebellion: The Struggle for Freedomand Autonomy at theLjubljana2020/2021 Protests.’ ThirdText 36 (5): 409–428. Grlic, Danko. 1988. Izazov negativnog. Zagreb: Naprijed; Belgrade: Nolit. Gržinic, Marina. 2003. ‘Galerija škuc Ljubljana 1978–1987.’ In Do roba in naprej:slovenskaumetnost1975–1985,editedbyIgorŠpanjolandIgorZabel, 164–182.Ljubljana: Moderna galerija. Kovic, Brane. 1990. ‘Irwin – konec utopije.’ Sinteza (83–86): 13–17. Mandic, Dušan. 1983. Come, Close Close to Me, I Tell You Man You Will See ... Ljubljana: Self-published. Oleami, Samo. 2019. ‘Edicija oho.’ Aired on 27 October on Radio Študent. https://radiostudent.si/kultura/objekt-meseca/edicija-oho. Pavlišic, Andrej, ed. 2013. Metelkova mesto. Ljubljana: Študentska založba. PekarnaMagdalenskemrežeMaribor.N.d.‘Onas.’https://pekarnamm.org/o­nas Rancičre,Jacques.2010.Dissensus:OnPoliticsandAesthetics.LondonandNew York: Continuum. Scott, C. James. 1990. Domination and the Arts of Resistance. New Haven,ct, and London: Yale University Press. Španjol, Igor. 2003. ‘Veliki pok: multimedijska umetnost in alternativnascena v prvi polovici osemdesetih let.’ In Do roba in naprej: slovenska umetnost 1975–1985, edited by Igor Španjol and Igor Zabel, 80–92. Ljubljana: Mod-erna galerija. Vidmar, Igor. 1983. ‘Dossier Disco Študent.’ Mladina, 26. maj. Zabel, Igor. 1994. ‘oho – od reizma do konceptualizma.’ In oho: retrospek-tiva/Eine Retrospektive/A Retrospective, edited by Igor Španjol, 18–105. Ljubljana: Moderna galerija. ———.2003.‘Slovenskaumetnost1975–85:konceptiinkonteksti.’InDorobain naprej:slovenskaumetnost1975–1985,editedbyIgorŠpanjolandIgorZabel, 10–28 Ljubljana: Moderna galerija. Žižek, Slavoj, ed. 1984. Ideologija, cinizem, punk. Filozofija skozi psihoanalizo 1. Ljubljana: Univerzum. Archival Sources Arhiv Republike Slovenije, 1931 Republiški sekretariat za notranje zadeve So-cialisticnerepublike Slovenije(rsnzsrs),Uprava za analitiko1982,ma­701_108, Aktivnost slovenske politicne emigracije. Anthropos 56 (1): 59–78 | issn0587-5161 | e-issn2630-4082 Postajanje tovarišev v boju: umetnost in skrb za necloveški svet ter partizanska subjektivnost v jugoslovanskem narodnoosvobodilnem boju Gal Kirn Univerza v Ljubljani, Slovenija gal.kirn@ff.uni-lj.si ©2024Gal Kirn Povzetek. Besediloizhajaizkonceptapartizanskeekologijeingaposta­vljavkontekstdrugesvetovnevojneterjugoslovanskegapartizanskega boja(nob)protifašisticniokupaciji.Tobesedilointerpretiravrstopar­tizanskih umetniških del, ki jim je uspelo upodobiti neizmerno senzi­bilnostzanecloveškisvet,rastline,živaliterzlastigozdove.Tezaclanka predpostavlja,dasijepartizanskogibanje,nasprotnoodfašisticneoku­pacije in dominacije nad ljudmi ter naravo, prizadevalo graditi soli­darnost med partizani in živalmi/naravo. Clanek obravnava nekatere to interpretacijo podpirajoce trope v pesmih, proznih delih, risbah in graficnemgradivu,kjergozdpostanezatocišce,mestouporainobljuba osvoboditve.Nadaljeclanekopiševzniknastajajocepoliticnepartizan­ske subjektivnosti, ki vkljucuje zatirane, a tudi raznolike živali, krdelo volkov, požgana drevesa, ptice, ki kljub trnovim vejam še naprej žvr­golijo, polža kot figuro in kot primer trdoživega upora ter osvobojen gozd. Demonstrativnoprikažemo potek procesa, kiga Deleuzein Gu­attari imenujeta »postajanje cloveška žival«, pa tudi metamorfozo ne-cloveškihfigurv»tovariše«vborbiprotifašizmu. Besedilosezakljucis poskusom uskladitve jugoslovanskega partizanskega boja s splošnejšo razvojno linijo protikolonialnih in ekoloških bojev. Kljucne besede:nob, Jugoslavija, partizanska umetnost, gozd kot pro-stor osvoboditve, postajaticloveška žival, požgano drevo, figura polža, odpor, trdoživost,partizanskaekologija, zapatisti Becoming Comrades in Struggle: Art and Care for Non-Human World and Partisan Subjectivity in the Yugoslav People’s Liberation Struggle Abstract. The article is based on the concept of partisan ecology and is deployed in the context of the Second World War and the Yugoslav https://doi.org/10.26493/2630-4082.56.59-78 Gal Kirn partisanstruggle(nob)againstfascistoccupation. Itinterpretsaseries of partisanartworksthatsucceededin depicting an immense sensitiv­ity to the non-human world, plants, animals and forests. The thesis of thearticlearguesthatthepartisanmovement,in contrasttothefascist occupation and domination over people and nature, sought to build solidarity betweenpartisansandanimals/nature.The articleexamines this thesis in diverse poems, prose works, drawings and graphic ma­terial, and is focused on the process of transformation: for example, how the forest first becomes a refuge, then a place of resistance and a promise of liberation. The article goes on to describe the emergence of political subjectivity, wherethe oppressedarejoinedby diverseani­mals,apackofwolves,burnttrees,birdsthatcontinuetochirpdespite thethornybranches,thesnailasafigureofresilience,andtheliberated forest. Thisiswhat Deleuze andGuattari callbecomingahuman ani­mal,aswellasthemetamorphosisofnon-humanfiguresintocomrades in the struggle against fascism. The text concludes with an attempt to expand the Yugoslav partisan struggle to the contemporary situation. Key Words: partisan art, partisan ecology, forest as site of liberation, national liberation struggle, Yugoslavia, figure of snail, resilience, re­sistance, becoming animal, Deleuze, Zapatistas Teoretski uvod: misliti po partizansko? Izraz misliti po partizansko nas napotuje na slavno izjavo Karla Marxa (Marx, Bloch in Rossi 2008, 25), ki dejansko zaobsega širok nabor po­drocij, in sicer na slovito 11. tezo o Feuerbachu: »Filozofi so svet samo razlicno interpretirali, gre za to, da ga spremenimo.« Ta vizionarska iz-java je, ne brez kanca ironije, spodbudila številne nove filozofske in dru­gacne interpretacije, ki so svet ponovno interpretirale. Njena zacetna na­loga ostaja kakopak nerešena, predvsem v smislu, kako naj spremenimo svet,kdosmo»mi«,kinajgaspremenimo,inskakšnimisredstvi. VMar­xovem delu ne najdemo enoznacnega odgovora, prav tako pa obstajajo odstopanja med razlicnimi izhodišci in praksami, med poezijo, ki mora sanjati o prihodnosti, in zgodovino, ki mora zajeti dinamiko kapitala in (partizansko)razrednosubjektivnost,kišeneobstaja.Kernimogoceizo­liratiposameznihpraksdružbenetransformacije,sepoglavitnopartizan­sko vprašanje glasi, na kakšen nacin lahko heterogene prakse – politicne, teoreticne inumetniške –prispevajokbojuzaosvoboditevinspreminja­nje sveta. Korazmišljamootem,kajpomenibitipartizan,inkosesrecamospar­tizansko zapušcino v (post)jugoslovanskem kontekstu, moramo zaceti z dialekticnepozicije:bitidanespartizanpomeni,poenistrani,zavzetikri- ticno distanco do prevladujocega nacionalisticnega zgodovinskega revi­ zionizma in politicnih aparatov, ustanovljenih na podlagi ideje etnicno ocišcenih držav, po drugi pa ponovno soocenje s partizansko zapušcino, ki je bila nekdaj del uradne ideologije socialisticne Jugoslavije. To nela­ godno pozicioniranje do zapušcine nekdanje države pa nas vendarle ne bi smelo odvracati od premisleka in reaktivacije ter reapropriacije proti­ fašisticne in emancipacijske zapušcine ter kulturnih in politicnih virov, ki lahko pripomorejo obnoviti »tradicijo zatiranih« (Benjamin 2015), ali celo od sodelovanja pri grajenju transverzalne solidarnosti. Ce se želimo vrniti k raznoliki in transformativni zapušcini partizan­ skega – narodnoosvobodilnega – boja, moramo odkrito priznati, da to ni bil le negativen boj proti okupatorju, temvec boj, porojen v gozdovih partizanske Jugoslavije, ki je osvobodil okupirana ozemlja ter vzpostavil alternativno politicno in kulturno organizacijo. Za ta uspeh je zaslužna ljudska mobilizacija zatiranih, zlasti delavskih množic nepismenih kme­ tov, mladine in žensk v letih 1941–1945.ą Ceravno so bili jugoslovanski odporniki eni redkih v Evropi, ki so se uspeli osvoboditi sami, pa partizanskega delovanja ne moremo zvesti zgolj na vojaško gverilsko taktiko. Enako veliko vlogo so imele namrec politicne, predvsem pa kulturne in umetniške dejavnosti, ki so postale najpomembnejše orožje množicnega ustvarjanja. V štirih letih osvobo­ dilnega boja so množice anonimnih pesnikov – zvecine samoizobraže­ nih,mnogimednjimipasosebranjainpisanjašelezaceliuciti–ustvarile okrog 40.000 pesmi. V nemogocih okolišcinah materialnega pomanjkanja in neobstojece umetnostne infrastrukture so partizanski umetniki ustvarili na tisoce risb, zgodb, crtic, celo dram, grafik, kipov, fotografij ter celo simfonij in filmov.˛ Vojna zatorej ni bila izkljucno temacno obdobje grozovitih de­ janj, temvec tudi proces kulturne revolucije, ki je prinesel emancipacijo tistim,kisobilivpredvojniKraljeviniJugoslavijinajboljizkorišcani.nob je tako že od vsega zacetka povezan z utopicnim in transformativnim vi- dikom: projektom gradnje nove Jugoslavije, ki se ne bo koncal s koncem vojne(Kirn 2022a).Takoseta utopicna, avantgardna idejaprelamljatudi znotraj kasnejših tendenc in prelomov v socialisticni Jugoslaviji. ą Ta proces je podrobno opisan v Kirn (2022a). ˛ Za najpodrobnejši prikaz partizanske umetnosti, osredotocene na poezijo v casu druge svetovne vojne, glej Komelj (2009). Gal Kirn Partizanska ekologija? Kakoinzakajpovezatijugoslovanskopartizansko-osvobodilnoumetnost z ekologijo? Tu ne gre toliko za to, da predmet raziskovanja na vso silo usmerimo kmodnejšemuinaktualisticnejšemubranjupreteklosti. Naj takoj pristavim, da v medvojnem obdobju skrb za okolje ni bila visoka teoretsko-politicna prioriteta tako v kapitalisticni kot socialisticni mo-dernizacijski paradigmi, a vendarle je partizansko gibanje prispevalo k drugacnemupogleduinpraksidookolja.Nadalje,clanekboposkusildo­kazati,dacedanesželimoopartizanstvugovoritionkrajnostalgije,simo­ramotudizastavitivprašanjeopovezavimed(neo)partizaniinekologijo. Cenamjemarzasvetincegaspreminjamo,potemmorata,gledenapod­nebne spremembe ter ekološke izzive sedanjosti, razmišljanje in delova­nje v tej smeri postati ena prioritetnih nalog sodobnih partizanskih pri­zadevanj, usmerjenih proti korporativnemu zelenemu pranju (angl. gre­enwashing) in zanikanju podnebnih sprememb. Ko upoštevamo izsledke dolgotrajnih znanstvenih raziskav, politicneakcijein destruktivno trans-formacijo naše obstojece realnosti, postane povsem ocitno, da globalni kapitalizem ruši absolutne meje okolja in njegovih obcutljivih ekosiste­mov. Kapitalisticni razvoj je drasticno spremenil našo predstavo o pri­hodnosti. Ne gre le za to, da je v velikem delu znanstvenofantasticnega in fantazijskega žanra že pred casom prišlo do preobrazbe utopicnega v distopicni imaginarij prihodnosti (Jameson 2001) in da je že vsaj od leta 1989znano,dasejespropadomsocializmataprocessamošeokrepil(Bu­den2014).Imaginarij(post)apokalipticneprihodnosti,nepredvidljivihin neobvladljivih sil narave evocirajo že sama imena, recimo temu »novo­partizanskih« ekoloških gibanj oz. skupin: »izumrtje«, »upor«, »zadnja generacija« ipd. (Extinction Rebellion, Last Generation, Voluntary Hu­man Extinction Movement). Toda zamišljanje apokalipse in postapokalipticnih scenarijev, kot so to že ugotavljali nekateri teoretiki, ovira plodovit kolektivni razmislek o drugacni in alternativni prihodnosti. Na to distopijo sta jasno opozarjala JamesoninŽižek,zlastikoncizno pajetougotovitevrazvilin popula­riziral Mark Fisher s koncipiranjem »kapitalisticnega realizma«, ki ga je opredelil kot obcutek, da je samo kapitalizem edini možen politicni in ekonomski sistem in da si je danes nemogoce zamisliti alternativo kapi­talizmu (Fisher 2021). Tako ne preseneca, da se velik del ekološke kri­ticne zavesti in gibanj vrti okoli religioznega oz. eshatološkega tropa za­dnjesodbeingrehov,zakaterebocloveštvonaposledmoraloodgovarjati. Na tocki, ko ne premoremo imaginarija utopije, sedanjost in prihodnost pa vidimo vedno bolj kot del »naravnega stanja«, se nam alternativna iz­ bira reducira na izumrtje ali preživetje. S tem pa se v našo legitimizacijo obstojecegavednoboljvsiljujenormalizacijavojne,ekstraktivizmainnaj­ brutalnejših oblik vladanja ter nasilja. Vclankubirad,tudikotprotiutežtej normalizacijinaravnega stanjain odsotnosti utopije, opravil nekaj preliminarnih raziskav o jugoslovanski partizanski ekologiji,kibibilelahkovpomoctakoprirazmislekuoume­ tniškirazvojnipotiindedišcinizatiranihizdrugesvetovnevojnekottudi pri formuliranju jasnega – partizanskega – stališca, ki bo ustrezno od­ govarjalo napereceizzive naše sedanjosti. Zatomebodo zanimaletiste prakse partizanske ekologije, ki jim je uspelo prelomiti z obstojecim sta­ njem »prvotne akumulacijekapitala«.ł To so prakse, ki si zamišljajoin že materializirajosvet,vkateremskupnostvodporurazvijasobivajocinne­ pridobitniški (nekstraktivisticen) odnos do narave. Za tukajšnji koncept partizanske ekologije se v tem clanku naslanjam na dve besedili: kratko besedilo Andreasa Malma o maronskih upornikih in divjini ter knjigo Malcolma Ferdinanda, ki govori sicer o »dekolonialni ekologiji« ter po­ nuja izjemen vpogled v karibsko modernost s posebnim poudarkom na karibskem odporuprotikolonialnemuinokoljskemuzlomu. Obaavtorja prepricljivo predstavita emancipatorno gibanje nekdanjih sužnjev, ki so od 16. do sredine 20. stoletja gradili alternativne skupnosti. Nekdanji oz. osvobojenisužnjiso dobiliime»maroni« pofrancoski besedi marron oz. španski cimarrón, kipomenita»divji,ubegel«,najprejuporabljanivzvezi zdivjimalipobeglimgovedom,kasnejepasovLatinskiAmerikiinzlasti na karibskem otocju tako poimenovali zasužnjene ameriške domorodce terafriškesužnje,kisoubeglisuženjstvuterpobegnilisplantažglobokov gozdove, hribovita in gorata podrocja ter mocvirja, kjer vladajo težke ži­ vljenjskerazmere(Spitzer1938;ArrominGarcíaArévalo1986). Nenehno so bili življenjsko ogroženi, sprva kot sužnji, kasneje pa je njihov boj za svobodo potekal v gosto porasli divjini. Kljubtemovirampasomaronskeskupnostiuspešnokonstituiraledru­ gacno, avtonomnooblikoživljenja,kijemed drugim temeljilanabolj organskem odnosu z naravo. Maroni so ostali vojaško pripravljeni tudi po samoosvoboditvi,bili so gverilski borci, ki so obcasno napadali plan- taže in osvobajali druge sužnje. V tem pogledu so se še naprej bojevali ł Ta koncept sem v okviru spominske politike in tranzicije v (post)jugoslovanskem konte­kstu obravnaval v Kirn (2022b). Gal Kirn protizatiralskimoblikamplantažnega sistemainnajnasilnejšimvidikom ter oblikam »primitivne akumulacije kapitala« (Marx 2012). Po Malmo­vih (2018) ugotovitvah je prehod na fosilni kapitalizem notranje zvezan s kolonializmom, zato ga najmocneje obcutijo prav kolonizirana ljudstva in ti, ki živijo na periferijah svetovnega sistema; medtem ko Ferdinand (2022) kot kljucno spoznanje izpostavlja, da je maronski transformativni odpor ponujal utopicni horizont, kar sam jemlje za temeljno in nujno epistemološko izhodišce ponovnega premisleka karibskih zgodovin. Cepravseomenjenidelineosredotocatanaumetniško razsežnost ma-ronskih uporniških bojev, pa pri svojem raziskovanju upoštevam njuna teoretska okvira. V raziskavi poskušam najprej uskladiti jugoslovanski partizanski primer s splošno nadzgodovinsko solidarnostjo/dedišcino, k cemurjepozivalžeWalterBenjamin(2015),kojepisaloobnovitvi»tradi­cijezatiranih«. Pri analizi jugoslovanskegaodporaprotifašisticni okupa­cijimeddrugosvetovnovojnopašeposebejupoštevam,dajetapotekalv izrazitodrugacnihzgodovinskihokolišcinahinkontekstukakorkaribski. Pavendarjemogocekaj hitrougotoviti,daobstajanekajnespregledljivih podobnosti med partizanskimi in maronskimi odporniškimi praksami termedpartizanskoinmaronskosenzibilnostjozaokolje.Podobnokakor maroni so sebilitudijugoslovanskipartizani – dabipreživeli in(p)ostali svobodni – prisiljeni zateci v goste gozdove, hribovja in gore Balkana. Ti prostori zatocišca so se spremenili v prave prostore odpora in kon­stitutivnemoci.NaosvobojenihobmocjihjeKomunisticnapartijavtvor­nem sodelovanju s partizansko samoorganiziranim ljudstvom razvila al­ternativne politicne in kulturne protiinstitucije. Pri ustvarjanju novega imaginarija drugacnega sveta pa je imela odlocilno vlogo prav partizan-ska umetnost. Prav tako je treba upoštevati, da je njihov modus operandi temeljil na izraziti mobilnosti, saj so se osvobojena ozemlja naglo širila in izginjala, partizani pa so se pogosto morali, ponekod v roku nekaj te­dnov, preseljevati v povsem druge regije. Celoten osvobodilni boj lahko potemtakem razumemo kot dolgotrajno deteritorializacijsko gibanje in gverilsko vojskovanje. Jugoslovanski protifašisticni odpor ni nasprotoval zgolj fašisticni oku­paciji, pac pa je bil zasnovan tudi kot boj proti predvojni Kraljevini Ju­goslaviji, torej usmerjen proti izkorišcanju in dominaciji nad ljudstvi ter proti sami vojni kot dominaciji nad naravo. Zato ne preseneca, da imajo narava, gozd pa tudi živali ter rastline kljucno vlogo v partizanskem na-cinu življenja in boju ter zasedajo pomembno mesto v njihovem imagi­nariju,ki jeformiral to, kartuimenujemo »partizanska ekologija«. Pre­senetljivejše pa je nemara to, da niti med najnovejšimi raziskavami par-tizanskega boja in partizanske umetnosti ne najdemo nobene, ki bi po­globljeno obravnavala doticno razsežnost partizanstva in njegovega raz­merja do narave. Sicer obstajajokrajše analize narave v partizanskem pe­sništvu, ki jih je opravila Marija Stanonik (1995), Lojze Gostiša (1994) je analiziral nekatere alegoricne motive živali v likovni umetnosti, Miklavž Komelj (2009, 520–528) pa je med dodatke k svoji knjigi vkljucil kratek pregled »postajanja živali«4 v nekaterih partizanskih pesniških, proznih indramskihdelih.Todavtehobravnavahumanjkaširša,celostnaanaliza partizanskeumetnostiinsimbolnepolitike,odnosapartizanovdonarave ter vloge narave v partizanski umetnosti, kar je tema tega clanka in pri­hodnjega dela. Partizanska breza/umetnost: med propagando in modernizmom? Namen predstavitve in interpretacije izbranega gradiva ni kanonizirati ter povzdigovati naravo in krajino v partizanski umetnosti, marvec po­ kazati, kako so izbrana umetniška dela, ki so obravnavala necloveško – rastline, gozdove in živali –, ne le postala umetniške alegorije partizan­ skegaboja,pacpaso,prežetazidejoosvoboditve,zavzelastranv(protifa­ šisticnem) boju.Namen prispevka ni(zgolj)dokumentiranjefašisticnega terorja, razvidnega v podobah pobitih živali in požgane zemlje, temvec dokumentiranje tistih podob in pesmi, ki so k naravi pristopile dialek- ticno in ohranile sledi tako grozljivega nasilja kot tudi emancipatornih obljub. V casu fašisticne nevarnosti namrec ne obstaja nic takega, kot so nedolžna narava alidrevesa,oz.: zakajbi pravzaprav v casu fašizmasploh še govorili o drevesih? To spominja na Benjaminov zagovor »politizacije estetike« nasproti fašisticni »estetizaciji politike«. Nek ideal narave, po­ vratek k bolj »naravnemu« in ocišcenem okolju je bil kakopak sestavni del nacisticne ideologije, dasiravno v ostrem nasprotju s siceršnjimi na­ cisticnimi težnjami po visoki tehnološki razvitosti in modernizaciji (Be­ njamin 2015). Brecht je v casu skokovitega porasta fašizma v svoji (1967) pesmispraševal,alinigovoritiodrevesihvcasufašizmamalodanezlocin, avendarle semoramoskupajznjim vprašati,ali –inkako–je mogoce govoriti o naravi na partizanski, antifašisticni nacin? Polemika, kakšno vlogo pripisati partizanski umetnosti, se je v okviru jugoslovanskega in predvsem slovenskega osvobodilnegaboja še posebej 4 »Clovekovo postajanje žival je realno, ne da bi bila žival, v katero se clovek spremeni, realna« (Deleuze in Guattari 1980, 291). Gal Kirn zaostrila leta 1944 po javnem natecaju za (partizanske) risbe/slike. Pole-mika je znana kot »partizanska breza«, saj je poziv vseboval izrecno po­liticno navodilo: ce že hoce nekdo narisati drevo/brezo, potem mora biti jasno, da, povedano s tocnimi besedami partizanskega umetnika Doreta Klemencica–Maja(1971,13),5 »šetakodobronaslikanabrezanemorebiti umetnina, ce ni pod njo naslikan vsaj partizanski mitraljez«. Prikaz na-rave mora vsebovati neposredno reprezentacijo (vojaškega) boja, zaradi cesar je bil poziv kriticno ocenjen kot propagandisticen in direktiven. V socasni javni razpravi, ki je artikulirala avtonomisticno držo (ki je tudi prevladala), so pozivu nemudoma nasprotovali številni komunisti in ra­znovrstni partizanski umetniki. Mnoge retroaktivne interpretacije te po­lemike–kisosepovojnitekomsocializmanadaljevale–sozatrjevale,da grezatipicnodihotomijomedsocialisticnorealisticno/propagandisticno stranjo in avtonomisticno, modernisticno stranjo, ki si je prizadevala za avtonomijo umetnikov. Vendar pa natancno branje teh polemik pokaže, dasprtistraninitinistabilitakodalecnarazen, kotbilahkosklepaliizpr­votnih kontroverz: avtonomisticna (pozneje modernisticna) perspektiva ni namrec nikoli kategoricno trdila, da sploh obstaja nekaj takega, kot je nepoliticna umetnost, ki ne bi zagovarjala nobenih (eticnih) vrednot. Še vec,neizbežnoje,davsakaumetninaznotrajosvobodilnegabojapostane politicna; prav tako pa to, kar je veljalo za propagandisticno, iz partizan­skeumetnostiniizkljucevalonobeneposebneumetniškeformenitinebi moglitrditi,dajebilsocialisticnirealizemprevladujocokvirosvobodilne umetnosti.6 Primeri partizanske umetnosti: narava postaja partizanska, partizani postajajo živali? Kot izrazit primer partizanskega drevesa je mogoce izpostaviti risbo, ki je postala znamenita partizanska grafika, imenovana Ožgana tepka. To delo je ustvaril France Mihelic, eden bolj znanih slovenskih eks­ presionisticnih grafikov, ki je izdelal precej obsežen graficni portfelj, v katerem (mrtva) narava in požgana drevesa zasedajo pomembno mesto. V nasprotju zuveljavljenointerpretacijomotiva ožganehruške predstav- 5 Glej Mocnik (2016, 32). Za daljšo razpravo o politicni angažiranosti in modernisticnih, realisticnihteravantgardisticnihtendencahvlevicarskiinpartizanskiumetnostiglejtudi diskusijo med Komeljem in Mocnikom v isti številki Slavica tergestina (Komelj 2016). 6 PonovnobiusmerilnaomenjenodiskusijomedKomeljeminMocnikom,kisvajouredila s Habjanom v zgoraj omenjeni številki Slavice tergestine. Slika 1 France Mihelic, Ožgana tepka (z do-voljenjem Muzeja novejše in sodobne zgodovine Slovenije) ljam razmišljanje, da tega motiva ne gre razumeti le kot emblema faši­sticne vojne. Resda drži, kot je to ugotavljala Tina Fortic Jakopic, da po­žgano drevo predstavlja žrtev fašisticne vojne, toda sam bi to interpreta­cijonadgradilšezdvemapoudarkoma.Najprejpredlagam,dapožganega drevesa ne dojemamo le kot prispodobo žrtve vojne, ampak kot »materi­alno prico« vojne. Kot drugo pa menim, da (avtorjeva)osamitev in izpo­stavitevdrevesa,karganarediavtonomneganasprotipokrajini,neolepša tolikosledovnasilja,kolikorpoudaripomenupirajoceserastlineinvztra­janjauporavkrajini.TudiKomeljizpostaviprecejantimilitaristicnodržo Mihelica,kozapiše(2016,60),da»Mihelictrdi,dasodrevesapomembna prav v svoji konkretnosti in tujosti in da je ravno pozicija, s katere se za­vemo njihovega pomena, tudi pozicija, s katere se lahko upremo vsakr­šnim poskusom estetizacije vojnega opustošenja«, zaradi cesar je ta po­zicija »antimilitaristicna«. Ceprav je ta del gozda mrtev, pa njegova gro­zljiva forma vztrajno ostaja in jo je zato mogoce razumeti kot enega iz­razitih primerov partizanske trdoživosti, trdoživosti boja – kot emblem partizanske ekologije. Gal Kirn Drug takšen presunljiv vizualni graficni izdelek je ustvaril hrvaški li­ kovnik in grafik Marijan Detoni. Svoja dela o naravi najbogateje nagradi v svoji graficni mapi Plodovi vzburjenja (hrv. Plodovi uzbudjenja), kina­ stanenasamemzacetkuvojne(1941).Naprvipogledjevideti,daavtordo narave, razlicnih vizualnih tropov in morfologije rastlin pristopa na ro­ manticisticennacin,vendarpanarava,razlicnerožeinrastline spribliže­ vanjem detajlov postanejo grozece, prerašcajo meje in zadobijo celo po­ šastno podobo. V tem bi lahko brali vizualno referenco na Baudelairjeve Rože zla, ki so prav tako intervenirale v umirjajoce buržoazne horizonte morale.7 Detonijev proces odstiranja in vzburjenja med »plodovi mišlje­ nja«lahkorazumemokot»trganjeokov«,kijetukajumešcenovdolocen upor rastlin proti grozeci brutalnosti vojne in okupacije. Lahko bi rekli, dauporrastlinponazarjatudiprihodnjiuporše neobstojecihpartizanov, ki bo prav tako vzklil v gozdovih Jugoslavije. V nekoliko bolj psihoanali- ticnem smislubi lahkotudi rekli, dato monstruozno izrašcanje iz narave predstavlja realno, grozljive vojne okolišcine, ki nikogar ne pustijo nedo­ taknjenega, tudi same narave ne, obenem pa nas že pripravljajo na samo grozljivonujnostuporaprotitakšnimokolišcinam. Detonijevodedišcino plodov, ki zaenkrat še ni dobila mnogo pozornosti, gre brati kot neke vr­ ste bestiarij oz. favnarij partizanskih rastlin, necloveškega sveta, ki budi in buri partizansko domišljijo. Ce sevrnem kMihelicu, ki ježe med bojem zaslovel zgraficnim izdel­ kom, ki ga je soustvaril v sodelovanju z Nikolajem Pirnatom, osupljivim graficnim zemljevidom Naš boj, pa je njegovonajbolj vizionarsko in nav­ dihujoce graficno delo mogoce najti v njegovi seriji oz. ciklu risb Apoka­ lipsa. Mihelicu je uspelo zajeti vso razsežnost unicenja vasi,ljudi,narave, sledove nasilja, posiljevanja in mucenja, kar tvori apokalipticno krajino, ki jo težko zajameta fotografski in filmski objektiv. Ta izstopajoca risba, ki je kasneje postala tudi grafika oz. linorez, se imenuje Sledovi. Tina Fortic Jakopic (2020, 23) trdi, da prav ta risba »povzema fazo po­ polnegaunicenjainobenemprikazujetrenutek,kosevseumiriinutihne [...] edini preživeli bitji sta dve vrani. Edini preživeli bitji sta živali.« To »upocasnjevanje«jesimptomaticno,sajvecinadrugihMihelicevihpodob in grafik predstavlja gibanje, ljudi,partizanov, fašistov ter drugih figur. V primerjaviznjimistatako Ožganatepka kot Sledovi videtitihožitjivojne, kjerživljenjeobmiri,zaradicesarjeobaizdelkamogocerazumetikotnek 7 Ceprav je bil Baudelaire poznan po favoriziranju umetnega nasproti naravnemu, vsaj del njegovega opusa lahko citamo tudi skozi to alternativnejšo optiko; glej tudi Pegram (2012). Slika 2 Marijan Detoni, graficna mapa Cvjetovi mašte (z dovoljenjem Muzeja suvremene umetnosti Beograd) tragicnirezultatvojne. Vojnogibanjenemalokrat –tudizaradiustaljenih reprezentacijvojne–»krasi«dinamika,gibanje,eksplozije,juriši... ,ven­darobstajatudistranobnemelosti,zamrznitevpokrajine,praznihterpo­žganih vasi in dreves, izgubljene živine ter postajajocihživali, ki po vojni vihri brezsmiselno tavajo naokoli. Naslednjavrstaobravnavanihprimerovsenanašanagozd,ki,kotžere-ceno,nibilleprimarnozatocišcepartizanov,ampaktudiprimarnomesto politicnega organiziranja in odpora, laboratorij ljudske oblasti. Živali in gozd kot celota postanejo pomemben del partizanske ter umetniške sen-zibilnosti. Ceprav Marija Stanonik (1995) meni, da reprezentacija narave v partizanski poeziji ni tako prevladujoca, kot bi to pricakovali, pa še ve­dno najdemo obilo mnogoterega vizualnega in pisnega gradiva, ki izpo­stavlja gozd kot nov politicni prostor. Še vec, gozd postane neposredna metafora samega partizanskega boja (prim. Komelj 2009), kar nazorno ponazarja odlomek pesmi Zorana Hudalesa Senoviškega (iz leta 1943), v katerem je razvidna presunljiva preobrazba partizanskih trdnjav v parti­zanske zbore – zbori so najbolj priljubljena in najmnožicnejša umetno­stnopoliticna forma ter praksa partizanskega boja (Paternu 1998, 507): Zeleni gozdovi, slovenske trdnjave šumite o borbah, junakih in zmagi ... šumite nad zemljo, kjer padli so dragi. 69 Gal Kirn Šumite ponosni, brstite in stojte! Z vetrom mogocno v širne daljave še pesem o svobodi zlati zapojte. Preobrazbo iz negibne trdnjave narave v zbore, ki jim je dan glas, spre­mljasubtilenpremikodnegodovanjainobjokovanjapadlihkpetjupesmi svobode, ki so postaleizjemno popularneinsehitro širile popartizan­skem ozemlju pa tudi v okupirana mesta. Podoben ritem in odporniško trdoživost je mogoce zaslediti v razlicnih zapisih o zaprtih, poškodova­nihinizmucenihpticahpatudiopticah,kijihnimogocezapretivkletke ali ki jim uspe pobegniti na prostost. Partizanska ptica kljub nemogocim okolišcinam poje še naprej, kljub temu da se njenega glasu ne sliši zaradi eksplozij fašisticnih bomb in prepovedi uporabe nenemškega jezika na okupiranih ozemljih. Partizanska ptica poje navkljub ovirajocemu trnju in omejitvam ter prebuja ljudi, kot to dobro prikaže pesem Radajeva iz leta 1944 (Paternu 1989, 191): Izpod neba brnenje motorjev se krohota ... Pojte ptice, pesem železno pesem viharno, udarno ... Pojtojodan in noc, da jo poslušal bo kleti sovrag. Nas pa preletajte in nam oznanjajte srecno in novo svobodno pomlad Ptice so tako postale mocan vizualni trop, eden najznamenitejših pri­merovpajenedvomnopetjeslavckanatrnoviveji.Lahkobiceloodlocno zatrdili,dasotakšniemblemiizsvetanaravebistvenopomagalinadome­stitistereotipno figurativnojunaškoupodobitevpartizanov alipartizank. Ta ptica je znamenje in simbol partizanskega odpora kot takega. Postajanje žival: partizani – volkovi Drevo, gozd in ptica so nemara nekoliko prevec prikladni primeri par-tizansko-osvobodilne umetnosti, zato je smiselno preiti na grozljivejšo upodobitev, in sicer na upodobitev zveri, kar je vselej služilo utrjevanju locnice med clovekom/civilizacijo in živaljo, oz. kar je prisotnejše v pro­pagandisticnem žanru, locnice med našo in sovražnikovo stranjo. Ce­prav bi pricakovali, da bodo fašisti prikazani kot zveri/volkovi, ki plenijo »naše« ljudi/nedolžne ovce, pa je v razlicnih pesmih, proznih in likovnih delih mogoce zaslediti pozitivno vrednotenje volkov in volkov – parti­zanov. Partizanski pesnik Matej Bor je že od svoje prve partizanske re-portaže in partizanske drame Raztrganci (1942) dalje upodabljal volkove v jasni navezavi na partizansko subjektivnost. Presenetljivo je tudi to, da se jeprvapesemnob»Pojte za menoj«,ki jojenapisalOtonŽupancic (1959, 148–149) in je bila nepodpisana objavljena v Delu, decembra leta 1941, prav tako koncala z izrecno omembo volkov. Pesem klice k orožju proti fašisticni okupaciji in kolaboraciji ter zakljuci: takrat volcji zbor pojde lovce klat. Volcji zbor oz. »krdelo volkov« je mogoce razumeti širše od meta- foriziranega vznikanja moci silovitega odpora, katere pozitivne sledi najdevamo v zapušcini širšega balkanskega imaginarija (glej tudi Ko­ melj 2009). Namesto tega predlagam, da teh verzov ne razumemo le kot metaforo, temvec kot tvorni del imaginarija,8 ki sproži politicni proces, ki ga Deleuze in Guattari (1986) poimenujeta postajanje žival. Ta proces je determiniran s premikom od glavnega/stalnega k manj­ šemu/spremenljivemu, kjer deteritorializacija oznacuje nomadsko mo- dalnost postajanja. Zaradi specificne lokacije partizanskega boja in nje­ gove intenzivnosti ta boj presega mejo med clovekom ter živaljo. Pouda­ riti pa velja tudi pomembnost tega, da je takšno politicno branje v na­ sprotju z retrospektivnim in relativizirajocim liberalno-humanisticnim tropom, ki vztraja pri ohranjanju locnice med ljudmi in živalmi. Ta liberalno-humanisticnitropnamrecpripisujegrozotevojneljudem,kiso postali živali in naj bi takšni postali zaradi vojne, tovrstno sklepanje pa zagrešilogicnozmotokrožnegasklepanja(lat.circulusinprobando).Ven­ dar pa takšna argumentacija cloveka razbremeni vsakršne krivde in od­ govornosti za storjenagrozodejstva: fašisticnadejanja,pomnenjurevizi­ onistov pa tudi antifašisticni boj, so tako domnevno »necloveška« zaradi vojne ideologije in ker naj bi storilci opustili svojo cloveško/civilizirano naravo. Alternativna partizanska pesniško-literarno-politicna trajekto- 8 S tega vidika je ta specificna in mocno metaforizirana podoba, ki se samospreminja – v tem primeru volcje krdelo –, tvoren del partizanskega imaginarija postajanja živali clo­ veka. Gal Kirn rija uvaja možnost nove, drugacne identifikacije, ki je bila nujna, da so partizani lahko postali zveri, ce so želeli zmagati v boju proti fašistom, za kar je vcasih potrebna celo(s)tna eksistencialna angažiranost. Proces preseganja binarnega locevanja med clovekom in živaljo je tako izredno kriticen do moralizirajocega humanisticnega tropa ter ga lahko zasle­dimo v številnih umetninah tistega casa. Šeenonajemblematicnejšihformvizualnegaupodabljanjazveripanaj-demo znova v ciklu Franceta Mihelica Apokalipsa. Predlagam, da obrav­navano podobo,kisojonekateri avtorjipoimenovali Tuleci pes, interpre­tiramo kot tulecega volka (ali celo kot partizana oz. psa, ki postaja volk). Po interpretaciji Tine Fortic Jakopic naj bi ta podoba upodabljala po­slednjega preživelega tavajocega psa (oz. žival, poleg že omenjenih dveh vran), ki mu ne preostane drugega, kot da obupano tuli v nebo. Vendar pa lahko tega tulecega volka s pomocjo manjšega dialekticnega zasuka – in z navezavo na Župancicev »volcji zbor« – razumemo kot klicanje k mašcevanju, izravnavi krivice oz. kot pozivanje drugih k orožju, naj se pridružijo nastajajocemu zboru in krdelu partizanov – volkov. V partizanskem tisku najdemo raznovrstna pesniška in prozna dela za otroke–naosvobojenihobmocjihsobilepartizanskebolnišnice–inmed to otroško (partizansko) literaturo sem našel ilustracijo, ki pospremi pe­sem »Živali pomagajo«, objavljeno leta 1944 (Paternu 1989, 107): Ono noc ob polni luni so živali gozdne zborovale. Enodušno so sklenile: »Partizanom bomo pomagale!« Nekatere živalipostanejokurirji,drugiobhodnikivpatrulji,vse paso­delujejo v partizanskem boju proti fašisticni okupaciji. Pomenljivo pa je tudi to, da so si številni partizani ob vstopu v partizanske odrede nadeli živalska imena. Enazadnjihkljucnihživali,prisotnihvrazlicnihzgodbah,pesmih,gra­ficnih zemljevidih, fotografijah in risbah, je nedvomno mula oz. konj. Ti so bili dejansko najnujnejše transportno sredstvo partizanov, simbol žr­tve(nosti) in upora ter pomemben del partizanskih pohodniških kolon in maršev. Nekaj najmarkantnejših figur, ki upodabljajomuloinkonja,je pri nas ustvarilIve Šubic,ki mulooz. konjaoznacujezizrazom »tovariš«, karkaže nelena preseganjerazlikovanjamed clovekom in živaljo, mar­vec na žival, ki pripada politicnemu taboru. Žival, ki se, preko trpljenja inboja,subjektivizira(zaodlicno izpeljavopoglej Vicar2016).Tomocno Slika 3 Ive Šubic, Mula Jaka (z dovoljenjem Mu-zeja novejše in so-dobne zgodovine Slovenije) spominjanamisel,kijoje–obnatancnembranjuPlatonova,cigarskrbin utopijastazajemalavesplanet –navrglaOxanaTimofeeva(2018,168):»V njegovihspisih želja po komunizmupreplavljane leljudi,pacpa vsaživa bitja, vkljucno z rastlinami«. Pri Platonovu tovariški hrbet konja, pri Šu­bicu obraz tovariša – konja in neskoncna medsebojna podpora na njuni skupni poti do osvoboditve. Figura polža: od partizanske trdoživosti do zapatisticno navdahnjene odrasti Za konec bi rad še omenil podobo živali, ki je bržkone ne bi videli kot borcavprvihvrstahpartizanskegaboja:polža.Polžisovprimerjavisko­nji, z volkovi in s pticami videti prepocasni, niso srditi, ne morejo se zbi­rati v »zbore« kakor volkovi, ne morejo peti pesmi, ki bi naravo in mno­žice mobilizirala v skupnem boju, niti ne morejo prevažati ranjencev ali hrane, ki jo potrebujejo partizanski odredi. Partizanski polž pa simboli­zira tudi vzdržljivost ter mukotrpno, dolgotrajno pot upora in osvobo­ditve partizanov. Nenazadnje polž venomer »nosi« s sabo svojo hišico, Gal Kirn Slika 4 Alenka Gerlovic, Polž (z dovoljenjem Muzeja novejše in sodobne zgodovine Slovenije) kar predstavlja visoko adaptabilnost pa tudi doloceno nenavezanost na lastnino in državo ter tako po samem nacinu gibanja in življenja aludira na deteritorializirajoce gibanje partizanskih cet. Zaradi tega je polž nadvse primerno utelešenje deteritorializirajoce lo- gike, ki izvaja nenehno gibanje. Polž je figura, ki jo lahko zoperstavimo teluricni (zemeljski) dimenziji vecne pripadnosti eni »domovini«. Opo­ mnimo, da ima prav navezanost na zemljo (angl. soil)kljucen pomenv definiciji partizanske figure Carla Schmitta. Po njegovem prepricanju se partizanska formacija odlikuje po gibljivosti in neustaljenosti ter je nad­ dolocena s teluricno navezanostjo. Schmittovi partizani ljubijo zemljo in se zanjoborijo, karlahko beremo kotprojiciranodmev fašisticne rodin­ grudovske (nem. Blut und Boden)ideologije.. Vnasprotju stem grepar­ tizanskemu polžu, podobno kot pri deževniku ali pri krtu, za ritje po ze­ mlji,tojezaprakso, ki redefinira inpreoblikuje to,kar dojemamo kot našo domaco grudo, zemljo, deželo. Ta polžje-deževniška praksa nas ne napeljuje k povratku k vecni in nespremenjeni grudi, ki bi bil tako del vnaprejdoloceneorganskenacionalnesubstance, inkjer kri,kiizraste iz zemlje, doloca njeno preteklost in prihodnost izvoljenega/izbranega na­ roda.Vnasprotjuzvecnimvracanjemkstarietnicno-zemeljskisubstanci bodo partizanske živali, borci in borke zemljo samo ter s tem tudi svojo identiteto preoblikovali med bojem. Naša izbira figure polža za partizansko gibanje in osvobodilno logiko . Za mojo kritiko Schmitta glej Kirn (2015). ni tako poljubna, kot se zdi na prvi pogled. Polža lahko povežemo z raz­licnimipartizansko-osvobodilnimizapisiinpodobamipovsemsvetu:od znamenitegaizrekaChejaGuevare,dasogverilcikakorpolži,kisvojdom vedno nosijo s sabo(2006, 52), do idejedeteritorializacijeinvelikega po­menapolževter školjkvzapatisticnemgibanju,kisejerazvilovdevetde­setih letih prejšnjega stoletja in vztraja še dandanes. Zapatisticno gibanje polža obravnavakot zgodovinsko figuro, z Benjaminom bi lahko govorili tudi o miselni figuri (nem. Denkfigur),ki ponazarja tako zacetek kot tudi konec svojega boja, je imanenten ter se nanaša na neko tocko zunanjosti. Obenem polža vidimo kot emancipatoren navdih iz kulture in življenja majevskih staroselcev. Lupine polžev imajo koncentricne spiralne kroge, kizgodovine/preteklostinekodirajoinneregistrirajonjenegalinearnega poteka, temvec zgodovino predstavljajo bolj organsko ter na nacin, ki prepleta naravo in kulturo, na kar so opozarjali že v majski civilizaciji. Za zapatiste je reapropriacijapreteklosti kljucnega pomena in tudi ta cla-nekprivededopomembnegavprašanja,insicer,kakojemogocearhivirati znakeinsledi odpora. Ne gre torej za neko naivno dešifriranje znakov, da v neke stare neznane pisave citamo, kar hocemo citati, kar odslikava nek romanticni povratekknedolžniocišceninaravipredkolonializmom in kapitalizmom ali pa revizionisticni vecni povratek k nacionalni cistosti. Podkomandant Marcos (Subcomandante Marcos 2021) je lapidarno zjedril pomen polža za politicni imaginarij in celo za samo organizacijo zapatistov: »Polž, ki so ga naredili majevski uporniški voditelji, se je za-celinkoncalv varni hiši, vendar se je tudi zacel inkoncalv knjižnici. Mesto srecanj, dialoga, prehoda, iskanja – to je bil polž iz Aguascalien­tesa.«Cekaterakoliživalsimboliziranaš potencialpostati cloveškažival, ki postane praksa naše pocasne, dolgotrajne skupne rasti in odrasti, je to bržkone polž. Ne gre le za to, da so polži izredno vzdržljivi in odporni, grezato, da se ta polžja kvalitetakažeinsejo daslediti vgestahter pra­ksah odpora, upora, vzdržljivosti in neomajne odlocenosti ne glede na nemogoce razmere, ne glede na to, da se sedanji imaginarij predstavlja kot brez alternative. V dolocenem smislu, z upoštevanjem globoke krize idejenapredkainkapitalisticnemodernizacijeter rastivdobipodnebnih sprememb, bi lahko polž postal najmocnejša ikona odrasti. Sklepna misel Clanek je pokazal, da je jugoslovanski partizanski boj, tudi zaradi svojih številnih navdušujocih umetniških dejavnosti, proizvedel mocno eko­loško senzibilnost in nepridobitniško odnosnost do necloveškega sveta, Gal Kirn skratka nekaj, kar tu imenujemo partizanska ekologija. V partizanski umetnosti tudi ne gre iskati neke romanticne nedolžnosti necloveškega sveta. V tej umetnosti najdemo razlicne upodobitve, karikature, alego­ricne motive ter silno pripovedno in reprezentativno moc, vloženo v gozd, živali in rastline. Partizansko avtonomijo in osvobojena ozemlja je omogocalo zavetje globokih gozdov, prav tako pa so partizani sami spremenili svoja zatocišca v nove, osvobojene politicne prostore. Kot se je politizirala estetika, sta se preko nje politizirala tudi prostor in pred­stava »narave«. Analiza primerov je pokazala, da je bila v produktivni partizanski izmenjavi, ki je potekala med cloveškim in necloveškim sve-tom, implicitna želja – dolocenega segmenta partizanske umetnosti – po mobilizaciji necloveškega sveta v boju proti fašizmu in po prikazu dolo-cenega postajanja partizanske cloveške živali (npr. volkovi, slavcki itd.). V nasprotju z uveljavljeno interpretacijo sem z analizo izbranih prime-rovpesmi, zgodb,crtic,risb in grafik skušal pokazati, daupodobljene živali niso mišljene le kot preprosta metafora, pac pa da je bil partizanski boj temeljno zaznamovan s procesom postajanja (cloveka) žival, s prese­ganjem razlikovanja med živaljo in clovekom ter z vkljucevanjem živali med soborce, v boj proti fašizmu. Partizanska ekologija si je zatorej zamišljala – in skladno s tem tudi delovala – svet brez orožja in vojn, a tudi svet, ki nasprotuje imperativu rasti in profita, in se tudi sama spreminjala v smeri odrasti. To niti ne preseneca, saj je, glede na pokrajino, kjer se je odvijal jugoslovanski od­por, osvobajanje potekalo predvsem v gozdovih pa tudi sama družbena konstitucija partizanskega telesa je bila v veliki meri sestavljena iz pripa­dnikov in pripadnic kmeckega sloja, ki se je emancipiral skozi boj in s tvornim politicno-kulturnim ter vojaškim delovanjem. V partizanskem spoštovanju narave innjegovemzavedanju,daje narava kljucendejavnik za uspeh osvobodilnega boja, kar bistveno doloca partizansko ekologijo, pajemogoceopazitiambivalentnostinceloprotislovjesprihodnjousme­ritvijo socialisticne Jugoslavije,ki je v povojni socialisticni obnovi sledila vzorcem modernisticne paradigme in industrializacije. To je partizanska zgodovina, ki je bila pozabljena v socializmu in izbrisana v casu kapitali­sticne tranzicije. Zaradi tega je zadnja sled in povezava s transverzalnimi ter internacionalnimi boji potlacenih toliko relevantnejša. Figura polža kot figura partizanskega odpora in trdoživosti, kot figura osvobodilnih bojev, zapatistov in nemara tudi kot znanilec sodobnega boja za odrast pa nas lahko pozove k bolj poglobljenemu raziskovanju ekološke oza­vešcenosti. Namesto vselej nove (post)industrializacije in pospeševanja ter krcenja prostora in casa je cas prav za upocasnitev, kar tudi pritrjuje globoki tezi Walterja Benjamina, ki revolucijodefinira ne kot pospešenje casa, marvec kot njegovo ustavitev. Opomba ClanekjenastalvokviruraziskovalnegaprojektaProtesti,umetniškepraksein kulturaspominavpostjugoslovanskemkontekstu,kigajepodprla Javnaagen­cija za znanstveno-raziskovalno in inovacijsko dejavnost Republike Slovenije (aris,j6-3144). Literatura Arrom, José Juan,inM.Antonio García Arévalo. 1986. Cimarrón. Santo Do­mingo: Ediciones Fundación García-Arévalo. Benjamin,Walter.2015.»Zapisiopojmuzgodovine.«PrevedelAlešKošar.Pha­inomena 24 (94/95): 277–286. Brecht, Bertolt. 1967. »An die Nachgeborenen.« V Bertolt Brecht, Gesammelte Werke, uredila ElisabethHauptmann, 722–725. 4. zv. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag. Buden, Boris. 2014. Cona prehoda. Prevedel Samo Krušic. Ljubljana: Krtina. 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Anthropos 56 (1): 79–95 | issn0587-5161 | e-issn2630-4082 ‘Revolution is Learned Faster than Culture’:ą On the Amateur-Professional Relationship in the Artistic Legacies of the People’s Liberation Struggle Ana Hofman Research Centre of Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Slovenia hofman.ana@gmail.com ©2024Ana Hofman Abstract. This article focuses on the discourses and debates that sur­rounded the building of the new organizational model of artistic pro­duction during thePeople’sLiberationStruggle(pls), which soughtto bringaboutaprofoundtransformationofsocial relations.Drawingon the historical sources, I show how the reconfiguration of the amateur-professional nexus was central to these strivings. Those reconfigura­tions uncover the complex processes of dealing with the bourgeoise canon of art, the class-based notion of expertise and aesthetic value. Moreover, the legacies of artistic production in theplsquestion the exclusive theorization of amateurism as a practice ‘from below’ that serves as a corrective to professionalized art, but instead reveals the complex encounters and the profound reconfigurations of these two fields. This historical look, I argue, points to the longstanding dilem­masandchallengesthatstillhauntthecontemporarydebatesaboutthe artistic production as the field of transformingthe capitalist modes of production and social relations. KeyWords: amateur-professionalrelationship,thepls,artisticproduc­tion, active masses »Revolucijeseucimo hitreje kot kulture«:orazmerju med amaterizmom in profesionalizmom v umetniški dedišcini narodnoosvobodilnega boja Povzetek. Clanek se osredotoca na diskurze in razprave, ki so obkro­žale vzpostavitev novega organizacijskega modela umetniške produk­cijevcasunarodnoosvobodilnegaboja(nob),kijeskušalizpeljatiglo­boko preobrazbo družbenih odnosov. Na podlagi zgodovinskih virov ą ‘Revolucija se, eto, brže uci nego kultura’ (Colic 1981, 316). https://doi.org/10.26493/2630-4082.56.79-95 Ana Hofman pokažem, kako je bilo preoblikovanje razmerja med amaterizmom in profesionalizmom osrednjega pomena za ta prizadevanja. Ta preobli­kovanja razkrivajo kompleksne procese soocanja z mešcanskim kano­nom umetnosti ter razrednim pojmovanjem strokovnosti in estetske vrednosti. Poleg tega zapušcina umetniške produkcije vnobpostavlja podvprašajizkljucnoteoretizacijoamaterizmakotprakse»odspodaj«, kislužikotkorektivprofesionaliziraniumetnosti,namestotegaparaz­kriva kompleksnasrecanjain temeljnapreoblikovanja obeh podrocij. Menim,datazgodovinskipogledkaženadilemeinizzive,ki še vedno obvladujejo sodobne razprave o umetniški produkciji kot polju trans-formacije kapitalisticnih nacinov produkcije in družbenih odnosov. Kljucne besede: razmerje med amaterizmom in profesionalizmom, nob, umetniška produkcija, aktivne množice The development of culture and art in the Republic of Užice shows that they merged with the People’s Liberation Struggle and that the goal of the revolution and of art was the same: not only the social liberationofahuman,buttheliberationofherunsuspectedcreative possibilities [Glišic 1986, 179]˛ In histalk OnMusic (‘Omuzici’)atthe FirstCongressofthe Cultural Workersof Croatia in Topuskoin 1944, Yugoslav composer and partisan fighter Miroslav Špiler gave a comprehensive overview of the new role of musical activities in the building of socialist society. Musical life can­ not be monopolized by artistic ‘elites’ who are detached from the wider massesandtheirmusicalactivities,especiallytheexploitedandoppressed peasants and urban proletariat. What he sees as the radical moment in layingthefoundationsforthenew‘overallartisticlifeofthepeople’(serb.­ cro. zajednicki opcenarodni glasbeni život) is toallow unrecognized artis­ tic talents fromall socialstrata to develop their artistic capacitiesin both productive and reproductive musical activities (Špiler 1976, 108). This short excerpt from Špiler’s talk gives an insight into the ambi­ tiousgoalsoftheYugoslavPeople’sLiberationStruggle(pls)inachieving transformation in the cultural sphere, which focused on two main as­ pects: the activeinvolvementofthewidermassesinartistic activitiesand ˛ ‘Razvoj kulture i umetnosti u Užickoj republici pokazuje da su one srasle sa narod­nooslobodilackom borbom i da je cilj revolucije i umetnosti bio isti: ne samo soci­jalnooslobodenjecovekavecoslobodenjeinjegovihneslucenihstvaralackihmogucnosti’ (Glišic 1986, 179). the dismantling of the division between the institution of art and other spheresoflife.BotharebasedonMarxistthoughtaboutculturaltransfor­mation as inherent to revolutionary transformation.ł In his writings on culture and arts, Leninargues that culture shouldupliftthe massesin or­dertopreparethemfortheroleofkeyactorsinthecreationofthenewso­cialist socialrelations. This process entails making up for what the work-ingclassincapitalismhasbeendeprivedof,beingcompletelyenslavedby ‘thenarrowspecializationofthemodesofproduction’(Ziherl1958,969).4 The masses are not simplythe recipients of art; their (self-)emancipation toward active political subjects relies on the ‘releasing’ of their creative capacities.The more the widersocialstrata are engaged withculture, the more ready they are to take a political destiny into their own hands. In otherwords,therevolutionarysubjectshouldnolongerbe‘guided’bythe professionals, especially in the case of peasants and exploited workers, as a way to change the material conditions of artistic engagement, which, togetherwithotherfieldsofsociallife,wouldcontributetotheformation of a new socialist society. This fully supports the claim that the Yugoslav socialist revolutionary strivings aimed not only to ‘reshape the internal structure of culture, but also revolutionize the position of the “cultural sphere” in the social structure’ (Mocnik 2005). Theorizing the Amateur-Professional Nexus through the Lenses of Yugoslav Socialist Revolutionary Legacies By focusing my examination on the attempts ‘to awaken and develop artists in the masses’ (Lenin 1950, 124–125) during thepls, I aim to ad- dresstheamateur-professionalrelationshipasessentialforthebuildingof the new organizational model of artistic production that sought to bring about the profound transformation in all spheres of life which was the key to socialist revolutionary strivings. Focusing on the discourses and debates that surrounded such transformation, I argue, reveals the dilem­ mas and challenges that still haunt our contemporary approaches to the political potential of art. My intention here is not so muchto establish a direct relationbetween ł The common thesispertainingto Marxistthought about thekeyroleof culturalemanci­ pation of the working class as the basis of its the overall emancipation. For employment of this thesis in the Yugoslav context, see e.g. Jakopovic (1976, 21) and Sklevicky (1996, 26). 4 See also Lenin’s writings on culture and arts (1950). Ana Hofman thehistoricalexperienceoftheplsandthecurrentmoment,butratherto explore how these legacies contribute to the contemporary theorization ofartisticengagementsasaninterventioninthesocialrelationsgoverned by the capitalist mode of production. This examination is motivated by the increasing interest in non-professional or anti-professional activities in various scholarly fields and the need to rethink the modes of artistic productionbasedonexpertiseandtheprofessionalizedrealitythatdomi­natesthesocial,economic,politicalandacademiclifeofglobalcapitalism (Merrifield2018).Practitionersandscholarsinthefieldsofmusic,theatre and visual arts have revitalized long-standing discourses on amateurism as a means of democratizing participation in cultural and artistic activi­ties across the class spectrum and as a counter-response to commodified leisure (for an overview, see Bryan-Wilson and Piekut 2020). They focus on the power relations behind knowledge production in the artistic field and the unquestionable authority of trained, vocational, or professional artists. As a category unbound to the notions of skill or expertise, his­torically associated with vernacular and ‘low’ cultural production, ama­teurismhelpstounmasktherelationsofinequalityinknowledgeproduc-tionbasedongender,race,class,education,geopoliticalcontext,accessto resources, etc. and reveals professionalismas strongly rootedin the capi­talist Global North/the Anglophone world (Ochoa Gautier 2014). While the amateur andprofessionalspheres often overlap – as non-professional artistic engagement canbejustaseffective in terms of innovation,pro­ductivity or approaching the aesthetic goals of professional(ized) art – the authorsargue for the gesture of ‘distancing’ fromthe professionalized sphere of artistic production. What LuciaVodanovic calls the manifesta­tion of a distance, ‘a separation but also an engagement with this distant relationship’(2013,173),revealsartisticexpressionnotsimplyastherealm of the gifted and trained, but of the privileged who have access and the opportunity to develop their talent through formalized training. This article aims to contribute to the ongoing conversations about the boundaries between ‘professional’ and ‘amateur’ as politically charged, revealing the hierarchies in knowledge production as embedded in the material conditions of life and the modes of production. The historical trajectories of the amateur-professional nexus in the Yugoslav socialist revolutionary context gives us insight into the historical knowledge and experience that is often missing in the contemporary debates. As a dis-tinctmomentinhistory,theplslaidthegroundworkforchangingthere­alizationofthepre-warcommunistculturalandartistictendenciestodis­ mantle the modesofartistic engagementbased onthe capitalistexploita­ tive social and economic conditions. This transformation had a strong class dimension, which presupposed an active participation of all work­ ing people in cultural activities, regardless of their social background or levelofeducation.5 Theplsthusenabledthecloseinteractionbetweenes­ tablishedartistsandculturalworkersandthe ‘ordinary’ people,including uneducated and illiterate peasants, the working classes or women, youth and minorities, who were denied access to ‘art’ (as conceptualized by the bourgeois canon). The intersection between the professional and ama­ teur fields formed the basis for the ‘artistic production’ (serb.-cro. umet­ nicko stvaralaštvo) thatwas deeply embeddedinthe revolutionarymo­ ment (MileticandRadovanovic2016, 51).Thishistoricalmomentuntan­ gles the exclusive theorization of amateur art as a practice ‘from below’ that serves as a corrective to professionalized art, and instead reveals the complex strategies and organizational models not only of the encounter, but also of the profound reconfigurations of these two fields.6 Muchhasbeenwrittenabouttheanonymous masses asthe main bear­ ers of partisan art that signalled a radical break with artistic production based on class stratification.7 Little attention, however, has been paid to the mechanisms and strategies that allowed such interactions to emerge, and more importantly, to be sustained. The mass participation in artistic activities aimed at challenging the professionalized framework of art and artistic expertise relying on the hierarchical relationship between ‘high’ and ‘low’ cultural expression.8 Realizing such strivings on the ground, however, was a complex process saturated by an array of tensions and contradictions. One of the main stumbling blocks was the unsettling co­ 5 Among many others, see Petranovic (1988), Mocnik (2005), Komelj (2009), and Kirn (2020). 6 Thishasbeenpartlyexploredbythestudiesfocusedontheroleofamateurmusicalactiv- itiesinbuildingthepublicculturalinfrastructureinthevillages(Hofman2011b),therole of amateur music making in the negotiation of gender roles (Hofman 2011c), and on the cultural activitiesin the socialist factories and bigger enterprises (Koroman 2016; Vaseva 2018; Petrovic 2021). 7 For more aboutthetransitionfrom individual tocollectiveauthorship asone ofthemost important characteristics of the self-emancipatory process of the working masses in the Yugoslavrevolution,seeNedeljkovic(1962a;1962b;1963),andHofman(2008).Onanony­ mous authorship andhowitisrelatedto the concept of thecommunity tocome, seeKirn (2020). 8 My intention is not to reopen the question of the autonomy of art that was one of the long-standing concerns of the intellectual circles of that time. Ana Hofman existence between the persisting dominance of the bourgeois institution and understandings of art and the goal of building new artistic life based on its rejection. This further raises the question of the self-taught or self-grown artist and their role in the reconfiguration of the very categories of artist and artistic production. This process concerned the intersection betweeninstitutionalregimesofartsandthepracticesontheground,for­malandinformalorganization,thequestionofculturalvaluesandrecog­nition, and knowledge production, all related to the building of the so­cialist social relations. We can follow the lively debates among the political leadership, intel­lectuals and cultural workers about the need for a democratization of the artistic field, which should bring about the transformation of the very recognition of what art is and the equality of different forms of expres­sive practices, especially folk expression. The material I analyse consists of the reports on cultural activities, memoirs (both the ones made dur­ing theplsand during the socialist period), discussions, and papers pre­sented during the congresses of cultural workers.. Iamfully aware that each artistic field has its own peculiarities in the understanding and use of the terms ‘amateur’ and ‘professional,’ a prime example of this being the field of popular music, where the lack of institutionalized training madeself-taughtmusiciansintoprofessionalswholivefrommakingmu­sic.ą° While a focus on the specificities has its own advantages in tracing how the amateur-professional relationship figured across different artis­tic fields, I pursue a view that includes a wide range of artistic activities to provide an important insight into the general tendencies. Liberation of People’s ‘Natural’ Artistic Capacities Another participant at the 1944 Topusko Congress of Cultural Workers, general Ivan Gornjak,saidthat‘we arewitnessinganextraordinary mo­ . My initial aim was to search through the memoirs of partisan fighters that reflected the everydayexperiencesof thepls,lookingfortheaccountsthatcapture artisticengage­ment as it unfolded within the broader context of partisan and revolutionary struggle. My attempt was not successful, however, as the cultural activities were usually described very briefly,only in a few sentencesas part of the description of other events. WhileI use some of this material in this article, I eventually turned to the sources that focus on cul­ture, primarily the reports of the congresses of Slovenian and Croatian cultural workers in Semic and Topusko in 1944. ą° Ethnomusicologists argue that amateur music is ‘rather a label than a distinction’ (Finnegan2007,18),whiletheamateur–professionalrelationshipisacomplexcontinuum thatcan alsoinvolve making an emotional claim and a political statement (see Finnegan 2007; Baily 2016). ment in this region as once semi-literate and illiterate people are now participating in writing either wall newspapers or pocket newspapers’ and ‘are activeparticipants and creators ofabetter reality’ (Gošnjak1976, 30). He emphasized the cultural-educational work (serb.-cro. kulturno­prosvetni rad) as essential for increasing the intellectual and artistic ca­pacities of partisan fighters. The cultural-propagandistic or educational-propagandistic committees (often called cultural groups or cultural sec­tions) in the partisan units were responsible for improvement of their literacy and organization of cultural activities. Yugoslav intellectual and partisan fighter Moša Pijade recalled the full dedication to the organiza­tion of cultural events (mitinzi, priredbe), which consisted of theatrical performances, poetry, and choral singing, most of them produced by the partisan fighters themselves (1976, 32). The workofthe cultural-educationalcommitteesdidnotconcern only thepartisanunits,butextendedtotheorganizationofculturaleventsand activitiesforthe peopleintheliberated territories orinthe areas the par-tisanunitspassedthrough.Mobilizingthelocalpopulationtotakeanac­tivepart in artistic activitieswasademanding task of systematicallyrais­ing their awareness of the importance of artistic activities for a better life forall.For this reason, assoonasthe partisan unitsliberated certain ter­ritory, they established the alternative cultural infrastructure. Ivan Cace, writerandpainter,notesthattheyfirstsearchedfortalentedpeasantswho would engage in writing and painting, if possible, ‘in every village, and collect and publish the peasants’ works, while giving feedback for those whose works still need polishing’ (1976, 94). Writing inmoredetail aboutthe organizationin the cultural fieldafter the foundation of the Republic of Užice (Užicka republika), the first lib­erated territory in Europe in 1941, Milutin Colic (1981, 313) notes that the artistic unit of the Užice partisan brigadeąą initially consisted of twenty ‘fighters –“artists”’(hisemphasis).Themajorityofthemwerenottrained artists,buthadanaspirationoratalentforsinging,acting,playing,danc­ing, or writing music and poetry (Đuric 1981, 321), many of whom were activeinthepre-wwiiworkers’ culturalsocieties.ą˛ Accordingtothe tes­timonies,theuntrainedbuttalentedindividualswerethemainbearersof the cultural life in the Užice Republic, although with the significant help of the professionals. In only two months, they established three choirs – ąą Also called artistic section or artistic theatre (Colic 1981, 313). ą˛ Sources alsonote thatthesearch for ‘talents’ wasnot always successfuland report on the constant lack of people who could be engaged in the cultural activities. Ana Hofman men’s, women’s and mixed, and even four orchestras: symphonic, wind, folk and pop (serb.-cro. narodni and zabavni) (Glišic 1986, 169). The ac-tivitiesofthose ensembleswerenotlimitedtothetownofUžiceonly,but they regularly performed in the surrounding villages.ął The active participation of ‘ordinary’ people, peasants and workers, in the cultural activities was essential for the reconfiguration of relations of production in the artistic field. Reflecting on how class conscious­ness was deeply connected to amateur music-making activities during thepls, Dragutin Cvetko wrote: ‘All those who had talent or were will­ing to learn basicmusicalskills, but who weredeprived ofeducational or performance opportunities before the war, were able to develop and re­alize their talent during the war’ (in Križnar 1992, 10 ).ą4 Ivan Cace uses theterm ‘the self-activistartists’ (serb.-cro. umetnicisamoaktivisti)tode-note ‘an army of fighters and background workers – men and women – who write poems, sketches, plays (igrokaze) and the like; who paint, edit magazines, give lectures and generally engage in cultural work; who, so to speak, have started from scratch’ (1976, 96). This statement fully illus­trates the rhetoric of the ‘deep democratization’ of people’s cultural life, in which the masses are both the object and the subject of emancipation (Gabric 1991, 492). Achievingthisinpracticemeantaconstantefforttoovercomethefixed positionsof producers, reproducers andconsumers established by the pre-World War ii bourgeois canon of art. While these positions remained, they were no longer reserved for a certain group of people according to theirprofession,education,orexpertise.Špiler(1976,113)wrotethatatthe beginning of World Warii,the widermasses weremainly involved in the reproductive musical activities (serb.-cro. reproduktivna glasbena djelat­nost), which continued to be the main form of their artistic engagement in thepls. In this way, the division between those who can ‘produce’ art and those who can just reproduce it, maintains the stratifications based on expertise and thus stands in the way of revolutionary strivings. The next step, therefore, would be to give people from different social strata a voice in all aspects of musicalproduction, reproduction and consump­tion (p. 114). To understand his stance, we have to be aware that it de- ął For thecondensedhistoryof theculturalactivitiesintheUžiceRepublic, seeMileticand Radovanovic(2016,61–102).On musical lifein thepls,see Pejovic(1965),Hercigonja (1972), Tomašek (1982), Križnar(1992), and Hofman (2008; 2011a). ą4 See also Hrovatin (1961) and Kalan (1975). rivesfromtheWesternartmusicparadigm,ą5 whichneglectstheproduc­tiverelations in other fields of musicactivities,primarily folk expression, something I will return to in the next section. The specific conditions oftheplsand the guerrilla mode offighting opened up the possibilities for transgressing the established divisions of roles in artistic production, often out of necessity: due to the precarious conditions,theconstantmovement,andthelackofpeopleandresources, trained individuals were no longer the only creators of artistic content. Written sources indicate the constant lack and fluctuation of people as the main problem in maintaining cultural groups or making them more structured and organized. For example, the constant lack of musicians (instrumentalists)ą6 orsheetmusic,lyrics,andready-madedramatictexts requiredtotake onnew,oftenmultiplerolesinwriting,performing,con­ducting, and acting (Vojvodic 1987, 64). However, we cannot say that this was only a result of the exceptional-ity of the war and revolutionary moment. The agenda of ‘educational and liberating ideological and political work with the people’ (serb.­cro. prosvetni odgojni-obrazovni i oslobodilacki idejno-politicki rad u nar­odu) meant the continuous agitation of the importance of culture on the ground. Members ofthe culturegroups organized extensive debates with the audience after the cultural events, visited people in their homes and used every possible opportunity to explain the importance of culture for buildingnewsocialrelations. Allthis oughttopromotethe ideaof ‘active masses’ against the position of masses as the passive consumers of the ‘given’ cultural offer.ą7 In the efforts to encourage cultural expressionamong all working peo­ple –betheypeasants,workers,orintelligentsia–theplssetupnewways ą5 The folk expression does not support the thesis of separated phases of production and reproduction. The oral transmission is based not only on anonymous authorship, but on a process of creation as a process of reproduction: in the case of folk songs, they were constantly (re)created through new variants. ą6 Vojvodic (1987, 13) reports that in 1942 there was no single instrumentalist – accordion player – in the whole of Lika. ą7 In my previous work, I have written extensivelyabout how culturalactivities in Yugoslav villageshadastrongself-organizedandparticipatorydimension,astheyweresupported byarobustculturalinfrastructurethataimedtoinvolvemarginalizedsocialgroups,such as women and ethnic minorities, in cultural activities as part of a discourse of socialist modernization.Ishowhowthisfosteredcollaborationbetweentheorganizersofcultural activities, people from local communities and writers, ethnologists, composers, journal­ists, and local authorities and party administrators (Hofman 2011c, 35–37). Ana Hofman of artistic knowledge transmission.The artistic units tried to instilconfi­dence in people to start writing, painting, and composing. Special atten­tion was paid to the ‘beginners,’ who should be less concerned about the ‘quality’oftheir works,butshouldconcentrate ondevelopingtheirskills. The most successful amateurs were automatically given new tasks and a leading role in ‘training’ new cadres and organizing the cultural activi­tiesandnewlyformedculturalgroups,regardlessofgenerational,gender, ethnic,socialbackground,educationalandotherdifferences.Thismeant an important shift in the process of knowledge transmission, which now took place outside of the formal framework of schools and academies, in the improvised setting of quick coursesą8 and the interactions between professionals, newly trained people and the ones completely inexperi­enced. Illustrative examples of this can be found in partisan testimonies, in which uneducated peasants, who were transformed from ‘just’ the au­dience orlisteners intoauthors,composers,orconductorsinthepartisan units, acquired diplomas or master’s degrees in composition or conduct­ing after the war. For instance, Avdo Smailovic confessed that he could nothaveobtainedauniversityeducationwithoutthe radicaltransforma­tionofsocialrelationsbroughtaboutbythesocialistrevolution(Tomašek 1982, 313). Destabilization of the seemingly fixed positions of producers, repro­ducersandconsumers/receiverspavedthewayforchallengingtheneces­sity of formal knowledge as a requirement for being active in the artistic field. Theprimetoolforthetransformationwasthepeople’s(self-)aware­ness that they were not limited to the role of consumers of the cultural offer created by someone trained or skilled. One such breakthrough came in 1945, when the members of the An­ton Cesarec partisan theatre group attended a professional theatre per­formance in Trieste for the first time: ‘For almost three years, we have beenthe bearers ofa part ofculturein theentire territory ofCroatia,and most of the members of the August Cesarec theatre group are entering a real theatre for the first time. For the first time, they are seeing a real theatrical performance, with professional, trained actors’ (Vojvodic 1987, 97–98). Yet to what extent did this enable the reconfiguration of artistic knowledge productionand the value associatedwiththe particular types of artistic expression? ą8 The informal educationduring theplsis atopic inofitselfanddeservesprofound exam­ination. Artistic (Self-)Emancipation between ‘Liberation’ and ‘Cultivation’ The strivings to establish the new material conditions of artistic produc­tion based on the close interaction between professionals and amateurs were constantly faced with the difficulties of overcoming the values as-signedtocertaingenres,formsandpracticesandthepositionof(artistic) authority.Asfarasmusicalactivitiesareconcerned,theambitiousgoalof establishingthepeople’smusicallife,assimultaneouslydistantfromboth national and ‘high’ culture and based on ‘natural artistic instinct without regard to the conventions of music theory’ (Žganec 1962, 15), demanded dealing with a deeply rooted and internalized values associated with a certain type of training or knowledge necessarily for music-making. Themainstumblingblockwas thehierarchies basedonformaleduca­tion and expertise: renowned artists were the main authority in direct­ing and organizing musical activities. Due to their position of authority, prominentfigureswerestillinvitedtoassessthequalityoftheprogramme andofferadvice for itsimprovement. ‘It is notthatthe artistshaveonly changed their halls or elite cultural spaces with the open wooden stages andpartisancamps. Theartistisnowapoliticianandapedagogue,’states Miroslav Špiler (1976, 113). Therefore, we cannot ignore the fact that the foundation of the new canon of people’s musical life could not completely dismantle the es­tablished forms of knowledge production and transmission based on the Western art music paradigm as the universal framework for music-making. Forexample,apart fromfightingilliteracy, oneof the maingoals of people’s emancipation during theplswas also eradicating ‘musical il­literacy’ (serb.-cro. muzicki analfabetizam), learning of Western musical notation. Thisaimedatraisingthe levelofunderstanding ofmusic,espe­ciallyforyoungtalentedpeoplewhodidnothaveaccesstoformalmusical education. Through the exposure to this content, the lower classes of il­literate peasants and workers would gain agency needed to change the internal hierarchies in the field of artistic production. Still, such an ap­proach reinforced the long-standing unequal status of oral culture (folk­lore) in relation to written culture, the former playing a key role in the enlightenment of the masses.ą. ą. Inherresearchofethnographicrecordsof partisansongs,JelkaVukobratovic (forthcom­ing)notesthatsongsbasedonthelocalfolkloreidiom(inparticularlyuntamperedscales) did not enterthe writtensongbooks, in particulartheones createdafterwwii. About the folk expression in theplsand the partisan songs, see Hrovatin (1960), Hercigonja and Ana Hofman As a result of this, introducing the Western art music idiom to the masses was a challenge. I found several notes about the behaviour of the audience at the cultural events, who often needed to be ‘educated’ about the proper way of listening to the concert performance. In a vi­gnette about the concert performance of mixed and men’s choirs in 1941 in Užice, Milutin Colic describes how the conductor Dragoljub Jovaše­vic, who was conducting in front of 2000 people, reacted to the audience who, instead of waiting patiently for the end of the performance, started talking and making noise (serb.-cro. galamiti). He turned to them and complained that they should be ashamed of disrespecting Smetana, but he immediately added how they, as partisan fighters should know that (Colic 1981, 316). The recollection of Stanka Vrinjanin, a pre-World Wariipianistand partisan fighter, of the musical activities during theplsis particularly telling.Atrained musicianwithadegreeinpianofromtheMusicAcade-my in Zagreb, she was assigned the task of teaching music and establish-ingthe children’schoirinthetownofGlinainCroatia. Sherecollectsthat even the selection of children for the choir was a difficult task, as most of themweresounfamiliarwiththe12-toneequaltemperamentmusicscale thatshewasunabletoassesstheirsingingabilitiesonthepiano.Musically attunedtothefolkidiomofthearea,thechildrencouldnoteasilyadaptto thepostulatesofWesternartmusicandalthoughsheinvestedaconsider­ableeffortin‘tuning’theirsinging,theycontinuedsingingspontaneously in the folk manner, refusing to reproduce the melody and be guided by the conductor. Eventually, she managed to put together a repertoire con­sisting of various pieces (including folk songs), which they performed in the partisan units and at cultural events (in Tomašek 1982, 347). Thisvignetteportraystheconstraintsofdealingwiththevalueassigned to the Western art music canon. It also raises the question about where and how the emancipation through artistic engagement can unfold. The debates of the time were not blind to these constraints and the inequal­ities deriving from artistic competence. The real transformation might happen,IvanCace(1976,99)explains,‘whentheself-taughtartistisgiven the opportunity to be “developed” into a cultural worker, to take respon­sibility forthe importanttask inthe development ofthe new society.’ In further elaborating on this, he adds that the main contribution to the Danon (1962), and Hofman (2004; 2008). For the more general relation between oral and written culture through the concept of aurality, see Ochoa Gautier (2014). struggle against the ‘old’ patterns of artistic productionis not simplyglo­rifyingpeasant’snaďveart.Inthepre-wwiiperiod,theartisticelitestarted criticizing peasant artists when they did not conform to the expectations of the unpolished, ‘childishly primitive’ and ‘sweetly naďve’ amateur aes­thetic, but begantodepictthe realityofpeasant lives; they were accused ofbeing‘contaminated’bythemoderntendenciesortheprofessionalized ‘school’ (p.95). Inother words, the value of self-taughtartistic worksis sustained only when it aligns with the expectations of the ‘position’ that was assigned to them within the bourgeois norms of artistic production. For the experts, peasants’ works lost their ‘artistic value’ when they came closer to professional or trained aesthetics. This reflection shows how artistic engagement became disruptive not when non-professionals met the expectations of the self-taught, amateur aesthetic, but when they refused the clear boundaries between ‘high art’ and ‘folk art’ and a class division attached to it. Therefore, an important part of the overall emancipation of people in theplswas the recognition of the value of non-professional forms of artistic engagement, but with­outglorifyingthedifferenceorkeepingthemisolatedintheirmarginality or exceptionality. The main target of transformation was the class strat­ifications that are at the core of artistic production in capitalism. There-fore,thepeasantpopulation’sartisticactivitiesshouldnotbedelimitedby their (identitarian) position, but the new coordinates of artistic produc­tion nurtured embracing various forms and practices of artistic engage­ment. The same counted for the formally educated composers, perform­ers or conductors who werewidelyexposedto folkmusic.˛° Itisprecisely these encounters thatmakeitpossibletochallengethe bourgeoisnotions of the artist, of artistic production. Conclusion The quotation from the beginning of this article summarizes the cen­tral concern of the cultural policy debates during thepls: to what extent the immediate goals of the socialist revolution are in line with the trans­formation of the cultural field. Numerous debates at the time dealt with the tension between the mass participation of people and the ‘quality’ of artistic expression or, in other words, the attempts to elevate the people’s ˛° About the intersection between folk music and Western art music in the works of com­posers, see the introduction to The Collection of Partisan Folk Songs (Hercigonja and Danon 1962) and Atanasovski(2011). Ana Hofman capacitiesandtheneedtosticktotheformsadjustedtothewidermasses. Navigatingthe twooften resulted in the practice where prominent artists and cultural workers were called upon to evaluate and improve the qual­ity of the cultural activities, which meant that the ‘more developed’ ex­pressive forms were widely disseminated across the social spectrum. With regards to music in particular, while official discourses empha­sized the importance of folk music expression, this does not diminish the value of Western art musical practices as the ‘highest’ form of artistic expression. I arguethatwehave to becareful in ourcritiqueofthese constraintsas itcanconformthelong-standingdiscoursesoftheharmfulconsequences ofthe ‘forced’ socialistmodernization that ‘erased’ the ‘authentic’ folkex­pression by imposing the West-European ‘elite’ modes of cultural pro­duction onthe masses.Lately, such viewshavebeenreinforcedby the decolonialturn and the increased interest in the ‘peasant’ or ‘indigenous’ artistic knowledge and practices as marginalized or suppressed. AsLucia Vodanovic demonstrates, the works of the self-taught artists have been praised for their ‘unpolished’ aesthetics that presumes sincerity, imme­diacy, a sense of ‘naturalness,’ and an unusual use of new artistic means (2013, 171) from the perspective of the ‘oppressed’ subject – whether in­digenous people, uneducated peasants, migrants or people from unpriv­ileged social backgrounds. The Yugoslav revolutionary legacies of the reconfiguration of the am-ateur-professional relationship, in contrast, remind us about the short­comingsofupliftingunderprivilegedindividualsandcommunitieswithin the existing field of artistic production informed by the capitalist modes of production and class division. The historical lesson of theplsbrings totheforethetransformationoftheamateur-professionalrelationshipas inherentinthetransformationofthatverysystem,inwhichbothamateur and professional transcend the particular class position attached to the particular style or aesthetic practices (such as ‘folk’ or ‘elite/high’ expres­sion). Itinvites the focus on the agencyofanamateur in reconfiguring themodesofartisticproductionthatispartofthebroadersocio-political transformation toward dismantling the capitalist modes of artistic pro­duction. References Atanasovski,Srdan. 2011. ‘Nikola Hercigonja i proizvodenje jugoslovenske na­ cionalne teritorije.’ In Nikola Hercigonja: (1911–2000): covek, delo, vreme; povodim 100 godina od njegovog rodenja, edited by Mirjana Veselinovic­ Hofman and Melita Milin, 133–151. Beograd: Muzikološko društvo Srbije. Baily, John. 2016. War, Exileand theMusic of Afghanistan: TheEthnographer’s Tale.soasMusicology Series. London and New York: Routledge. 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Anthropos 56 (1): 97–123 | issn0587-5161 | e-issn2630-4082 Literature Builds Children, Children Build Literature: Literary Education in Socialist Yugoslavia and Children’s Literary Agency Katja Kobolt Research Centre of Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Slovenia katja.kobolt@zrc-sazu.si ©2024Katja Kobolt Abstract. Based on ethnographic work with producers for children in the literary sector in socialist Yugoslavia (1945–1991), this paper turns to the literary education of the time. It reflects discourses, modes and (infra)structures–specialisedchildren’smagazines,literarycirclesand festivals,particularly–thatfacilitatedearlyandcontinuousliteraryand aesthetic education and promoted children’s participation in cultural life. The paper argues that the active forms of literary education, even if they were ideologically framed beyond utilitarian and functional­ist conceptualisations, nevertheless contributed to the remarkable de­velopment of smaller and underdeveloped literary systems, which in some Yugoslav spaces (here mainly in Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegov­ina) startedmore or lessfrom scratch. By reflectingonthe past modes of literaryeducationin referenceto ‘cultural agency,’denoting ‘a range of social contributions through creative practices’ (Sommer 2006, 1), fostering agency also in other fields, the paper proposes their concep­tualisation within so-called literary agency and frames the latter as a generative and reproductive tool of literary systems, and by extension also of other cultural and social fields as well as of subjectivation. Key Words: literary education, literary agency, socialist Yugoslavia, ŠimoEšic,XhevatSyla,Dije(Qibrije)Demiri-Frangu,festivalKurircek S književnostjo otroci rastejo, književnost raste z otroki: literarna vzgoja v socialisticni Jugoslaviji in literarno delovanje otrok Povzetek. Na podlagi etnografskega dela z ustvarjalkami/-ci za otroke znotrajotroškeknjiževnostivcasusocialisticneJugoslavije(1945–1991) se s clankom posvetim takratni literarni vzgoji. Posebej se osredoto-cam na diskurze, nacine in (infra)strukture – otroške revije, literarne krožkeinfestivale–,kisoomogocalizgodnjoinkontinuiranoliterarno https://doi.org/10.26493/2630-4082.56.97-123 Katja Kobolt terestetskovzgojoin spodbujali sodelovanjeotrokv kulturnemživlje­nju. Cetudi je bila takratna literarna vzgoja vecinoma razumljena on-kraj utilitaristicnih in funkcionalisticnih konceptualizacij, skušam ra­zumeti posebej njene aktivne oblike kot vzvode takratnega izjemnega razvoja zlasti manjših in manj razvitih literarnih sistemov, ki so se v nekaterihtakratnihjugoslovanskihprostorih(predvsemnaKosovuter v Bosni in Hercegovini) šele vzpostavljali. Z razmislekom o preteklih nacinihliterarnevzgojevpovezavis»kulturnimdelovanjem«,kiozna-cuje »vrsto družbenih prispevkov preko ustvarjalnih praks«, ki spod­bujajo delovanje tudi na drugih podrocjih (Sommer 2006), v clanku predlagam njihovo konceptualizacijo znotraj t. i. »literarnega delova­nja« kot generativnega in reproduktivnega vzvoda za razvoj ter pre­novo literarnih sistemov kakor tudi za subjektivacijo in delovanje, ki presega samo polje književnosti. Kljucnebesede: literarnavzgoja,literarnodelovanje,socialisticnaJugo­slavija, Šimo Ešic, Xhevat Syla, Dije (Qibrije) Demiri-Frangu, festival Kurircek Introduction: ‘Children Are No Spectators, Children Are Players’ (Milaric 1960, 14) Inadditiontomanycatchphrasesofourtime,thisoneisalsoknown: ‘We live in the century of the child.’ Children were given significant freedoms and many [adults]shook their heads, becausesupposedly children’s freedom manifests itself mainly in its flip side: in anar­chy and oblomovism.[ą] Cocteau expressed the opinion that young peopleareunhappybecausethey donothavetheopportunitynotto listen. That is completely excessive, taken to the point of absurdity. Childrenhavenotyetreceivedelementaryfreedoms:tobehonest,to bedirect,tobechildren. Theyareinasituationtosimulateprematu­rity, to express themselves with a gesture, instead of an act. [Milaric 1960, 6; translated by Katja Kobolt] With these introductory words on ‘Children’s Literary Creativity’ to a plenum at the 3rd edition ofchildren’s festival Zmajeve decje igre (1960), Vlatko Milaric – a teacher at the elementary school Vladimir Nazor in Petrovaradin (Serbia) – invoked not only the famous book title by the Swedish feminist pedagogue Ellen Key, The Century of the Child (1900) ą After Ivan Alexandrovich Goncharov’s 1847 novel Oblomov about an eponymous anti­hero, ‘oblomovism’ becamesynonymouswithadreamy,idleandaimlesslifeanddevotion to destiny. – he also anticipated with his introduction contemporary scholarly and professionaldiscoursesonliteraryeducationandproductionforchildren derived fromchildism. Initially, the notion of childism was coined to de­note prejudicesagainst children, constructingnot onlychildren as anin­ferior social group, but more or less everything that is connected to chil­dren, and thus also artistic production for and by children, as subsidiary. However, inrecentinternational children’sliteraturestudies theterm has experienced an affirmative re-articulation,as ‘aproductivestarting point for further openingsinchildren’sliteratureand culture studiesand child­hood studiesifitbecomes apluraland messynotionthat questions the discourse of hope for a better future as defining children’s lives’ (Deszcz-Tryhubczak and García-González 2022, 1037). The teacher Vlatko Milaric, who later became one of the leading ed­itors and anthologists of children’s literature of his generation in Serbia, and the festival for children Zmajeve decje igre (Novi Sad, since the year 1957) have belonged to numerous practitioners and (infra)structures of theliterary systemandofaestheticeducationforchildreninsocialistYu­goslavia (1945–1991). The sole fact of the existence of such organisations asZmajevedecjeigre,aswellastheabove-namedpresentationofMilaric to a plenumofchildren’sauthors,editorsand decisionmakers in cultural and educational policy, testify to the endeavours socialist Yugoslavia in­vested in the project of modernisation and humanisation of social rela­tions of the previously underdeveloped and war-torn country through participatory aesthetic and, here particularly, literary education, primar­ily of children but also other social groups. The socialist foregrounding of children has, in the post-socialist deca­des, often been studied through the prism of totalitarianism and author­itarianism, presenting the socialist politics of childhoodand its many in­frastructures, including literary productionfor children, mostly as a tool ofmouldingchildreninto idealsocialistcitizens,on the wayto establish­ing the new social order (Vucetic 2001, 251; Erdei 2004, 156). This paper, however, follows more recent research in regard to socialist cultural and childhood politics as well as children’s literature scholarship and, along with that, also the suggestion by the above-quoted Vlatko Milaric (1960, 12):toconsiderproduction by childrenasamethod ofliterary education. In his – in parts harsh – critical talk, Milaric first condemned various approaches of traditional literary education, which in his eyes often re­duced children to passive imitators of given interpretations, forms and ideas, emphasising rational approaches and practical language (Milaric Katja Kobolt 1960,8–9).Hetalkedinsteadinfavourofliterary educationraisingaffec­tive relations towards literature and underlined that this can be realised only if children are free to write the way they want to and in their ‘au­thenticchildren’slanguage,’not followingthe guidelinesandadults’ ideas of what literary language is (pp. 8–9). Milaric (p. 12) saw the immanence of the active method of/in writing by children as twofold: 1. Children’s writing constitutes on the one hand a so-called literary child; 2. and on the other it constitutes a literary author. In other words, the active method adds to and co-defines the image of children and ideas of childhood in literature. In addition, through the experience of writing, the active method promotes understanding of lit­erary works as specific expressions of an artist about life and as such also promotes self-awareness and autonomy in children, something which corresponds with intergenerational and relational conceptualisations in contemporary children’s literature scholarship, anchored predominantly in childism (Deszcz-Tryhubczak and Jaques 2021; Deszcz-Tryhubczak and García-González 2022).˛ Reading historical discourses on literary and aesthetic education of the time and drawing on interviewsł with children’s authors – Šimo Ešic ˛ Both aspects of participatory literary education addressed by Milaric in the year 1960 have also marked more recent international scholarship on children’s literature, espe­cially since the influential TheCaseofPeter Pan, or the Impossibility of Children’s Fiction by Jacqueline Rose (1984), as well as Peter Hunt’s Criticism, Theory, and Children’s Lit­erature (1991), which both foregrounded the need for an active status and participation of children in children’s literature. While Rose’s main critical claim was that literature for children, and by extension scholarship on it, mainly reflected an imaginary of ideal children produced by adults in order to mould real children after the images presented, Hunt stood up for ‘rereading of texts from [...] a childist point of view’ (Hunt 1991,143). Along with other influential scholars and works, that followed their proposals, both au­thors problematised on the one hand the image of children in literature, as suggested by children’snarrators,figuresandimpliedreaders,andontheotheralsocriticallyaddressed the status of children as readers, critics and by extension as writers. ł ThepresentpaperisbasedonalargerstudyonsocialistYugoslavchildren’sliteratureand its multi-layeredand changingideological, (infra)structural, participatory, iconographic and stylistic characteristics. In its ethnographic part, the paper presents selected authors from BosniaandHerzegovinaandKosovo,whowereavailableforinterviewsandwilling to share their documentary material. All of those included were born in the 1950s and participatedinliteraryeducationactivitiesmostlyfromthemid-1960son,whentheyalso gradually startedtheirprofessionalengagementwith production forchildrenin socialist Yugoslavia, which they have actively co-shaped since the 1970s. (b.1954,BosniaandHerzegovina),4 Dije(Qibrije)Demiri-Frangu(b.1957, Kosovo) and Xhevat Syla (b. 1956, Kosovo),5 as well as in reference to yet another cross-sectoralevent of literary and aesthetic educationof the time, the festival Kurircek, based in Maribor, Slovenia, which operated across Yugoslavia between the years 1963 and 1992 – the paper unfolds pastparticipatorymodesofliteraryeducationanditsinfrastructures.The paper argues that the participatory forms of literary education, even if they were ideologically framed beyond utilitarian and functionalist con-ceptualisations,nevertheless contributed to the remarkable development of smaller and underdeveloped literary systems, especially in some Yu­goslav spaces (North Macedonia, Monte Negro, Kosovo, and Bosnia and Hercegovina); however, all of the production contexts experienced im­mense growth of the sector (Kobolt 2022; 2023a). The different social­ist Yugoslav production contexts of children’s literature were fragmented nationally and also language-wise;6 however, they werealso ideologically and structurally connected, thus the following findings are also applica­ble to other Yugoslav production contexts of the time. By reflecting on the past modes of literary education in reference to ‘cultural agency,’ as a termdenoting a ‘range ofsocialcontributionsthroughcreativepractices’ (Sommer 2006, 1), the paper proposes their conceptualisation within lit­erary agency and frames the latter as a generative and reproductive tool of development and renewal of literary systems and by extension also of other cultural and social fields. Literary Education as Participation in Culture The centrality of culture in the Yugoslav project of social emancipation – in terms of class, gender, ethnicity and generation – has been empha­sised by many scholars and also practitioners of the time.7 In line with 4 Interview conducted by the researcher in Tuzla in 2023. 5 Interviews conducted by the researcher in Pristina in 2022. 6 Writersintheso-calledsmallerlanguageslikeSlovenian,Macedonian,Albanianandalso in minority languages, and by extension also illustrators that were equipping their pub­ lications with illustrations, depended much more on translation practices and networks, whereas writers in Serbo-Croatian, as it was called at the time, potentially addressed a much larger readership, because the different national variants of the Serbo-Croatian standardwerelargelyunderstoodinCroatia,Serbia,BosniaandHerzegovinaevenifwrit- ten in different script (Latin or Cyrillic). 7 Within the pastsocialist Yugoslav research on cultural policy, theterm ‘culture’ was used asanumbrella term andsuggesteddifferentmodes of participation. For the Slavicist and Katja Kobolt the idea of enlightened rational subjectivity as the product of a human’s own work, characteristic also of other socialist emancipatory projects of the time,8 the core Yugoslav socialist idea of freeing people from alien­ated work and working towards (more) self-determined work and re-lationsinproduction and thus life,was,especially since the introduc­tion of self-management from the 1950s on, based on the project of ‘hu­manizing’ socialrelationsmainlythrougheducationand cultural activity (Aleckovic 1954, 366; Kocijan 1970a; 1970b; Moder 1974; 1981; Žnideršic 1972;1977).. Thus,theculturalpolicyofthetimewasdirectedtowardsthe cultural participation of different social groups,ą° and was,inthe course later literary historian Gregor Kocijan (1970 and 1970b), who in the 1960s and 1970s, commissionedbytheAssociationofUnionsofSlovenia(ZvezasindikatovSlovenije)and the Cultural Community of Slovenia (Kulturna skupnost Slovenije), paid attention to worker’s culture and cultural policy and its implementation, the term ‘culture’ thus cov­ered the ‘cultural-artistic field, forms, content and organisation, which concern cultural-artistic production and its circulation among people’ and phenomena such as ‘cultural life,’ ‘satisfaction of cultural needs,’ ‘cultural activity,’ ‘cultural values’ and ‘cultural goods,’ etc. (Kocijan 1970a, 425). 8 Cf. the paper by the theatre researcher Wolfgang Wöhlert from East Berlin, who pre­sented at theunescosymposium at the 19th Jugoslovenski festival djeteta – Šibenik in the year 1979: ‘Marx’s fundamental thought that people in the practical life process de­velop as creative personalities and, as subjects of history, understand and act, applies to children as well as to adults. Therefore, in socialist countries, the youth is a partner of adults in the social development process, it is the subject of education, which co-shapes and educates’ (p. 1). At the same symposium, the children’s author Pero Zubac (1945–) made a similar claim, proposing that children, as they influence adults, have by that in-fluencealsothepotentialtochangetheworld(Zubac1979,3).Therelationbetweenadults andchildren(andbyextensionalsobetweenotherlivingbeings(Deszcz-Tryhubczakand García-González 2022) has built the core of the recent conceptualisations of childism. . Active participation was a common topos in discourses on cultural policy and aesthetic education of the time, cf. the programmatic speech on production for children’s litera­ture by an influential children’s poet, editor, and decision-maker Mira Aleckovic (1955) in front of the 4th Congress of the Yugoslav Writers’ Union in Ohrid, Macedonia, 1955 (Kobolt 2022). Francek Bohanec (1958, 5), a writer, editor and director of the children’s publiclibraryinLjubljana(Pionirskaknjižnica),whereaestheticeducationwaspromoted by involving artists in workshops with children, wrote in his compendium on literary education: ‘By active aesthetic education I mean that education which encourages chil­drentobecreativethemselves.’ThestudiesbytheInstitutefor statisticsofsrSlovenia and Cultural Community of Slovenia provide information on the cultural participation of workers and other groups provide (Moder 1974; 1981). Valuable insights into cultural participationofhouseholds/families,andthusalsointochildren’sreadingculture,areof­feredalsobythestudybyaresearcherofpublishingandamanagerinpublishing,Martin Žnideršic (1972; 1977). ą° Next to national languages of individual socialist republics and autonomous regions, writing and publications in minority languages like Hungarian, Slovak, Turkish and of its relatively short though diverse historical development, subject to change (Gabric 1991; Praznik 2021; Kobolt 2022; 2023a; forthcoming). Within the self-management of the 1970s, the cultural policy was based on different lawsąą promoting participation of different social groups, among which children and youth were the principal group. The period since thelate 1970s hasevenbeendenoted as a ‘society of culture’(slov. družbakulture)(Korda2008,291).Proposedbysociologist,culturalprac­titioner and artist Neven Korda, ‘society of culture’ refers particularly to the ‘global shift from industrial society’ to the so-called ‘alternative cul­tures’ or‘subcultures,’creatingintersectionsofart,culture,andentertain­ment(p. 283).WhileKorda,whenforgingtheterm,probablydidnotpar­ticularly have in mind children’s culture, especially as children’s culture has been much more entangled with different state apparatuses (institu­tions of care, school, and of out-of-school education as well as with dif­ferent state and ‘civilsociety’ą˛ organisations),I propose to consider chil­dren’s culture also as a part of the larger context of the ‘society of culture.’ Rusyn were also promoted. A volume edited by Tropin and Barac (2019) also offers in­sights into different Yugoslav periodicals for children in minority languages. ąą Theculturalpolicyofparticipationwasimplementedthroughtheso-calledculturalcom­munities(slov. kulturneskupnosti)ashubsofdifferentlyorganisedculturalorganisations and associations, operating in a cross-sectoral manner with the so-called organisations of associated work (slov. organizacije združenega dela) (Moder 1981). The policy was based on different laws on associated work, defining social economic relations and self-managed organisation of work among workers in organisations of associated work; the so-called Law on Common Grounds of Free Work Exchange (Zakon o skupnih osnovah svobode menjave), which anticipated ‘the realisation of free exchange of work in order to fulfil personal and common needs as well as interests in culture, upbringing and ed­ucation, science, health and other social activities and some other activities of material production, by the ways of free exchange and integration of work by workers in organ-isations of associated work in the field’ (p. 12). Thus the General Directions of Cultural DevelopmentinSloveniainthePeriod1981–1985(Splošneusmeritvekulturnegarazvojav Sloveniji v obdobju 1981–1985) particularlystressedthe ‘enforcementofsocialrelations,in which culture will not be conceived as part of consumption, but as an essential component of the overall material and spiritual reproduction of society, whose role will be defined by its contribution to the satisfaction of common needs and the development of society as a whole’ (p. 75; emphasis added). The Directions particularly promoted the ‘development of artistic creativity’ and ‘accessibility to culture, cultural education, amateurism [slov. ljubiteljske dejavnosti]’ and, departing from economic and social inequalities, stood for the closing of material, human and organisational resources gaps in regard to cultural developmentbydifferentactions,likestipendsandsubsidiesforassociations(pp. 75,77). Among the latter were also youth’s and pioneer’s (children’s) sections in local communi­ties (slov. krajevne skupnosti). ą˛ Tomaž Mastnak (2023) offers a historic overview of civil society and elaborates on the development of it in the Yugoslav context of the so-called alternativesof the 1980s. Katja Kobolt Even if contemporary scholarship only gradually starts paying atten­tion to the multiple past structures and modes of aesthetic education in socialist Yugoslavia – musicologists especially have a leading role here (Durakovic 2017; Vesic 2023; Hofman forthcoming) – the broader field of inquiries into cultural production and also childhood politics and ideology has provided valuable insights into different segments, inter­faces and manifestations of participation in the cultural production of the time. Anthropologist and ethnomusicologist Ana Hofman, who is also present with a contribution in the current Anthropos issue, partic­ularly addresses amateur cultural activities in her work, especially in re­lation to the historical antifascist struggle within the people’s liberation front (nob, 1941–1945), as well as contemporary antifascist protests and leisure activities. Researcher of music pedagogy Lada Durakovic (2023) paysattentionnotonlytoin-schoolmusiceducationbut also to different out-of-school structures of the time. Research in other fields also offers valuable considerations on partici­pationintheculturalproductionofthetime. Participationincultureand arts of the time has also been questioned, particularly in recent art his­tory: if Bojana Videkanic (2019) explored how cultural workers partici­patedandcollaboratedwithinthenon-alignedmovementanditscultural policy in order to create global counter-hegemonic artistic and cultural networks and proposed a term of ‘non-aligned modernism,’ Petja Grafe­nauer and Daša Tepina (2024) have observed the lackof participation, or ratherignoranceofthelocal(Ljubljana)artisticscenetowardsthepresen­tations of their colleagues from the non-aligned countries (in the frame­work of the Ljubljana Biennale of Graphic Arts). When exploring differ­ent aspects of production of monuments in regard to the commemora­tionandcelebrationofthenobandtherevolution,SanjaHorvatincicand Beti Žerovc (2023) observed a decrease in participation throughout the Yugoslav temporality. While in the first decade and a half afterwwii, lo-calcommunitiesalso participatedinthe productionofmonuments,later on monuments became huge and elitist memorial centre projects, evok­ing participation mostly as rejection of too-inaccessible stylistic forma­tions. Researcher of theatre and performance arts Branislav Jakovljevic (2016) observed performing practices in the political economy of self-management. Following the relation between state (performances), per-formingpracticesandconservativereformsinparalleltotheglobal,espe­ciallypost-1968,neoliberalrenewalofcapitalism,Jakovljevicshowedhow artisticandstateperformancesrevealedrupturesinself-managementand its participation practices. In regard to childhood politics and ideology, the historian Igor Duda (2015) researched the Yugoslav and Croatian Pi­oneer organisation, respectively, and even if he pointed to the central­ity of children’s participation, he also reflected the relational aspects and within those the persistence of romanticised conceptions of childhood, positioning children many times as still subordinated. Anthropologist of childhood Barbara Turk Niskac (2023) analysed the ideology and expe­riences of play/work by children within structures of self-management. Sheobservedanamalgamateoftheabove-mentionedMarxistideologyof self-determinedworkandofthe‘ethosoftheagriculturalsociety’sdomes-tic economy’ (Turk Niskac 2023, 462). The historian Ljubica Spaskovka (2017) researched youth politics and youth activism in regard to partic­ipation in articulation, questioning and rethinking Yugoslav socialism andYugoslavism.Whatdothesescatteredfieldsofresearchhaveincom­mon besides all of them referring to cultural production in socialist Yu-goslavia?They all reflect different (infra)structuresand modes of partici­pation culture (or the lackof it) and their impact (or the lack of it) on the ‘society of culture.’ Literary Agency Children’s active participation in the literary education of the time has been mostly denoted as ‘literary creativity’ (serb.-cro. literarno stvar­alaštvo) (Filipovic 1968; Nola 1972; Tasic 1972). Danica Nola, one of the key figures in the post-wwii education system in Croatia referred to it also as ‘common, especially social creativity’ (1972, 9), while the re-searcherofaestheticandliterary educationZdenkaGudelj-Velaga(1990) proposed the term ‘creative literacy.’ął ął Important insights into the state of research and reflection on children’s participation in culture and literature of the time are given, in particular, in the research activities by the Zagreb-based Centar za vanškolski odgoj Saveza društava »Naša djeca« (Centre for out-of-school education of the Association of Societies ‘Our Children’). At the time, the Centre conducted noted research on children’s free-time activities (cf. Jerbic 1970; 1973; Mesec et al. 1974; Posilovic and Višnjic 1969; Brocic and Dizdarevic 1972) as well as acted as publisher of the specialised journal serb.-cro. Umjetnost i dijete (Art and Child, 1969–1997) and of other publications related to aesthetic education. The Centre also or-ganised events where practitioners, researchers and policy makers met to discuss topics related to aesthetic education. In the year 1971, thirty-four actors in aesthetic education from all over Yugoslavia gathered at the Festival Djeteta in Šibenik to exchange from different angles on the topic of creativity of youngsters and free time (Brocic and Diz­darevic 1972). The common thread of the presented papers – creativity of children – was Katja Kobolt Incontemporaryinternational scholarshipwefindagaindifferentpro­posals and terms in relation to children’s participation in culture and principally in literature. The proposals are coming especiallyfrom schol­ars working with childist criticism, with the aim of ‘appreciating chil­dren as creators of children’s culture and of including texts produced by them into the remit of children’s literature studies’ (Deszcz-Tryhubczak and García-González 2022, 1040–1041). Researchers of children’s litera­tureJustyna Deszcz-Tryhubczakand MacarenaGarcía-González,who in theirresearchpracticeevenincludechildrenasco-researchers,havebeen exploringpracticalandtheoreticalpossibilitiesofchildren’sparticipation basedoncriticalreflectionsaswellaspossibilitiesofchildisminchildren’s culturestudies.Followingfeministnewmaterialism,Deszcz-Tryhubczak and García-González (2022, 1038) proposed to extend childism, particu­larly in its interrelational aspects towards ‘more-than-human relationali-ties that produce childhood and adulthood.’ Departing from the critique of the ‘generational gap’ in criticism and scholarship of children’s litera­ture, which has almost exclusively dealt with production for children by adults and as a rule excluded the production by children, researcher of children’s literature David Rudd (2005, 19) proposed the term ‘construc­tive child,’ directed towards affirmation of children’s creativity and writ­ing. Researcher of literary and cultural aspects of childhood Clémentine Beauvais (2015) wrote of the ‘mighty child’ along similar lines of child­hood as already proposed by revolutionary pedagogy, picturing children as the bringers of the new social order (Balina and Oushakine 2021). Se­bastien Chapleau (2009, 79, 83), a teacher, activist and community or-ganiser, devoted his thesis to childhood cultures in which he proposed to consider childism alongside other emancipatory theoretical-political­socialprojects likeMarxist, feminist,lgbtq+and antiracist movements. Acknowledging the past and present terms, proposals and conceptu­alisations in regard to participation in culture and particularly children’s participation in literature, with the following paper I propose to observe the literary education of the time particularly through the aspects of agency. In reference to the concept of ‘cultural agency’ introduced by the philologistofRomancelanguages,writerandculturalactivistDorisSom-mer (2006), Ipropose the observation of the pastparticipatory modesof the literary education through literary agency.ą4 thus considered in its social, institutional,inter-relational, personal, and political as well as economic and ideological, aspects. ą4 The term ‘literary agency’ hasbeen introduced also by Maya Nitis(2023)in her doctoral Researching cultural policy and activities within Latin American left­ist movements, Sommer (2006, 2, 6) coined the term ‘cultural agency’ in reference to Gramscian ‘passive revolution’ and ‘consensual hegemony [... which]requirescompromiseandanewculturethatcountseveryone in.’ With ‘cultural agency,’ Sommer and her colleagues pointed to poli­cies and practices as a ‘wedge to open up the civil conditions necessary for decent politics and economic growth [in order to] move toward the goal of emancipation’ (p. 2). Observing the past modes of cultural par­ticipation and, here particularly, of children’s literary education through theconceptofculturalagency,enableshighlightingthecommonfounda­tions of the herein discussed past modes and conceptualisations of liter­ary education with other participatory aspects of cultural policy of the time as well as with the recent conceptualisations derived from child-ism. Focusing on agency within the past modes of literary educationdis-closes their methodological, structural, systemic and relational dimen­sions which gave rise to it, and thus underlines its role in the past devel­opment of literary systems and, by extension, of the broader cultural as well as social system in the region. Literary System(s) of Children’s Literature in Socialist Yugoslavia and Children’s Literary Agency: The Case of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo Thepostwwii(re-)establishinganddevelopmentofchildren’sliteratures inindividualYugoslavnationallanguageshasbeenembeddedindifferent Yugoslav temporalities stemming from different longue durée constella­tionsofindividualnations: hencetheproposalbythe sociologist,curator and publisher Sezgin Boynik (2023) to regard Yugoslavia as ‘an uneven andcombineddevelopment.’ą5 The ex-Yugoslavliterary systems were re- thesis ‘Minoritized Knowledges: Agency, Literature, Temporalities,’ in which she defines it as adecolonialintervention by‘minoritizedliterarypracticewhere the transformative relation betweenliteratureandknowledgecomes tothefore’ (p. 33). Nitissituatesitin the ‘transdisciplinary context that underscores the interrelation of literary genres with one another, as well as with other theoretical discourses and practical social contexts’ where ‘literaryagencyintervenesinthehistoricalpresentasamodeofcounter-melancholy’(pp. 7–8). ą5 ImperiallegaciesofOttomanandAustro-Hungariantimesincluding, sincethemid-19th century, rising nationalisms (on practically all sides), the pre-wwiimperial tensions as wellthefoundationofnewstates,thepost-wwiterritorialchanges,thepoliticalandeco­nomic constellations of the mid-war Yugoslav monarchy, different positions in thewwii and post-wwiifederal, republic and global political and economic streams as well as its social implicationsand,lastbut notleast,theintensityandduration ofthepost-Yugoslav Katja Kobolt lated inthe federal framework duetoculturalpolitical,ideological,insti­tutional, structural, productional and market aspects – and all these also affected canonisation processes and discourses framing the production, as well as the level, of literary contacts. The vivid and structurally sup­ported past translation practices had a particularly important role,ą6 as well as the different structures of literary education, which will be dis­cussedinthecontinuationandwhichsupportedchildrenintheirliterary agency. Magazines Children’s periodicals played a particularly important role in the devel­opment of children’s literary agency in the post-war period. In the post­war material shortages and the lack of booksą7 in the national languages, periodicals were sometimes even used instead of textbooks.ą8 Acompar­ative view of children’s periodicals in Yugoslaviadiscloses familiar edito­rial structures, based primarily on literary and artistic experience as well as technical and political education, among which sections for children’s contributions were a constant.ą. The post-war establishment, develop­ment, editorial structures and role of children’s periodicals in individual national languages as a tool of literary education were discussed at the wars (1991–2000), which, next to the profound systemic changes,concluded the process of the disintegration of socialist Yugoslavia. ą6 At the time, inter-Yugoslav co-productions between different Yugoslav publishers spe­cialising in children’s literature were common, thus, selected titles came out simultane­ously in different national and minority languages. Translated works featured originally produced illustrations or often also illustrations produced by locally engaged artists in order that the illustrations captured the visual dimension of the context into which the work was translated. ą7 The post-war lack of books had different reasons: pre-war and wartime Fascist and Nazi oppression had included redundancies, persecution, imprisonment, internment, mur­der and the burning of books in South-Slavic languages. Thenobhad institutedcultural silence in some regions (slov. kulturni molk) as a resistance strategy, and the post-war period featured the prohibition of private publishers as well as changes in selection pro-cesses(Svetina).Finally,therewasalackofmaterial(paper,inks,printingmachines,etc.). For the post-war re-establishing of publishing for children, cf. Kobolt (forthcoming). ą8 ThemagazineCiciban,publishedintheSlovenelanguagesince1945andtargetedtowards childrenofthefirstthreeschoolgrades,hadfrom1945anditsfirstissuearemarkableprint run of 82,000 copies, whereas today’s average print run of Ciciban is 12,000 copies. ą. A comparative view on editorial policies of children’s sections in children’s magazines would be a research desideratum, which would, however, go beyond the scope of the present paper. symposium at the 15th Festival Kurircek (xv. Festival Kurircek 1977). Ri-fat Kukaj (1938–2005), a poet, writer, and editor for children in Kosovo, reported there in regard to the role of the Kosovo Albanian children’s magazine Pionieri in literary education: Pionieri [...] has been a literary journal for 30 years. Old people say that a wise man sees life with three eyes. With the first eye he sees thepast. Our newspaper hasdonesowith hundredsof poems and storiessuitableforchildren.Itwasnecessary toshowhistoricalreal­ityfromthe experience of adults.Atthe same time, withthe second and third eye, the journal sees the present, our everyday life, full of flight and zeal for work, school knowledge and other goods, and the future – a vision of an even more beautiful and happier life. A society that cares for the lives and education of children shows its maturity and humanism, while at the same time it ensures its own futureand perspective. [...]The circleofreadersisgrowingand the printrun has risen to 50,000 copies [...]. The Journal made a signif­icant contribution to thedevelopment of Albanian children’s literature in Yugoslavia. Many writers have made a name for themselves in the newspaper, and many of its first readers are today its best colleagues. Today, over twenty-five authors of Albanian nationality writing for childrenaremembersoftheWriters’Association.Themagazinehas cultivated poetry andprose,drama andoriginalcomics,andhas al­waysbeen opentoexploringtheliterary heritageofotherpeoplesof Yugoslavia.Thus,themostimportantandmostrenownedwritersof Yugoslav nations and nationalities ‘sang’ in Albanian and enriched the spiritual life of young readers. It can be said that the exchange of literary material between newspapers in Yugoslavia built bridges of fraternity and understanding between creators and readers. [...] Special attention hasalsobeenpaidtothe illustrations and furnish­ings in the sheets. [...] A large number of excellent illustrators have contributed to the design and growth of the original illustrations. [Kukaj 1978, 52; translated and emphasis added by Katja Kobolt] Despite the particular temporality of Kosovo within the Yugoslav framework, which, as my interlocutors in the preparation of the paper reported,˛° resulted in a belated and interrupted development of the ˛° TheinterviewwasconductedbytheresearcherinPristina,Kosovo(2022)withthewriter and former editor of the Zëriirinisë youth magazine, Ibrahim Kadriu, poet for children Katja Kobolt Kosovo Albanian literary system,˛ą the Kosovo Albanian children’s lit-erature˛˛ experienced an immense development in this period. Differ­ent (infra)structures of literary education promoting literary agency also added to this development. The (infra)structures that supported the development of literary and artistic productionfor children were manifold: from the specialised pub­lishers for children, that were established in all national production con­texts immediately after the war (Kobolt forthcoming); through intro­duction of structurally secured access to daycare centres, mass curric­ular and extracurricular education, where publications for children be­come an important educational and interaction tool; to structurally im­plemented accessto culturaland artistic production(Hofman forthcom­ing; Praznik 2021, 61; Videkanic 2019, 51, 232) and diverse professional and academic institutions as well as amateur networks. Particularly in the contexts which experienced a rapid re-establishment and develop­ment of publishing for children, like Slovenia and Serbia, but also in other contexts where publishing for children was re-established gradu-ally,like Croatia, orestablished from scratch, most rapidlyinMacedo­nia, and gradually also in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and Mon­tenegro (Aleckovic1954), the introducedstructures of the literary system provided an important platform for the inclusion of a broad network of culturalworkers,andthussupportedsocialandpoliticalhomogenisation of the producers –culturalworkers –aswellasoftheir public –children and editor of text books Xhevat Syla, poet for children and researcher of children’s lit-eratureDijeDemiri-Frangu, and illustrator and visual editor of the Pionieri magazine Demush R. Avdimetaj. ˛ą Due topolitical reasons,after the 1948 Yugoslav informbiro breakwith Stalinand by that also with Albania ruled by Enver Hodxa, cultural and academic production in Kosovo proliferatedonlyfromthemid-1960son.Thestructuralchangesintroducedinthecourse of the 1974 constitution substantially supported the development of Kosovo Albanian culture and thus also literature. The development was gradually hindered in the course of the post-1981 protests repercussions, which got especially intensified towards the end of socialist Yugoslavia and after its dissolution in 1990s (Malcolm 1998). ˛˛ The main publisher of children’s literature in the Albanian language was the Pristina-based publishing house Rilindja (1945–1999), which brought out the magazines Pionieri (1947–) for children of the first school grades, and a weekly children’s supplement titled Rilindja për fëmij to the daily Rilindja (1945–1990/1999–2002) and the youth magazine Zëri i rinisë (1968–1991), as well as children’s books programme. Also, the Macedonian publisher Nova Makedonija/Detska radostbrought out children’smagazinesinAlbanian – Fatosi: reviste e vocërrakëve (1955–2005) and Gëzimi: revistë e përdyjavshme e ilustruar për shkollarë (1951–2005) as well as a children’s books programme. (Kobolt forthcoming).However, childrenwere also active producersand were as such supported by different participatory modes and infrastruc­tures of literary education. Literary Circles In the semi-structured interview conducted by the researcher in Tuzla in the year 2023, the Bosnian-Herzegovinian poet, editor and publisher for children Šimo Ešic (b. 1954, Breze by Tuzla,bih), reported that for him, as one of eight children of an illiterate miner and a housewife, the activ­ities offered at school were very important in his literary education. Ešic started writing poems as early as in the third grade of elementary school intheframeworkoftheliterarycircleofferedatschool.Asimilarreportis given by the Kosovo poets for children Dije Demiri-Frangu (b. 1957) and XhevatSyla(b. 1956),whobothstartedwritingandpublishingatayoung age and with whom the researcher talked twice in the year 2022. At first the educators at schools, who ran literary circles, responded to the open calls of children’s magazines to submit children’s works for publishing; later on, children sent in their works on their own (Syla 2022; Demiri-Frangu 2022; Ešic 2023). My interviewees also report on vivid teachers’ and editors’ feedback that substantially supported them in their literary development. Students engaged in literary circlesalso collaboratedwithschool mag­ azines, which in most schools were produced under the mentorship of teachers.˛ł Literarycirclesalsooperatedoutofschool:˛4 OliveraTasic(1972;1980), ˛ł Pedagogue Nikola Filipovic (1968), who acted first as a headteacher, then later as a uni­versity professor and influential Bosnian-Herzegovinian politician, accomplished with his doctoral thesis a quantitative and qualitative research of the ‘educational value of literary creativity,’ focusing on selected literary circles and school magazines in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia. There were at the time 250 school magazines published, written and edited by children (Filipovic 1968, 78). Filipovic analysed the content of the magazines and concluded that children ‘write about all issues from the life and work of the school, about various ideological-political, cultural, sports, scientific and economic-technical events in the country and abroad’ (p. 79). Filipovic evaluated published prose and poetic works to ‘have an elementary literary-artistic value’ and underlined that the editorial inclusivity dedicated to publishing works of students of different grades had ‘a positive effect on establishing a closer relationship between the paper and readers of all grades’ (p. 79). ˛4 In the year 1978 there were in Slovenia, which had a bit less than 1,853,000 inhabitants at the time (SiStat), 192 children’s and youth’s literary groups gathering 2,411 youngsters Katja Kobolt a pedagogue at the Belgrade library of Dom pionira (House of Pioneers), where extracurricular literary education was offered to children with an aimof‘systematicdevelopmentofcreativeactivitiesofpioneers,whohave anaffinityforliterature andliterary creativity’ (Tasic1972, 262;translated byKatjaKobolt),particularlyunderlinedtheimportanceofactivitiesfos-teringinterrelationsbetweenreadingandwriting(capturingimpressions, reading logs), usage of different media (music-poetic events and perfor­mativeadaptationsofliteraryworks)andmostlybetweenchildrenthem-selves, pedagogues and authors (discussions on the read works as well as discussionswithauthors,visitstoliterary events). ‘Achildinthe position of a creator will be able to better understand the creative process and ef­fort of writers, will be able to feel the beauty of the language and style, the message of the work, will be able to experience the book in its total­ity’ (p. 263; translated by Katja Kobolt). Tasic therefore developed differ­ent games ‘to support finding appropriate epithets that best characterise a word, to find vivid comparisons for given words, to metaphorically ex-pressthepropertiesofcertainphenomena,objectsinrelationtoconcepts, todiscoverallthemeanings ofaword,to derivenew wordsfromtheroot or froma letter of agiven word’ (Tasic1972, 264;1980; translated by Katja Kobolt). Libraries Specialised children’s libraries at schools or out-of-school pioneer li­braries should also be named as an important infrastructure for the pro­motionofliteraryagency.Intheschoolyear1956/7inSlovenia,from1,793 schools 1,575 libraries with 578,247 children’s books were recorded (Šlaj­pah 1963, 15). Specialised out-of-school children’s libraries were founded usually within or back-to-back with public libraries and/or the ‘Homes of the Pioneers’ or ‘Towns of the Pioneers’ as cultural centres for chil­dren were called. In 1949, the Pioneer Library was founded in Ljubljana, whichalso promotedother forms of cultural educationin additionto lit­erary education (Šircelj 1963, 29). In 1947, the youth work brigades built the Town of the Pioneers in Belgrade, one year later the construction of the Townofthe Pioneers in Zagreb began, and in1961and 1963,re­spectively, The Homes of the Pioneers in Pristina and Ljubljana were opened. (whereas 691 adults gathered in 56 literary groups) and 106 fine arts groups, which gath­ered 1,543 youngsters (Moder 1981, 124). The Reading Badge InSlovenia,thereadingcompetitionBralnaznacka(TheReadingBadge) was introduced in 1960, allegedly based on the Czech model. The an­nual reading programme has been implemented for children of varying school grades and has included discussions on the read works. The par­ticipatingchildrenwhoreadtheincludedworkswereawardedabadgeat ceremonies. The initiative was spearheaded by two pedagogues: the di­rector of an elementary school in Prevalje, Carinthia, the writer for chil­dren Leopold Suhodolcan (1928–1980), and a teacher of Slovene Stanko Kotnik (1928–2004). After a decade, in 1970, has become a structurally implemented programme for the promotion of reading culture, includ­ing all primary schools in Slovenia (Letonja 2015). Participation in the reading badge was additionally rewarded, as successful participation in all school years also facilitated the acquisition of scholarships. The read­ingbadgehasalsobeenintroducedinsomeotherYugoslavcontexts,such asSerbia,butonamuchsmallerscaleandwithoutcurricularadaptation. Paratextual Elements As a tool of literary education, different paratextual and sometimes also metafictional˛5 elements should also be mentioned. Prefaces were a con­stant element of children’s books; they were especially never missing in the titles included in compulsory reading, where extensive book discus­sions and notes on authors were also included, and often also secondary literature. Whether written by editors or by the commissioned literary critics and literary scholars, the prefaces were directed to children and, in the case of publications for smaller children, to adults as well. Festivals TheFestivalKurircek,whichmyinterlocutorsin the research oftenhigh­light,alsobelongedtothemanifoldcross-sectoral(infra)structuresoflit­erary education of the time (Syla 2022; Ešic 2023). Organised between 1963–1992 in Maribor, Slovenia and also in other Yugoslav cities (e.g. Kragujevac, Sarajevo, Varaždin, etc.) the festival Kurircek carried out ac­ ˛5 Magarac (Donkey) by Zvonimir Balog, published with illustrations by Nives Kavuric­Kurtovic(1973)atMladost,Zagrebin1973,includesanaddressbytheimpliedauthorand narrator to the implied readers; the narration is interrupted by proposals of the narrator for readers to take breaks while reading: ‘Take a rest,’ ‘Stretch your legs,’ ‘How about a little lemonade?,’ ‘Take a deep breath,’ ‘Have a look outside the window,’ and suchlike. Katja Kobolt tivitieswithdifferentorganisationsfromthepolitical,security,socialand economicsectors˛6 andfeaturedanimportantplatformforworkwithand for children as well as by children. The festival organised events for children, mainly in the Army Halls (Domjna),wherechildren’sauthors,someofthem ex-nobfighters,in the company of officers of the Yugoslav army (jna, Yugoslav national army) read and talked to children (Filo 1966). In addition, with its ac­tivities the festival also importantly supported theoretical reflection on children’s literature by the practitioners themselves as well as also gradu­ally by scholars. As with the children’s festivals in Novi Sad and Šibenik, the festival Kurircek also organised a yearly conference on specific topics relatedpredominantlytothequestionsoftherepresentationofthenobin the production for children and later on, more general topics connected toliteraryandaestheticeducation.˛7 Keepingandshapingthememoryof thenoband of the revolution through the Yugoslav temporality was one of the main objectives of the festival Kurircek, which since its founda­tion addressed children, who did not experiencenoband the revolution themselves. Ifand how wouldthe generationsgrowingup fromthe 1950s onremembertheeventsofnobandtherevolutiondependedoncommu­nicative memory and media (Assmann 1999). The strengthening of the memory of thenoband the revolution was embedded in the Yugoslav politics of peace and was the core aim of the Kurircek festival (Kobolt 2023b).˛8 In the annual reports of the Festival, we can follow not only the activi­ties,collaborationsandplansofthefestivalbutalsoitsfinancialstructure ˛6 ThefoundersoftheFestivalKurircekwereZvezazdruženjaborcevNarodnoosvobodilne vojne (Federation of Associations of Combatants of the National Liberation Army), Komisija zavzdrževanjetradicijnob(CommissionfortheValuesoftheNationalLib­eration Movement) and Jugoslovanska ljudska armada (Yugoslav People’s Army). The named organisations were also the main financers of the festival. ˛7 The festival also initiated the journal for studies of children’s literature Otrok in knjiga (Child and Book), which has since 1972 continued to be the only journal in Slovenia dedicated to children’s literature and aestheticeducation. ˛8 ‘The young generations coming after the war are embracing this great heritage as the traditionoftheirparents,asaguidefortheiryounglives.Theworldweliveinisdifferent fromwhatitwasaquarterofacenturyago;generationsaregrowingupinafreehomeland who know persecution and violence only from books or from the stories of their elders, generations who, in a free homeland, are called to build a new world, a world without hatred, a world of peaceful coexistence’ (iv. Festival Kurircek 1966; translated by Katja Kobolt). to which, according to the self-managed cultural policy, many organi­sations from security, education, and the economy, as well as the social and cultural sphere, contributed.˛. Already, by its third year of existence, in 1965, the festival reached out and included 250 writers and poets for children (practically all authors for children, members of the Yugoslav Association of Writers at the time) and addressed 50,000 children from all over Yugoslavia(Filo 1966). Many of my interlocutors in the research, including Šimo Ešic, Xhevat Syla and Dije Demiri-Frangu, underlined the importance of the events with children’s authors,as wellas the open calls by the festivals and mag­azines,which, intheir eyes,haveimportantly supportedthem in their decisiontoengage withliterary productionfroma youngageand to con-tinuewithitinone way oranother lateronintheir lives. Like Šimo Ešic, Xhevat Syla continued to write for children when he worked as an editor at the Office for textbooks in Pristina, and as a member of many com-mitteeshe also shapedculturalpolicyand children’sliterary educationin Kosovo. Dije Demiri-Frangu, who still writes for children, worked as a professor and researcher of Albanian literature at the Pristina University, where, among other subjects, she researched children’s literature. Back to the festival Kurircek: next to the public programmes for chil­dren the festival initiated open calls on specific themes. The open calls wereanonymousandwereaddressedtoauthorsandcomposersaswellas to children. The calls were promoted in children’s magazines all over Yu­goslavia, as well as through the Association of Yugoslav writers. Submit­tedworkswereevaluatedbyajurycomposedofdifferentprofessionalsin children’sliterature. Authors and composerswhose works wereawarded, received financial prizes and in some years, these works were published as individual publications in the programmes of collaborating children’s publishers. Selected works submitted by children were presented at pub­lic readings and in exhibitions, and were credited in the annual reports of the festival. All the submitted works were sent to children’s periodi­cals across Yugoslavia to be, in the case of editorial interest, eventually published. Next to the opencallsbythe FestivalKurircek,practicallyall children’s magazines and festivals from all over Yugoslavia organised individual ˛. Intheyear1977thefestivalhadanoverallbudgetof508,504Yugoslavdinarsorabitmore than27,500usd, which would, takinginflationinto account, today be more than142,500 usd(Filo 1977, 102). Katja Kobolt open calls for writers, illustrators and children.ł° Selected submissions –writtenandvisual –enjoyedprinted presentationsinmagazinesaswell as in exhibitions. Many times, not only adult authors got cash prizes, but children, in addition to material awards – Ešic (2023) remembers getting a watch as an award for one of his public presentations of his poems – were sometimes even paid fees for their contributions, which were usu­ally provided by economic organisations. Ešic (2023), who would send poems not only to Bosnian-Herzegovinian children’s magazines but also to journals in Croatia and Serbia, reports that he started earning with his writing when he was fifteen years old. A similar report is given by the Kosovo children’s poet Xhevat Syla, whose first illustrated collection of poems for children Syriipranverës (The Eye of Spring) came out with Rilindja in 1976 when he was 20 years old. At this age Syla already had a decade-long experience of publishing poems in children’s magazines, for which, as he reported, he got editor’s feedback, especially when meeting the editors at yearly literary meetings where child authors, along with adult authors, presented their works for other children and practitioners in children’s publishing (Syla 2022). Intheyear1972,whenhewas18yearsold,ŠimoEšic,whowasaregular guest at different public presentations all over Yugoslavia, where he met different authorsforchildren,approachedSamoupravnainteresna zajed­nica kulture Tuzla (Self-managed interest community of culture Tuzla) and proposed to organise a literary event with prominent Yugoslav au­thors for children in his native Tuzla. The interest community gave him theopportunityandthefunds,thustheeventOktobarskapoetskadrugo­vanja (Octoberpoetic friendships) continuedto exist for the next twenty years till the outbreak of the war inbih. Conclusion The presented discourses on the literary education of the time, its modes and infrastructures, aswellas the testimoniesofthe authorsincluded in the research bespeak active participation of children in literary pro­duction – what I propose to call literary agency. The manifold struc­tures of literary education, embedded within literary systems and their cross-sectoral cooperation with institutions of care work and education ł° Cf. a historical overview of participatory aesthetic education in children’s publishing in the Slovenian-speaking context by the scholar of children’s literature and librarian Mar­tina Šircelj (1977). (kindergartens, schools, organisations of out-of-school education and amateur structures) and with organisations from cultural, political, so­cial, economic and security life, enabled promotion of literary agency and with that also an influx of trained writers, editors and other profiles backtotheliterarysystem,andthusaddedtothedevelopmentofliterary systems. The systemic changes and the post-Yugoslav wars affected, in (cultur-al-)political,structural,institutionalandeconomicterms,allex-Yugoslav literary systems, and especiallyprofoundly the literary systems in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and North Macedonia. The dismantling of in­frastructures of literary education like the Kurircek festival or their pe­ripheralisation (the festivals Zmajeve decje igre, Novi Sad and Festival djeteta, Šibenik are nowadays addressed as a rule only to professionals and children in Serbia and Croatia, respectively) added to the peripher­alisation of the literary systems of children’s literature.łą Whereas in the socialist context, literary systems and the broader cultural field, particu­larly in the above-named countries, experienced a remarkable develop­ment (Aleckovic 1954; Praznik 2021, 61), today these very same literary systemsfacemitigationofneworiginalproduction–inwordandpicture – and depend widely on translation or import from other languages and fight stagnationoforiginalproduction. Šimo Ešic(2023),whostill runsa publishing house and a festival for children in Tuzla as well as organising the Little Prince (Mali princ) award, the onlycross-border prize for liter­ary worksfor childrenin Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian-Montenegrinorthe ‘common language,’ł˛ lamented the generational gap in children’s litera­ture: without the manifold past infrastructures of literary education and with the productional scarcity there is a reduction of literary agency; in łą Even if today the literary systemsaswell asbroader cultural fieldsin question still main-taincontactsandpartlyshareinstitutionalsimilarities(e.g.pluralisationofpublishers on the one hand and the centralisation of the public subsidising mechanisms on the other), the dissolution of the federal framework and the post-Yugoslav wars reduced the links between the ex-Yugoslav literary systems mainly to translation and sometimes institu­tional, but mostly personal, contacts. ł˛ Since the year 2016, almost 10,000 people working in science, culture and other spheres of societyhavesupported theDeclarationon a Common Language(‘Dekleracija ozajed­nickomjeziku’),whichtreatsthelanguagesspokeninBosniaandHerzegovina,Montene­gro, Croatia and Serbia as a so-called polycentric literary language – a language spoken byseveralpeoplesinseveralcountries,withdistinctivevarieties,whichisacommonphe­nomenoninEuropeaswellasintherestoftheworld. Moreat ‘Dekleracijaozajednickom jeziku’ (n.d.). Katja Kobolt the above-named production contexts there are only a few writers and illustrators for children of younger generations producing new original works.łł The reasons for the lessening of literary agency are surely to be found intheglobaldigitalshiftaswell.However,nexttotheglobalmediadevel­opmentinwhichelectronicmediatookover,thepost-socialistchangesof ideological, productional and infrastructural organisation of literary ed­ucation also affected the literary systems in question and added to their peripheralisation. The past promotion and strengthening of literary agency in vernacu­larsoftheregionpopulatedbydiverseethnicitiesandnationalitiesadded not only to the development of literary systems, but also to the cultural agency of different social groups, and thus also of children. As such, lit­erary agency is to be considered as an aspect of cultural agency and as a tool in the past processes of modernisation and social homogenisation beyond ethnic-religious identities and thus also of peace in the second half ofthe twentieth century inthe region. ł4 In the light of these consid­erations, literary education promoting literary agency does not appear only as an activity useful in education processes or in spare time, but as one of the vital aspects of literary systems and also of other cultural and łł Cf. the generations of the prize winners, https://maliprinc.ba/. ł4 See figure 1, the publication of the ‘Kad bi’ (If Only) by Šimo Ešic, at the time pupil at an elementaryschool,intheBosnian-HerzegovinianmagazinePorodicaidijete (Familyand Child) which reflects the politics of peace and solidarity: If all the people in the world would give each other their hands, they could easily encircle the entire planet. If only, if only ... If white people would be willing to reach out hand to black, red and yellow, and to say to each other from the bottom of their hearts: comrade, the whole world would live in peace and song ... Eh – if only. If only ... If those who have much would givetothose who havelittle, even the sun would shine more cheerfully on us and everyone could live full and happy. Eh – if only. If only ... Šimo Ešic, elementary school 2. October, Kiseljak near Tuzla Translated by Katja Kobolt. Figure 1 Poem ‘Kad bi’ (If Only) by Šimo Ešic published in the magazine Porodica idijete (Familyand Child), probably published in the year1969 (courtesy of Šimo Ešic) artistic productionfields andthusalso forbroaderculturaland socialde­velopment and cohesion. Acknowledgment This article is part of a project funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 researchandinnovationprogrammeundertheMarieSklodowska-Curiegrant agreement 101024090 –soc-ill. 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Šibenik: Jugoslavenski festival djeteta. Žnideršic, Martin. 1972. Ekonomski problemi slovenske knjige. Maribor: Ob-zorja. ———. 1977. Knjiga in založništvo. Ljubljana: Državna založba Slovenije. Zubac, Pero. 1979. ‘Dali djeca mogu izmeniti svet?’ In Umjetnost spona pri­jateljstvamedjudjecomsvijeta.Jugoslavenskifestivaldjeteta19,Šibenik, 1–4. Šibenik: Jugoslavenski festival djeteta. Memorising through Comics/Graphic Novels Graphic Memories of Yugoslav Wars: Rat by Đo & Dju and Vojna by Goran Duplancic Tanja Petrovic Research Centre of Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Slovenia tanja.petrovic@zrc-sazu.si ©2024Tanja Petrovic Abstract. Starting from the capacity of comics to simultaneously con-firmandchallengedominantnarrativesofwarandconflict,thisarticle discusses graphic narratives of the wars in which socialist Yugoslavia disintegrated in the 1990s. It outlines an arc of the comic production related to the Yugoslav wars, from those which emerged in the course of the wars, to those made and published with a temporal distance. Such a broad temporal arc offers a lens for understanding the ways in which comics relate to different layers of memory of wars and what they add to other narratives about war experiences. The central part of the article is dedicated to the discussion of two comic books that poignantlyaddressquestionsofthesubjectiveexperienceofsoldiering in the 1990s, but also the generational experience of war and trauma: Rat (The War) by Đo & Dju (2018) and Vojna (The War) by Goran Duplancic(2021).Theconcludingpartofthearticleisdedicatedtothe discussion of the ways these subjective and generational graphic nar­ratives intervene in the memory landscape of post-Yugoslav societies. Key Words: Yugoslavia, war, trauma, comic, cultural memory, Goran Duplancic, Đorde Balmazovic Graficni spomini na jugoslovanske vojne: Rat Đoja in Djuja ter Vojna Gorana Duplancica Povzetek. Izhajajoc iz zmožnosti stripov, da hkratipotrjujejoin izpod-bijajoprevladujocepripovediovojnahinkonfliktih,clanekobravnava graficnepripovediovojnah,vkaterihjevdevetdesetihletihprejšnjega stoletja razpadla socialisticna Jugoslavija. Opisuje in razclenjuje pro-dukcijo stripov, povezanih z jugoslovanskimi vojnami, od tistih, ki so nastali med vojnami, do tistih, ki so bili ustvarjeni in objavljeni s ca-sovno distanco. Tako širok casovni lok ponuja objektiv za razumeva­njenacinov, kako se stripi povezujejoz razlicnimi plastmispominana vojneinkajdodajajodrugimpripovedimovojnihizkušnjah.Osrednji https://doi.org/10.26493/2630-4082.56.127-150 Tanja Petrovic del clanka je namenjen obravnavi dveh stripov, ki pronicljivo obrav­navata vprašanja subjektivnega doživljanja vojskovanja v devetdesetih letih,intudigeneracijskeizkušnjevojnetertravme:Vojna(Rat)avtor­jev Đo & Dju (2018) in Vojna Gorana Duplancica (2021). Sklepni del clanka je namenjen razpravi o tem, kako te subjektivne in generacij­ske graficne pripovedi posegajo v spominsko pokrajino postjugoslo­vanskih družb. Kljucne besede: Jugoslavija, vojna, travma, strip, kulturni spomin, Go­ran Duplancic, Đorde Balmazovic Introduction Comics, just as films, have always been a fertile ground for both fic­tional and non-fictional narratives of war, conflict, combat and soldier­ing. AsarguedbyProrokovaandTal(2018,6),‘warprovidesagoodstory, uniquely bringing together universal themes, such as the battle between good and evil, and offering tales of heroism and transcendence, tragedy and heightened drama. Unsurprisingly then, graphic novels and comics about war are perhaps the most established and most popular genre of graphic narratives.’ With their Manichean narratives about heroes and enemies, and privileging heroism over the suffering and horrors of war, comicshavealsobeenanimportantvehicleforpropagandaandnational­ism in times of war and their aftermath. In case of theus, Trischa Good-now and James J. Kimble argue that comics ‘helped forge a united home front by cultivating a patriotic sensibility that celebrated both American triumphalism and virtue’ (Goodnow and Kimble 2016, 4; see also Rech 2014). Harriet E. H. Earle similarly argues (2017, 11) that ‘the early super­heroes were all, to some extent, symbols of nationalist pride, and Super­man isnoexception.However,itwas theintroduction ofCaptain Amer­ica in 1941 that opened up the comics form as a medium for conveying nationalist pride and encouraging “homeland morale.”’ At the same time, comics have demonstrated an important capacity to challenge fixed narratives about wars and conflicts and complicate our knowledge about them, thus defying the widespread view that they are ill suited to serious subjects, especially those that incorporate authentic social history (Schjeldahl 2005). Writing about the journalist and comic author Joe Sacco, Edward Said pointed to comics’ capacity to open ‘new and radical imaginative avenues’ (Earle 2017, 16). Said wrote that ‘comics seemed to saywhatcouldn’t otherwise besaid, perhaps whatwasn’tper­mitted tobesaidorimagined,defyingthe ordinaryprocessesofthought, which are policed, shaped and re-shaped by all sorts of pedagogical as well as ideological pressures [...] I felt that comics free me to think and imagine and see differently’ (quoted in Whitlock 2006, 967). An already classicaland still resonating example of this capacityof comicsto articu­late and bring into public consciousness what is otherwise difficult to say is Art Spiegelman’s Maus:ASurvivor’sTale(see Chute 2016b). Starting from the capacity of comics to simultaneously confirm and challenge dominant narratives of war and conflict, this article discusses graphic narratives of the wars in which socialist Yugoslaviadisintegrated in the 1990s, focusingon the comicsnarrating the realityofwar from the perspective of combatants/soldiers. This section is followed by an out­line of comic production related to the Yugoslav wars, from those which emerged in the course of the wars to those made and published with a temporaldistance.Suchabroadtemporalarcoffersalensforunderstand­ing the waysin which comicsrelateto different layersofmemory of wars and whatthey addtoother narratives aboutwar experiences. The central part of the article is dedicated to the discussion of two comic books that poignantly address questions of the subjective experience of soldiering in the 1990s, but also the generational experience of war and trauma: Rat (TheWar)byĐo&Dju(2018)and Vojna(TheWar)byGoranDuplancic (2021). In the concluding part of the article, I ask how these subjective and generational graphic narratives intervene in the memory landscape of post-Yugoslav societies. Comic (Super)Heroes of the Yugoslav Wars In the series of ethnic conflicts in which Yugoslavia disintegrated, a va­riety of military and paramilitary units took part – from the Yugoslav People’sArmy(thejna/jla),whichaligneditselfwiththe Serbiansidein the ensuing ethnic conflicts (Bieber 2008), to more or less spontaneously formed units of national armies, paramilitaries and criminal groups – among which a clear dividing line could not always be drawn (see Sacco 2003; Vivod 2013; Vukušic 2023). In Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Serbia, the early 1990s were marked by local comic production that brought new (super)heroes, placed in the battlefields where newly estab­lished armies and paramilitaries were fighting each other. This produc­tion was densely intertwined with other popular culture products, such as movies,tvseries,illustrations,stickers, etc. (seeMatoševicandŠkokic 2014; on Cro-Army stickers, see Bukac 2021). Many already established comic authors, active in ‘the golden age’ of Yugoslav comic production Tanja Petrovic of the 1970s and 1980s, embarked on this new production of war comics. The comic Zelene beretke (1994) was created by Ahmet Muminovic, the author of ‘partisan comics’ Otpisani (in the late 1970s) and Valter brani Sarajevo in the mid-1980s. Jules Radilovic, the author of the series Parti­zani(startedinthelate1970s),createdillustrationsofCroatianArmysol­diers publishedas chocolatestickers forthe albumCro-Army (seeBukac 2021; Dragaš et al. 2014). In 1991, Belgrade Politika started publishing Knindže – vitezovi srpske krajine (byŽarkoKaticandDankoĐukic),inspiredbyparamilitaryunits whose name combines Japanese ninjas and the name of a Croatian city andamajorwarzone,Knin.TheyhadnamesfromSerbianfolklore(Sava, Radojica, Milica, Dijete Grujica, Starina Novak), and were presented as descendantsofSerbianfreedomfightersfromtheremotepast,devotedto traditional, patriarchal values, having superpowers and far eastern mar­tial skills, but also rich cosmopolitan experience obtained in the crimi­nalundergroundacrossEurope(seeColovic2000;Matoševic2004/2005; Vivod2013;Pasanovic2018);theywere‘ingoodphysicalshape,dressedin modern camouflage uniforms’ (Shymkevych 2021). Dragan Vasiljkovic, akaKapetan Dragan, leader ofthe Serbianparamilitaries inKninskakra­jina, was an inspiration for comics as well: Osmica published the comic Kapetan Dragan, while Radiotvrevija published aseriesofcomic strips Kapetan Knindža in 1991 and 1992 (Zupan 2007, 112). A Croatian superhero from the same period was Superhrvoje (Ercego-vac and Listeš 1992) who came into being when Hrvoje Horvat, a son of Croats who emigrated to Germany and got killed in a traffic accident, cametoCroatiaafterreceiving acallfromhis bestfriend Stjepanand got transformed into an undefeatable stone-man. Bosnian comic superhero, Bosman (created by Ozren Pavlovic in the mid-1990s), fought ‘wild Chetniks’ who attempted to conquer Sarajevo. Created in the besieged Sarajevo, Bosman ‘was envisioned as an ongo­ing story for young readers to bring them hope and a form of escape from their daily horror’ (Pasanovic 2018, 60). Similarly to Serbian and Croatian (super)heroes, Bosman wasclosely connected toaremote, past mythology; in his case, pre-Ottoman and Ottoman imagery and tradi­tions. Simultaneously, he was modern and cosmopolitan: he runs half-naked ‘through the woods and observe[s] the occupation forces moving around Sarajevo months before everyone else will admit there is a prob-lem.Whensnipersstartshooting,heiswokenfromhisyogaritualsandis depicted astheonlyonewhorunsintobuildingstostopthe snipersfrom killing innocent people in the crowds protesting wars in Bosnia,Croatia, and elsewhere’ (p. 60).ą As several authors have already pointed out, these post-Yugoslav su­ perheroes draw from both global superhero imagery (characters such as Captain America, Superman, Flash Gordon, etc.) and rediscovered (me­ dieval) national imageries and histories of their respective nations. They werealsobasedonthesharpoppositionbetween‘us,’patriotic,tradition­ alist, but simultaneously modern, West-oriented, and ‘the enemy,’ pre­ sented as wild, cruel, incompetent, and primitive. These heroic graphic narratives donot depict traumaticeffects ofwar events,butanother kind of trauma often shapes and drives their superheroes’ actions: it is trauma relatedtoYugoslavsocialism.ItturnsoutthattheYugoslavregimewasre­ sponsible for the death of Hrvoje Horvat’s parents in Super Hrvoje, while his best friend Stjepan’s father was imprisoned in Goli otok in the 1970s because,whiledrunk,heblamedtheYugoslavregimefortheirdeaths(see Matoševic and Škokic 2014, 133). The childhood of Savo, protagonist of Knindže – vitezovi srpske Krajine, hasalsobeenmarked bythe trauma of Yugoslavsocialism:in1971,hisfatherwaskilledbyUstašeinLikabecause heallegedlyworkedforudba(Yugoslavsecretpolice)(p.126).Inthisway these comics contributed to the widespread Balkanist tropes of the Yu­ goslav wars as being caused and driven by centuries-old hatred among different ethnic groups, as just another iteration in an endless chain of violence, and thus as something primordial and inevitable. Closer to the real experiences of combat are comics describing ex­ periences of young fighters, whose authors sometimes had a first-hand knowledgeoffightinginthewar. Manyofthesecomicswerecreateddur­ ing wartime by Croatian authors (e.g. Mudraci by Štef Bartolic (2011), ‘Cistaci’ by Miljenko Horvatic and Mario Kalogjera (2014), ‘Savjest’ by Brajen Dragicevic and Goran Sudžuka (2014), all comics were first pub­ lished in 1992). Despite their narrative complexity and emotional multi­ layeredness,thesecomicsstillfollowtheclearpatterninwhich‘our’fight­ ers are presented as ‘good boys,’ modern, listening to rock music and having ‘western’ values, while ‘the enemy’ is homogenized, presented in ą Kosovo-AlbaniansuperheroShqiponja(2012)bycomicartistfromPrizren,GaniSunduri, may be added to this list of national(ist), post-Yugoslav comic heroes, although his au­thor ‘was insistent his superhero had no political message, and was aggrieved that some thought he harked back to the political superheroes of the Yugoslavian era’ (Freeman 2022). Tanja Petrovic a stereotypical,caricatural wayasprimitive,dirty, cruel and grotesque.˛ ThisisalsotrueforthemajorityofcomicscreatedaftertheYugoslavwars were over. They do not challenge dominant binary views based on the idea of the moral and cultural superiority of ‘us’ and serve to support nation-building narratives. The preface for the collection Domovinskirat ustripu (Dragaš et al. 2014) was written by then president of Croatia Ivo Josipovic,who stated (2014, 3) that the ‘popularityofcomicsoffers possi­bilities to show the greatness of the Homeland war to many generations andalsoexpressacknowledgement,respect,andgratitudetosoldiersand allvictimsofwar.’Butthisbookitselfreflectsthecomplexityandambigu­ityofwar, thememory ofitand its effects, showing howheroicnarratives ofwarareinseparablefromthoseexposingitsabsurdity,terrifyingreality andthedeep,painfultracesitleavesonindividuals,communitiesandso­cieties.ł Among the comics produced with a temporal distance from the war in this collection, there were also those which address the disastrous aftereffects of war – trauma, mental health issues, loneliness, difficulties of reintegration, etc. (‘Poslije rata’ (Sudžuka 2014) or ‘Baba i ja’ (Petruša 2014). Trauma, generational loss and discontinuity are also at the cen­tre of the twolonger albums, Papak by Frano Petruša (2010a; 2010b) and Vukovar Haš by Nenad Barinic (2018). Another important body of comic works addressing the wars through which Yugoslavia disintegrated mostly concerns the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina and consistsofworksauthoredbyforeign artists whoeither had a chance to observe war events as war correspondents, or to learn about these events from their friends and acquaintances in Sarajevo or other places. Sarajevo and the war in Bosnia were the subject of Her­mann’s Sarajevo Tango (1995) and Joe Cubert’s Fax from Sarajevo (1996), Tomaž Lavric’s Bosanske basni (1997) and Evropa (2003), and Les tam- ˛ War comics The Prout Pictures by Dubravko Matakovic, published in Nedjeljna Dal-macija in the 1990s, abounded with grim and ironic humour, cruelness, grotesqueness and absurdity, and offered a picture of war in Croatia that was an alternative to the nar­ratives of heroism and moral superiority of Croatian soldiers, but also ironically mocked all conflicting sides in the Yugoslav wars, ‘chronologically following events related to the startof theHomelandwarinCroatia,ten-dayswarinSlovenia,warinBosniaandHerze­govina, animosities within the disintegrating federation, but also the mentalities of its citizens’ (Banic 2014, 34). ł For an overview of ‘the independence comics’ in Slovenia and Croatia, see Gale (2019). Gale emphasizes the importance of narrating the wars for independence of these two societies through the comic medium and thus paying tribute to the selfless soldiers who fought for it, but also points to the pointlessness and cruelty of war. bours de Srebrenica by Lobjois and Raimbeau (2019). Joe Sacco visited war-torn Bosnia and Herzegovina several times between 1992 and 1995 and authored several war comics (Christmas with Karadzic (1997), Šoba (1998),SafeAreaGoražde:TheWarinEasternBosnia1992–95(2000),The Fixer:AStory of Sarajevo (2003)). These comics stand out as complex narrativesexposingambiguitiesofpositioningwithinarealitydefinedby warand violence.They are also characterized by a high levelofthe au­thor’sself-reflexivityandawarenessthatthesesameambiguitiesdefinehis own position of ‘confused observer’ (Georgievski 2022). Tomaž Lavric’s comics related to the Yugoslav wars are also multi-layered, exposing the brutality of war, the ambiguity of its effects, and the long-lasting damag­ingconsequencesofviolenceandtrauma,aswellasthetroublingworkof hegemonic relations of power that have marked the European continent for centuries already and have strongly shaped relations, operations and people’s destinies in the wars of Yugoslavia as well. The above overview of comics related to the wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s, although inexhaustive and inevitably simplified, points to the va­riety of discursive frames, domains of media content production and genre conventions with which they communicate. What connects this diverse comic production is a complex, often tense dialectics between the reality of war and combat and these broader frameworks. Some of the comics, particularly those made during the wars and published by mainstream media such as Politika in Serbia or Slobodna Dalmacija in Croatia easily read as nationalistic war propaganda. They were simulta­neously interpreted as a way to keep the spirits of the population high. Whattheveryshortlifeofcomicssuchas Super Hrvoje,Bosman andoth­ers seem to suggest is that their propagandistic narratives did not really resonate with the reality of life in war – the same suggestion is made by the authors who have analysed these comics so far (e.g. Matoševic 2004/2005; Pasanovic 2018). More personal comic narratives, many of which were told from a temporal distance from the war events, are more complex, but often remain within the binary understanding of two sides in war and insist on clear, unquestionable moral positions. As a con­sequence, they are perceived as a suitable tool for nation building and shaping the collective memory in which the figures of fighters for inde­pendence/freedom/democracy have the central role. Some of the comics created in the wake of the Yugoslav wars reveal aspects of war which are lesssuitableforromanticizing and veneration – thecriminal background ofparamilitariesandtheirleaders,corruptpoliticians,thehighlyambigu­ Tanja Petrovic ous role of the international community and theunforces, etc. They are often characterized by a blend of genres and referentiality: from a crime drama (Sarajevo Tango), a road-movie (Evropa), and a thriller (Les tam-bours de Srebrenica), to more (self-)reflexive works that explore ‘the lim­its of autobiography’(Matovic2022, 256) and blend ‘field journalism and its subsequent, often painstakingly long, graphic envisioning, altogether commonly referred to as comics journalism or graphic journalism’ (Ma­tovic 2022, 256; see also Chute 2016a), as in Joe Sacco’s graphic accounts of war in Bosnia. Such diversity of a rather limited number of comics re­lated to the wars in Yugoslavia confirms the plasticity of the genre of the graphic novel (Hatfield 2005, 4). Time, Biography, Generation With the passage of time, the comic narratives on the Yugoslav war be­came even more rare. Les tambours de Srebrenica, published in 2019, presents a rather isolated event, and it seems that in the late second decade of the twenty-first century the international publishing market largely lost interest for the now distant Yugoslav wars and graphic sto­ries about them. The appearance of two book-length graphic narratives whose titles both translate as War in this same period thus may seem a surprise: in 2018, Belgrade publisher Fabrika knjiga published the comic book Rat with Đo and Dju listed as its authors,4 while in 2020, another small, independent publisher, Barbatus from Zagreb, released Vojna by GoranDuplancic.5 But,asIwillarguebelow,theirappearanceatthatmo­ment reflects the fact that time and its passing are essential for the very 4 ThesepseudonymsaremadeofthefirstlettersofthefirstnameoftheartistĐordeBalma­zovic, who wrote and drew the comic book, and of the surname of Saša Đukicin, whose story was told in the book. The decision to indicate authorship in this way has been in­formed by the long-lasting opposition by Đorde Balmazovic and the art group Škart to which he belongs to the art-historical regime in which the authors and their identity are central and decisive to the artistic value of their works. In addition, it was important to acknowledge Saša’s equal role in the creation of the comic book (interview with Đorde Balmazovic, 10 January 2024). 5 In this article I refrain from using the designation graphic novel to describe Rat and Vo­jna,althoughtheysatisfymostofcriteriausedtodefineitasagenre:theyareboth‘longer narratives that are contained within one book’ (Earle 2017, 23) and represent ‘long comic books that require a bookmark’ (Spiegelman 2011). My reasons to call them comics or comic books instead are similar to some of those informing Harriet E. H. Earle’s decision toabstainfromreferringtocomicsasgraphicnovelsinherwork:shequotesDanielRae-burn, founder and writer of The Imp, who writes (2004, 110): ‘I snicker at the neologism first for its insecure pretension – the literary equivalent of calling a garbage man a “san­ possibility of articulation of the personal and generational experience of young men coming of age during Yugoslavia’s disastrous dissolution. At the heart of Rat – prica u slikama (The War – A Story in Images) is the story of Saša,amanfromNoviBecej in the Serbian province of Vojvodina, who answered a call for mobilizationin 1991 and ended up in thebattlefieldsofEasternSlavoniaintheuniformoftheYugoslavPeople’s Army. ‘Saša’s Story,’ the chapter describing events from the battlefield, is preceded by the chapter ‘May 2007,’ which provides a framework within which the main narrative that follows has been shaped. In May 2007, Đorde Balmazovic Žole, an artist and activist, and member of the artist duo Škart,6 headed to London and stayed there with his friend Saša, who have lived there already for many years. In company of Miško (Mišel), Saša’s Montenegrin friend who works as a taxi driver in London, they sit, talk and listen to music. At some point, they listen to Miles Davis’ songs and start discussing when exactly he passed away. Žole asks whether it was in 1992. ‘No, in 1991,’ answers Saša. Žole asks if he is certain about it, and Saša answers: ‘I am positive. It was at the end of 1991. I was on the frontline then.’ This is an interlude into Saša’s story about how he got mobilized, sent to the frontline, about the bizarre everyday reality of war, and about his injury in a battle. The story is not linear and gets inter­ rupted several times with zooming out to its narrative here-and-now, in whichSaša,ŽoleandMišelcontinuetheirconversation,askingquestions itation engineer” – and second because a “graphic novel” is in fact the very thing it is ashamedtoadmit:acomicbook.’AsEarl(2017,24–25)furtheremphasizes,‘Tomymind, the term “graphic novel” serves to give legitimacy to a form that has been unfairly tar­ nished by its past as a mass-produced medium, or more precisely by high cultural prej­ udices about the age of mass production. Comics has earned its stripes as a legitimate narrativeform. As such, there is no reason whya long comic thatdealswith “serious” is- suesandmemoirshouldhaveanyspecialterm,hencemypreferencefortheoriginalterm “comic”.’ An additionalreason not to use graphic novel for Rat and Vojna comes from the fact that their authors do not use this term, either. Rat is described in the subtitle as ‘a story in images’ (serb. prica u slikama), and Goran Duplancic refers to Vojna as ‘a comic’ (cro. strip). 6 Škart is an artist-activist group consisting of two members – Dragan Protic Prota and Đorde Balmazovic Žole. As stated on their website, ‘Škart is a collective founded in 1990 attheFacultyofArchitectureinBelgrade.Whileexperimentingthroughtheirwork,they focus primarily between the medium of poetry and design. “Architecture of the human relationships” is their main concept. Through the constant flux within the collective, present since its very beginning, members collaboratively work to develop new values. Theyareparticularlycapablethroughtheprocessofmaking,toembrace “beautiful” mis- takesandtirelesslystrivetocombineworkwithpleasure’(Škart,n.d.;seealsoYildiz2022). Tanja Petrovic about Saša’s war experience and commenting on it. The epilogue (‘What happened afterwards’) has been crafted after a friend suggested that the authors add it. It talks about Saša’s transfer to the Novi Sad hospital af­ter wounding, his hospital days, return to his home town, and travel to Sarajevo, from where Saša emigrates to theuk. The book ends with his boarding the London-bound plane. Vojna is the personal story of Goran Duplancic, who in 1991, as a 19­year-old man from the town of Split, performed mandatory service in the Yugoslav People’s Army (jna) in the Boris Kidric military base in Ljubljana’sŠentvidneighbourhood.Togetherwithotheryoungmenfrom all corners of former Yugoslavia, Goran found himself in the middle of theconflictbetweenthejnaandTerritorialDefence,themilitaryunitsof Slovenia who just declared independence. Under information blockade, without electricity and without food supplies, Goran and his army bud-diestakecareof,encourage,andsupporteachother. Aboundingwithhu­mour and details recognizable to several generations who served in the jna, with tense situations, chaos, and absurdities, this comic book ends with no tragedy, but announces tragedies of an incomprehensible scale that unfolded when the war moved further to Croatia and then Bosnia and Herzegovina. Vojna focusesonthetensedaysofthesummerof1991inSlovenia,with­outan ambition to placethem in a broader context of consecutive events inwhichYugoslaviadisintegrated,ortoreflectonthemfromthepresent­daypointof view. As the writerMiljenko Jergovicpointedout(2021), Vo­jna’sauthor‘managedtorecreatetheemotionofadistantpast,makingno use ofthe privilegeofknowing the outcomes.’Althoughframedas a per­sonalaccountofeventsencompassingashortperiodinŠentvid,Slovenia, detached from what came after, Vojna narrates a generational trauma of young men marked by violent conflicts in Yugoslavia. For this reason, it cannot be read (only) as an amusing, albeit tense, episode with no tragic consequences. Drawninfast,sharp moves, Vojna relies uponand simultaneously cre­ates a recognizable imagery of war comics – it shows men in uniform, strategizing,weapons,etc. Atthesametime,however,theauthorpictures hisarmybuddiesandhimselfasrich,diversecharactersanddepictscom­plexrelationshipsamongthem,includingcare,solidarityandlove.Atthe very end of the comic, the reader is faced with the author’s photograph fromthearmydaysandwiththefactthatheandothersoldierswerevery young, almost children, at the moment they were pushed into an absurd Figure 1 A Detail from Goran Duplancic’s Sketch­book with Drawings from Vojna (repro­duced with permis­sion of the author) armed conflict – a fact that has been slightly obscured by the sharp lines in which the author portrays himself in comic frames. Rat, on the other hand, engages more explicitly with the narration of the generational experience by addressing the lasting effects of war vio­lence: emigration, trauma, separation, and loss. It is visually narrated in simple, black and white images, which amplify the intensity, absurdity andtragedyofeventsdescribed.While Vojna isapersonalstory inwhich the author is the protagonist and in control of the narrative, Rat’s narra­tiveresultsfrominterpersonal interactionandnegotiationbetweenŽole, whodrewthestory,andSaša,whonarratedit. Theirrelationshipandrole in shaping the narratives is muchmore complex,though: they both grew upinNoviBecej,wereinthesameclassandhavebeengoodfriendsfrom those early days. The voices of both of them are present in the book and equally engaged in shaping the story, including when their views of the Tanja Petrovic past diverge significantly. From the closing text on the last page (p. 158), which offers the readers an insight into the process of creating the comic book, it is clear that one of the factors contributing to its long-lasting productionwasanegotiationbetweenSašaand Žoleover thecontent, its presentationandformulation.Thereaderslearnthattheytook20months to compete the epilogue. ‘We argued most over the footnote on page 42 – whether it is necessary at all and what should it say.’7 In spite of different narrative techniques, both Rat and Vojna tell per­sonal stories that are simultaneously a story of the Yugoslav generation coming of age in the 1990s, and a universal story of the absurdity of war and dangersofnationalismandwhattheydotoindividuals,theirdreams andfutures.Whatisalsocommontobothisthattheywereshapedduring a long period of time and after a significant amount of time has passed since the events which they describe took place. Goran Duplancic (in Mager 2023) thus explains his decision to start drawing his story as late as in 2013: When I was experiencing these events, I was telling myself that this would be a good story to make a comic, if I only make it through. But then, Ifeltnoneed to putit onpaper foralong time,probably also because after every war ‘big stories’ of suffering and heroism dominate the public sphere, while ‘little stories’ seem unimportant incomparisontothem.ThefactthattheconflictinSlovenia,ascom-pared to subsequent wars in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, seemed quite unserious did not work in favour of making a comic, either. I actually started working on it once I had my own children. I started thinking ofwhat couldIteach them aboutbigtruths of life and realized that everything I know I learned during those ten days ofwarinSlovenia.Thoseeventshaveirreparablyaffectedmyselfand our entire generation. To be told as a graphic narrative, Saša’s traumatic experience of partic­ipating in war operations in Slavonia had to wait for the two childhood friends to reunite in London in 2007, and then making the comic book took several years. Both comics thus resulted from a long process and became tellableonlyinacertain moment intime and from acertain dis­tance from the traumatic events.8 7 This footnote explains who Slobodan Miloševic was. 8 AsignificantamountoftimeusedfortheproductionofwarcomicsalsocharacterizesJoe Temporal distance notwithstanding, the authors of these two comic books were careful to remain faithful to the events as they really hap­ pened decades ago and to provide exact and just representation of their actors. In the introductory note to Vojna, GoranDuplancicstatesthataf­ ter almost 30 years he does not remember the faces and names of all the participantsintheeventshedescribed,and ‘thatthosehestillremembers werearbitrarilyascribedtopersonsinthecomic.’ĐordeBalmazovictold me that for Saša it was very important that the events from the 1990s were told exactly as they happened, and once they started talking about the war and mobilization, he started remembering details gradually, in the process of creating the comic book.. Another common characteristic of Rat and Vojna, which separates themfrommostofthewarcomicsfromthe1990s,isthattheydonotcre- ate a narrative with a clear dividing line and a moral opposition between ‘us’ and ‘them.’ Rat discussesopenlythe Serbianroleinthe Yugoslavwars and responsibility for it. Vojna, as Miljenko Jergovic emphasized (2021), is a book ‘that can be read with exactly the same feelings in all countries from which the soldiers came to the Šentvid military base 30 years ago.’ Goran Duplancic carefully and skilfully draws his characters of the sol- diersfromdifferentpartsofYugoslavia,emphasizinglinguisticandother differencesbetweenthem.However,specificlinguisticandotherfeatures, which indicate the ethnic background and geographical origin of young men are not caricatured and used to mark anyone in a negative way, as was a standard technique in most of the comics about the Yugoslavwars. Fear, Trauma, and the Workings of War While fear and trauma do not go well with heroic narratives of war, comics seem to be a suitable form for mediating traumatic experiences and memories (seeWhitlock2006), duetotheir capacity to locate ‘the reader in space’ and ‘to spatialize memory’ and thus ‘to map a life, not only figuratively but literally’ (Chute 2011, 108–109). Goran Duplancic, the author of Vojna, also points to the ability of comics to tell traumatic (hi)stories: ‘The written text is invaluable, but it cannot be rewound. But one can rewind images and drawings. Even film does not have such Sacco’s work, which has been labeled ‘slow journalism,’ ‘not solely because of the sheer amount of time it takes to complete the publications, but more significantly because of thekindofreadingexperiencetheyprovide’ (Matovic2022,257;seealsoChute2016a,7). . Interview with Đorde Balmazovic, 10 January 2024. Tanja Petrovic power, because you cannot pause your gaze and establish a relationship with protagonists, you are primarily a spectator. In comics, on the other hand, the reader chooses the rhythm herself. For these reasons, there is nobettermediumthanacomicbooktotellpersonal, emotionallyloaded stories’ (Duplancic in Mager 2023). The feeling of fear and its workings are the central motive of both Rat and Vojna. In Duplancic’s comic book, the fear the main protagonist/the author feels during the days he was trapped in the military base during thewarinSloveniaisdepictedasaterrifyingblackwolfhauntinghimand knowntohim from hisearly childhood days.In Rat, the fear is explicitly mentioned and discussed several times. It is exposed as a driving force for decisions and as a feeling in the roots of important moral questions the two friends keep asking themselves over the years. On pp. 38–40, the authors deconstruct the very idea that answering the mobilization call was a sign of braveness while draft dodging was a sign of cowardness: Saša explains that his going to war was a consequence of the fear that one of his friends would get mobilized instead of him, and he would feel guilty in front of him or his mother. ‘The same way your mum feared my reaction because you did not respond to the call to go to war. She told me that when I met her after I came back,’ he says to Žole, adding: ‘In my mind it looked like choosing between war and jail. For some reason, going to the front line seemed as a less bad option. At least I thought so backthen. In a way, I went to the war because ofcowardice.’ ‘So youboth were afraid?,’ asks Mišel. Saša and Žole both exclaim: ‘Yes!’ The authors of both these comic books, as emphasized above, con­cern themselves with the precise and faithful narration of war events. The strong presence of fear and the fact that many years passed between the events and their recreation in the form of comic books (the process of remembering suppressed events and experiences particularly shaped Saša’s story), already signal the highly traumatic nature of these events. However,neither ofthesetwocomicnarrativesreflectsontraumaexplic­itly, which is in line with the insights that trauma is not ‘fully narratable,’ but‘itunquestionablyinfluencesnarrativesthatemergearoundit’ (Jelaca 2016, 3). Rat faces the readers with terrifying experiences of death, wound­ing, and destruction in Eastern Slavonia during war operations and the painfulreality of warinSerbiaatthe same time. Discrepancies between simple moves that slightly resemble children’s drawings, mostly static, often metaphorical (e.g. soldiers depicted as skittles with helmets) and Figure 2 Adetail from Đorde Balmazovic’s Sketch­book with Drawings from Rat (repro­duced with permis­sion of the author) scenes of killing, suffering and destruction have profound effects and point to the inability to comprehend and narrate events in all their trau­matic dimensions, simultaneously revealing the absurdity and pointless­ness of war. With such a driving technique, Balmazovic breaks with the tradition of comicrepresentations ofwarasheroic and abounding withaction and glorification of war and conflict (Earle 2017, 13) which erases ‘all the gore and truth from the battle’ (Kermode 2011, 4). Moreover, Rat overtly op­poses the mythology of war heroism extensivelyemployed in the nation-building narratives with humour and fine sarcasm: in the beginning of Saša’s storyfromthe frontline, there isascene in which,insearchofa place to go to toilet, he crouches in the field with his pants down. The bullets start flying above his head, so he runs back to the transporter in rush. He then imagines how his monument would look if he got shot while relieving himself – a crouching soldier with his pants down and full military equipment on a pedestal. Vojna, on the other hand, does not depict armed conflict, casualties and violence directly. According to its author, his ambition was to recall Tanja Petrovic inthecomictherecognizableatmosphereofservingintheYugoslavPeo­ple’s Army: ‘I wanted to give the comic the aura that resembles conver­sations of friends who meet and evoke memories of their youth. Many people who read the comic told me that comics remind them of their high school days, although the events my comic describes are not really something they want to recall’ (Duplancic in Mager 2023). It is rather what could happen than what happened (as well as the knowledge that it did happen just months later in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina) that points tothefactthattraumasignificantlyshapesthememory ofde­scribedeventsinVojna as well.The recognizablejnahumourandcomic situations Vojna abounds with do not conceal the fear, tension, and ab-surdityofwar,but actually amplifythem. Vojna describes a moment in whichGoranandotheryoungmentrappedintheŠentvidarmybasewere denied the possibility to imagine the future and have dreams and plans for it. Between one day and the next, from being the soldiers of the com­mon socialistcountry, they became enemies forthe Slovenian Territorial Defenceandthepublic(despitethefacttherewerestillSloveniansoldiers among them), while thejnaauthorities required them to blindly follow orders, even when it implies shooting at a friend who attempts desert­ing and leaving the confined space of the barracks where they were kept without food, electricity and information for weeks. Several renowned researchers of trauma maintain that trauma has a distinctively individual character and insist that trauma is a singular ex­perience (LaCapra 2001;Tal 1995;see also Earle2017).For example, Do-minickLaCaprawarnsagainstgeneralizingandrelativizing,pointingout that ‘the notion of trauma [should not] be rashly generalized or the dif­ference between trauma victim and historian or secondary witness – or, for that matter, between traumatization and victimhood – be elided’ (La-Capra 2001, 97). Both Rat and Vojna narrate personal experiences; how­ever, these experiences strongly resonate both generationally and within the space and time of post-Yugoslav societies. They expose trauma as cultural memory (see Jelaca 2016), shared by many belonging to the last Yugoslavgenerationswhoexperienced mobilization,draft-dodging,war, forced migration, massive emigration and futures cut short. Trauma also marked the lives of the parents of these generations and significantly shaped inter-generational relations (which is poignantly illustrated by a scene in Rat in which an unknown woman cries and embraces Saša after he is back home fromhospital and tells him ‘Children, what did we do to you.’). The way these two comic books evoke trauma goes beyond the di­chotomy of victims vs. perpetrators, destabilizes moral positions these two categories usually imply, and points to the ambiguous nature of in-volvementinwarand conflictand the consequencesofthatinvolvement. IntheŠentvidmilitarybasein1991,Goranisfacedwithanordertoshoot athisfellowsoldiers,whichherejects,puttinghimselfintodanger.InRat, Saša tells his father who manages to visit him on the frontline: ‘Dad, why am I here? What do we want here? I just want to save myself. Dad, I can­not shoot at another human being!’ His father answers: ‘Son, if you have to choose whom to save, choose yourself!’ The authors also reflect upon other workings of war that profoundly affect an individualin ways which often do not relate to what kind of person this individual is in ‘ordinary’ situations: Goran is rude and violent toward a Spanish female journalist who comes to the base andtriestogeta statement from him.In Rat, Saša and his fellow soldiers laugh when they hear that their transporter hit Fica, a small Yugoslav automobile. Later, in the hospital, he encounters the driver ofthatcar,who is badly injured,withmultiplefractures in his legs. ‘I was horrified remembering that a few days ago we were laughing because of the accident between Fica and our transporter,’ says Saša. Both comics critically expose war propaganda by both opposing sides and the ways it dehumanizes ‘the enemy,’ and what this dehumanization does to soldiers on the frontline. For example, in Rat, Saša and other sol­diers watchtvnews, first on the Belgrade television channel, where the reporter saysthatCroatianunitsbroketheceasefire, andSerbiansoldiers liberatedthevillageofSarvaš.Thesoldiersloudlyapprovewhattheyhear. ThentheyswitchtotheZagrebchannel,wherethereporterssaythatSar­vaš was occupied by the Serbian aggressor army. The soldiers disagree in rage,andattackSašawhenheasksthem:‘Haven’tyouseenwithyourown eyes what happened?’ These comics do not romanticize war, battles, and bonds among men resulting from participation in dramatic and traumatic events. In Vojna, solidarity and comradeship among soldiers is not presented as a social infrastructure fosteringtheir braveness and readiness to fight, butas sur­vival strategy, their last resort and a way to oppose the hegemonic work of war and the military institution. They also expose collectivity and sol­idarity as sources of pressure and hegemony in war situations: before attacking Vukovar, the officer asks men in Saša’s unit if there is anyone whofeelsincapableofparticipatingintheforthcomingaction. ‘Everyone was silent, so I was silent, too,’ describes Saša in Rat of how this pressure Tanja Petrovic works. In Vojna, Goran refuses to escape the military base and go home to Split when his mother visits and proposes it. The Slovenian soldier, Tomaž, also stays in the barracks with his army buddies, even though he meets his brother on the other side of the fence, whoisamember of the Slovenian Territorial Defence unit, and although everyone expects him to leave. Rat, Vojna, and Memory Cultures in Post-Yugoslav Societies If we understand cultural texts as ‘repositories of feelings and emotions, which are encoded not only in the content of the texts themselves but in the practices that surround their production and reception,’ following AnnCvetkovich(2003,7), then Rat by Đo& Djuand Vojna by Goran Duplancic may be read as cultural texts. They engage the readership and thepublicintheformerYugoslavsocietiesincomplexandmanifoldways. These two comic books have manifold lives, too. Vojna was originally published on the largest regional web forum for comic authors and lovers, www.forum.stripovi.com, under the name Na mestu ... vojna! Thefirstsixpagesappearedon8March2013,andtheau­thor periodically published new pages over the next two years. The last, 264th page, was published online on 14 January 2015. From the author’s post on the forum preceding publication of the first pages, we learn that he decided to publish a web comic although it was originally planned to appear in print in the Q Library edition.ą° He enjoyed the immediate online interaction with the readers – members of the comic forum com­munity andtheir feedback,and wasquite surprisedbyanideabyJosip Sršen,anothercomicauthorandpublisher,topublishthebookthatcame several years later.ąą Publishing house Barbatus released Vojna in 2021, six years after Duplancic uploaded the last page on the web forum. The author was even more surprised by the significant interest in the comic book – the first edition sold out within only half a year, and the second addition appeared in 2021. In autumn 2022, the Slovenian translation of Vojna was published by the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences andArts(Duplancic 2022).Itprovokedinterestthatclearly exceeded the usual circles of comic fandom and, travelling across state borders established through the events it describes, engaged in new de­batesinthewaysitsauthordidnotanticipateorcareaboutwhilecreating ą° See http://forum.stripovi.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=43600&whichpage=1. ąą Interview with Goran Duplancic, 22 April 2023. it. If the dynamic, witty and emotional story and numerous references to militaryserviceintheYugoslavPeople’sArmymadethiscomicappealing for readers in Croatia and other parts of former Yugoslavia, in Slovenia it acquired additional, more distinctively political meaning. As the first­hand accountof dramatic events duringthe ten-day-warin Slovenia, Vo­jna challenges the narrative dominating the Slovenian public sphere, in whichjnasoldiers, including the young men performing their military service who were trapped in military bases across Slovenia, were pre­sented as the enemies and aggressors who were eventually defeated by the heroic actions of the Territorial Defence. October 25, the day when in1991 the lastjnasoldierlefttheterritory ofSlovenia,ismarked asa national holiday(see Janša2013).Withabiographicalstoryfromthe ten-day war, Vojna insists on that war’s absurdity and pictures it as chaotic and morally ambiguous. Its challenge of the fixed narrative of virtuous and victoriousdefeatofthe aggressorhad asomewhatcathartic effect for the Slovenian public because it opened a space to remember the days of getting independence outside the petrified categories of national(ist) mythology.ą˛ Mostofthememorable,witty,andtragicimagesthatcomprisethenar­rative of Rat carry strong and importantanti-war messages if taken indi­viduallyor in shorter sequences. As painful ‘postcards of the 1990s’ (Kal-aba2019),theyfindtheirplaceinartexhibitionsintheregion.InDecem­ber 2019, the Museum of Yugoslavia staged the exhibition The Nineties: AGlossaryofMigrations whose aim was ‘to generate a new vocabulary that would at least temporarily rearticulate [...] dominant concepts and discourses’ about the nineties in former Yugoslavia. ‘All the artists were invited, in collaboration with the curators, to choose a term, syntagm or idiom that they thought articulated the position of the work, initiative or communityinthemostaccurateway –ofcourse,primarilyfromtheper­spective of the exhibition’s problematic focus – and they were also asked to write a statement explaining that choice’ (Ognjanovic 2019, 27–28). Škart/Đo & Dju choose courage and/or cowardice. The words constitut- ą˛ See, for example, the discussion at the book launch of Vojna in Ljubljana, 23 February 2023,availableatzrcsazu(2023).Althoughitmighthavenotbeentheauthor’sintention or ambition, Vojna thusjoinedabodyofothertextsandworksofartwhichproblematize theideaofSlovenia’smorallyunquestionableandsuperiorroleinYugoslavia’sbreakdown and the narrative which is the foundation of the Slovenian independent state. Among them are the theatre play Republika Slovenija (2016), and Zoran Smiljanic’s and Marjan Pušavec’s comic Zadnji let Tonija Mrlaka (2017). Tanja Petrovic Figure 3 Frames from Rat (acrylic on cardboard, reproduced with permission of the author) ing this pair seemingly function as antonyms, but actually demonstrate that ‘inthe givencontext,it was difficulttodiscern betweenchoiceand coercion, that is, between the possibility of stepping out of the discourse of absolute victimization and passivization’ (pp. 25–26). This is how the artists reflect upon the meaning of these words (Škart 2019, 169): What did it mean, in the nineties, to be brave, and what did it mean tobecowardly?Toheadontoawaronedidnotknowthereasonfor, or to avoid it? Now, almost thirty years later, when it is known that the war resulted in approximately 140,000 killed and that around 4 millionpeoplebecamerefugees(mostofwhomleftYugoslavia),the extent of the evil brought on by nationalism is clear and why it is so important to recognize it in time, and stop it. This statementisaccompaniedby several frames fromthe comicbook Rat –thosedepictingthe conversationbetweenSašaand hisfather, those in which the officer asks whether anyone feels incapable of participat­ing in the forthcoming action and everyone is silent, an image of Saša on the monument pedestal with his pants down, and some others. Frames from Rat were also exhibited in Sarajevo in the summer of 2023, in the framework of the exhibition Art War curated by the artist Slaven Tolj. The Škart was faced withnegative reactions by some visitors of this exhi­bitionbecauseoftheframesdepictingdifferencesinreportingonthewar operations in Sarvaš ontvchannels in Belgrade and Zagreb – for these visitors, even after so many years, it was unacceptable to publicly present the ‘Serbian side’ of the story in such a negative light.ął Rat and Vojna are graphic narratives of the wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s that both offer individualized accounts and tell of personal experi- ął Interview with Đorde Balmazovic, 10 January, 2024. ences, traumas, fears and moral dilemmas. Due to their testimonial na­ture, immediacy and high affective charge, they are capable of emotion­ally mobilizing different publics in various localities. However, the focus on personal and individual stories and memories by no means implies that these comicbooks de-politicizeevents, persons and their voices.On thecontrary–asŽoleemphasized,‘itisveryimportanttocollectasmany documentsandtestimoniesaboutthe1990saspossible.Thatisoneofthe reasons Saša and I made this book. Documenting events through testi­monies prevents perpetuation of myths and legends. Myths and legends are either exaggerationsorlies,they fabricatehistory, and wewitnessthis fabricationalmostdailyinSerbia’(BalmazovicinKalaba2019).Manifold ways in which these two comic books engage with dominant narratives about the Yugoslav wars, traveling from one post-Yugoslav state to an­other, from the web to printed media, from printed pages to the exhi­bition halls, from one language to another, demonstrate the capacity of these individual and personal voices to challenge and destabilize fixed, hegemonic and binary discourses and imaginations of the wars through whichYugoslaviadisintegrated,andtopointtoalternative waysofbuild­ingacollective,thinkingsubjectivityandresponsibility,rememberingthe past and imagining the future. Note This article is a result of the research programme Historical Interpretations of the 20th Century (p6-0347) financed by the Slovenian Research and Innova­tion Agency. References Banic. 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Engaging Miki Muster’s Legacy: Remembering Zvitorepec (Slyboots) in Contemporary Slovenia NinaCvar University of Ljubljana, Slovenia nina.cvar@ff.uni-lj.si, nina.cvar@fe.uni-lj.si ZoraŽbontar National Museum of Slovenia, Slovenia zora.zbontar@nms.si ©2024NinaCvarand Zora Žbontar Abstract. This paper explores Miki Muster’s work and its reception in both socialist and contemporary Slovenia, arguing that a certain type of public corresponds to a specific aesthetic regime. The central the-sisisthatthe socialist public behavesdifferentlycomparedto thecon-temporary configuration, resulting in a changed reception of Muster’s work. With reference to Miško Šuvakovic, the socialist social configu­rationfollowsadistinctivemodeofgovernance,meaningthatthehet­erogeneityof acting in public needs to be taken into account. This pa­perdemonstratesthatMusterintertwinesWesternvisualimagesofhis comiccharacterswiththehistoricalaestheticconfigurationofSocialist Yugoslavia. Due to the change of the political system, the current re­ception of Muster’s work operates as a nostalgic phenomenon, which is demonstrated by the questionnaire distributed to different genera­tions. In the concluding part, the paper presents a synthesis via Ann Rigney’s dynamic model of cultural memory and elaborates onthe fu­ture potential of Muster’s comic imagery. Key Words: Miki Muster, Slyboots, political cartoons, nostalgia, capi­talism, socialism SpominjanjeMustrovegaZvitorepcavsodobnislovenskidružbi Povzetek. Clanek obravnava delo Mikija Mustra in njegovo recepcijo tako v socialisticni kot sodobni Sloveniji,pri cemer izpostavlja, da do-locen tip javnosti ustreza specificnemu estetskemu režimu. Osrednja teza je, da socialisticna javnost v primerjavi s sodobno ucinkuje dru-gace,karvplivanaspremenjenorecepcijoMustrovegadela.Pobesedah Miška Šuvakovica socialisticna javnost sledi posebnemu nacinu delo­vanja. Clanek predstavi nacine, kako Miki Muster prepleta vizualne https://doi.org/10.26493/2630-4082.56.151-169 Nina Cvar and Zora Žbontar podobe z Zahoda z (zgodovinsko) estetsko konfigurcijo socialisticne Jugoslavije. Zaradi spremembe politicnega sistema sodobna recepcija Mustrovega dela ucinkuje kot nostalgicen fenomen, kar dokazuje tudi anketni vprašalnik, ki so ga izpolnile razlicne generacije. V sklepnem deluclanekpredstavisintezoprekokonceptakulturnegaspominaAnn Rigney in podrobneje obravnava potencial Mustrovih stripovskih po-dob. Kljucne besede: Miki Muster, Zvitorepec, politicne karikature, nostal­gija,kapitalizem,socializem Introduction Ourfirstencounter with Miki Muster,and in particular with hisfamous Slyboots comics, is inherently linked to school summer holidays, which, at least in the time of Yugoslavia were usually spent somewhere on the Adriatic coast (figure 1). On one occasion, luckily for us, the summer sweetness of a child’s boredom was saved by a series of Slyboots comics, given to us by a neighbouring camper. However, the tranquillity of the childhoodrivilegeofnotneedingtocareaboutthelabyrinthinecomplex­ities of social reality abruptly ended with the Balkan wars in the 1990s, when innocence and naivety was turned into asking questions that did not have an easy answer – or to refer to the 1960s phrase, personal sud­denly became political. Whilegrowing older, we ran into Muster’s politi­calcartoons,manyofthemfunctioningdifferentlyfromSlybootscomics, read in our childhoods. How was this possible, we asked each other, en-couragingustothink about the receptionofMuster’swork today. In this manner, this article will investigate the relation between Miki Muster’s work Zvitorepec (Slyboots) and the public in both socialist and contemporary Slovenia; we argue that a certain type of public corre­sponds to a specific aesthetic regime. Jovita Pristovšek’s (2019) argument in which she claims that the aes­thetic regime blurs the boundaries between art and other spheres of production will allowustorearticulateall threekey spaces of social (re)production – i.e. the aesthetic, the public and the political – as actual regimes, demonstrating that socialist and contemporary regimes have distinctive sets of norms, rules and protocols around which the expecta­tions and actions of the subjects are constituted. Accordingly, this paper argues, in reference to Miško Šuvakovic, that the socialist social configuration follows a distinctive mode of gover­nance, meaning that the heterogeneity of acting in public needs to be Figure 1 Slyboots (Zvi­torepec), the Wise Tortoise Trdonja, and the Always Hun­gry Wolf Lakotnik (reproduced with permission of the copyright owner) taken into account (Šuvakovic 2011). Thus, this study’s central thesis is that a socialist public acts differently in comparison to the contemporary configuration, resulting in a changed reception of Muster’s work. Furthermore, this paper will demonstrate that Muster intertwines Western visual images of his comic characters with the historical con-figurationofSocialistYugoslavia. Alongthese lines,Muster’swork seems to resonate Fredric Jameson’s (1991, 54) claim concerning the effacement of the older(essentiallyhigh-modernist)frontierbetween high culture and so-called mass or commercial culture. Additionally, we claim that due to the change of the political system, the contemporary reception of Muster’s work operates as a nostalgic phenomenon, which is demon­strated by the questionnaire handed to different generations. In the concluding part we will deliver synthesis via Ann Rigney’s dy­namic modelofcultural memory and elaborateonthe futurepotentialof the image of Muster’s comics. Public Sphere, Life and Aesthetic Regime To be able to connect Muster’s image with a specific aesthetic regime, we needtoarticulatetherelationbetweenthepublicsphere,lifeandaesthetic regime. We will start with Habermas’s concept of the public sphere. Much has been said about Habermas’s (1989, 49) conceptual idea of a public sphere, where supposedly all citizens would be able to gather Nina Cvar and Zora Žbontar anddiscussmattersofcommoninterestinan‘unrestrictedfashion.’How­ever, the Habermasian model of a public sphere is a normative one and is an effect of the process of marking boundaries, resulting in exclusion (Deutsche 1998). Another challenge with the Habermasian model is that it is based on the dividing line between state and society, separating the privatespherefromthepublicsphere,neglectingspecificsof,forexample, socialist states, underlining Nancy Fraser’s (1992) claim that it is almost impossible to separate matters of public and private concern, especially for historically marginalized groups. Fraser’s (1992) criticism of the Habermasian model that overlooks marginalized groups,whichnonethelessformtheirownspaces,hasbeen taken asanepistemic base forthispaper in ordertoinspect thestruc­ture of the socialist model of the public sphere, examining its specifics through an analysis of Muster’s works. In her book Structural Racism, Theory and Power, Pristovšek (2019) evocatesRancičre’snotionoftheaestheticregimeto–amongotherthings – rethink aesthetics in the vicinityofthe nation-state. The importance of Rancičre’s understanding of aesthetic regime is his underlining of a link between the production of works (or artistic practice) and the forms of visibility that these forms take (Deranty 2010), enabling us to think art production and life on the same plane. ‘Aesthetic regime’ thus represents a field in which a new paradigm of community can be conceived, epistemically positioning itself as a place that openstopolitical thinking,which, asHabermas shows,isafter all connected to the public. In regard to Rancičre’ s analysis, we have iden­tified two distinctive historicalpublic forms, which has allowedus to ad­dress specific themes of socialist and contemporary Slovenia with refer­ence to Muster’s work. Structuring the Public Sphere in Socialist Yugoslavia and Postsocialist Slovenia Thepublicsphereisaspace ofsocial reflection whichisconstructed dif­ferently inspecific historicalformations. JasminaZaložnik (2017), forin-stance, writes that in Socialist Yugoslavia various unitarisms proclaimed social egalitarianism,brotherhood and unity;aprojectoflanguageand cultural unitarisms, gender blindness, etc., structuring the public in Yu­goslavia as enmeshed with politics to usher in the revolutionary project. Despite some of the common traits, the socialist public sphere did changeovertime. Alreadyin the 1960s,Yugoslavpraxis philosophersde­manded a free public sphere, although in the context of understanding public discourse as a medium for facilitating socialist society in Marx’s sense (Križan 1989). Further changes took place with the formation of civil society in the late 1970s and early 1980s (Mastnak 1990), with civil society being seen as separated from the state; in this regard new social movements,e.g.punk,wereessentialinconstitutinganalternativepublic sphere and new political subjectivities. Despite the common opinion among western philosophers and soci­ologists arguing that the Yugoslav system was where socialist humanism was well-anchored, and where, accordingly, emphasis was placed on the greater respect of individual rights, compared to its Soviet counterpart (Ramšak 2018). This propelled the so-called self-management system, however even in the 1980s, it was according to Marina Gržinic (2023), difficult to enter the public space, which was characterized as a distinc­tive space. WithrespecttoMuster’swork,inhisinterviewforDnevnik,heexplains that when he started drawing, anything which resembled America was not allowed (Mehle 2015), clearly demonstrating the unique relation be­tween the public sphere, collective life and aesthetic regime. However, as we will latershow, Muster’s comicimage drew importantlyonWestern influences. On the other hand, the Slovenian contemporary public sphere cannot be adequately understood without taking into account the unique pro-cessesoftheSlovenianmediasphere’sprivatizationthattookplacewithin the change of the political-economic system. In their analysis of the Slovenian media space, Sandra Bašic Hrvatin and Lenart J. Kucic (2004) stress that at the beginning of the 1990s a spe­cific privatization model was implemented in Slovenia; they also argue that the main feature of the present day media space in Slovenia is cor­poratization of media discourse, resulting in media content being subor­dinated to the interests of media owners and the largest advertisers. Re­ferring to Bašic Hrvatin and Kucic (2004), in contrast to other socialist East and Central European countries that sold off their media to foreign owners at the beginning of the transition period, Slovenia took a decade to carry out the privatization process; however, in the end it experienced a rather similar outcome that it otherwise aimed to prevent. In a similar vein, other researches claimthe same,arguingthatthe processoftrading and exchanging ownership shares of state-owned companies from 1995 to 2006 resulted in a consolidation of ownership, where a small num­ Nina Cvar and Zora Žbontar berof‘domestic’ (Slovenian)ownersenabledbothhorizontalandvertical concentration of ownership via numerous interlinked and cross-owned companies(Ribac2019).TosummarizewithMarkoMilosavljevic(2016), the Slovenian media landscape has been influenced by the economic and political restructuring of the former socialist society. Furthermore, with the economiccrisis of2008/2009, theSlovenianmediasector exhibiteda considerablelevel ofweakness,leavingvarious actors,e.g. mediacompa­nies, weaker and exposed to both politicaland advertising pressure from owners and other ‘key agents’ in society (Milosavljevic 2016). The structural conditionsof theSloveniacontemporary mediaspace – amongotherthings,inSloveniatherearemorethan2,000mediaoutlets, more than 2,000 journalists and only 2 million inhabitants – and wider technological transformation, e.g. social media channels, are undoubt­edly playing an important role in shaping this space’s content, which is characterized bythe useoftabloidnarratives,andevenverbalexcessesin journalisticstories(Vezjak2024).Inaddition,weareseeinganexpansion of hate speech and phenomena linked to fake news and overall spread of misinformation, encouraging a culture of subjective opinions. To encap­sulate,bothpublicspheres,i.e.socialistandcontemporary,arerelatedtoa specific social bond, which is reflected in distinctive content production. By delineating the characteristics of both the socialist and contemporary Slovenianpublicspace,elaborationofeachoftheaestheticregimescanbe conductedtodemonstratethe receptionofMuster’sSlybootsinboth ver­sionsofthe publicspace.Wewillnow focusonthe case studyofMuster’s Slyboots. Case Study: Miki Muster’s Slyboots Who is Miki Muster? Miki Muster, born in 1925, is a pioneer of Slovenian comics and one of the most successful creators in the field of comics, known for his iconic comic series Slyboots (1952–1973). Slyboots’s characters gained an iconic status very quickly, literally from its launch in the 1950s, when Western culturalnoveltiesweremoreorlessreluctantlyintroducedtothesocialist environment.Heisregardedasoneofthemostsuccessfulcreatorsofcar­toonsinSlovenia aswell. Hisoverall oeuvre is enviable in scope, quality and diversity. Between 1952 and 1973 he published in Slovenski porocevalec, a prede­cessorof Delo, acentralSloveniannewspaper,whereheworkedasajour­nalist and illustrator. In1973 he moved to Munich,where hewas engaged in production of cartoon films. During this time Muster also made his legendary commercialadvertisements andcreated aworld-famousseries of cartoons based on the ideas of the French cartoonist of Argentine ori­gin,GuillermoMordillo.Inthe90s,Musterworkedasapoliticalcartoon­istfor Mag and later Reporter magazine. In2015,Musterwasawardedthe Prešeren Prize for Lifetime Achievement, which is considered as one the most prestigious national awards in arts. Alreadyduringhislifetime,Musterwaslikearockstar:peoplestopped him and askediftheycould shakehis hand.Eventoday, if (in particular older generations, as we will later show) asked about Muster, they will usually respond that Muster still makes them feel like they have a child inside them. Historical Development of Slyboots Letusnow focusonthe historical contextof Slyboots. Slyboots wasfirst published in July 1952 in a predecessor of Delo. However, his debut, ac­cording to Alja Brglez’s (2011) extensive study on Muster, was not really a result of a deliberate desire to instigate home-grown comic strip pro­duction. On the contrary, seven years after the end of the Second World War and four years after the Informbiro, influenced by Stalin, the editor Igor Šentjurc commissioneda Disney comic to be published on the most famous and most prominent back page. But the comic did not arrive in time – in one of his interviews, Muster hinted, ‘that the comic had ar-rived,butthatitwasthentakentocustomsorwherever,soasnottospoil the youth’ (Brglez 2011, 59). Leaving his suspicions aside, Muster, at that time employed as a jour­nalist-illustrator, was asked to draw one of his own comics, which would resemble Walt Disney’s animal-like characters, but with some Slovenian touches, so that readers would be able to identify with them more easily. Handily, within the early socialist period, a quintessential (Western) content in a distinctly modern form was introduced to Slovenia, ques­tioningthebeliefthatthefirstyearsoftheYugoslavandSloveniansocial­istdevelopmentweresealedfromeverythingwhichwasnotideologically consistent and defined by the definitions of the new social order. Muster’scomicsandhisprotagonistsresembledDisney-likecharacters, but were adapted to the Slovenian cultural heritage of local fairy tales (to prevent Muster being accused of Americanism) and made a strong connection with their audience (Brglez 2011). Inoneofhisinterviews,Musterunderlined theroleofhisreaders,who Nina Cvar and Zora Žbontar Figure 2 Road to the Moon (reproduced with permission of the copyright owner) were making eager demands to editors to enable a constant flow of the comics,easingthethreat,sotospeak,ofpossiblecensorship(Brglez2011). Muster also explained how he was allowed to draw, albeit on condition that he would not draw American-like comics. When the atmosphere liberalized and when it became clear that his comics could do no (political) harm, Muster started drawing picture books. However, there was in fact one reported incident of political censorship. In his comic story Road to the Moon, published in 1959 (Muster 2011a), Muster’s vision of space exploration and above all, a cri­tique of geopolitical tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc, Muster’s protagonists were stopped by the Soviets, which happened to be drawn like bears. Slyboots’s main characters have anthropomorphic ani­mal traits; nevertheless, the Soviet embassyprotested to the Muster’sedi­tor,whoaskedMuster, ‘Whatarewegoingtodo?’ andMusterresponded: ‘Nothing, give me a week to think ofsomething’ (Brglez 2011, 71). Muster continued the story, so the Soviets let the matter go; the Americans did not really care how they were represented (figure 2). Slyboots’s Image in Socialist Yugoslavia: Traces of Western Aesthetics in the Socialist Aesthetic Regime In the following section of the paper, we would like to show the mecha­nisms by which Muster intertwines Western visual images of his comic characters with the historical configuration of Socialist Yugoslavia. In one of the first in-depth studies on comics in Yugoslavia, France Zupan (1969), an art historian and sociologist of culture, underlined the character of mass culture in comics. Zupan (1969) also stressed the im­portanceofregularpublicationandtheuniquesetofvaluesandtradition of the Slovenian cultural space; however, he also emphasized the inter-meshing between Western and socialist aesthetics. Yet, Muster’s comics are devoid of official socio-ideology, although the wise tortoise Trdonja openly wears a middle-class bow tie, while the always-hungry wolf called Lakotnik dresses akin to Uncle Sam (without the stars and stripes).This indicates that Muster byno means shiedaway from conceptual messages. Therefore, he was politicallyincorrect, which is typical for youth comics. Additionally, there is one story, a direct criti­cism of the socialist economy, Problems with Construction (figure 3 and figure 4) from the early years of economic liberalization (before Kavcic’s Figure 3 Problems with Con­struction (repro­duced with permis­sion of the copyright owner) Nina Cvar and Zora Žbontar Figure 4 Problems with Con­struction (repro­duced with permis­sion of the copyright owner) reforms) in 1963 (Muster 2011b). It serves as a direct and clear satire on bureaucracy and social corruption, revealing that socialist Slovenia was not totalitarian (Vidmar 2011, 4). IgorVidmarstatesthatSlyboots(Zvitorepec),thetortoiseTrdonja,and the wolf Lakotnik (figure 5) remain vivid in his memory, not merely as nostalgicfiguresbutasjoyful,vibrant,native,comicanimal-humanhero­archetypes.Theyrepresenthisinitialencounterwiththehigh-qualityand dynamicuseofcomiclanguage,whichconsistentlytranscendedthemun­daneaspectsofsocialistsociety,leadingusintotherealmsofaglobalstate of mind (Vidmar 2011, 4). Miki Muster, a pioneer of Slovenian comics and a world-class anima­tor, did not receive many awards for his work. However, in 1978, the Yu­goslav associationestablished the Andrija Award (named after the Croa­tian comics pioneer Andrija Maurovic) for achievements in the field of comics,withMusterbeingthefirstrecipientforhislifelongcontributions. The accompanying explanation stated (Modic 2011b, 8): Miki Muster, as the most prominent Slovenian creator of graphic literature to date, is recognized for his unique quality achievements in the tradition of Disney’s caricature animal comics, particularly in the earlier period. His work, characterized by drawing integrity andscriptprocessing,laysthefoundationofSlovenianandYugoslav comics while simultaneously earning its place among the classics of the European ninth art. Figure 5 Slyboots (Zvi­torepec), the Wise Tortoise Trdonja, and the Always Hun­gry Wolf Lakotnik (reproduced with permission of the copyright owner) Max Modic revealed that Muster remarked that without socialism, he might have established his own studio much earlier in Slovenia. In 1973, as already stated, Muster relocated to Germany for better creative con­ditions and while there, he crossed paths with Guillermo Mordillo, a world-renowned French cartoonist of Argentine descent, who sought a European studio to adapt his caricatures into cartoons. Muster produced nearly 400 films for Mordillo, albeit without receiving credit (Modic 2011a, 5–8). He conceptualized animated films as moving comic books. UponhisreturnfromGermany in1990, Muster’sbodyofworkincomics and cartoonswas extraordinary. He devoted sixteen hours a dayto draw­ing (Modic 2011b, 5–6). Stylistically,Muster’sworkinSlybootsisdistinguished byhistranspar­ent framing, effective comic dynamics, inventive scripts, fluent dialogue and an overall reliable composition. Muster used a concise outline draw­ing, initially a pen drawing technique, later ink, with his style gradually maturing into a distinctly precise contour drawing, stylisation and real­istic perfectionism (Brglez 2011). Intermsofthecharacters,demandresultedincharacters’ development in stages, as not all of his main protagonists were developed together. Gradually, the series ended in three anthropomorphic, animal-like char­ Nina Cvar and Zora Žbontar acters,withthewittyandinventivefox,cleverandgood-naturedtortoise, andedgyandgreedywolfwhobecamemostpopularwiththereaders(Br­glez 2011). To quote from one of Muster’s interviews (Teran Košir 2011): Sometimes there are stories in which he is the only protagonist. He wasenoughbecausehewasafigureyoucoulddoalotofthingswith. I also liked him. At the beginning he was bloodthirsty, because in thefablethewolfisjustlikethat,butovertimehebecameapositive character. France Zupan (1969) also identified a set of values promoted by the centralSlybootscharacters,i.e.optimism,chivalry,honesty,camaraderie, not being too fond of individualistic ambitiousness, self-importance, or authoritarian personalities, and furthermore, always being on the sideof the weak. In Slyboots,thisvalue setisplayedvia evocation ofthe narra­tologicalframework of adventure,the useofnarrative techniques suchas gags and innovative scripts. Back to the Present: Slyboots’s Image in the Contemporary Aesthetic Regime Let us now jump to contemporary times. Muster’s comic series offers a potent research groundforanalysing the historicalreception ofcapitalist content in early socialist Yugoslavia (Brglez 2011) and beyond. ButperhapsevenmoreinterestingishowMuster’sworkisremembered within contemporary Slovenia, which cannot be fully understood with­ out taking into accountits specific transition from socialist Yugoslaviato capitalism – aprocess marked by differentstages of neoliberal capitaliza­ tion (Hocevar 2021) and its accompanying cultural mode of production, whichinregardtoMusterinparticular, comestolight in hislater work from the 1990s and first decade of the 21st century, when he was active as a political cartoonist. Study on the Reception of Miki Muster’s Work: Beyond Slyboots For the purposes of identifying reception of Muster’s work in contem­porary times, we constructed a survey using Google forms. The survey, whichconsistedof8openquestions,ą tookplacebetween15thand20thof January2023.Thirty-nineresponseswerereceived,withwomenandmen being almost equally represented. In terms of age, the most responses ą The questions are listed in the appendix section. came from persons aged 40, followed by persons aged 36 and 44.˛ But it was important for us to check if there are any differences between age groups, especially in people born in the late 1990s vs. people born in the 1950s. Unfortunately, it was rather difficult to gain data from the second group, which we attribute to the lack of digital skills and competences. In terms of education, the majority of respondents obtained a high school degree, followed by a bachelor and a master degree. A question at which age the readers were introduced to the comic se­ riesissemi-demographicalandmorecontentrelated. Nevertheless, most people started reading comics at the age of 10. Due to the open-ended questions design, we were able to get access to more nuanced sentiments aboutMuster’s work. The questions aspired to understand respondents’ remembrance modes; furthermore, the survey wanted to ‘test’ the dimension of forgetting by checking if the respon­ dents remembered the main Slyboots characters, although identification oftheso-calledcriticaldistancewasalsoinstalledintothesurvey,byask­ ingwhetherthecomicsandMuster’sworkareproblematicinanyway,e.g. by putting focus on his later work in reference to his political cartoons. What the results show is an obvious sentiment of nostalgia; quoting some of the responses: They [Slyboots comic series] are a very nice reminder of my youth, when I had the passion, time and energy to read and learn about theworld.Iwouldrecommendthemtotoday’sgenerations,perhaps with notes about the time and place in which they were written. Even tome they werepresented as a kind oflegacy,amemoryofthe past, andinthat sense Icanimagine thatthey couldbe entertaining for the younger generations of today. They remind me of relaxed summer days, so I have fond memories [...] quite nostalgic. I would also recommend them to the present generation. What we havefoundinteresting is that out of39 responses, almost 75. of respondents remember Slyboots’s characters. In regard to ‘contempo- rarylenses,’14respondentsproblematizerepresentationofwomen,which they say evokes patriarchy and orientalism. In terms of controversy, re- latedtopoliticalcartoons,only6respondentsareawareofthem,ofwhich 5 problematized them, with one response wrapping up nicely: ˛ Figure 6 in the appendix. Nina Cvar and Zora Žbontar I saw the cartoons and I didn’t really like them. Miki is primarily a children’s author and I don’t think he’s good at political cartoons. In terms of relevance, again the sentiment of nostalgia is evoked, espe­cially in terms of the value of camaraderie, although we also found out that at least two respondents commented on the issue of comics being outdated due to the type of language Muster was using and the issue of technology. To quote one response: I’m afraid [the comics are (not) relevant]. Because the stories are very non-digital, non-technological, very often linked to past eras (stoneage,knights,cowboys...), the languageand thecharacters suffer the ‘teeth of time.’ On the other hand, underlining Muster’s comics as a national legacy, and perhaps moreimportantly, the factorofnostalgiahas beenagainun­derscored in respondents’ reactions. EngagingMiki Muster’s Legacy: Remembering Zvitorepec (Slyboots) in Contemporary Slovenia; The Contemporary Aesthetic Regime What to make of the collected data in regard to Muster’s work, includ­ing his political cartoons, with reference to nostalgia? Let us first start withthedefinitionofnostalgia.ChristopherLasch(1991,83)understands nostalgia as an evocation of a time that is lost forever, and is therefore timeless. The prevalence of nostalgia canof course be very well observed in the conducted survey, as 6 respondents out of 39 speak about nostal­gia directly. But can evocation of nostalgia address the intertwining of Western and socialistaesthetics and furthermore, givean insightinto the functioning of both aesthetic regimes, socialist and contemporary? Following Susan Stewart (1993, 23), ‘nostalgia – like any other form of narrative – is always ideological:the past it seeks never existed elsewhere than in narrative,’ and exactly this dimension of the narrative construc­tion is key, as on one hand it enables us to obtain an insight into cultural memory of Muster’s work, shedding light on the role of comics in trans­mitting and distributing these memories and on the other hand, it re­veals Muster’s complex reproduction of the ideological position towards socialist Yugoslavia. Muster spoke about Yugoslavia’s political-economic system in many of his interviews (Bratož 2015): I lived in a system that instilled fear; the post-war period was the worst, when youdidn’tdareopenyourmouth,even among family, relatives or friends, because younever knew who would report you. In his interview with Dnevnik, along with Delo, another central Slove­nian newspaper, Muster directly declared his political position (Mehle 2015). Interestingly enough, only three respondents in the survey associ­ated Muster with his declared ideological position. But even these three, along with the rest of the respondents, remember and relate Muster and theSlybootscomicswiththeirpleasantchildhoodmemories,underlining the role of the narrative as something which is shared and as such pro­vides a common channel for the transmission of memorability via which different generations articulate their experiences and convert them into a transferable form of disseminating narratives about the past. Nostalgia Stumbles upon Dissonance Let us go back to the moment when our childhood nostalgia stumbled upondissonance,detectedinMuster’slaterwork. Wewilltrytoaddressit viaAnnRigney’s(2018)thesisonthedynamicandgenerativemodelofcul­tural memory, which is about memorability being culturally produced in changing contexts. Conceptually potent is, in particular, Rigney’s (2018, 243) claimthat ‘memoryofrecentevents canworkagainstthepowerthat myths have acquired over much longer periods of time.’ In regard to Muster’s case, Rigney’s argument proves especially useful as his readers do not really problematize the socialist past; on the con­trary, following their responses, Muster’s claims are ontologically closer to myth. Furthermore, Muster is actually perceived as an indispensable part of socialist Yugoslavia – for instance, one respondent very clearly and directly wrote that Muster’s comics were a mirror of the Slovenian society of that time, but not in a way Muster had perhaps envisaged. If MusterheldagrudgetowardssocialistYugoslavia,itcanbeprovocatively claimed that it was the sociopolitical and cultural context of socialist Yu­goslaviawhichfunctionedasa ‘source’ andimpetusforhiswork,demon­strating that remembrance is an active process, occurring withinspecific historical relations. But remembrance is also a resource for redefinition of the past, albeit in this case of Muster’s work operating as a reservoir for production of images for the purposes of consumerism (for instance, Muster’s images are still used today for selling different products, for ex-ample,Nutella-likeproducts)andfurthercapitalistvalorization,omitting Muster’s sometimes problematic political cartoons and images of patri­archy, orientalism, etc. In terms of the narrative aspect, it is important to addthatthisreservoirfunctionsassomekindofnarrative,whichaccord­ing to Stewart (1993) is directly linked to nostalgia. Nina Cvar and Zora Žbontar Conclusion If we have started this paper with nostalgia, it is only adequate to finish withitagain.Clearly,Muster’scomicsarenotachievingthepopularityto­daythattheydidduringsocialism.Andforthis,thereareseveralreasons, be it transformation of the aesthetic form (analogue to digital), be it the changed conditions of the medium’s formats in terms of production and distribution(digitizationanddigitalizationtogether),orbeitthechanged conditions of how creative industries contents are consumed, with circu­lation being, to refer to Jonathan Beller (2006), a mode of capitalist pro­duction on its own (Beller 2006). However, the strange twist, or even irony of history, is that reception of Muster’s comics nowadays is more or less based on the somehow lost values of socialism, e.g. camaraderie and collectivism, which are, at least for the neoliberal organization of the social bond, more or less abolished in favour of individualism, which is clearly detested by at least one of Muster’s central characters, if not all of them, emphasizing the unique traits of the socialist aesthetic Yugoslav regime. Muster’s comic figures arean example of theregime, whereartistic form,massor commercial culture, collective life and politics come together. Based on the responses fromtherespondents,Stewart’sargumentonnostalgiabeingalwaysideo­logicalresonateswell,underliningtheproposedargumenttothinkabout Muster’s work via aesthetic regimes. When analysing Muster’s comics, we attempted to identify the recep­tion of the contemporary audience. During this process, we observed a certain duality. In his late interviews, Muster encourages his readers to contemplatebroadersocial issues, but on the other hand, his discourse is the discourse of the 20th century. Ifthecontemporary aestheticregimeis the regime of global capitalism together with its associated art forms and modes of subjectivities, char­acterized by a burden to create their own biographies (Beck 1992), nar­ration of memories becomes indispensable for the reproduction of not just individual, but shared memories too. Following the conducted sur­vey, it is interesting that most of the participants who responded to our invitation to take part in the questionnaire are in their late 30s and early 40s and what most of them have in common is their shared memory of the socialist past. But perhaps even more interesting – and a proposal for the next research – would be to get younger people to participate in the survey and delve into Maja Breznik and Rastko Mocnik’s (2021) hypoth­esis on being able to have a shared memory of the past events which the involved individuals did not experience – solely based on experiencing Muster’s comics and political cartoons. References Bašic Hrvatin, Sandra, and Lenart J. Kucic. 2004. ‘Slovenia.’ In Media Owner­ship and Its Impact on Media Independence and Pluralism, edited by Bran-kica Petkovic, 463 –492. Ljubljana: Mirovni inštitut. Beck, Ulrich. 1992. Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. London: Sage. Beller,Jonathan.2006. The CinematicMode of Production: Attention Economy and the Society of the Spectacle. Lebanon,nh: Dartmouth College Press, University Press of New England. 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Vidmar, Igor. 2011. ‘Mi smo Mustrovi, Musterje naš!’ In Zbirka Miki Muster 6, 1963–1965, 3–4. Ljubljana: Buch. Založnik,Jasmina.2017.‘PunkasaStrategyforBodyPoliticizationintheLjubl­jana Alternative Scene of the 1980s.’amJournal of Art and Media Studies, št 14: 145–156. Zupan, France. 1969. ‘Masovna kultura – strip.’ Problemi, revija za kulturo in družbena vprašanja 7(73/74):63–92. Appendix The survey on the reception of Muster’s work was conducted via Google forms between 15th and 20th of January 2023, consisting of 8 open ques­tions and also demographical data. We received 39 responses. For the pur­pose of thispaper, theresponseswere appropriately anonymizedandused for interpretation purposes only. Below, we reproduce the 8 open-ended questions from the survey: 1. Have you ever read Muster’s comic strip Slyboots? If so, could you give your approximate age when you read them? 2. Ifyouansweredyestotheabovequestion,howdoyourememberthem – perhaps you can share with me some of your memories, associations, etc.? 3. If you answered yes about reading the comics, perhaps you could indi­cate how you remember the characters of the main characters? 4. If you havereadthesecomics,doyoufind themproblematic in anyway today:e.g.howaregender,socialinequalityorsocialsystems(socialism vs.capitalism,theColdWar,new technologies, etc.),criticismof social systems, the value system (e.g. patriarchy, etc.) dealt with? 5. Inthecaseyouhavereadthecomics,doyouthinktheyarestillrelevant today – can you briefly explain? 6. Doyouknowanyotherworksbyhim?Ifyes,pleaseindicatewhichones. 7. If you answered yes to the last question, and if you have mentioned Muster’s political cartoons, I would like to ask you for a brief comment on them: do you remember them, where did you see them, what ideas and values did they convey? 8. What do the Slyboots comics mean to you today mend them to today’s generations? .. . (.....) .. . (.....) .. . (.....) ... (.....) .. . (.....) .. . (.....) .. . (.....) .. . (.....) .. . (......) .. . (.....) .. . (.....) .. . (.....) – would you recom- ... (......) .. . (.....) .. . (......) .. . (.....) ... (.....) .. . (.....) .. . (.....) .. . (.....) .. . (.....) .. . (.....) Figure 6 Age of the Participants Who Responded to the Survey Saudek and Macourek’s Muriel: (After)Lives of a Czechoslovak Anti-Normalisation Superheroine Robin R. Mudry Leipzig University, Germany robin.mudry@egs.edu ©2024Robin R. Mudry Abstract. This paper presents a symptomatic rereading of four of Kája Saudek and Miloš Macourek’s collaborative works around the female double-heroineofMuriel/Jessiethroughthelensofcriticaltheory.The film Who Wants to Kill Jessie? (Kdo chce zabít Jessii?) (Vorlícek 1966), the two first and only existing episodes of the Muriel comics series Muriel and the Angels (Muriel a andelé) (Saudek and Macourek 1991) and Muriel and the Orange Death (Muriel a oranžová smrt)(Saudek and Macourek 2009), as well as the comics-comedy Four Murders Are Enough, Darling (Ctyri vraždy stací, drahoušku)(Lipský 1971) are con­ceived of as intermedially connected and socio-politically relevant to date. By analysing in particular the political context in which these works were created and extrapolating the underlying, yet often ironic critique of ideology inherent to them, the present study for the first time methodologically foregrounds their investigation along political and ideological lines. Special attention is paid to the counterfactual openings and the political imagination at work that can be designated as communist utopian. The paper thus aims at demonstrating that it is not enough to praise the import of American-style imagery, or the comicgenreitself,intotheCzechoslovakpopcultureofthe1960s,ifwe are to grasp the continuing significance of one of its most famous su­perheroines(Muriel/Jessie)andcreativeduos(SaudekandMacourek). Key Words: Czechoslovak comics, communist comics, Czechoslovak film,post-socialism, communistutopia,ideologycritique,counterfac­tual narratives,female comic heroes, comics-comedy Muriel Saudeka in Macoureka: (po)življenja ceškoslovaške protinormalizacijske superjunakinje Povzetek. ClanekpodajasimptomaticnoponovnobranještirihdelKáje Saudeka in Miloša Macoureka o dvojni junakinji Muriel/Jessie skozi leco kriticne teorije. O filmu Kdo hoce ubiti Jessie? (Kdo chce zabít https://doi.org/10.26493/2630-4082.56.171-195 Robin R. Mudry Jessii?) (Vorlícek 1966), dveh prvih in edinih obstojecih epizodah se­ rije stripov o Muriel – Muriel in angeli (Muriel a andelé)(Saudek and Macourek 1991) ter Muriel in oranžna smrt (Muriel a oranžová smrt) (Saudek and Macourek 2009) – ter stripovski komediji Štirje umori so dovolj,draga(Ctyrivraždystací,drahoušku)(Lipský1971)razmišljamo kotointermedialnopovezanihteršedanesdružbenopoliticnorelevan­ tnih. Z analizo politicnega konteksta, v katerem so bila ta dela ustvar­ jena, in ekstrapolacijo temeljne, a pogosto ironicne kritike ideologije, kijevnjihinherentna,pricujocaštudijaprvicmetodološkopostavljav ospredje raziskovanje avtorjev v politicni in ideološki smeri. Posebna pozornost jenamenjenaprotidejstvenimvrzelim in politicni imagina­ ciji na delu, ki jo lahko oznacimo za komunisticnoutopicno. Clanek takoželi pokazati,da nidovolj samo hvalitiuvozapodob v ameriškem slogu ali stripovskega žanra nasploh v ceškoslovaškopop kulturo šest­ desetih let prejšnjega stoletja, ce hocemo razumeti trajni pomen ene njenihnajboljznanihsuperjunakinj(Muriel/Jessie)inustvarjalnedvo­ jice (Saudek in Macourek). Kljucne besede: ceškoslovaški strip, komunisticni strip, ceškoslovaški film,postsocializem,komunisticnautopija,kritikaideologije,protidej­ stvene pripovedi, stripovske junakinje, stripovska komedija AStrangeFairytale In the short text ‘Podivná pohádka’ (A Strange Fairytale) (Saudek 1991), which oscillates between preface and prologue, Kája (Karel) Saudek, probablythebest-knownCzechcomicsillustrator,retracedtheperipeties of the convoluted and much deferred publication history of his Muriel andtheAngels(Murielaandelé)(SaudekandMacourek1991).Eversince 1969,whenSaudek,togetherwiththescenaristMilošMacourek,planned a series of twelve graphic novels narrating the adventures of the young, smart and extremely attractive physician Muriel, the first episode had been waiting in the drawers of Mladá fronta.ą It eventually saw the light of day on the Czechoslovak book market in 1991, only to become one of the author’s most appraised comic strips. A Strange Fairytale amounts to a comico-cinematographical note where Saudek’s hopeful race to the editorial office not only transpires the spirit of the just kicked-off Velvet ą Founded in 1945, Mladá fronta (The Young Front), was one of the most important pub­lishing companies in post-war Czechoslovakia. As with any other publisher, it was sub­jected to state censorship in varying degrees throughout communist dictatorship. After a turbulent, and later much criticised, privatisation in the 1990s, the publishing house ceased to exist in 2021. Revolution, but also textually evokes comic bubbles – ‘Uf! Gasp!’ (1991, 2).Saudekhadmadeittotheofficejustintime,yetwithoutachievingany publishingperspective.Inthe same vein,acouple of (seemingly rhetor­ ical) questions and exclamations are addressed to the readership of an unsteady ‘post-revolutionary’ time which appeared to have only little in common with the equally uncertain moments of the Prague Spring and its disillusioning aftermath two decades earlier.˛ That is to say, also with the moment when Muriel and her fantastically utopian multi-temporal world were born. Remembering that context of hopeful change, Saudek asked ‘Would all of this [the crazy genesis of Muriel in the liberated mo­ mentum of 1968] still be true today, in a time of videos, devoid of ideas and inflationary in about every sense?’ (1991, 1, emphasis added).ł It is precisely this presumed lack of ideas that stands in stark contrast with the political imagination and audacity of Saudek and Macourek’s erstwhile Muriel story. A story full of scathing socio-political and ide­ ological criticism, unfolding both on the level of its scenario, including interplanetary journeys, time travel and alternate history (Macourek), as well as on the level of its visual executionfull of irony, intericonic and in- termedial citations and Western, mostly American, references (Saudek). Muriel’suniverseincludesversionsofadifferentutopianfuturewherethe ideaofcommunismseemstohavebeenfullyrealised(MurielandtheAn­ gels)aswellasascenarioofhowsuchahistoricaltrajectorycouldbeham­ pered by the invasion of orange monsters, which bears strikingly anal­ ogous resemblances to the 1968 Warsaw Pact occupation of Czechoslo­ vakia(Muriel and the Orange Death). Even inthe faceof outspokencen­ sorship and the sweeping political shifts that stifled the country’s spring­ time awakening and converted it into the depoliticised apathy of the so- called ‘normalisation’ –bothofwhichrenderedregularpublicationofthe first two and only existing Muriel episodes impossible – Saudek would find ways to smuggle Muriel into other media he was working on, such ˛ Whereas the Velvet Revolution of 1989 quickly ushered in the demise of Czechoslovak state socialism and subsequently led to the splitting of the Czech Republic and Slovakia, thePragueSpringof1968 had aimed at realising ‘socialism with ahuman face,’ butwas soon crushed by a Soviet invasion. The years following the end of the Prague Spring are commonlydesignatedas ‘normalisation.’Thetermisproblematicinitselfasitreproduces the reactionary perspective of the occupier since what had to be normalised were the reformist tendencies of 1968 deemed too liberal. ł ‘Platilo by tohle vše ješte dnes, vdobevideí, žádných idejí a inflace všeho?’ (Saudek 1991, 1, emphasis added); all translations from Czech are by the author. Robin R. Mudry as the feature-length comics-comedy Four Murders Are Enough, Darling and the movie poster of Roger Vadim’s Barbarella (1968) for Czechoslo­vak distribution (Diesing 2013, 278, 374–375). Thus, a lack of ideas and, especially, political imagination would be the last things that come to mind to characterise Saudek and Macourek’s work. It comes as a strik­ingsignofforeclosure,then, that exactly suchafear is uttered inthe face of the ‘democratic transition’ and ‘economic transformation’ Czechoslo­vakia was about to undergo in the 1990s (Offe 1991) and, moreover, as history seemed to have ended (Fukuyama 2006) and the new uni-polar worldriditself ofanyalternative utopias. Inwhatfollows,thisfear willbe read as a symptom for the unrealised utopias whose loss we continue to mourn in the third decade of the twenty-first century. Comics and Politics The current paper proposes a (re)reading of Saudek and Macourek’s Muriel and her multiple lives by politically and ideologically contextual-ising them and, thus, opening aperspective of comicsstudies that, in the ‘post-socialist’ predicamentofCentralEurope,hasbeenwidelyneglected for the benefit of mostly depoliticised chronological and positivistic ac­counts(Korínek 2010; Pospiszyl 2015).These hitherto prevalent method­ological choices symptomatically indicate the ongoing failure to grasp the discrepancy between ‘actually existing socialism (a later expression)’ (Jameson 2017, 269) on the one hand and a utopian communism on the other, the latter being far from absent in Saudek’s comics. For instance, TomášPospiszylatteststothemostambitiousprojectthusfarofmapping the History of Czechoslovak Comics in the 20th Century (Prokupek et al.2014) andthe efforttogobeyond‘thecreation ofadetailedfactogra­phy lacking necessary interpretation,’ only to ascertain the adjournment of a more theoretical approach (Pospiszyl 2015, 767). In his review of the most extensive monograph on Saudek to date (Diesing 2013), Pavel Korínek (2010, 685) goes so far as to conclude that, ‘[u]nfortunately, the accompanying text could not shift away from elementary descriptive­ness.’ In ‘Comics, Comics Studies and Political Science,’ Kent Worcester, himself a political scientist and co-editor of AComics Studies Reader (Heer and Worcester 2009), more generally states that ‘[t]o date, schol­ars of comics have done a better job of analyzing individual narratives, and recovering the lives and works of past cartoonists, than of finding ways to measure the social, political, and economic impact of comics and cartoons’ (Worcester 2017, 692). Furthermore, such assessments not only hold true with regard to secondary literature, but can also be ap­plied to the presentation of comics in an exhibition context. When I first researched this paper in 2023, there were altogether three distinct shows on displayinthe CzechRepublicwhere the workofKájaSaudekingen­eral and Muriel in particular prominently featured. Whereas one Prague exhibition at the Dancing House Gallery was completely monographic, the shows at the Western Bohemian Gallery in Plzen and the Moravian Museum in Brno focused on genealogies and authoritatively displayed the work of Saudek in his capacityas ‘the king of Czech comics’4 (Galerie Tancící dum 2022; Moravské zemské muzeum 2022; Bendová and Šla­jch 2022).5 However, Muriel and the Angels were reduced to pop icons, superheroes and fantastic creations without any emancipatory potential. Their visual qualities were preferred to narratological or utopian ones where the protagonists’ features were reduced to iconographic innova­tion and their main strength perceived in the import of Western pop culture syntax. Finally, in the introduction to Comics and Ideology –the very first book to directly link comics with questions of ideology6 –the editors laconically observe that ‘[c]ertainly much research about comics has focused on elements other than ideological’ (McAllister, Sewell, and Gordon 2001, 3). Pointing out both comics’ formal specificities and so-cialsignificance(2001,3–4),theygoontoformulatetwoquestions: ‘Why 4 It is not only in light of the collective background of the creations here examined – all of them emerged in cooperation with Miloš Macourek as scenarist and others with regard to the motion pictures – that we abstain from the ex post designation of Saudek as ‘the king of Czech comics’ (‘král ceského komiksu’). Furthermore, such a title does not re-flectthehistoricalrealityoftheCzechoslovakstate,giventheimportance of Slovakiaasa publicationsite,especiallyin Technické noviny (TechnicalNews),whenprintingSaudek’s comics in the Czech half of the state had become increasingly difficult throughout the 1970s (Prokupek 2014a, 570; 2014e, 657). It is, in the geographical context of this journal, noteworthythat,in1971,Saudekmanagedtopublishadouble-pagespreadcomicstripon Jan Hus as the founder of the Czech reformation (‘Jan Hus – osnivac ceške reformacije’) inissueno. 37oftheCroatianyouthmagazine Sveoko nas (Prokupek2014a,569;Diesing 2013, 322–323). 5 The exhibition in Plzen was entitled Linky komiksu (The Lines of Comics) which, how-ever,werebasedonassociativeconjecturesratherthanhistoriographicalgenealogiesand did not really take into account the lines singled out in the History of Czechoslovak Comicsinthe20thCentury(Prokupeketal.2014;Schmarc2015,773).Yet,bothgenealog­ical approaches attribute one specific ‘line’ to Kája Saudek and his stylistic followers. 6 Wesubscribe totheunderstandingofideologyas ‘a theoryof[sic]whichisnecessaryfor an understandingof constitutedinterestswithin systemsof representation’ (Spivak 1999, 252). Robin R. Mudry and how may comics challenge and/or perpetuate power differences in society?Docomicsservetocelebrateandlegitimizedominantvaluesand institutions insociety,ordo they critique and subvert the status quo?’ (p. 2). These queries are of equal importance to the present endeavour, as we shall examine both Saudek’s particular use of American-style comic features to subvert and ironise the official discourse on comics of 1950s and 60sCzechoslovakiaaswellas the (lackof)receptionofMurielinthe early1970s andthenagain afterthe demise of thestate socialist regime. Letusreturn,foralasttime,toWorcester’sreviewoncomicsandpolit­ical science in order to further pin down our methodological approach. The author continues by broadly distinguishing ‘three very different ap­proaches to the challenge of mapping the relationship of politics and comics’(Worcester2017,692).First,areastudiesmostoftengroupcomics along geographical lines – e.g. A History of Czechoslovak Comics in the 20th Century – and enable comparatist perspectives. Second, there is a more theoretical approach aimed at applying the methodological tools developed by social theory as well as postcolonial and cultural studies to graphic narratives in order to identify how power relations and cul­turalstrugglesarenegotiated,yetoftenwithouttouchinguponthemedial specificities of the comics form. A third approach finally consists in tak­ingformal considerationsofthecomicgenre more seriouslyintoconsid­eration and exploring its unique possibilities of pictorial, spatiotemporal and medialrendering of(political)narratives. It elaborates ‘the medium’s capacities, advantages, and liabilities when it comes to presenting politi­cal material’ (p. 693). Even though such an approach has been associated with the comic journalism of Joe Sacco and its engagement with history, it turns out to be equally useful for older comics, especially when they closely interacted with other media (such as film) and enacted the con­cept of time and interplanetary travel – a particular form of the ‘abrupt shifts in chronologicaland spatial location’ that ‘comicstend to comfort­ably accommodate’ (p. 698). While it would make no sense to dogmatically uphold Worcester’s threefold distinction, it is mostly the third approach, with some alle­giances to socialtheory questions, that best underpins my own revisiting of Macourek and Saudek’s work. This quest is, however, also a visit tout court as Saudek’s comics have to this date mostly been analysed from the perspective of area studies. Moreover, they have frequently been framed along black-and-white anti-communist narratives, according to which we would have had to partake in the following trajectory. First, the artist’s early private works remained secluded from a wider audience, given Saudek’s ‘bourgeois’ class background. Second, his public produc­tivityfinallygainedsometractionundertheimpressionofPragueSpring liberalisation tendencies in the late 1960s, only to be crushed by Soviet-imposedcensorshipinthe courseofthe so-called ‘normalisation’ period, i.e. afterCzechoslovaksociety hadgonetoo farinits quest for ‘socialism with a human face.’ Finally, Saudek’s work could be published after com-munistdictatorshipended,albeitthe ‘wild1990s’ withtheiruncontrolled deregulation and rise in criminal activities would bring along tedious legal and editorial struggles that only gradually enabled the author and, after his 2015 death, his family to recover the abducted or missing comic panels for an eventually wider publication (Diesing 2013, 269).7 How­ever, the regime’s relationship to the comic genre had become far more nuanced (Foret 2014, 550–554) and Saudek turned out to be a proficient visual contrabandist. As for the publishing turmoil, it was Mladá fronta which refused to publish Muriel and the Angels after 1989 because of an alleged lack of profitability (Saudek 1991, 2). Despite the consistent censorship and marginalisation of his work by the Czechoslovak state authorities in the 1970s and 80s, we will also ar­guethat the artist-cum-author’srelationshiptocommunism asapromise (Derrida 1994, 74) was far more complex than the often too quickly as­sumed straightforward opposition. Our preliminary thesis would there­fore be that it is Muriel’s status of ambivalent superheroine who is fight­ing for peace and universalist ideals, as well as Saudek’s untimely ap­propriation of American comics visuality and prototypes, that seem to have made this compound of work so apt of subversion. In what follows, we will moreover focus on the strategies of intericonicity and interme­diality, interconnecting both comic strips among themselves and with movies. Also, the use of counterfactual narratives will be taken into ac­count. As the editors of a recent anthology on Counterfactual Narrations andCultureofRemembrance(Nicolosi,Obermayr,andWeller2019,3–6) 7 This line of historico-biographical interpretation, further underpinned by the biological metaphor of awakening, heyday and decline, can be easily followed by taking a look at the titles of the chapters dedicated to Saudek in A History of Czechoslovak Comics in the 20th Century: Saudek’s Belated Debut (‘Saudkuv opoždený debut’), Searching for an Emergency Exit [from censorship] (‘Hledáníúnikového východu’), A Light atthe End of the Cave [Saudek was drawing for the Czech Speleological Society in the 1980s] (‘Svetlo na konci jeskyne’), Out of the World of Stalactites (‘Ven ze sveta krápníku’), A Somehow Unhappy Happy End (‘Ponekud neštastný happy end’), Saudek Is Leaving (‘Saudkovo odcházení’) (Prokupek 2014d, 467–472; 2014a, 565–570; 2014e, 653–657; 2014f, 739–742; 2014b, 832–837; 2014c, 914–917). Robin R. Mudry pointed out, every counterfactual project is always also an intervention in time and expresses a desire to have the present changed by altering the course of history at a decisive point of bifurcation, i.e. a moment (nexus)intimewhereeventsturnedoutdifferentlyfromhowhistoryhad recordedthem:aretroactiveopening (alsoMorson2003). Hence, Saudek was juggling with official discourses on the trajectory towards commu­nism and, at the same time, appropriating the motif of a technological racetowardstheconquestofspacemuchpopularisedbySovietdiscourse (Schaber 2019). Eventually, it was the control over time as frequently dis­played in contemporary sci-fi films and especially in comedies succeed­ing the Czechoslovak Nouvelle Vague cinema in the early 1970s that was at stake (Selingerová 2016). In pursuingthese lines, we will focus on four of Saudek’s works associated with or directly featuring what we call an ‘anti-normalisation superheroine.’ These are, in chronological order, the film Who Wants to Kill Jessie? (Kdo chce zabít Jessii?) (Vorlícek 1966), the two first and only existing episodes of the Muriel series – Muriel and the Angels(Murielaandelé)in1969(SaudekandMacourek1991)andMuriel andthe OrangeDeath(Murielaoranžovásmrt)in1970(SaudekandMa­courek2009) –andfinallythecomics-comedyFourMurdersAreEnough, Darling (Ctyri vraždy stací, drahoušku)(Lipský 1971). Whoever Wants to Kill Jessie Is Denying Freedom to the Dreams Althoughthemoviescenarist MilošMacourekand the comicsillustrator Kája Saudek had known each other since 1960, it was only in the second half of the decade that their joint work would intensify and yield fruits. TogetherwithfilmmakerVáclavVorlícek,whoinitiallyhadtheideatoin­troduce comic characters into a film strip (2004, 94), they came up with a complete formal and genre novelty. Who Wants to Kill Jessie? consisted in the conflation of film and comics for the first time in Czechoslovak cinematography (Vacovská 2016, 105–106, 110). The use of ‘a unique spa­tial grammar of gutters, grids, and panels’ (Chute 2016, 4) in a motion picture included not only the interjection of comic strips in the open­ing credits of the film and the dreams of the male anti-hero, engineer Jindrich Beránek, but also integrated speech bubbles into the very film once the comic strip’s protagonists had exited the world of dreams.8 Sig­ 8 ThereisawholehistoryofhowspeechbubblesfoughttheirwayintoCzechcomics,which is echoed by the trouble Macourek and Vorlícek encountered upon introducing comics and their bubbles into film (Korínek and Prokupek 2014a; Vorlícek 2004). nificantly, we have to deal with the breakup of the, albeit always fuzzy, boundaries between dreamlands and reality. Jindrich’s tyrannical wife – docent. Beránková whom we could describe as a ruthless careerist loyal to the interests of a state-owned positivist science – had successfully de­veloped a technology by means of which the subject’s dreams could be optimised. Upon application, nightmares and disturbing elements in the oneiric realm are supplanted by what are deemed to be pleasant and uplifting re­placements in order to optimise the day-time labour productivity of the worker. The work of dreams (Freud’s Traumarbeit) is taken over by the stateanditsideologistswhoeffectivelyundertakethedisplacementofob­jects(Verschiebung). Thereis onlyonecatch,namelythattheundesirable elements whichmake up our agitated nightmares escapefrom these only to enter reality and cause even more terror.ą° It is tempting, following Slavoj Žižek (Fiennes 2012), to read this kind of experiment not only as an ideology critique of the communist dictatorship aiming at controlling the dreams of its subjects, but also as a meta-medial critique of cinema asthe supreme machine ofdreamsitself, anaspect going wellbeyond the bipolarworldviewoftheColdWar. Thattheendofsuchbipolaritywould not automatically lead to a utopian state of peace was very clear to Ma-courek and Saudek, as is demonstrated by the peripeties of their Muriel story where only time travel and interplanetary journeys with their in­terventions in history pave the way for a truly anarchic and peaceful future. Jessie is an extremely good-looking blonde female heroine played by Saudek’s earlier love Olga Schoberová, whom engineer Jindrich encoun­tered in the comic strip episode of the fictitious journal Svet techniky (World of Technics) and who then appears in his dreams. The fact that she is an inventor herself precisely doesnot identify her withthe dogma­tist docent Beránková. On the contrary, she is trying to save her inven­tion – anti-gravitational gloves – from the icon of American comics, i.e. Superman, who is accompaniedby his WildWest villainaide (calledPis­tolník, the gunman). In what seems to be an inversion, the best-known . At that time, it was not yet today’s gendered title ‘docentka.’ In its abundant use, how­ever, the appellation designating university faculty in the broadest sense conspicuously demonstrates the contemporary ‘titulomania.’ ą° In Lacanian terms, one could argue that they are the Real hitting back at the regulations of the Symbolic Order. Figure 1 Left: Kája Saudek, Kdo chce zabít Jessii? (Who Wants to Kill Jessie?), 1966; Right: Kája Saudek, Kdo chce dobít Bessii? (Who Wants to Recharge Bessie?), 1966 (Film Posters, Courtesy of Berenika Saudková) Americancomicshero,whohadhistoricallybeenchasingfascists(Krohn 2019), appears as a wretch. Once more, formerly clear division lines are turned upside down and make it difficult to reproduce Cold War re­ception schemata such as the general rejection of comics as an Amer­ican imperialist and decadent genre widespread in Czechoslovak post­war discourses (Foret, Jareš, and Prokupek 2014).ąą It remains nonethe­lessuncleartowhatextentsuchaninterpretationofthefilmwascommon amongcontemporaryviewers,sincetheywere,unlikeSaudekandasmall esoteric circle,ą˛ not acquainted with the standard visual and narrative ąą Thequestionofideologicalimport whenitcomestotherolecomicsaresettoplayindif­ferent(geo)politicalcontextshasbeensingledout byMcAllisteretal.: ‘Howthesecomics fit in with the socio-political context of these countries, given the different roles that the comicsmay playinthesecountries,isaquestionofideologicalimport, asisthe potential oftheroleofthecomicsinthecreationorresistanceofculturalidentityandimperialism, given the economic and cultural dominance of such countries as the United States and Japan’ (McAllister, Sewell, and Gordon 2001, 4–5). ą˛ The question of motivation remains in part open also with regards to Saudek himself, since he mostly knew about American superheroes from comic strips printed in news­papers that the food his family received from relatives in theusafter World Wariiwas Figure 2 Still Frame from Kdo chce zabít Jesii? (Vorlícek 1966,28:30) (Courtesy of Czech Film Fund, Národní filmový archiv, Prague) features of American comics and might not have perceived the incon­gruitiesofthefilm’scast. Whatcertainlymusthavebeen perfectly under­standable to everybody, though, was the variation of the first encounter between Jessie and her persecutors which makes appearances in a one-page comic strip both in the movie and on its promo posters (figure 1) (Diesing 2013, 151, 154). The variation shows a different continuation as themovieposterwastornoffbyacensornamedProkopFišerwhoseems tohavebeendisgustedbythedisplayofexplicitmaterial –theever-erotic intensity of the fight between Jessie and Superman taking a sexual turn –onlytobetransposedintoadumb workers’ story. Following a differ­ent script of ‘Com[munist] Comics,’ comrades Superman and Jessie at­tend a meeting of the labour brigade after which they are told to get back to work, i.e. to perform an activity they do not really master. The slight yet significant shift in the title to Who Wants to Recharge [being a pun on conquer in the Czech title] Bessie/the Beast? (Kdo chce dobít [dobýt] Bessii/bestii?)makes things even more ambivalent, ironicallyevading the all-too-omnipresent grip of censorship.ął The attempted censorship even of dreams is openly broached in the wrapped in, and had to creatively make senseofthem(Prukopek 2009, 147–148;Diesing 2013, 21). ął The threatofcensorship issimilarlyaddressedinthe one-pagecomic strip entitledCon­frontation of the Century (‘Souboj století’) Saudek was privately working on in the sec­ond half of the 1960s. While the foreground confrontation is between two female super-heroines embodying Olga Schoberová and his wife Johana, a giant intruder destroying the entire setting and emblazoned with the lettering ‘Censura’ might well have signified the real ‘confrontation of the century’ (Diesing 2013, 150, 157). Robin R. Mudry movie when Superman interrupts his vandalism in Beráneks’s flat to exclaim ‘Svobodu snum!!!’ (‘[I demand] Freedom to Dreams!!!’; figure 2), which is to be read as a direct answer to apparatchiks like docent Beránková who had just denied the right to freedom to dream-like phe­nomenainaprecedingconversationwithherhusband.ą4 Thatthisspeech bubblewasunmistakablyinterpretedalongsuchlinesisconfirmedbythe reportedly enthusiastic reactions it received during the first live projec­tions of the film (Vorlícek 2004, 95, 98). Toward the end of the movie, Jessie and the gunman are introduced as the new (dream) workers to engineer Jindrich’ssuperior – apunworkingaround thesemanticallyde­cisive disappearing ‘s’ of ‘snoví pracovníci’ (‘new dream workers’). In the meantime, docent Beránková was herself swallowed by the dreamlands of her dog Czar, whither she blindly followed Superman by means of an antidote, thus ending the controlling grip on her husband’s and society’s dreams.Orsoitseems,asthe assumption of adream come true with Jindrich and Jessie eventually united in his bedroom is thwarted as soon as the heroine unlearns her speech bubbles only to start speaking like docent Beránková and ordering Jindrich what to dream of.ą5 Muriel and the Angels Muriel(orJessie)iscertainlyanatypicalnamefortheCzechoslovakcon­text, mostlyreminiscent oftheAnglophone role modelsinSaudek’swork but maybe also alluding to the archangel Uriel. The whole Muriel story can be considered a pastiche of the American superhero plot with a re­markable gender inversion. The import of American (or more broadly speaking Western) pop culture and imagery is certainly one of the sub­versive aspects that are worth emphasising in Saudek’s work. We have to deal with a formal circumstance that was in itself already perceived with scepticism and aversion by the state authorities, since it no longer actively undermined or ridiculed a visuality which had been considered to be a product of bourgeois degeneration with particularly deleterious consequences for young readerships (Foret, Jareš, and Prokupek 2014). Let us, in this regard, exemplarily mention the artist’s usual signature, ą4 ‘Takovýzjevynemajíprávonasvobodu!,’‘Suchphenomenaarenotentitled/havenoright to freedom!’ (Vorlícek 1966, 28:01). ą5 It is noteworthy that a particular structure of temporal circularity and repetition, much popularinthepost-NouvelleVagueCzechoslovakfilmsofthe1970s,isforeshadowedhere. Theauthor’sstudyonthistemporalconfiguration,especiallyinthefilmsofJanŠvankma­jer and the so-called ‘crazy comedies’ of the 1970s, is in preparation. ‘kresby Kája Saudek,’ which is a condensed play on words conflating the Czech plural of ‘drawings’ (‘kresby’) and the English ‘drawn by.’ It is not insignificant that this gesture allowed Saudek to avoid the use of the sev­enth Czech case, the instrumental, which has no equivalent in the En­glish language and would have profoundly impacted the Western aspect ofhissignatureifapplied,e.g.bywriting ‘kreslenoKájouSaudkem.’Also, Saudek playfully combined the ‘o’ of Macourek with the ‘i’ in Muriel on thecoverpageforMurielandtheAngelssoastomakehissurnamesound Irish: MacOurek. Finally, he opted for the Anglophone ‘comics’ instead of its Czech counterpart ‘komiks’ and, later on,wouldeven use ‘k/comix,’ the appellation used for underground comic strips in the West since the 1960s (McAllister,Sewell, and Gordon2001, 8–9).Yet, asweare show­ing in the unfolding of the plot, Saudek was not uncritical of (American) forms of militarism and imperialism and it was a very particular United States pop culture he turned to, namely that of the civil rights, peace and hippie movements (Diesing 2013, 257, 268). Enthusiastic about their introduction of comics into film and infused withthefreeratmosphereofthePrague Springwhichenabledtheimagi­nationof allkinds offutures, Saudekand Macourek(1991) were ready for their next joint venture: Muriel. This time, a female superheroine, whose visual and character genesis can be directly traced back to Jessie, is set in a not-too-distantfuture – the late1980s –whereshe worksas aphysician for the United Nations which by then has taken over the world govern­ment. WhiletheColdWarseemstohaveended,theruleofforceandcap-ital are still in place and theunpresent themselves as a techno-military complex. After aunplane and aufocrash overthe Atlantic,Murieltakes careof the fatally woundedpassenger from another time. Whileshe cannot save what appears to be an angeland withwhomsheimmediatelyfalls in love, soonenoughtheunitedarmedforcesofhumankindcaptureanotherufo andquestionitsangelicoccupantinfrontoftheWorldAssembly. Itturns outthat the angels are highlysophisticatedand genetically optimised hu­manscomingfromthetenthmillenniumad.Sincetheyretrieved‘anage-old book which was created at the dawn of history, a book called Bible’ (1991, 29) whereinthey mostidentified with the angelsofGod,they de­cided to develop wings with which to fly. Of course, they can also re­suscitate Muriel’s deceased lover, the angel Ro. In the end, humankind sends two delegates to accompany the angels to the future: Muriel and Xeron, the sergeant-general of theunarmed forces whose name badge – Robin R. Mudry egoarmy– epitomises both his character and his synecdochical func­tion with regards to the army. Travelling through time and space, they end up on a geographically completely changedplanetwith anislandof lovein its centre.What seems to be a quasi-paradisiacal, anarcho-communist world, a remake of the garden of Eden depicted in colourful, flowery and psychedelic tones,wherefreeloveamonghumansandcompleteharmonybetweenall speciesreign, where money, armies or weaponsbelong to the thingspeo­pleknowonlyfromhistoryclassesandmuseumsandwheretheonlypun­ishment imaginable is to temporarily deprive someone of their glasses, which render the others visible, soon, however, turns out to be based on the exploitation of other planets and their equally anthropomorphic, yet giant inhabitants. While the amazed Muriel explores everything along­side her requickened partner Ro, general Xeron could not be more dis­pleased by what he sees. As soon as he learns about the historical role of their 1980s contemporary Mike Richardson who would be responsi­ble for abolishing the military and bringing about lasting peace, he de­cides to change the course of history and kill that youngster once back in the present. It comes with no surprise that he can also not understand howconsensual lovehas become thestandard, as,inhis view,violence and hierarchy seem to have made sex attractive in the first place. Xeron vainly attempts to impress the local beauties with his phallus both in the Jungian (represented by his 20cm-long cigarette) and Lacanian senses (hisgeneral-cum-macho-styleindecency failing)(Saudekand Macourek 1991,54;Žižek2008,175–176),onlytobechastisedforsexualharassment. Of course, the angels are aware of the dangerous insights Muriel and Xe-ron gained, which is why they take some amnesic measures before the two return to the intradiegetic present day. Nevertheless, everybody in­volved manages to keep their memories and, once back from the future, arace tosaveMikeand thus that very future begins. In this brief summary of Muriel and the Angels, we can discern a con­flation of utopian, sci-fi,ą6 futurist and also always counterfactual pat­terns. The latter is not unusual for how comics work with history (Zim­mermann 2019, 20), especially in the context of time travel (Weller 2019, 167),andserveasacontrastingprogrammeofideologicalworldviews.Al­ ą6 While on their exploratory trip to retrieve the resource that ensures the humans of the future their ‘relative immortality,’ the angels compare their mission to the plot of some 20th century film (Saudek and Macourek 1991, 65–66). Figure 3 Kája Saudek, Muriel a andelé (Muriel and the Angels), 1969; First Published in Saudek and Macourek (1991, 96–97) (Courtesy of Berenika Saudková) ternative futures near and distant are thus imagined, but always already threatened, as prefigured in the opening credits where Muriel and the angels sit not only on the comic strip’s title but also above a huge pair of glasses reflecting the cosmic changes to come. This is probably most strikingly illustrated by the quasi-cinematographic cut between the two worlds and eras, between pages 96 and 97 of the comicstrip (figure 3), as flowers rain down onto theufotaking Muriel and Xeron back through space and time to the 1980s. Upon return, the spacecraft flies over a des­perate scene of drudging workers. The shot is framed with signs read-ing‘Dig we must’ and‘Danger’aswell asanempty bottle characteris­ing the proletarian condition (of alcoholism) and filled with intermedial citations including Honza Hrom, with a Saudek comics in his trouser pocket,andKarelKanál,ą7 aswellastheinscription‘FannyHill,’referring to the pornographic paradigm of sexuality as explored in John Cleland’s homonymouseroticnovel(1748).Thehyperbolicuseofironicalallusions andpunswhichcharacterisestheentirefightforthefuture,however,also constantly undermines the seriousness of any underlying (ideology) cri­tique. For instance, we read about Mike Richardson that he is the front singer of The Flowers, performing at a Woodstock-like festival, and that he is goingto singpeacesongsby the ‘national artist’ (‘národní umelec’ – ą7 Thetwoprotagonistsweretakenfrom anotherofSaudek’spartiallycensoredcomicstrips which was published in 1968 in the magazine Pop Music Expres (Prokupek 2014d, 469; Diesing 2013, 220–227). Robin R. Mudry a typical distinction for culture workers in socialist Czechoslovakia) Bob Dylan. The festival’s poster ends with the motto ‘Make Love Not War’ now pointing towardsuscounterculture. While such chiasmic designa­tions – combining communist jargon with evident American references – clearly made fun of the socialist state nomenclature and the ‘tituloma­nia’ characteristic of its cultural politics, the very end of this first Muriel episode – Mike was saved and evil Xeron escaped into outer space with a stolenufo– enacts and parodies the typical filmic zoom-in of any ro-mantichappyending,theonlythingmissingbeingthevoice-overstating that they – Muriel, Ro and Mike – lived happily ever after (Saudek and Macourek 1991, 126–127). Yet, Muriel was to be continued (‘pokracování príšte’) ... Muriel and the Orange Death Even though the publication of Muriel and the Angels was announced several times in the print media of the publishing house Mladá fronta – in 1969 the first 29 pages were even printed in the guise of a preview in the weekly Mladý svet – it had to be postponed given the tragic events of August 1968 (Prokupek 2014d, 471). Already, Saudek and Macourek were working on the second episode of the series as they readily reflected the changeinpoliticalcircumstances–theinvasionofCzechoslovakiabythe WarsawPactforcesandthecrushedPragueSpringhopes–yetwithoutre­alistically anticipating their ultimate societal and cultural consequences. Muriel and the Orange Death (Saudek and Macourek 2009) can be con-sideredatitleindisplacement,wherebythecolourorangetakesthe place of red and the announced death comes, once more, from another planet. All of this is from the outset staged as a filmic intro reminiscent of Jessie and, most of all, anticipating Four Murders Are Enough, Darling. It is ex­actly this OrangePlanet where Muriel iskidnapped to by one ofits secret agents who took the happy family triangle – Muriel, Ro and Mike – by surprise as they were having a picnic in the forest and, thus, smashed their idyll just in time to prevent them from turning into mediocre petty bourgeois. Saudek’sdepictionsofOrangelandshowadesperate,highlymechanical place where some sort of artificial intelligence – the central brain – con­trols almost everything, from what its inhabitants think to how their hu­mours and emotions go. This kind of mental Gleichschaltung is ensured by means of little antennae that are implanted on everybody’s heads and directly oversee their brains by transmitting the central computer’smind control. Whileallablemenarepartofthearmedforces,womencarryout the necessary physical work, including ploughing fields and digging tun-nelsforagulag-likesystemwhereprisonersfromotherplanetsandrebels arekept inforcedlabour. Thereisnoparental educationand childrenare directlytakencareof,i.e.militarised,bythecentralbrain.Onlypresumed everyday activitiesare left to individualdecision-makingbut, as the peo­ple’s wardrobes are empty, there are not many outfits to choose from and this kind of derived freedom turns out to be obsolete. One needs no par­ticularly gifted imagination to recognise many features of a Stalinist, or indeed any totalitarian, regime in the state organisation of the Orange Planet, including the abovementioned lack of consumer goods. Byaccident,Murieland herabductorcollidewithXeron’sufowhile on their way to the Orange Planet. Still highly opportunistic and thus withoutanycommittedideologicalposition,thegeneralseizesthechance of leading the Orange Army to invade planet Earth. As Saudek would laterwrite (1991,1), Xeron’scharacter traits were inspired by JanŠejna,a fraudulent general who had made a splendid career in the Czechoslovak CommunistParty after WorldWariionly to escapeinto exile and col­laborate with theciain early 1968 once his crooked business had been exposed (.t24 2012). As the comic strip unfolds, Mike and Ro had been franticallydriving across America, meeting Batmanonthe way for the firstand onlytime inCzechoslovakculture(SaudekandMacourek2009, 44; Prokupek 2009, 150), and realising how ‘škoda,’ ‘what a shame’ it will be to sell their sports carą8 in order to get the angelic walkie-talkie fixed so that they can call the future for help. Yet, all their projects fail as the invasion of the Earth has started and is live-streamed on a hijackedtv channel –certainlynothow theWarsawPactinvasionofCzechoslovakia could be covered. Xeron, in a Herodian gesture, has his lackeys capture all youngsters who look like Mike Richardson as he still wants to elim­inate him and secure a bright militaristic future.ą. As Xeron goes on to confront the World Assembly, we also learn more about the continuous ideologicaldifferencesamongunnations –fromtheFrenchman’s elegant ą8 The Czechoslovak car brand Škoda literally means ‘pity’ and Saudek might well have lamented the fact that his passion for fast American engines was never met by the state-owned car producer. ą. The comparison to Herod is explicitly made by Muriel in the opening sequence where sheinsertsthehithertoadventuresintoateleologicalnarrativecommontobothChristian salvifichistoryandtheMarxist-LeninistunderstandingofadirectedHistory(Saudekand Macourek 2009, 8). Robin R. Mudry remarks while hiding away his Scandinavian porn˛° to the Soviet and Chinese references to the proletariat’s force of resistance – not without a pungent thrust against Maoism when the chairman’s portrait bears the small-lettered title ‘Haepatitis Epidemica’ (Saudek and Macourek 2009, 81). On the ground however, all states have quickly fallen and we see the last fighters fleeing from the orange terror intermedially accompa­nied by Pat Boone’s 1960 Exodus film score ‘This Land Is Mine’ (p. 78) or thegospel-cum-protestsong‘WeShallOvercome’(SaudekandMacourek 2009, 63; Diesing 2013, 268; Prokupek 2009, 151). Again, it is a very par­ticular America that Saudek is referring to – that of the civil rights and peace movements – and Western capitalismisnot spared from(indirect) criticism.ItisnotablethatcompaniessuchasNestléandibmaredepicted in relation to the Orange Planet where the first seems to be carrying out some extraction works (Saudek and Macourek 2009, 94) while the lat­ter is the brand which had produced the hardware for the central brain (p. 137), i.e. the planet’s totalitarian ruler. Unlike the aftermath of1968, where nobody came to help protesters in Prague,Bratislavaandelsewhere,theinhabitantsofthetenthmillennium get soon informed, in fact ripped out from their land of ‘Flower Power’ (Saudek and Macourek 2009, 97) and ‘Super Kyc’ (p. 98),˛ą and send a heavenly army to disband the orange forces. Whereas these will still try to break the morale of their abducted prisoners and manipulate young Mike into docility by implanting in him invisible antennae, Muriel, who is by now allied to the underground resistance onthe Orange Planet, will destroy the central brain just in time to prevent the execution of all our heroes.WhilejoblessGeneralXerononceagainescapesintoorbit,weend up with a family reunion that echoes the finale of Muriel’sfirst episode ˛° Pornographicliteratureagainplaysanimportantroleandunderscores thesexualsubtext of the 20th century paradigm depicted, as it also happens to be the main source mate­rial the erstwhile secret agent from the Orange Planet had retrieved (Saudek and Ma-courek 2009, 23). While most of Saudek’s visuality partakes in heteronormative stereo­types (Playboy-style beauties in need of male salvation being rescued by hypertrophic athletes),however, the orangers’ study of humankind is further ironised as they mistake the almost naked Ro and his angelic companion Bur for homosexual wrestlers, remem­bering a gay nudes ad from the March/April issue of the 1969 International Times which Saudek collaged into the comics bubble (Saudek and Macourek 2009, 111; ‘Gay Young Men, With Style & Pose & Lack of Clothes ......’ 1969). ˛ą Both are written with flowers and vegetablepatterns, respectively, adorning the island of lovewhich,inthisMuriel sequel,hasputforthblossomsintheformofheartsandbreasts (Saudek and Macourek 2009, 102; Diesing 2013, 268). and, inversely, raises the expectations for another continuation. Finished by early 1970, with Muriel and the Angels still unpublished, it must how­ever have been clear to the authors of this overtly anti-normalisation in-stalment staging any orange/red occupation as temporary, that Muriel and the Orange Death would not meet its audience through any official channel any time soon. Indeed, Tomáš Prokupek (2009, 149) goes so far as to perceive in Macourek’s scenarios the only optimistic answer to the overthrow of the Prague Spring. Four Murders Are Enough, Darling or Why Four Times Saudek Are Still Not Enough It was certainly in great part thanks to Macourek’s manoeuvring aptness that Saudek, in spite of being increasingly hindered in having his comic strips printed elsewhere, could collaborate on another movie in 1970/71, this time with filmmaker Oldrich Lipský. Four Murders Are Enough, Darling was presented as a comics-comedy (‘komixkomedie’) and the Saudek-Macourek duo did not omit any chance to smuggle the artist’s comic strips, and mainly Muriel, into the film. To start with, the front creditsof Four MurdersAreEnough, Darling canbeconsideredtobeaci­tationfromtheopeningofthetwo Muriel episodes,butespeciallyMuriel and the Orange Death, with one of the panels used being a direct vari­ation of Ro fighting the orange monsters (Saudek and Macourek 2009, 121). Furthermore, there are several flying comic panels throughout the film that are directly taken from that unpublished book, including page 61, which explicitly depicts the attack of the Orange Planet, imitating a bottom-up film shot showing two girls jumping over a crimson puddle of bloodand shrieking. We can observe a similarlycontrabandist gesture thatSaudekhadundertaken withtheCzechoslovak1971movieposterfor Roger Vadim’s Barbarella. Jean-Claude Forest’s comic strip of the same name had been both Vadim’s as well as Macourek and Saudek’s liter­ary model for Barbarella and Muriel, respectively (Prokupek 2014d, 472; Diesing 2013, 374–375; Korínek and Prokupek 2014b, 546). The knowing eye will therefore immediately have identified the poster’s protagonist with Muriel and have recognised Ro in the flying angel next to her. Also, a folded page ripped from Muriel and the Angels is among the mingle-mangle of flying objects surrounding Barbarella (Jane Fonda). While the convolutedplotof Four Murders Are Enough, Darling˛˛ shall ˛˛ A rich gentleman carrying a cheque over 1 million dollars from the central bank of the Robin R. Mudry not interest us in detail here, it is once more a refined intermedial play thatMacourekenactswiththehelpofSaudek’scomicsinordertoblurthe lines between ‘reality’ and the fantastic world of the comic strip. Indeed, this happens ex post. The opening scene in a train compartment promi­nently features one of Saudek’s comics as the nervous money courier is trying to dissipate his fears by reading the strip and is soon surprised by thefirstgangsters.Theplotcarriesonandthescenesarealwaysseguedby meansofdrawnimagesandinterruptedinthemanneroftvadsfeaturing non-existent commodities. The very existence of comics-style advertise­ments, which would have been unthinkable in 1960s Czechoslovakia, is made plausible inside the movie. At the very end of the film, after the dénouementhasalreadyhappened,thecamerareturns tothatsametrain compartmentwhereourinitialcarrierhasjustfinishedreadingtheentire plot of the film in his comic strip. This circular configuration of time˛ł is taken even further when the protagonist opens the compartment door andacorpsefallsontohimjustasithappenedcountlesstimesduringthe entire film, which now, in a sort of mise-en-abyme, starts all over again, redoubling the circularity of time. The moviecanthusalso beread asa meta-commentary oncomics,es­pecially in the advertisement breaks and with the integration of comic signs indicating movements and sounds. Furthermore, the comic strip is materially present at various locations throughout the movie (both in the classroom of the foolish literature teacher who despises comics and in the press office where they are being prepared for publication). The metaphorical or medial use of the comics and comics’ aesthetics is a guiding thread when the panels are turned into a film inside the film, a story inside the story, thus becoming a kind of paratext. Finally, we also have to deal with a commentary on the authority position regard­ing comics, which come to play an important deictic role as the filmic plot unfolds. Yet, at times, the panels deal with censorship directly – as the poster deemed too lascivious by a ‘Bonzensor,’ i.e. a censor of Bonza­nia, is quickly removed (Diesing 2013, 179) – and indirectly as in the sur­reptitious instances of Muriel’s appearance. When comics are derided as an inferior genre by the equally ridiculous figure of the literature teacher who does not understand their popularity and discredits himself for fail- fictitious state of Bonzania is being chased by two opposite mafia gangs whose members are continually murdered as they try to get hold of the money. ˛ł Not unfamiliar to Czech filmmakers of the Nouvelle Vague and beyond; see footnote 15. ing to grasp different registers of language, he rebuts his erstwhile claim by eventually morphing into a comic hero himself and thus underlines the genre’s significance in a self-sabotaging way. Is it then the kind of restart, of reset enacted at the end of Four Mur­ders Are Enough, Darling, the kind of rolling things back only to let them startagain, yet in a slightlydifferentway, thatmakes for the seriality of the comic strip and interconnects it with the kindred medium of film? Can we then assume that every narrative and its mediations can have different issues, different lives, afterlives (in the full Benjaminian mean­ing of Nachleben; Weidner 2011; Vargas 2017)? And what would the af­terlives of the declared anti-normalisation superheroine Muriel look like ‘after communism,’ i.e. after the fall of state socialism when her only des­tiny was to be commodified? That is also a predicament where the very utopia of communism has become unimaginable (Fisher 2009), while the old scenarios of war and exploitation seem to be repeating them­selves in the absence of new ideas (Saudek 1991). Unlike those critics who deemed the Muriel plot ‘a nostalgic memory of the naive ideals of the 1960s’ (Prokupek 2014b, 832), its rereading along socio-political and ideological lines seems to make all the more sense in the second decade of a millennium that has not only undone the alleged ‘end of his­tory’ (Fukuyama 2006) but, in instances such as censorship and the lack of political alternatives, seems to be regressing even further. Or are we maybe going too far in asking these questions so seriously and forgetting Saudek’slife-long(self)ironicalstance?Afterall,thenamehechoseforhis personal company spoke of Duté fráze bezduchého kýce, that is Hollow Phrases of Soulless Kitsch. Yet again, this appellation consists of a com­bination of the most frequently uttered allegations against comics ever since the late 1940s (Foret, Jareš and Prokupek 2014, 419–420), i.e. their being a form of simple-minded kitsch.˛4 It is therefore another highly connoted intertextual allusion that raises the ideological premises of its socio-politicalsituation only to immediately ironise them. By highlighting the political and ideological dimensions embedded in the narrative enactments of four of Saudek and Macourek’s joint works – twomoviesandtwocomicstrips –thepresentpaperhastriedtodemon­ ˛4 The words ‘prostoduchý’ (‘simple-minded’) and ‘kýc’ (‘kitsch’)figuredinone of themost poignant attacks on a comic strip: Václav Stejskal’s 1947 lampoon article against Jaroslav Foglar’s Rychlé šípy as published in the weekly paper Vpred (Foret, Jareš and Prokupek 2014, 419–420, 424). Robin R. Mudry stratethatitisnotenoughtopraisetheimportofAmerican-styleimagery, orthecomicgenreitself,intotheCzechoslovakpopcultureofthe1960sif we are to grasp the continuing significance of one of its most famous su­perheroines. Muriel, or Jessie, still manifest anti-normalisation qualities in the sense that their character traits and their actions point to unre­alised utopias whose very possibility has been erased from a globalised post-historical imaginary. A symptomatic rereading of Muriel’s adven­tures through the lens of critical theory is thus far more than a nostal­gic return. The missing continuation of her story does not merely point to Saudek and Macourek’s incomplete lifetime achievement as most of comic studies hitherto would have it. While it partakes in the ongoing lack of historical agency, it also hinges on the necessity to think anew theworldhistorical. IntheabsenceofthepresumablytenmissingMuriel episodes, it is thus first and foremost given to her readers to continue imagining the very possibility of a utopian communism. Note A first version of this text was presentedat the conference Comics in Commu­nism – And Beyond: Propaganda and Subversion which took place in Leipzig on 2–4 February 2023, and was co-organised by the University of Leipzig and the University of Ljubljana. My thanks go to the conveners Tanja Zimmer­mann, Gal Kirn and Mirt Komel as well as to Nina Cvar and Pavel Liška. References Bendová, Eva, and Václav Šlajch. 2022. Linky komiksu. Exhibition catalogue. Západoceská galerie v Plzni, výstavní sín 13, 21.10.2022–29.01.2023. Plzen: Západoceskágalerie v Plzni. Chute,HillaryL.2016.DisasterDrawn:VisualWitness,Comics,andDocumen­ tary Form. Cambridge,ma: Harvard University Press. 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Korínek, Pavel, and Tomáš Prokupek. 2014a. ‘Dobrodružství v bublinách? Radej žerty ve verších ...: Prekladové obrázkové seriály 1938–1945.’In Dejiny ceskoslovenského komiksu 20. století, edited by Tomáš Prokupek, Pavel Korínek, Martin Foret, and Michal Jareš, 295–301. Vol. 1. Prague: Akropolis. ———. 2014b. ‘S finskou »cestovkou« dousa, sprátelenou Evropou na vlastní pest: prekladové obrázkové seriály 1964–1971.’ In Dejiny ceskoslovenského komiksu 20. století, edited by Tomáš Prokupek, Pavel Korínek, Martin Foret, and Michal Jareš, 543–549. Vol. 2. Prague: Akropolis. Krohn, Claus-Dieter. 2019. ‘Demythisierung der amerikanischen Comic-Su­perheldeninden Kriegen von PearlHarbor bis Vietnam.’ In Geschichte undMythosinComicsund GraphicNovels, edited by Tanja Zimmermann, 77–99. Berlin: Christian A. Bachmann. Lipský, Oldrich, director. 1971. Ctyri vraždy stací, drahoušku. Filmové studio Barrandov. 1 hr., 47 min. McAllister,Matthew P.,EdwardH.Sewell, Jr., and Ian Gordon. 2001. 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Prague: Akropolis. ———.2014b.‘Ponekud neštastný happy end: tvorba Káji Saudka 1989–1993.’ In Dejiny ceskoslovenského komiksu 20. století, edited by Tomáš Prokupek, Pavel Korínek, Martin Foret, and Michal Jareš, 832–837. Vol. 2. Prague: Akropolis. ———. 2014c. ‘Saudkovo odcházení: tvorba Káji Saudka 1993–1999.’ In Dejiny ceskoslovenského komiksu 20. století, edited by Tomáš Prokupek, Pavel Korínek,MartinForet,andMichalJareš,915–917.Vol.2.Prague:Akropolis. ———. 2014d. ‘Saudkuv opoždený debut: tvorba Káji Saudka 1966–1971.’ In Dejiny ceskoslovenského komiksu 20. století, edited by Tomáš Prokupek, Pavel Korínek, Martin Foret, and Michal Jareš, 467–472. Vol. 2. Prague: Akropolis. ———.2014e.‘Svetlo na konci jeskyne:tvorba Káji Saudka1979–1985.’ In Dejiny ceskoslovenského komiksu 20. století, edited by Tomáš Prokupek, Pavel Korínek, Martin Foret, and Michal Jareš, 653–657. Vol. 2. Prague: Akropolis. ———. 2014f. ‘Ven ze sveta krápníku: tvorba Káji Saudka 1985–1989.’ In Dejiny ceskoslovenského komiksu 20. století, edited by Tomáš Prokupek, Pavel Korínek, Martin Foret, and Michal Jareš, 739–742. Vol. 2. Prague: Akropo­lis. Prokupek, Tomáš, Pavel Korínek, Martin Foret, and Michal Jareš, ed. 2014. Dejiny ceskoslovenského komiksu 20. století. 2 vols. Prague: Akropolis. Saudek, Kája. 1991. ‘Podivná pohádka.’ In Kája Saudek and Miloš Macourek, Muriel a andelé, 1–2. Prague: Comet. Saudek, Kája, and Miloš Macourek. 1991. Muriel a andelé. Prague: Comet. ———. 2009. Muriel a oranžová smrt. Prague: Plus. Schaber, Elisabeth.2019. ‘Reise in eine Zukunft voller Vergangenheiten:Welt­raumeroberung und Raumfahrtgeschichte im ddr-Comic Mosaik von Hannes Hegen.’ In Geschichte und Mythos in Comics und Graphic Novels, edited by Tanja Zimmermann, 123–141. Berlin: Christian A. Bachmann. Schmarc, Vít.2015. ‘Sedm paneluceskoslovenskýchkomiksovýchdejin.’ Ceská literatura 63 (5): 767–774. Selingerová, Magdalena. 2016. ‘Ceskoslovenský film 1945–1993.’ In Typografie filmovýchtitulku:úvodnítitulkyvceskoslovenskémhranémfilmu1945–1993, edited by Andrea Vacovská, 10–1. Prague:umprum. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 1999. A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present. Cambridge,ma, and London: Harvard University Press. Vacovská,Andrea.2016.‘Typografiefilmovýchtitulku.’InTypografiefilmových titulku:úvodní titulkyvceskoslovenském hraném filmu 1945–1993, editedby Andrea Vacovská, 100–114. Prague:umprum. Vadim, Roger, director. 1968. Barbarella. Paramount Pictures. 1 hr., 38 min. Vargas,MarielaSilvana.2017.‘Nachleben[pervivencia]ehistoricidadenWalter Benjamin.’veritas (38): 35–50. Vorlícek, Václav, director. 1966. Kdo chce zabít Jessii? Filmové Studio Barran­dov. 1 hr., 19 min. ———. 2004. ‘Jak »Jessie« vznikla.’ In Pavel Sýkora, Karel Saudek, Miloš Ma-courek,andVáclavVorlícek,KdochcezabítJessii?,94–99.Prague:Albatros. Weidner, Daniel. 2011. ‘Fort-, Über-, Nachleben: zu einer Denkfigur bei Ben-jamin.’InBenjamin-Studien2,editedbyDanielWeidnerandSigridWeigel, 161–178. Leiden: Brill. Weller, Nina. 2019. ‘Gestern wird Krieg sein: Zeitreisen als neoimperiale WunschmaschinenderrussischenErinnerungskultur.’InInterventionenin die Zeit: Kontrafaktisches Erzählen und Erinnerungskultur, edited by Ric­cardo Nicolosi, Brigitte Obermayr, and Nina Weller, 167–198. Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh. Worcester,Kent. 2017. ‘Comics,ComicsStudies,andPoliticalScience.’ Interna­tional Political Science Review 38 (5): 690–700. Zimmermann, Tanja, ed. 2019. Geschichte und Mythosin Comicsund Graphic Novels. Berlin: Christian A. Bachmann. Žižek, Slavoj. 2008. The Sublime Object of Ideology. London and New York: Verso. Alan Ford Goes to Yugoslavia: From Tautology to Ideology Mirt Komel University of Ljubljana, Slovenia mirt.komel@fdv.uni-lj.si ©2024Mirt Komel Abstract. Alan Ford, originally an Italian comic book created in 1969 by Max Bunker and Magnus, soon after its translation into Serbo-Croatian, gained huge popularity in Yugoslavia. Its ironic take on the genreofespionage,combinedwithasurrealblackhumourandasatiri­calcritiqueofItalyandtheWestingeneral,apparentlybrilliantlytrans-lated as an ironic depiction not only of Yugoslav party politics of the period, but also of contemporary politics in post-Yugoslav countries. ThearticlethusdealswiththecomicaspectsoftheYugoslavAlanFord, focusingonitsspecificironyandtautology,sincebothprovideadirect link between the spheres of comedy and ideology. Key Words: Alan Ford, comedy, Yugoslavia, ideology Alan Ford gre vJugoslavijo: od tavtologije do ideologije Povzetek. Alan Ford, italijanski strip, ki sta ga leta 1969 ustvarila Max BunkerinMagnus,jekmalupoprevoduvsrbohrvašcinopridobilizje­mno popularnost v nekdanji Jugoslaviji. Njegov ironicni pristop k ža­nru vohunjenja, združen z nadrealisticnim crnim humorjem in s sati­ricnokritikoItalijeterZahoda,jeocitnoodlicnoprevedenkotironicna upodobitevjugoslovanskepolitiketistegaobdobja,kijevecinomavpli­valatudinasodobnopolitikovpostjugoslovanskihdržavah.Prispevek se osredotocanakomicnevidikejugoslovanskegaAlanForda,še zlasti pa na ironijo in tavtologijo kot dvoje specificnih tehnik proizvajanja komicnega ucinka, ki si jih komedija deli z ideologijo. Kljucne besede: Alan Ford, Jugoslavija, komedija, ideologija Perhaps it is not a coincidence that Alan Ford by LucianoSecchiand Robert Raviola – in arte Max Bunker and Mangus – started its journey in the revolutionary year of 1969, when the post-war optimism was slowly fading away and the dominant liberal ideology started to crumble. The comic book is basically a satirical take on the classic secret agents genre, https://doi.org/10.26493/2630-4082.56.197-209 Mirt Komel spiced with black humour and cynical references to certain specific as­pects ofItalian societyofthe period,but also amockery of certain uni-versalaspectsofWesternsocietyatlarge.Althoughitbecamewidelypop­ular in Italy shortly after its introduction, Alan Ford remained relatively unknown outside its country of origin, except for one formidable excep­tion: Yugoslavia. Curiously enough, leaping from capitalist Italy to its so­cialist neighbour, Alan Ford became such a huge success that even later on, after the violent dissolution of Yugoslavia,in its successor states it re­mained one of the most popular comic books. Thus, if in Italy Alan Ford wasintendedandinterpretedasasatireofcapitalism,thenitisevenmore interestingtoknowthatontheothersideoftheso-calledIronCurtainin Yugoslavia, it was, to the contrary, read as a political satire of socialism, or even, to put it in ‘Alanfordistic’ terms, as its ‘accurate depiction.’ How, therefore, to reconcile these two contradictory perceptions/receptions of the comic book? How can one satire of society become such an effective ironic critique of two such different ideologies? Rather than asserting a kind of comic universalism as if comedy is so universal that it can take on different ideologies and function in different historical contexts – the errorwouldbethesameasifassertingtheuniversalvalidityofthisorthat ideology – I wouldlike to propose a certain particularism of comedy, fo­cusing on its specific techniques of irony and tautology as two hallmarks of how Alan Ford functions in these two very different contexts. Max Bunker’s and Magnus’s Alan Ford The original idea for Alan Ford as conceived by Max Bunker along with illustrator Magnus was to create a satireof James Bond, the iconic British spy, who for the decades to come defined the whole genre in literature, cinema, andtvshows, and pop-culture in general. TheinitialscriptforAlanFord waswritteninAugust1967,andincluded itssixmaincharactersthatformthelegendary Grouptnt:AlanFord, Bob Rock, SirOliver, The Boss,Jeremiah,and Grunf. Grouptntisan assembly of misfit secret agents, who operate from a flower shop in New York,whichtheyuseasafrontfortheirsecretheadquarters.Theyarede­picted as lazy, poor, and incompetent, yet somehow also intelligent and cunning, especially when it suits their own personal interests. Their out­landish biographies are dwarfed by that of their leader, the wheelchair-ridden Number One or Broj Jedan (introducedinthe series only later on in the eponymous 11th issue, see Bunker and Magnus 1970), who embez­zles the millions paid to the group for various secret missions while pay­ ing a pittance to his agents, leaving them poor to the bone in the process (Lucchesi 2014). The now legendary first issue of the comic book, entitled The Group tnt (Bunker and Magnus 1969a), was received mildly by its audience, andthusthesecondissue,TheHollowTooth,whichappearedinJune1969 (Bunker and Magnus 1969a),wasovershadowedby the first issue’sfiasco. However, the reputation of Alan Ford grew steadily with subsequent is- sues.Magnusdrewthefirst75issues,afterwhichhewasreplacedbyPaolo Piffarerio in 1975, who was also replaced in 1983, when the comic book moved to the Max Bunker Press. Currently the comic book is drawn by DarioPeruccawithinksbyOmarPistolato,whoretainedthesamedraw­ ingstyleassetbyMagnus.Thecomicbookhasbeenadaptedtoanimated film and theatre plays, as well as used as a source of inspiration in books and movies,most notably a low-budget 30-minute animated short called Alan Ford e il Gruppotntcontro Superciuk, which was directed by Max Bunker in 1988. Max Bunker initially wanted to create a comic book that would not fall into either of the then predefined categories of adventures and dark comics, like Satanik or Kriminal (Bunker and Raviola), or funny comics like Mickey Mouse (Walt Disney), but rather would employ a mixture of genres (adventure,romance, etc.) held together by the mainspystoryline (Terzi 2011). This pastiche of genres could be read as one of the distinc­ tiveelementsofpostmodernism(Jameson1997,64);however,wemustbe precise that in Alan Ford the element of parody still prevails overthe pas- tichesincethe differentgenresarealwaysparodieddespitetheanchoring on the spy genre which is itself an object of parody – and therefore it wouldstillfall,accordingtoJameson’sowncriteriaaslaidoutinhisbook on postmodernism (1997), nearer to modernistic than postmodern art.ą Thedifferencebetweenpastiche and parody isimportanttounderstand the subversive effect of Alan Ford: ‘Pastiche is, like parody, the imitation ofapeculiarmask,speechinadeadlanguage:butitisaneutralpracticeof suchmimicry,withoutanyofparody’sulteriormotives,amputatedofthe satiric impulse, devoid of laughter and any conviction that alongside the ą Jameson, in his book on postmodernism, is adamant about the difference between the twoconcepts,whilepinpointingthehistoricaloriginof ‘pastiche’(astheoreticalconcept) (1997,76): ‘Thisconcept, whichweowetoThomas Mann(in Doktor Faustus),who owed itinturntoAdornoonthetwopathsofadvancedmusicalexperimentation(Schoenberg’s innovativeplanification,Stravinsky’sirrationaleclecticism),istobesharplydistinguished from the more readily received idea of parody.’ Mirt Komel abnormaltongueyouhavemomentaryborrowed,somehealthylinguistic normalitystillexists’(Jameson1997,65).Pasticheis,inshort,‘blankirony, a statue with blind eyeballs’ (p. 65). Parody, on the other hand, could be thus defined as a very special kind of irony that imitates a peculiar mask with its specific discourse, and it does so in a very vivid language that is far from neutral, but rather engaged, motivated by its satiric impulse that bursts into laughter as soon as it touches the serious reality it tries to mimicwith its process. Alan Ford is definitely such kind of parody, for its pastiche of different artistic genres is in function of its more general – and at the same time very idiosyncratic, as we will see later on – ironic take on reality. However, what kind of reality exactly? Alan Ford’s New York is not ex­ actly New York, and neither is the rest of the World that the protagonists visitduringtheirexoticvoyagesabroadwhensentonthisorthatmission (adistinctivefeatureofthespygenre):realityis ‘seen’ fromaveryspecific angle, shaped through the substance ofthe genrethat defines whatis real and what is not, which is true also in many other comic books that are not setinalternativerealitiesbutratherinreallocationsseenfromavery particular perspective (as, for example, the London of Dylan Dog that is shaped through the lenses of the horror genre). One would imagine that the world of Alan Ford would be shaped and defined by its predominant genre so that we would get a glimpse into the secret world of spies, but what the comic book actually evokes is a world as seen through the per­ spective of class-struggle: ‘Reality as such is first presented as split into twoseparate worlds that do notshare any “commonreality” [...]In Alan Ford, the central scission runs between the reality of the “poor” and the reality of the “rich” that coexist on the same spot without really existing for each other’ (Bunta 2016, 893). The world of Alan Ford, is thus split through class struggle, where the parodic reality of the poor and the re- alityof the rich antagonisticallycollidewitheach other in satiricalbursts of laughter.˛ Point in case: Superciuk, one of the main reoccurring villains in the comicbookseriesandAlanFord’santagonist par excellence. As Ezechiele ˛ Bunta, in his article dedicated to Crepax and Magnus, argues that there are two prin­cipal methodological concepts linking Crepax’s and Raviola’s respective approaches in Valentina and Alan Ford, namely, the ‘pornological’ and the ‘metaphysical,’ the former referringtothesexualaesthetics,thelattertotheabove-mentionedsplitinreality,where, however, he constantly and systematically avoids the term ‘class struggle’ but rather speaks of ‘antagonism’ (Bunta 2016, 891–894). Bluff he is depicted as a typical underdog member of the working class, butasSuperciukwith hisdeadlyalcoholicbreath as hismainweapon,he isportrayedasasortofanti-RobinHood,forhe ‘steals fromthepoorand gives to the rich,’ thus encapsulating both realities as a living paradox or embodiment of class struggle itself. However,ifonecanstillunderstandwhysuchasatiricaltake onreality through parody was so effective in post-war capitalist Italy, one cannot marvel enough at why it was even more effective in socialist Yugoslavia, as if with the translation from one language and cultural context to the other something was produced as surplus. Alan Ford Goes to Yugoslavia Considering the distinctive Italo-American character of Alan Ford with its direct references to local Italian reality with many terms in Milanese dialect, as well as its open ridicule of certain aspects of contemporary capitalist society, especially the (anti-)utopic ‘American Dream,’ it is al­most incredible that it achieved such a great success insfrYugoslavia almost immediately after its first translation of 1972 on an already vividly crowdedcomicbookmarket(DragincicandZupan1986),andevenmore incredible that it survived Yugoslavia’s violent dissolution and kept its momentum afterwards with its Croatian, Bosnian, Serbian, Macedonian and Slovenian editions (Patruno 2006). Alan Ford was first published in former Yugoslaviaby the state-owned company Vjesnik from Zagreb, where the first few issues did not gain much success until the appearance of the above-mentioned antagonist Superciuk, translated as Superhik, in issue #25, with his famous motto of ‘steals fromthe poorand givestothe rich,’ whichapparentlywasreadnot onlyasaperfectcritiqueofAmerican-stylecapitalismbutofYugoslavso­cialismaswell.Althoughfromtwoverydifferent,irreconcilableperspec­tives,emphasisedbythetwodifferentnamesgiventothesamecharacter: while Superciukdenotes the ‘perverse logic’ ofcapitalismwhere the poor are exploited in favour of the rich, Superhik denotes a similarly ‘perverse logic’ of socialism where the poor are exploited by themselves (and Su­perhik fits this role marvellously since he is himself a proletarian). A lot of the comic book’s success in Yugoslavia is due to Nenad Brixy’s free-form witty adaptation and translation, both linguistic, into Croat­ian slang, and of course also political in terms of the many implicit ref­erences to the Yugoslav socialist system (Džamic 2012). Certain pictures fromthebookwereremovedorrepaintedinsomeeditions,whileinsome Mirt Komel other editions those very same pictures appeared in the original version, andunsurprisingly,someofVjesnik’seditionswereoccasionallyalsocen-sored by the publisher.ł Even Max Bunker acknowledged Brixy’s contri­butions to its popularityin Yugoslavia,which at a certain pointexceeded even the domestic Italian one, praising him as ‘one of the rare translators who successfully depicted the black satire of the Alan Ford’s story and drawings.’ When Brixy died in 1984 the date marked, in many ways, the end of an era for Alan Ford in Yugoslavia.4 If we refer here to Williams’s three-part theory of dominant-residual­emergentculture(1977,121–127),andunderstand AlanFord asanimplicit critiqueoftheYugoslavsocialistsystemduetoitsparallelismwiththeso­cietyofthe period,the translation of Alan Ford –interms of language as well as culture–couldberegarded aspartofthe ‘emergentculture’in oppositionto the ‘dominant’ and ‘residual’ elements of Yugoslavsociety.5 In terms of parallelism and satire, Flowershop uncannily resembles the Kuca cveca, the mausoleum of Tito, and the man himself resembles broj JedanorNumber One, asnoted by Džamic (2012) in hisbookon Alan Ford withthe brilliant and telling title: Cvjecarnica u kuci cvjeca (Flower-shop in the House of Flowers) (Ivic 2013). However, despite the fact that the parallels between the Yugoslav situation and the world of Alan Ford are one step short of uncanny, one must still be precise about where the parallelismstartsandwhereitends:whilethe‘outsideworld’ofAlanFord depictedtheother,‘poor,’flipsideofcapitalism,itisonlythe‘insideworld’ ł Forexample,inissue#16, ‘Don’tVoteforNotax,’alinemakingfunofdistinctivelyAmer­ican racism, reading ‘Firstly, I promise that we will get rid of the Blacks [...] This is a country of the white race, and whoever doesn’t think that way will get punished’ was changed to ‘Firstly, I promise that we will get rid of our enemy. This is our country and whoever doesn’t think that way will [...].’ 4 The edition continued after Brixy’s death, eventually ending in 1992 with the outbreak of the Yugoslav Wars, after which it was Borgis who picked up the publishing rights for theCroatianmarket,keepingtheoriginalseriestitleAlan Ford Superstrip. Maverickfrom Kraljevo initially started publishing for the Serbian market, and in 2003 the comic was picked up by Color Press Group from Novi Sad. In the 2000s, the original episodes in Brixy’stranslationhavebeenrepublishedbytheCroatianStrip-agentunderthetitleAlan Ford Klasik, whoalsopublished Alan Ford Extra (newItalianepisodes),and Pricebroja1 (Number One’s Stories). 5 Williams,inhisMarxismandLiterature(1977,121–127),devotesonechaptertothedialec­tical development of culture as the interplay between these three concepts, where dom­inant elements refer to the hegemonic values and practices of society; residual to those pastelementsthatstilloperatewithinthedominantones;andemergent tothoseelements that go against and defy both the dominant and residual ones. of the Flowershop from where thetntgroup operates that portrays Yu­goslav socialism. If the social dynamic of the grouptnt– chaotic rela­tions, dysfunctionality, bad organisation, incompetent agents – was seen as depicting the Yugoslav society, then its outside world can be taken as the Yugoslav ‘outside’ as such, i.e. the capitalistic West in general. Despite the fact that initially Alan Ford functioned as an emergent counterculture, it soon gained such an immense popularity that it be­come dominant soon after Tito’s death, and later on, after the dissolution of Yugoslavia, residual in its successor states. Attesting to the immense popularity of Alan Ford in Yugoslavia are the numerous movies, theatri­cal and other artworks that were directly inspired by the comic book in its Yugoslav variant: in 1994 a theatre play titled Alan Ford was staged at Teatar T in Belgrade, and in 2002 Radio Belgrade performed a radio dramabasedontheplay;EmirKusturica’sBlackCat,WhiteCat from1998 features a character who reads an Alan Ford comic book throughout the film; Prljavo kazalište, a Croatian rock band, was named after the trans­lated line from an Alan Ford issue called Broadway; Pero Defformero, a Serbian heavy metal band, was named after one of the minor characters of the comic book; as was Superhiks, a Macedonian rock band; in the 1980s the Yugoslavian software studio Suzy Soft made a game titled The Drinker, inspired of course by Superhik. Besidesthesepop-culturalreferencesonemustnotfailtomentionthat Alan Ford catchphrases become part of everyday slang in almost all of post-Yugoslavsuccessorstatesregardlessoftheir (different)nationallan­guages:Broj Jedan is used to refer to any old, grumpy, influential person; Superhik is used foranyone with a serious alcoholproblem; and Jeremija forsomeone whoiseasilyhurt, as synonymous for‘snowflake’; andSir Oliver’s line ‘Cijena, prava sitnica’ (‘Price? A bargain!’) as commonplace for ‘it’s too expensive.’ Thislastlineespeciallyis,Ithink,emblematicofoneofthedistinctively dialectical characteristics of Alan Ford, namely, its ability to express the truemeaningviaitsopposite,orwhatwasinclassicalrhetoricreferredto as antiphrasis, or in philosophy as irony. The Ideological Function of Irony and Tautology Perhaps the most famous philosophical form of irony is Socratic irony, a dialecticalmethod of inquiry where, toputit simply,one fakes ignorance in order to gain an admission from the interlocutor, whose knowledge is then shown as null and void. Mirt Komel Hegel, a fan of both Socrates and his method – as Brecht puts it (1967, 1460–1462): ‘He has the makings of one of the greatest humorists among thephilosophers,likeonlySocratesotherwise,whohadasimilarmethod’ – developed his dialectics in close connection with irony, which worked in a similar fashion, for he ‘faked absolute knowledge in order to gain an admission of ignorance from the interlocutor,’ and whose knowledge is again shown as null and void. And could one not regard Alan Ford as precisely such an exercise in Hegelian irony? The main protagonists of the comic book are comical first and foremost because they adhere to the Hegelian principle of com­edy where the relationship between substance and subject as enacted in tragedy is reversed: instead of the ethical substance affirming itself over the subjective action of tragic individuals, the comic individual affirms itssubjectivismoverethicalsubstance(Hegel1997,1380).Whilethenaive Alan Ford himself is faking ignorance while in fact enacting what could beunderstoodastheethicalsubstanceofthecomicbook,hisidioticcom­rades from the Flowershop are faking absolute knowledge for they are so sure of themselves even when their own actions collide with reality and prove them wrong, and this discrepancy between their subjectivity and realityisthe subjectoflaughter. Theirony,evendoubleirony is, thatifinthe original Italian Alan Ford the satire of capitalistic reality was explicit – and therefore comes as no surprisethatitdidnotmakeitintotheAnglo-Saxonworldwherecapital­ismitselforiginatedandisathomewithitself–intheYugoslavtranslation it was only implicit that the Flowershop and its inhabitants were a satire of socialist society, as if the comic book enabled an indirect satisfaction of an unconscious desire to ridicule a system that allowed none. Freud referred to antiphrasis as one of the ways in which the un­conscious works in order to avoid the conscious censorship of the ego, where the opposite of what is otherwise censored is shown precisely as vorstellungs-reprasentanz of the repressed content: as shown extensively in his Interpretation of Dreams, this process can affect characteristics of objects or people, thus transforming a small object into a very large one, or someone whose intelligence is envied in real life appears stupid in a dream,orclimbingthe stairsinsteadoffalling,andsoforth(Freud2010). Or, more pertinently related to our topic, in his book on the Witz, where a similar process takes place in order to disguise a taboo content in its contrary by way of euphemisms (Freud 1916), like in one of Žižek’s emi­nently Freudian jokes: ‘What is a Freudian slip of the tongue?’ – ‘When you say one thing and mean your mother.’ Althusser, who in many of his works tried to combine Marxism and psychoanalysis, detected a certain conceptual parallel between the Marxist understanding of ideology and the psychoanalytical conceptionofthe unconscious,thus pavingthe way for his pupils – most notably Balibar, Macherey, Pecheux – and their spe­ cific critique of discursive ideology, where art in general and literature in particular is understood as a potentially subversive practice of class struggle.6 There is, however, another similar usage of contrary meanings as in irony,whichhas,however,adirectlyoppositefunction:anideologicalas­ sertion rather than subversion of the existing order of things. The direct opposite to the dialectical use of irony in general and the rhetorical de­ vice of antiphrasisinparticulariswhatiscalled ‘subversive affirmation’ or ‘over-identification,’ as first employed in performing arts and litera­ ture, most notably in Vladimir Sorokin’s exaggeration of socialist real- isminhis novels. Žižek lateron(2006)popularized the concept through his contribution on ‘Why Are Laibach and the Neue Slowenische Kunst Not Fascists?,’ where he discusses the totalitarian aesthetics of the group and collective as a style that relinquishes irony in order to achieve a sub­ versive over-identification with the dominant ideology. The conceptual nuance is minimal, butimportant: inorder forsuchasubversive over- identificationtowork,onemust,sotospeak, ‘takeitseriously,’andthatis also why Laibach denies that what they do is intended to be either ironic or subversive. 7 The most minimalistic form of such a mechanism of over-identifica­ tioncanbeidentifiedinaspecialusageoftautology, otherwisefromtimes immemorial the linguistic tool of ideological conservatism, as attested, forinstance,intheChristianexpression‘GodisGod.’Jean-JacquesLecer- 6 Althusser (1991, 17–30) argued, most notably in his ‘On Marx and Freud,’ for a parallel readingbetweenMarx’stheoryofclass-struggleandFreud’sdiscoveryoftheunconscious, both beingconflictualtheories demonstratingtheiressentialepistemologicalbreak from tradition in their resistance to the dominant capitalist ideology. For the complex rela­ tion betweenAlthusser andpsychoanalysissee alsoPascaleGillot’s(2009) Althusser et la psychanalyse. 7 GregorModer,inhis‘WhatcanAlthusserTeachUsaboutStreetTheater–andViceVersa’ (2014, 86), discusses several such tautological examples where performers do precisely what theoppressive governmentdirects themtodo, oftensimply copying thegesturesor commands of authorities, thus producing a ‘blind spot’ of ideology, a point of view from which such performances ‘become subversive with respect to the dominant ideology.’ Mirt Komel cle(2008,162–166),inhis ‘AMarxistPhilosophyof Language,’writesthat a tautology is a grammatical marker of ‘the ideology ofconsensus’ in that it‘deliberatelyignoreseconomic,social,andpoliticalproblemsatthevery moment it promises to resolve them.’ If someone, for example, points to the cruelties of ongoing wars, to the persistent problem of poverty, and how does God justify all these, the most ideologically conservative reply is precisely ‘God is God,’ asserting the identity of the Almighty as expla­ nationfortheatrocitieswhileavoidingthehistoricalcausesforthem,and at the same time implicitlyasserting its existence as the ‘BigOther.’ Butif the same tautology of ‘God is God’ is employed by the above-mentioned Laibach as the title and refrain of their song, the effect is quite the oppo­ site, the futility of such an explanation and negation of its existence, or againin Lacanianterms: ‘Thereisno BigOther.’ Conversely, a simplede­ nialof an ideologicalstatement operates muchinthe same vein, as inthe statement: ‘The one that sacrificed for us on the cross does not exist.’ A denialcanalwaysbeonlyadenialofapresupposed,alreadyexistingcon- tent, that is thus re-affirmed through its very denial. Michel Pęcheux in his ‘Discours and Ideology(s),’ following step-by-step Althusser’s theory ofideologicalinterpellationinconnectiontoLacan’slogicofthesignifier, at a certain point notes that there is an implicit identity-affirming pro­ cess at work in the ideological interpellation, and that the symptomatic absurdity of its ‘evidence’ is shown in its twisted, humorous, ironic us­ ages, like in the following joke: ‘Mr. Tainta, tell us your name!’ Or: ‘I have three brothers, Paul, Michel, and me’ (Pęcheux 1975, 125–166). By ironically counting ‘myself’ as one of the ‘three brothers’ one denounces the absurdity not only of the elemental structures of kinship, but also of counting. There is, in short, a specific ironic usage of tautology that can be best described as subversive over-identification, and what Alan Ford does is preciselysuchatwistofthetautologicalideologyofinterpellationinside- outsothatinthefinalanalysisitbecomesitsopposite,notan ‘ideologyof consensus’ but rather an ‘ideology of conflict’ that emphasises economic, social, and political problems, as best attested from the gradual develop­ mentofthefollowingfewexamplesthatgofrombasictautologytoironic antiphrasis up until a most direct critique of the ruling ideology.8 8 Despite the fact that Alan Ford is, as a comic book, first and foremost graphical, we will nevertheless focus on its discourse, thus leaving aside the visual functioning of ideology, whichispivotalforthecomicsingeneral,andwhich,forinstance,BaraKolencelaborates The Ironic Tautology of Alan Ford Alan Ford has a plethora of memorable quotes that are, as already men-tioned,stillinuseinpresentdayYugoslavia’ssuccessorstates,andarealso reproduced on T-shirts as well as recurrently circulated on social media, especially during voting periods, which already in itself attests to their political meaning, at least in the post-Yugoslav context. ‘Tkospavanijebudan.’–‘Whomeversleepsisnotawake.’Thisisasim­pletautology,a no-shit-Sherlockstatement,thatstates theobvious,and is similar to another one: ‘Ako kaniš pobijediti, ne smiješ izgubiti.’ – ‘If you wanttowinyoumustnotlose.’However,looknowhowthisoneisturned about in the following: ‘Ne predaj se nikad, osim kad moraš.’ – ‘Do not concede defeat ever, only when you must.’ And in the final form the cap­italist ideology of competition, as embodied in the sports as an allegedly ideologically neutral sector of society: ‘Nije važno sudjelovati, važno je pobijediti.’ – ‘It’s not important if you participate, but rather if you win.’ By emphasizing the opposite of the Olympic slogan ‘it is not important if you win but rather to participate’ it shows the ideological falseness of the statement via its comic development into its contrary, ‘It is not im­portant if you participate but rather if you win,’ thus demasking also the capitalistic ideology of competitiveness inscribed in the very essence of sports. Another brilliant, eminently philosophical graduation from tautology to ideology, canbe found in the followingtwo aphorisms fromthe comic book: ‘Bolje nešto od necega, nego ništa od nicega.’ – ‘Better something of something than nothing of nothing.’ It works best in our languages because of the genitive that changes the two apparent tautologies (‘nešto ... necega’and‘ništa... nicega’),thuslinguisticallydeconstructingthe identity of ‘something’ on the one hand and of ‘nothing’ on the other, while apparently stating the evidential obvious. And, based on this, my last example, the best political joke ever, with an ultimate ironic twist in terms of ideological subversion: ‘Mi ništa ne in her essay ‘Voyeurism and Exhibitionism on the Internet: The Libidinal Economy of the Spectacle of Instanternity.’ Among other examples, she points to the visual aspect of tautologyin the form of ‘stating(or, rather,staging)theobvious’ in the sensethatwhatis most hiddenis whatisshown inthemost obvious way,avisualstrategyofalurewhichis certainly present in Alan Ford: ‘In trying to grasp what is beyond what one shows me – anindefinitesomething thatI assume is hidingbehindthe curtain – I fail again.Thereis nothing behind what one shows. For the subject is itself but a picture, a lure, a play with a screen’ (Kolenc 2022, 201–237). Mirt Komel obecavamo i to ispunjavamo – stranka istine’ – ‘We promise nothing and we deliver. The Truth Party.’ The nothing is delivered, and therefore not nothing, but something, and that is the truth of the Truth Party, the only honest partyinany given republicanparty-system of political represen­tation. Conclusion So,toreturn inconclusion to myinitial question:how canwereconcile the apparently contradictory tendency implicit in Alan Ford’s ironic po­litical satire, namely, that it can serve as a critique of capitalism as well as socialism? The difference lies in its ideologicalfunction: Alan Ford provided a se­rious satirical critique of the capitalist system as seen in the world of the ‘rich’ outsidethe Flowershop,while its ‘poor’ inside – the caricatureof its main tenants – delivered an ironic critique of socialism. The real kernel, however, lies not in the parody of capitalism or socialism, but rather in its distinctive use of irony that the comic book demonstrates precisely in its dialectical doublespeak, that is universal in form, but historically an­chored in its usage and interpretation (it is, in short and to put it bluntly, ‘funny’ not in an universal, but rather in a particular way). Andtocontinueonthelinesofhistoricalmaterialism:wehavenotedin terms of Williams’s dominant-residual-emergent culture, if the Yugoslav translation of Alan Ford at the beginning functioned as an emergent, countercultural element, it soon gained momentum and became dom­inant, but – with a true dialectical turn in terms of historical Marxism – one could say that with the dissolution of Yugoslavia and its capital­istic aftermath it again holds the potential to become a countercultural element. Thus,inthe post-Yugoslav context Alan Ford can still serve as both a critique of contemporary capitalist society – since most if not all of its successor states embarked on the neoliberal boat – and at the same time as a regulatory idea for what socialism truly is: the theory and practice of class struggle. References Althusser, Louis 1991. ‘On Marx and Freud.’ Rethinking Marxism 4(1): 17–30. Brecht, Bertolt. 1967. Gesammelte Werke 14. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Bunker,Max,director. 1988. Alan Fordeil gruppoTNT controSuperciuk. Cini­ talia edizioni. 26 min. Bunker,Max,and Magnus.1969a. Alan Ford 1: Il Gruppo T.N.T. Milan: Corno. ———. 1969b. Alan Ford 2: Il dente cariato. Milan: Corno. ———. 1970. Alan Ford 11: Il Numero Uno. Milan: Corno. Bunker,Max,andPaoloPiffarerio.1977.AlanFord99:Broadway.Milan:Corno. Bunta, Aleš.2016. ‘Crepaxand Magnus:The Art of Pornological Reflections.’ Teorija in praksa 53 (4): 891–905. Dragincic, Slavko,inZdravko Zupan. 1986. Istorijajugoslovenskog stripa. Novi Sad: Forum Marketprint. Džamic, Lazar. 2012. Cvjecarnicau kuci cvjeca: kako smo usvojili i ljubili Alana Forda. Zagreb: Naklada Jesenski i Turk. Freud, Sigmund. 1916. Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious. Translated by Abraham A.Brill.New York: Moffat,Yard, and Co. ———. 2010. The Interpretation of Dreams: The Complete and Definiteve Text. Edited and translated by James Strachey. New York: Perseus. Hegel, Georg W. F. 1997. Estetica. Translated by Nicolao Merker and Nicola Vaccaro. Turin: Einaudi. Ivic, Aleksandra. 2013. ‘Alan Ford e la Casa di Fiori di Tito.’ Osservatorio Bal­cani e Caucaso Transeuropa, 27 February. https://www.balcanicaucaso.org /aree/Serbia/Alan-Ford-e-la-Casa-dei-fiori-di-Tito-131224 Jameson, Fredric. 1997. Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capital­ism. Durham,nc: Duke University Press. Kolenc, Bara. 2022. ‘Voyeurism and Exhibitionism on the Internet: The Li­bidinal Economy of the Spectacle of Instanternity.’ Filozofski vestnik 43(3): 201–237. Kusturica, Emir, director. 1998. Crna macka, beli macor. Ciby 2000, Pandora Film, Komuna, and France 2 Cinéma. 2 hrs., 7 min. Lecercle,Jean-Jacques.2008.‘MarxistPhilosophyofLanguage.’Capital&Class 32 (1): 162–166. Lucchesi, Riccardo. 2014. ‘Collezionismo: Alan Ford.’c4Comic, 19 February. https://web.archive.org/web/20161105210830/http://c4comic.it /collezionismo/collezionismo-alan-ford. Moder, Gregor. 2014. ‘What Can Althusser Teach Us about Street Theater – and Vice Versa.’ Stasis 2(1): 80–91. Pascale, Gillot. 2009. Althusser et la psychanalyse. Paris: Presses Universitaires de Paris. Patruno, Camilla, 2006. ‘Alan Ford il piu amato dagli slavi.’ubcFumetti.com, 27 October. https://www.ubcfumetti.com/italia/?12702#contenuto Pęcheux, Michel. 1975. ‘Discours and Idéologie(s).’ In Michel Pęcheux, Les vérités de La Palice, 126–166.Paris: Maspero. Terzi, Vittorio. 2011, ‘Cinquecento di questi Alan!’ubcFumetti.com, 9 Febru­ary. https://ubcfumetti.magazineubcfumetti.com/italia. Williams, Raymond. 1977. ‘Dominant, Residual and Emergent.’ In Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature, 121–127. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Žižek, Slavoj. 2006. ‘Why Are Laibach and Neue Slowenische Kunst Not Fas-cists?’InSlavojŽižekTheUniversalException,Volume.2:SelectedWritings, 63–66. London: Continuum. Miscellanea Effect of Cognitive Reflection on Escalation of Commitment Petra Rekar phdstudent at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia petra.rekar@gmail.com Mitja Perat Inštitut za razvoj cloveških virov, Slovenia mitjaperat@institut.burnout.si © 2024 Petra Rekar and Mitja Perat Abstract. Sunkcosts areknown tobe one of thedriversofescalation of commitment. One explanation for the effect is the overgeneralization of the waste not rule,or the utilization of automatic Type 1 processing, whenthemoredeliberateType2wouldbeneeded.Theobjectiveofthe studywastotestifthecognitivereflectiontest(crt),asameasureofan individual’s tendency to engagein analytical thinking, is related to the escalation of commitment. We hypothesized that individuals scoring loweronthetestwillexhibitthetendencytohonoursunkcosts.Usinga continuationwithinvestmentproblemwefoundthatcrtisnotrelated to decision making which includes sunk cost. We can infer thatcrtis not the only or the main predictor of the escalation of commitment. Key Words: decision making, cognitive reflection, escalation of com­mitment, sunk costs, analytical thinking Ucinek kognitivne refleksije na stopnjevanjezavezanosti Povzetek.Poslovnonepovratnistroškisodejavnik,kivplivanastopnje­vanje zavezanosti k izbiri. Ena od razlag za nastanek ucinka je preti­rana posplošitev pravila, da se z denarjem ne razmetava, oz. uporaba avtomatiziranih hevristik prvega reda, takrat ko bi bila potrebna upo­raba analiticnega razmišljanja. Namen raziskave je preverjanje, ali se test kognitivne refleksije, kot mera posameznikove nagnjenosti k ana-liticnemurazmišljanju,povezujezzavezanostjokdoloceniizbiri.Pred­videvalismo,dabodoposamezniki,kibododoseglinižjomerokogni­tivne refleksije, v vecji meri upoštevali nepovratne stroške pri investi­cijskih odlocitvah. Pri nalogi nadaljevanja z investicijo smo ugotovili, dase testne povezujez odlocanjem,ki vsebuje nepovratnestroške. Na osnovi tega sklepamo, da testa kognitivne refleksije ne moremo upo­rabiti kot prediktorja za ugotavljanje stopnjevanja zavezanosti. https://doi.org/10.26493/2630-4082.56.213-225 Petra Rekar and Mitja Perat Kljucne besede: odlocanje, kognitivna refleksija, stopnjevanje zaveza­nosti, poslovno nepovratni stroški, analiticno razmišljanje Literature Review Honouring sunk costs is a well-documented effect, where an individual continues with an investment or endeavour once an initial amount of as­sets (money, time or effort) have been allocated to it (Arkes and Blumer 1985). This type of behaviour goes against the standard economic theory (VonNeumannandMorgenstern1947),whichisnormativeinitsessence and provides a norm that is the correct course of action. The normative approachtodecisionmakingprovidesstandardsofhowdecisionsshould bemade,withtheaimtoassistindividualstomaximizetheoutcome. Ac-cordingtoeconomictheory,thenormativelycorrectdecisionisthat only future (or incremental) revenues and costs should be considered when evaluating an investment (or project). A sunk cost has already occurred, isirrecoverableandassuchisnotaffectedbythedecision,henceitshould not be considered when evaluatingan investment. However, research in­dicates this is not the case and that sunk costs commonly drive the es­calation of commitment (Schmidt and Calantone 2002; Sleesman et al. 2012; Soman and Gourville 2001) in finance (Tan and Yates 2002), cus­tomer loyalty(Jang, Mattila,and Bai2007; Liang,Lee,and Tung2014), or the continuationof an activity (Ĺstebro, Jeffrey, and Adomdza 2007). Fa­miliarity with economic theory or with rational decision making alone does not always reduce or eliminate this effect (Fennema and Perkins 2007; Roth,Robbert, and Straus2015),noris itreducedby one’s cognitive ability (Haita-Falah 2017; Stanovich and West 2008). On the contrary, it has beenarguedthatbeingmoreanalyticalmightactuallyamplifythe ef­fect, as individuals who make logical arguments for a prior investment might be more inclined to allocate additional resources (Wong, Kwong, and Ng 2008). The effect is well researched from the angles of instruc­tion(TanandYates1995),frame(Klaczynski2001;SalterandSharp2001), the level of sunk costs as the percentage of the total investment (Garland 1990), and the completion of an investment (Boehne and Paese 2000), as well as some differences in the characteristics of the individual. The ef­fectisstrengthenedbystateorientation(vanPutten,Zeelenberg,andvan Dijk 2010), agreeableness and conscientiousness (Fujino et al. 2016), and youngerage(BruinedeBruin,Strough,and Parker 2014;Eberhardt, Bru­inedeBruin,andStrough2019).Itisbelievedthatexperiencereducesthe effect inolderindividuals; however,the type of sunk cost appearstoplay a key role. When the cost is monetary, experience plays a positive role; however, experienced inventors who receive a negative review of their idea (costs were effort and time) continue to invest more assets (money and time) in further development than their more inexperienced coun­terparts (Ĺstebro, Jeffrey, and Adomdza 2007). Domain-specific knowl­edge is believed to be helpful, but only when the situation cues its use. In one of the studies, individuals with knowledge of standard economic theory (cpas,mbas, and accounting students) made more normatively correctdecisionswhendealingwithaclearlyeconomicdecisionproblem (Fennema and Perkins 2007). In a similar manner, providing individuals with training in the sunk cost rule positivelyaffected normative decision making (Larrick, Morgan, and Nisbett 1990). There appears to be several explanations of the causes, ranging from mental accounting (Thaler 1999), loss aversion (Arkes and Blumer 1985), commitment to project completion (Boehne and Paese 2000), effort jus­tification (Cunha and Caldieraro 2009), agency (Harrison and Harrell 1993),orthewastenotrule(ArkesandAyton1999).Althoughdepending on circumstances, the type of sunk costs (money, time, effort), or indi­viduals’ characteristics, any of these mechanisms could explain the ef­fect. In the case of a monetary sunk cost, an individual acquainted with standard economic theory should be able to make a normatively correct decision, assuming they either reflect on the task (engage in analytical thinking), or they obtained sufficient relevant experience, which would facilitate a correct automatic response. Arkes and Ayton (1999) propose that the sunk cost effect is a result of the overgeneralization of the ‘do not waste’ rule, where ceasing the project would be considered a waste of money already spent. Essentially, they posit that the effect is a result of the so-called Type 1 processing. In cognitive science, there is a con­sensus that individuals switch between two qualitatively different modes of processing, namely the autonomous and fast Type 1 and the more ef­fortful and slow Type 2. By default, individuals have a tendency to utilize Type 1, as it is cognitively less costly; however, this type of thinking can leadto‘irrational’decisions(EvansandStanovich2013;Toplak,West,and Stanovich 2014), as it is dependent on the cues from the environment, as well as intrinsic factors (such as motivation or mood) (Klaczynski 2001). Thecognitivereflectiontest(crt)isapopularmeasuretodistinguishbe-tween individuals more prone to Type 1 processing (automatic, fast) and thosewhoaremoreanalytical.Inspiteofitswideuse,itisstableovertime (Stagnaro, Pennycook, and Rand 2018) and robust to multiple exposures Petra Rekar and Mitja Perat (Bialek and Pennycook 2017). Thetest is composedof3logicalproblems, which cue incorrect ‘intuitive’ answers that need to be suppressed to de­liberate on the correct answer (Frederick 2005). The higher the number ofcorrect answers,themoreanalyticalanindividualis. Thetestseemsto be a good predictor of performance in tasks that require engagement in moreeffortfuldeliberation,suchasheuristicsandbiases(Frederick2005; Toplak,West, and Stanovich 2011).Additionally,itisrelated to impres­sionmanagement,withcolourmanipulationsaffectingjudgementsofless analytical (more impulsive) individuals (Cardoso, Leite, and de Aquino 2018).Stanovich(2012)proposesthatdeviationsfromnormativedecision making may be the result of individual differences in thinking disposi­tions. To successfully perform on a variety of heuristics and biases tasks, an individual needs to first detect that there is a need to override Type 1 processing and inhibition, but they also need to possess the right mind-ware, including knowledge (Stanovich 2018; Stanovich and West 2008). Ascrtrequires an individual to suppress their initial (intuitive, though incorrect) response, Ronayne, Sgroi and Tuckwell (2021) showed that the capacity for reflection predicts sunk cost effect, where the ‘cost’ is effort exerted. To elicit the sunk cost effect, two types of tasks are commonly used – utilizationtasks,whereanindividualneedstoselectbetweentwoequally appealingoptions –andprogressdecisions,whereanindividualneeds to decide whether to escalatea commitment. To measure the effect ofmon­etary sunk cost, utilization decisions could be potentially problematic, as they might not be recognized as economic decisions and individuals might not apply domain-specific knowledge. In the case of progress (or the escalation of commitment) decisions, individuals should be aware of thetypeof decision theyare making andapply thenecessary knowledge (Roth, Robbert, and Straus 2015), assumingthe context cues relevant do­main knowledge. The aim of the study was to inspect whether more analytical individ­uals would more often reach a normatively correct decision in an esca­lation of commitment task. We hypothesized that if the sunk cost effect stems from the overgeneralization of the waste not rule, individuals with a higher propensity for analytical thinking should not succumb to sunk costs.We used the cognitivereflectiontestas ameasure ofpropensityfor analytical thinking, as it is believed to be associated with good decision making,whendeliberationisparamount,suchasonheuristicsandbiases tasks. However contrary to research so far, we failed to find an associa­tionbetweencrtandsunkcosts,whichisaclassicheuristic inthefinan­cial sphere. We demonstrated that simply being more analytical (scoring higheronthecrt),evenwhenpossessingtherightknowledge,isnotsuf­ficient to overcome the fallacy. Participants A total of 188 participants were included in the study (127 women; 61 men;meanage=19.54,sd=4.24).Aconveniencesamplewasused,where the majority of the participants (n = 164) came from a pool of 4th year students of an economics high school, while a minority (n =24) were professionals working in finance with degrees in economics or a simi­lar subject. In the case of the students, we were allowed to modify their curriculum by including information regarding the valuation of invest­ments (which included the treatment of sunk costs); however, no partic­ular stress was placed on this information. This information was given roughly 5–6 weeks before the testing took place to ensure that it was not too fresh in their memory and that they could make the connection. As the valuation of projects is a part of the standard curricula at the uni­versity level, it was assumed that professionals had this knowledge. All the materials were in the Slovene language as all of the participants were native speakers. Methodology For the students, testing took place during their regular economics class. Upon being informed about the study they were asked to give their consent. The experiment was a paper and pencil one and consisted of a short financial assignment, acrttest and a demographics question-naire.Firstly,theparticipantswerepresentedwithaninvestmentproblem which involved sunk costs, modelled after the airline company problem by Arkes and Blumer (1985), where they had to decide whether to con­tinue with an investment of the development of a virtual reality headset when the competition had just launched a similar product, while their company would need 3 more years to complete it. A certain amount of sunk costs related to the development so far had already been incurred, which was clearly stated. We included the information on expected rev­enues and the uncertainty associated with them, as this information would normally be available. Moreover, the expected revenues are vi­tal information as it enables individuals to set a budget without using subjective expectations about the value of the investment (Heath 1995). Petra Rekar and Mitja Perat Table 1 Results of StatisticalAnalysis Item Whole sample Women Men Students Employees n ... ... .. ... .. Mean ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... Std. error mean ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... Median ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... Standard deviation ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... Variance ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... Minimum . . . . . Maximum . . . . . Skewness ..... ..... ..... ..... –..... Std. error skewness ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... Kurtosis –..... ..... –..... ..... –..... Std. error kurtosis ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... Table 2 Chi-Square Statistics for Sunk Cost Task by Gender Sunk cost task Women Men .2(.) n . n . Incorrect answer .. ..... .. ..... ..... Correct answer .. ..... .. ..... notes p =0.870. The participants had to decide whether they would continue with this investment. The correct solution was to continue with the project (since the projected revenues surpassedthe projectedcosts)and disregardthe sunk costs. The use of calculators was not allowed as only a very sim­ple calculation was needed (adding/subtracting digits up to 10). Upon completion, they were given a 3-item cognitive reflection test (Freder­ick 2005), which was translated into Slovene using forward/backward translation. Although some have questioned the reliability of the test on adolescents, as it could be too difficult (Primi et al. 2016), we deemed it would be appropriate given that all participants were at least 18 years old at the time of taking the test. Lastly, we collected demographic data. Results Firstly, we inspected for any differences in the sample, where we found nodifferencesbetweenparticipantsinreachingthecorrectdecision.Em­ployees did not perform any better than students (.2(1, n =188) =1.086, p = 0.297). Additionally, we also found no difference with respect to gen­ Sunk cost task Students Employees .2(.) n . n . Incorrect answer .. ..... .. .... ..... Correct answer .. ..... .. .... notes p =0.297. Table 4 Chi-Square StatisticsSplit bycrtScore Sunk cost task crt_Score .2(.) .... Incorrect answer .. .. .. .. ..... Correct answer .. .. .. .. notes p =0.691. Table 5 Chi-Square Statistics for Participants with Different Levels of Cognitive Reflection Item Incorrect Correct .2(.) p answer answer High_analytical .. .. ..... ..... Rest .. .. Low_analytical .. .. ..... ..... Rest .. .. Mid_analytical .. .. ..... ..... Rest .. .. der (.2(1, n =188) =0.027, p = 0.870). To test our assumption that more analytical individuals would more often reach normatively correct solu­tions (would not honour sunk costs), we started by calculating the par­ticipants’crtscore. In line with other reports (Campitelli and Labollita 2010; Frederick 2005), 46.3. of the participants correctly solved at least one problem. The average number of correct answers was 0.84 (sd = 1.073),with21.3.solvingoneproblemcorrectly,12.2.solvingtwoprob­lemscorrectlyand12.8.solvingallthreeproblemscorrectly. Wedidfind some differences in how well the two groups scored on the test; employ­ees performed better, correctly solving 1.92 tasks (students 0.68), which was statistically significant (.2(3, n = 188) = 35.694, p = 0.000). We ap­pliedaChi-Squaretest(whereweseparatedindividualsbasedonnumber of points on the test), which rejected our hypothesis. We found thatcrt is not related to the escalation of a commitment in the presence of sunk Petra Rekar and Mitja Perat costs, (.2(3, n = 188) = 1.463, p = 0.691). To confirm the results, we made a distinction proposed by Frederick (2005) on highly analytical partici­pants (whosolvedall 3problemscorrectly), medium (those who solved 1 or 2 problems correctly) and low analytical participants (who did not solve any problem correctly). Dividing the participants in this way (by separating the extremes) corroborated our initial results. For highly an­alytical participants, we obtained (.2(1, n = 188) = 0.028, p =0.867), for lowanalyticalones(.2(1,n =188)=0.382,p =0.537),andforparticipants classified as medium analytical (.2(1, n = 188) = 0.595, p =0.441). General Discussion Wewantedtoinspectwhetherthedispositiontowardsanalyticalthinking can explain the results on a monetary sunk cost task in a group of indi­viduals acquainted with standard economic theory. With respect to sunk cost fallacy being related to the age of participants, our result is contrary tootherstudies,whereolderparticipantswerelesslikelytocontinuewith the commitment to a failing plan (Bruine de Bruin, Strough, and Parker 2014;Eberhardt, BruinedeBruin, and Strough2019; Karns 2012).Our results did not find a connection between reaching normatively correct decisionsandacrtscore,implyingthatanalyticalthinkingisneither the main nor only factor preventing the sunk cost effect. These results are in line with some previous research, which shows that the sunk cost fallacy is not related to measures of executive function processes (Del Missier, Mäntylä, and Bruine De Bruin 2012). Our findings are unlike those of Ronayne and colleagues (2021); however, this could be due to a differ­ence in the task used. The propensity for analytical thinking might be a good predictorwhen sunkcostisinthe form of effort expended, where it would be sufficient for an individual to pause and consider the expen­diture of effort so far vis-ŕ-vis alternatives before continuing. However, in the case of money spent, reflection (switching to analytical thinking) alonemightnotbesufficient,evenwhenthetaskisclearlyfromadomain theparticipantsarefamiliarwithandtheyshouldapplyknowledge-based decision making. It is likelier that the interplay of several factors deter­mines whether an individual will behave normatively correctly on such tasks. In our sample, even though the participants would have learned aboutsunkcostsbefore,wecannotruleoutthelackofappropriatemind-ware. Individuals first need to recognize the task and then apply the nec­essary knowledge, implying a certain level of the inhibition of impulse. Ascrtisameasureofinhibition,weonlycontrolledatthe levelwhen anindividualalreadyneedstoapplyknowledge,whereaswedidnotcon­trol for how the participants interpreted the task. Although instructions pointedoutthatthe assignmenthadacorrectanswer,wedidnotempha-size that it should be solved based on the knowledge they had received in class or during schooling, to keep it in line with decision making in real­ity. It might be that participants interpreted the assignment as if we were askingfortheirpreferenceandtheyhadnotappliedthenecessaryknowl­edgeinthefirstplace.Althoughthematerialswerepilottestedandwedid not receive any ambiguity regarding the interpretation of the questions, such an explanation cannot be ruled out. In the cases where participants did not have much practical experience treating (monetary) sunk cost, a problem of task recognition might arise, which results in the applica­tion of the wrong decision rules, indicating that the use of knowledge in lessexperiencedindividualsneedstobepromptedbytheenvironmentto prevent the sunk cost fallacy. Furthermore,someresearcherssuggestthateithergeneralorstatistical numeracyhasgreaterpredictivepowerinsuperiordecisionmakingthan crt(Cokelyetal.2018;Sobkow,Olszewska,andTraczyk2020).Although we collected the average grade in mathematics class, we did not control specifically for this type of numeracy, which is a limiting factor in our research. Certaindesignfeaturesalsolimittheecologicalvalidity.Firstly,inreal­itysunkcostswouldnormallybeknowntoadecisionmakerandnotnec­essarily explicitly stated in the analysis. By explicitly stating sunk costs, the saliency of this information might override the application of rele­vant knowledge. Secondly, although the use of hypothetical scenarios is common in such settings, it might be problematic. The stakes are clearly not real, which might reduce the motivation that would be present in a real world setting. Participants need to position themselves in the role of a ceo; moreover, the amounts of money (millions) can be too ab­stract. However, making the assignment more familiar (e.g. by using a smaller amount, investment in common items) can also be problematic, as it might be unduly influenced by recent experiences. Thebiggest hurdle to thegeneralizability of our results is the sample size and composition. Although students are commonly used and they were supplemented with participants who work in the field of finance, oursamplewasrelativelyyoungandperhapslackingsomeexperience. To counterbalance this, the sample would need to include older individuals with more work experience in the field of finance. 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Theprojectistwoyearsunderwayandyourteaminformedyoutheywould need another three years to complete it. Due to aging of technology, your team believes the bulk of the salesrevenueswould occur in five years after introduction, should you decide to continue with the project. Your mar­keting and development team provided you with the following data: Costs incurred to date: 7 millioneur. Costs/sales Years 12345 Expected future costs 3 2 2 Expected sales 1 3 3 2 1 Note. In millioneur. Cognitive reflection test (crt): 1. A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost? cents 2. If it takes 5 machines 5 minutes to make 5 widgets, how long would it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets? minutes 3. In a lake, there is a patch of lily pads. Every day, the patch doubles in size. If it takes 48 days for the patch to cover the entire lake, how long would it take for the patch to cover half of the lake? days Baudrillard, Ballard, Virilio: potencial integralne nesrece v dobi simulacije Branko Žlicar Alma Mater Europaea, Slovenija branko_zlicar@yahoo.com ©2024Branko Žlicar Povzetek. Namenpricujocegaclankajeinterpretacijanekaterihvidikov BaudrillardoveteorijesimulacijeinsimulakraspomocjoBallardovega romana Trk terViriliovegapojmovanjaintegralnenesrece.Baudrillard in Virilio vsak na svoj nacin analizirata sodobno družbo simulacije in simulakrov,kiznovimitehnološkimizmožnostmivtemeljuspreminja clovekov ontološki položaj v svetu. Ballardov roman Trk je eno redkih del, ki jih Baudrillard v svojem delu (1999) citira, pri cemer ga opre­deljuje kot roman,znacilen za dobo simulacije. Baudrillardovo teorijo simulakra in simulacije opredeljuje vtis temeljne brezizhodnosti, ki je posledicaimplozijesmisla,brisanjamejmedresnicniminlažnim,uki­nitvesamezmožnostizunanjereferenceterkoncapozicije(kriticnega) subjekta. Medtem ko ima pojem integralne nesrece pri Viriliu apo­kalipticne podtone, Baudrillardov ekvivalent pa najdemo v koncepciji implozije sistema/smisla, se obravnava osredotoca na odkrivanje mo-rebitnihpozitivnihoz. »emancipatornih«zasnov,kijihlahkonajdemo pribranjuobehavtorjev.KtemudodajamošeBallardovromanTrk kot tretjielement,kiraziskujekompleksnostodnosamedclovekominnje­govimitehnološkimidosežki. Vtemokviruclanekposkušaodgovoriti na vprašanje, ali obstaja pot izven simuliranega labirinta hiperrealno­sti, ki bi lahko bila zacrtanav sami zasnovi Baudrillardove misli. Kljucne besede: trk, integralnanesreca, simulacija, simulaker Baudrillard,Ballard, Virilio: The Potential of the Integral Accident in the Era of Simulation Abstract.ThepurposeofthisarticleistointerpretsomeaspectsofBau­drillard’s theory of simulation and simulacra through Ballard’s novel Crash andVirilio’snotionoftheintegralaccident. BaudrillardandVir­ilio each, in their own way, analyse the contemporary society of sim­ulation and simulacra, which is fundamentally changing man’s onto-logicalpositioninthe world through new technological capabilities. Ballard’s novel Crash is one of few books that Baudrillard cites in his https://doi.org/10.26493/2630-4082.56.227-236 Branko Žlicar work,definingitasanovelcharacteristicoftheageofsimulation(Bau­drillard 1999). Baudrillard’s theory of simulacra and simulation is de­finedby the impression of a fundamentalhopelessness,resultingfrom the implosion of meaning, the blurring of the boundaries between the real and the false, the abolition of the very possibility of external ref­erence, and the end of the position of the (critical) subject. While Vir­ilio’s notion of integral accident has apocalyptic overtones and Bau­drillard’s equivalent is found in the concept of the implosion of the system/meaning, the focus of thispaper is on discovering the possible positive or ‘emancipatory’ conceptions that can be found in the read­ing of both authors. Tothiswe addBallard’snovel Crash as a third ele­ment, which explores the complexity of the relationship between man andhistechnologicalachievements.Inthiscontext,thearticleattempts to answer the question of whether there is a way out of the simulated labyrinth ofhyperrealitythatmightbeoutlinedintheveryconception of Baudrillard’s thought. Key Words: crash, integral accident, simulation, simulacra Uvod Clanek skozi obravnavo izbranih delov Baudrillardove teorije simulakra in simulacije, Viriliovega pojma integralna nesreca ter Ballardovega ro­mana Trkišcepovezavomedtremiavtorji,kibilahkoodprlapotdoalter­nativnih interpretacij Baudrillardove misli. Besedilo se zacenja z obrav­navo Viriliovega pojma integralne nesrece, nadaljuje z obravnavo Ballar­dovegaromana Trk, zakljucujepazsklepnimpoglavjem,kipredstavljeno zasnovopovežeinpostavivokvirBaudrillardoveteorijesimulacijetersi­mulakra. Tri avtorje združuje skupni horizont, v katerem se pojavlja te­matizacija pojma nesreca/nezgoda, ki se na eni strani nanaša na clove­kovoproblematicno umestitevvdružbo,zaznamovano zrazvojeminfor­macijsketehnologije,nadrugistrani pana nesrecokotnapako vsistemu. Nesrecaimatupomennepredvidenenapake,kiprekineustaljenodelova­njesistema:gospodarskekrize,virusnepandemije,teroristicneganapada, racunalniških virusov itd. Vpricujocemuvodunakratkopojasnimoizbironaslova.»Dobasimu­lacije« oznacuje cetrto stopnjo podobe v Baudrillardovikategorizaciji, ki ponazarja postopno brisanje meja med realnostjo in podobo oz. mode-lom, simulakrom.Podoba kot odblesk globoke realnosti, podoba, ki ma-skirainponarejanaravoglobokerealnosti,podoba,kimaskiraodsotnost globoke realnosti, ter podoba, ki nima zveze s katero koli realnostjo, je svojlastnicistisimulaker(Baudrillard1999,15).PoBaudrillardusenaha­jamo v cetrtem stadiju podobe, v katerem podoba ni vec reprezentacija v smislu relacije z izvirnikom, temvec neodvisen, simuliran model real-nosti, hiperrealnost. Temeljna zagata dobe simulacije je v tem, da ni vec nobenegakriterija,kibiomogocalrazlikovanjemedresnicniminlažnim, teritorijem in zemljevidom, originalom in kopijami. Posledicno pride do »implozije smisla«, ki onemogoci klasicno pozicijo subjekt – objekt ter iznici vsakršno možnost kriticne distance. Doba simulacije ni smiselna, racionalna,pravtakoneabsurdnaaliiracionalna:processimulacijedeluje tako, da proizvaja vse možne naracije na ravni medsebojno zamenljivih znakov. »Potencial nesrece« se nanaša na pozitivno pojmovanje nesrece/akci­dence v sistemu hiperrealnosti, ki »zmoti« delovanje procesa simulacije, s tem pa odpira možnosti za nove konceptualne zastavitve. Realno kot drugo simulakra v Baudrillardovem delu ne izgine, ampak na parado­ksalen nacin vztraja kot nedefinirani preostanek. Baudrillard v svojem delu mestoma na sublimen nacin pokaže tocke, s katerih bi lahko zari­saliprihodnjestrategijeuporaprotisistemusimulakrov:enastrategijaje, denimo, v izzivu kriticne teorije, da najde nove nacine pisanja. Clanek v tem okviru obravnava razlicne pomene nesrece pri Baudrillardu, Viriliu in Ballardu. Virilio: integralna nesreca Virilio »integralno nesreco« definira kot tisto, kar je inherentno vsakr­šni ideji tehnološkega napredka. V tem smisluimatehnološki razvojvse­lej že svojo hrbtno, negativno plat. V delu Izvirna nesreca Virilio (2007, 10) zapiše: »Izum ladjeali parnika hkrati pomeni izum brodoloma.Izum vlakapomeniizumželezniškenesrecealiiztirjenja.Izumdružinskegaav­tomobila obenem prinaša verižno trcenje na avtocesti.« Integralnost ne­srece razumemo v dveh pomenih: nesreca je inherentna vsakemu tehno­loškemu dosežku, na drugi strani pa jo zaznamuje paradigmatska spre­membavsamipercepcijinesrec,kijihvdobivisokorazviteinformacijske družbe lahko spremljamo na daljavo. V tem smislu nesrece niso vec lo-kalizirane (vezane na specificen cas in prostor), temvec so univerzalno dostopne v neposrednem medijskem prenašanju (vecje število ljudi, ki spremlja televizijski prenos iste nesrece ali istega dogodka). V casu hi-pnega prenosa informacij in medijske pokritosti dogodkov se zdi, da se je svet »skrcil«, postal manjši, s tem pa tudi klavstrofobicnejši. Pri Viri­liu je kljucnega pomena nesreca oz. nezgoda, ki jo prinaša tehnologija komunikacije na daljavo, ki hitrost prižene do skrajne tocke takojšnjega prenosa,pri cemer grezapostopno zmanjšanjeoz.ukinitevtakocasovne kotprostorskerazdaljemedodhodominprihodom,zacetkominkoncem Branko Žlicar vrazlicnihdružbenihkontekstih.S tempridedo nesrece/nezgodev sami temporalni strukturi. Virilio v delu Informacijska bomba (2000) pred­ stavi tezo, da je katastrofi atomske bombe sledila nic manj katastrofalna informacijska bomba, ki jo je omogocil napredek informacijske tehnolo­ gije. Apokalipticni ton je med drugim treba postaviti v kontekst casa, v katerem je knjiga bila izdana: leta 2000, torej na prelomu tisocletja. Pri Viriliu v kategorijo cloveško ustvarjenih oz. »izumljenih« nesrec, ki se locijo od naravnih katastrof, spadajo tudi vojni konflikti, gospodar­ skekrizeindogodki,kotjenedavnapandemijavirusacovid-19.Nadrugi strani Viriliopišetudio»nesrecivseh nesrec«,stempaodpirahorizont apokalipticnegamišljenja.Pritemnipovsemjasno,kajnatancno jeta ul­ timativnanesreca,nezgodavsehnezgod,pricemerobstajavecmožnosti: nesrecakotdokoncnaprevladavirtualneganadfizicnim,popolnainercija (pasivnost),gospodarskizlomvirtualnihtrgovvecjihrazsežnosti.Vkon­ tekstu nesrec/nezgod/katastrof Baudrillard posebno pozornost posveca teroristicnim napadom, ki jim posveti knjigo z naslovom Duh terorizma (2003). V delu Hitrost osvoboditve Virilio (1996, 28) zapiše: Ce je, kot trdi Epikur, cas akcidenca akcidenc, tedaj s tehnologijami splošne interaktivnosti vstopamo v dobo nezgode sedanjika,saj slo-vita teleprisotnost na daljavo ni nic drugega kot nenadna katastrofa realnostitegasedanjegatrenutka,kijenašedinivstopvtrajanje. Od Einsteinanaprej pavsakdove,dajepravtakotudinašvstopvrazse­žnost realnega sveta. Odslej se realni cas telekomunikacij ne nanaša vec zgolj na zamaknjeni cas, temvec na neko drugo kronologijo. Ena kljucnih razlik med obema mislecema je v tem, da Virilio v svo­jih obravnavah privzema klasicno opozicijo med fizicno neposrednostjo in abstraktnostjo simulakrov, pri cemer favorizira vse, kar spada v prvo kategorijo. V tem okviru podoba nadomesti materijo, neposredno izku­šnjo. Baudrillardjev svojemdelu precejradikalnejši,sajhiperrealnost ne nadomešcatradicionalnopojmovanerealnosti,ampakjovprocesusimu­lacije iznici s tem, da jo producira in reproducira z modeli realnosti. Ce že govorimo o apokalipsi, se je pri Baudrillardu ta že zgodila z implozijo smisla.VdeluIzvenzaslonaą Baudrillard(2002,110)vcitiranemodlomku neposredno naslavlja Virilia: ą V angleškem prevodu se naslov glasi Screened Out, kar lahko prevajamo na razlicne na-cine, izzasloniti, raztegniti zaslon, biti izkljucen iz zaslona, pri cemer vsaka variacija im­plicira specificne pomene. Pri tem se pojavljajo številna vprašanja, kot je denimo nasle­dnje: kdo je tisti, ki je izrinjen iz »zaslona«? Je to morda subjekt? Sanjati o koncni nesreci pomeni podleci iluziji konca. To pomeni pozabiti,dajevirtualnostsamavirtualnaindapodefinicijinjendo­koncni prihod, njena apokalipsa, ne more prevzeti moci realnosti. Apokalipse virtualnega in realnega casa ne bo ravno zato, ker realni cas ukinja linearni cas in trajanje, s tem pa tudi razsežnost, v ka­teri bi se lahkorazvila do svojih skrajnih meja. Ni nobene linearno­eksponentne funkcije Nesrece, prav tako ni nobene tovrstne funk-cije za nic drugega. Možnost udejanjenja ostaja stvar nakljucja. Ra-dikalni prelom z realnim, ki ga povzroca virtualno, zaton ali kolaps casa,kigaprinašarealnicas,nasvarujepredkoncnoeksterminacijo. Virtualnisistem,kotvsakdrug,jepogubljenstem,kosširitvijouni-cuje lastne pogoje obstoja. Ballard: trk James Graham Ballard v romanu Trk iz leta 1973, ki ga v Simulakru in simulaciji obravnava tudi Baudrillard, raziskuje tematiko cloveške ume-šcenosti v sodobno družbo, spolnosti in nasilja. Trk se na eni strani na­naša nadobesednitrkvsmisluavtomobilskihnesrec,na drugipanapro­blematicno srecanjemed clovekom intehnologijo,kiodpirakompleksna razmerjamedspolnostjo,nasiljem,življenjeminsmrtjo.Poromanujebil leta 1996 posnet istoimenski film v režiji Davida Cronenberga. Trk lahko v skladu z opisom avtorja razumemo kot »tehnološko pornografijo«, v kolikorvecjidelromanazavzemajopodrobniopisiseksualnihaktovvav­tomobilih, ki se osredotocajo na možnost seksualnega vzburjenja ob ka­tastrofalnih dogodkih,kot so avtomobilske nesrece, vendar zgodba z na­slavljanjemeksistencialneproblematiketematskopresegaklasicneokvire pornografskeliterature. Oglejmosiopisdoživljanjaavtomobilskihnesrec enega izmed likov v romanu (Ballard 1997, 10): Pri Vaughanu je vsak razbiti avto sprožil drhtavico vznemirjenja, tako je bilo z zapletenimi geometrijami vdrtega odbijaca, z nepri-cakovanimi razlicicami zmeckanih hladilniških reber, z grotesknim previsom instrumentne plošce, ki jo je potisnilo proti voznikovemu koraku kot v nekakšnem kalibriranem dejanju strojne felacije. Inti-mni cas in prostor enega samega cloveka je za vselej okamenel v tej pajcevini kromiranih nožev in razpokanega stekla. Avtomobilska nesreca tu deluje kot vpis v realnost, ki omogoca vznik subjekta v prostoru in casu nesrece. Subjekt se paradoksalno vzpostavlja šele stem,da v nesreciumre ali pa je vsaj življenjskoogrožen.Obenem Branko Žlicar gre za proces individualizacije v smislu izhoda iz anonimnosti: en sam clovek, ki »okameni« v nasilnem trcenju med organskim telesom in ma-terijo, pri cemer trcenje pridobi naboj spolnosti. Avtomobilske nesrece nimajonobenega moralnegapredznaka: Ballardvseskozi poudarja,daso nesrece same po sebi nesmiselne, absurdne. Problem Vaughanove mor­bidne obsedenosti je v tem, da avtomobilske nesrece išce, jih vnaprej na-crtuje,stem paravnoizkljucujekvalitetonakljucnosti,akcidence, organ-skosti. Nesreca je po definiciji dogodek, ki ga ni mogoce predvideti: je anomalija, odklon od vsakdanje racionalnosti nacrtovanja. Baudrillard (1999, 141) o Trku zapiše naslednje: V Crashu ni vec fikcije niti realnosti, hiperrealnost ukine obe. Celo ni vec možne kriticne regresije. Ta mutirani in spremenjeni svet si­mulacijeinsmrti,tanasilnoseksualnisvet,abrezželje,polnposilje­nih in nasilnih, a kot nevtraliziranih teles, ta kovinski in intenzivno plocevinasti svet, a brez cutnosti, hipertehnicen, brez finalnosti – je doberali slab?Tegane bomonikolivedeli. Preprosto fascinanten je, ne da bi ta fascinacija implicirala vrednostno sodbo. V tem je cudež Crasha. Seksualnost je tu izpraznjena vseh afektov: ni želje, zadovoljitve,izpol­njenosti, prav tako ni nobene možnosti vzpostavitve intimnega odnosa dveh subjektov. Chaudhuri kot prevladujoce obcutje tako v romanu kot filmu vidi žalovanje v obliki melanholije. Protagonisti romana s prome­tnimi nesrecami vedno znova poskušajo vzpostaviti željo, ki funkcionira kot izgubljeni objekt. Vsakic znova je treba doživeti intenzivnost trka, ki udeležence vsaj trenutno zavaruje pred apatijo, praznino (Chaudhuri 2001, 64). V zvezi s tem Baudrillard (1999) izpostavlja opise genitalij in seksualnih aktov v izkljucno tehnicnem ter sterilnem jeziku Kljub Ballardovemu namenu, da bi Trk razumeli kot »prvi tehnološki pornografski roman«, se pri branju zdi, da v celotnem besedilu ni no-bene pornografske vsebine (Ballard 1997, 211). V seksualnih aktih ni no-bene zapeljivosti, erotike, prav tako ni namigov o možnosti zadovoljitve. Protagonisti hitijo od ene nesrece k drugi, dokler ne prispejo do tiste, ki se konca s smrtnim izidom. Njihovo delovanje bi pri tem lahko med drugimrazumelivsmisluBataillovegapojmovanjaekonomikepresežno­sti in trošenja, ki se zoperstavlja nacelom racionalnosti (Cord 2017). Tu je treba poudariti, da ima fascinacija pri Baudrillardu poseben pomen: greza»hladno«fascinacijoznakovnadznaki,kinepredpostavljanobene vrednostne sodbe ali potenciala za vzpostavitev relacije med subjektom inobjektom. Vsakršnarealnostjeproduktsimulacije,kijevseobsegajoca Day v clanku o Baudrillardovem branju Trka izpostavlja pomen Vau­ghanovega spodletelega poskusa, da bi povzrocil samomorilsko prome-tnonesreco,vkateribiumrlafilmskaigralkaElizabethTaylor.Day(2000) ta moment v romanu bere kot realno, ki se upira oz. zoperstavlja simu­lacijihiperrealnega. Dejstvo, da je ta spodleteli poskus postavljen na sam zacetekromana,lahkoberemokot»napako«vsistemusimulakrov.Vtem smislu gre za interpretacijo, ki se zoperstavlja Baudrillardovi. V zvezi s temlahkoizpostavimoironicenpodtonromana,kisenahajavdejstvu,da prometne nesrece kot take v sodobni družbi, prepredeni s prometno in-frastrukturo in cestnim omrežjem, izgubijo naboj fascinantnega, šokan­tnega spektakla. Reducirane so na raven vsakdanje statistike v rubrikah crne kronike. Ce si protagonisti romana prizadevajo z nacrtnimi nesre-camikogarkolišokirati,jimvtempravgotovospodleti.Nesrecesožein­korporirane v sistem, kar pomeni, da ga ne morejo ogroziti. Ce izhajamo iz marksisticnega mišljenja, kapitalisticni sistem že vsebuje »semena« la-stnega unicenja,alivViriliovemkontekstu: vsebikot negativnostže nosi integralno nesreco. Ponavljajoce se gospodarske krize v tem smislu niso izjema, ampak so lastne notranjemu delovanju kapitalisticnega sistema. Eden od osrednjih likov romana, ki pomenljivo nosi ime avtorja, opi­suje svojo prvo izkušnjo udeleženosti v prometni nesreci, pri cemer do-godeknositežoiniciacijskegaobreda,paradigmatskegaprelomavnjego­vem osebnem življenju (Ballard 1997, 34): Po puhlosti vsakdanjega življenja in njihovih pridušenih dramah je bila vsa moja organska sposobnost za spopad s telesnimi poškod­bami že davno otopela ali pozabljena. Trcenje je bila edina resnicna izkušnja, ki sem jo doživel po dolgih letih. Prvikrat sem se fizicno soocil z lastnim telesom, z neizcrpno enciklopedijo bolecin in iz­lockov, s sovražnim pogledom drugih ljudi in z dejstvom mrtvega cloveka. Kersomenenehno bombardirali spropagandooprometni varnosti, mi je bilo skoraj v olajšanje, da sem se zapletel v resnicno nesreco. Nesreca fascinira predvsem zaradi fizicne realnosti trka, ki »aktivira« telostem,dagaodpreintenzitetibolecine,odprtihran,adrenalina.Cord izpostavlja, da lahko ta moment v romanu med drugim razumemo s po­mocjo konceptov »želecih strojev« in »teles brez organov«, ki sta jih v njunemskupnem delurazvilaDeleuzeinGuattari.Avtomobilske nesrece vtemokviruodpirajomožnostinoveprodukciježelje,kininegativnoza­ Branko Žlicar znamovana zmankom ali s kompenzacijo,ampaks pozitivnoprodukcijo novih oblik »želecih strojev«, ki so produkt srecanja organske in neor­ganske materije (Cord 2017). Vsvetusimulakrovkotgeneriranihmodelovrealnostisomerilaza»re­snicno izkušnjo« prignana do skrajnosti: obcutek resnicnosti je tu pogo-jen s kontekstom smrtne nevarnosti, v katerem se odvijajoprometne ne­srece.Ceseželimoprebitiizsistemasimulacije,jetrebazastavitiživljenje. Zadnji del odlomka implicira pomen avtomobilske nesrece kot strategije upora proti sistemu, ki seže onkraj individualnega okvira (samouresni-citev v spolnem užitku, nasilju, destrukciji). Protagonist romana najde olajšanje v tem, da z udeleženostjo v prometnih nesrecah na nek nacin kriticnonaslavlja»propagandooprometnivarnosti«. Tuselahkoozremo v morebitno prihodnost samovozecih oz. »avtonomnih« avtomobilov, ki vozijo na podlagi kombinacije senzorjev, radarjev, kamer in umetne in-teligence. Eden izmed glavnih ciljev avtonomnih avtomobilov je zmanj­šanještevilaprometnihnesrec.Edenizmedargumentovjevtem,dajeza veliko vecino avtomobilskih nesrec odgovoren »cloveški dejavnik«, ki ga je posledicno treba zmanjšati oz. regulirati. Hiperrealni svet simulakrov temelji na modelih, ki razlicne vidike življenja poskušajo urejati po vna­prej dolocenih »scenarijih« oz. predvidevanjih: sem spada tudi organiza­cija prometne infrastrukture in optimizacija omrežij, katere koncni cilj je eliminacija nesrec kot nepredvidljivih, nezaželenih »napak« v sistemu. Cord(2017,18–19)vtemkontekstupredlagatezo,pokateriekstremnoob­našanje protagonistov romana lahko razumemo kot obliko radikalnega odpora oz. katastroficno strategijo ali strategijo katastrofe. Baudrillard: realno kot nesreca hiperrealnosti Kljub splošnemuvtisu fatalizma inbrezizhodnosti ob natancnejšem bra-nju pri Baudrillardu najdemo številne tocke, ki odpirajo možnosti za mi-šljenje odpora proti sistemu simulacijein simulakrov. Namig, ki podpira mišljenjevtejsmeri,najdemovsamizasnoviBaudrillardovegapojmova­njahiperrealnosti. Baudrillard vescas govorio»izgubi realnosti«, stem paprivzemapravtistonostalgicnodržo,kijosicerkritizira.Dobasimula­cijezlogicnegavidikanebismeladopušcatinobenega»prej«ali»potem«, ki bi funkcioniral kot »drugo« simulakra, saj smo vselej že v sistemu si­mulakrov, ki ne dopušca nobene zunanje pozicije. Ce tovrstna zunanja pozicija ni mogoca, potem Baudrillard sploh ne bi mogel pisati o hiper­realnosti oz. privzeti kriticne drže v pomenu filozofske teorije. To velja tudi v primeru, ce pristanemo na možnost, da Baudrillard piše »zgolj« na deskriptivni ravni. Vsak opis že nujno predpostavlja kriticno držo. K temudodajmo,daBaudillardzreferencami na»patafiziko«inobcasnimi namigi,dabi bilotreba izumitinov nacinpisanja,šezdalecnezapade v apaticnost ali fatalizem, ki ne bi dopušcal možnosti odpora proti sis-temu simulakrov. Številne kritike, ki Baudrillardaoznacujejo za nihilista, sopovršinskealienodimenzionalne. VzvezistemMerrin(2001,88)trdi, da nihilizem, ki ga opisuje Baudrillard, ni njegov nihilizem, temvec nihi­lizem same podobe in procesa simulacije. Realno kot »drugo« simulakra v Baudrillardovem delu ostaja nedefinirano, kar ni nujno pomanjkljivost njegove misli: lahko jo razumemo kot odprtost za nove interpretativne možnosti.EnaizmedmožnostijebranjeBaudrillardaspomocjoDerrida­jevega pojma, ki je v angleškem prevodu zapisan kot hauntology, nanaša pa se na spektralno prisotnost necesa, kar preganja, tudi straši (Derrida 2006).˛ Realnojevhiperrealnostiprisotnonanacinspektralneprezence. V jedru procesa simulacije realno vztraja kot nesreca, »negativni« ele­ment,kiseganimožnoznebiti zmodeliranjemhiperrealnosti.Pritemje v ospredju predvsem pomen nesrece kot akcidence: je tisto, cesar ni moc v celoti predvideti, napovedati, nadzorovati. Na abstraktni ravni lahko pojmovanjenesrece apliciramo tudi na Baudrillardovo teorijo simulacije insimulakra,pri cemer realno v hiperrealnosti dobi znacaj akcidence oz. nepredvidenega elementa. Na tem mestu je treba izpostaviti pomen si­tuacionisticnega gibanja in Deborda, ki je s svojim konceptom spektakla pomembno vplival na Baudrillardovo misel (Debord 1999). Emancipa­torni zastavek situacionisticne misli je predvsem v tem, da je realnost, ki bisezoperstavilaspektaklom,trebašeleizumiti.Simulacijanemorepov­sem uspešno ustvariti ali reproducirati realnosti, ne da bi se v tem pro-cesu nekaj izgubilo. Ce v sklepnem delu ostanemo v horizontu romana Trk: sodobniclovek sena razlicnenacine zapleta v nesrece, pri cemer gre za trcenje z realnim. Prav tu lahko išcemo možnosti nove subjektivitete, ki se odpira na mejah hiperrealnosti. Literatura Ballard, James Graham. 1997. Trk. Prevedel Jure Potokar. Ljubljana:dzs. Baudrillard, Jean. 1999. Simulaker in simulacija; popoln zlocin. Prevedla Anja Kosjek in Stojan Pelko. Ljubljana:šou, Študentska založba. ———.2002.ScreenedOut.PrevedelChrisTurner.LondoninNewYork:Verso. ˛ Vangleškemprevoduhauntologygrezazdružitevbesedhaunting (preganjanje,strašenje) in ontology (ontologija). V slovenšcininiustreznega prevoda, ki bi ohranil Derridajev pomen sintagme, zato v clanku navajam angleški prevod. Branko Žlicar ———. 2003. The Spirit of Terrorism. Prevedel Chris Turner. New York: Verso. Chaudhuri, Shohini. 2001. »Witnessing Death: Ballard and Cronenberg’s Crash. Strategies: Journal of Theory, Culture & Politics 14 (1): 63–75. Cord, Florian. 2017. J. G. Ballard’s Politics: Late Capitalism, Power, and the Pa-taphysics of Resistance. Anglia Book Series 54. Berlin: De Gruyter. Cronenberg, David,režiser. 1996. Chrash. Alliance Communications, 1ura, 40 min. Day,Aidan. 2000. »BallardandBaudrillard:Close ReadingCrash.« English 49 (159): 277–293. Debord, Guy. 1999. Družba spektakla; Komentarji k Družbi spektakla; Panegi­rik: prvi del. Prevedli Meta Štular in Tanja Lesnicar Pucko. Ljubljana:šou, Študentska založba. Derrida, Jacques. 2006. Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, The Work of Mourning & the New International. Prevedla Peggy Kamuf. New York in London: Routledge Classics. Merrin, William. 2001. »To Play with Phantoms: Jean Baudrillard and the Evil Demon of the Simulacrum.« Economy and Society 30 (1): 85–111. Virilio, Paul. 1996. Hitrost osvoboditve. Prevedel Stojan Pelko. Ljubljana: Štu­dentska organizacija Univerze. ———. 2000. The Information Bomb. Prevedel Chris Turner. London: Verso. ———. 2007. The Original Accident. Prevedla Julie Rose. Cambridge: Polity. In memoriam Milestones in Nenad Mišcevic’s Philosophical Career (1950–2024) Janez Bregant University of Maribor, Slovenia janez.bregant@um.si © 2024 Janez Bregant Zagreb, 1965. Nenad’s high school philosophy professor,as he himself re­called, always wore a spotlessly bright suit and a bow tie. He had a habit of addressing his pupils in a formal manner, which made a great impres­siononNenad,whointerpretedthisasanironicequalitybetweenteacher and pupils. The professorhosted the Marxist Circle, whichNenad, aself-proclaimed ‘nerd,’ joined in his first school year. Nenad adored writing papers and the Circle was a good opportunity for him to speak publicly, somethinghealsoenjoyed.For hisfirstperformance Nenadchose one of the Stalinist Informbiro books, which he thought would fit well with the nature of the Circle. After the presentation of the paper, the profes­sor called Nenad aside to tell him that he had not been very lucky in his choice of topic: evidently, Nenad did not have the faintest idea what he was talking about in his presentation. His mother was a professor of English and Russian, so to spite her, Nenad wanted to do science. Nevertheless, he asked the professor what this philosophy was that he was lecturing on. Even though the profes­sor considered the fifteen-year-old Nenad too young for it, he suggested that he read Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy. After read­ing the first hundred pages, the thick, brown book took him by surprise andchanged hisviewonwhathewantedtodowithhis life.Asahigh school graduate, Nenad became the youngest member of the Croatian Philosophical Society. ‘Life was nice,’ as he recalled. Paris, 1978. Disillusioned with postmodernist philosophy, Nenad, in search of something else, accidentally discovered the Philosophy of Lan­guage seminar on Wittgenstein done in a somewhat analytical way. He soon came across the works of Quine, which he did not understand be­cause of his continental philosophical upbringing. Everything changed https://doi.org/10.26493/2630-4082.56.237-239 Janez Bregant when Nenad began to read Austin, whose style made a great impression on him. Proving that something does not make sense does not neces­sarily mean hiding behind metaphors, literary theory, and erudition. A disagreement can also be expressed by means of arguments: with them we say openly what we think and do not seek to hide. Nenad thereby found out that philosophy can also be done in a different way from the continental one, i.e. in the analytical way. He received the advice that it would be good to start learning analytic philosophy by reading Dum­mett’s book on Frege, the book that was very much in fashion in analytic philosophy back then. Despairing of the postmodernist scene, Nenad abandoned hisphdin Paris, even though it was already finished, and began to work on a new one in Ljubljana under the analytical supervision of Frane Jerman. Here hefinallyobtainedhisphdinphilosophyandbrokenewgroundinSlove­nia concerning the philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology, cog­nitive theory, and political philosophy. Maribor, 1993. The first generation of philosophy students at the Univer­sity of Maribor eagerly awaited their first lecture. Nenad entered the lec­ture hall, huge, alive, curious, a giant in every sense of the word. The em­bodiment of the students’ idea of a philosopher, a Socrates of our time with an extraordinary talent for languages. An animator, an endless de­veloper of ideas, a passionate debater, and an engaged public intellectual. One of the pioneers of analytical philosophy in Slovenia and, paradoxi­cal as it may sound, one of the most influential ones, who always treated students as equal commentators. Nenad was able to explain philosoph­ical problems, no matter how complex, in a simple way that everyone could understand. He was a versatile philosopher, which is rare nowa­days. There was hardly a philosophical problem that did not attract Ne­nad’s attention and hardly a philosophical debate to which he did not contribute original insights. Philosophy, which is regarded as an abstract discipline that explores complex questions about the world and society, sounded easy coming from his lips. Philosophicalthinkingisgenerallybelievedtohavefewpracticalimpli­cations,butNenad wasprooftothe contrary. Followingthe geographical and political changes in the former Yugoslavia, he engaged in public de­batesonhumanrights,civilliberties,democracy,nationalism,patriotism, etc. from the very beginning and significantly enriched the debates with his extensive interdisciplinary knowledge and incisive analytical mind. Nenad’sregularcolumnsintheRijekanewspapercalledNovilist,hispub­lic appearances at round tables and his interviews, which are still today a model for clear, honest and reasoned public dialogue on the complex issues of coexistence, are, among other things, an invaluable contribu­tion to the popularisation of philosophy. Nenad dismissed the myth that analytic philosophers were not politically and socially engaged critical intellectuals and always put the search for truth at the forefront. He was truly a Renaissance figure and the embodiment of philosophical eros. To meet Nenad was to be permanently influenced, and to be his friend was a privilege. He will be greatly missed! Recenzija Vita Poštuvan in Mojca Cerce (ur.), Psiholog v dilemi: eticne vsebine in eticna zavest v praksi Samanta Hervol Univerza na Primorskem, Slovenija hervol.samanta@gmail.com Lucia Rojs Univerza na Primorskem, Slovenija lucia.rojs@iam.upr.si © 2024 Samanta Hervol in Lucia Rojs Psiholog se tekom svoje kariere skorajda neizogibno sreca z razlicnimi eticno obcutljivimi situacijami in eticnimi dilemami, ne glede na to, na katerempodrocjudeluje.Eticniizzivi,skaterimisesoocamo,sovsekom­pleksnejši, ob tem pa v slovenskem prostoru do sedaj ni bilo znanstvene monografije, ki bi sistematicno in celovito obravnavala razlicne vidike etike na podrocju psihologije. Knjiga Psiholog v dilemi: eticne vsebine in eticnazavest vpraksi, katere urednici sta izr. prof. dr. Vita Poštuvan, univ. dipl.psih.,indr. MojcaCerce, univ. dipl. psih.,jebilaobjavljenaleta2023 priZaložbiUniverzenaPrimorskem.Vnjejjesodelovalokar63avtorjev, kidelujejonarazlicnihpodrocjihpsihološkegadela. Delopredstavljane­pogrešljivvirinformacijinoporoprieticnihvprašanjihterdilemah,kise nam porajajo, obenem pa ponuja številna izhodišca in smernice, ki nas lahkopritemvodijo.Bralcuponujacelovitpregledeticnihvsebinterpri­našapoglobljenvpogled vspecificneeticnevidike,povezanezrazlicnimi podrocji psihološkega delovanja. V prvem sklopu, »O etiki in etiki v psihologiji« knjiga ponudi poglo­bljen vpogled v opredelitve etike in predstavi osnovne etiške paradigme. Avtorji poudarjajo, kako pomembno je, da vedenja in odlocitve strokov­njakov niso prepušcene le osebnim eticnim standardom, ampak da pri tem sledijo poklicni etiki. Ravno poklicna etika v psihologiji je tema, ki je obravnavana v nadaljevanju, saj nam knjiga ponuja zanimiv vpogled v razvoj eticnih standardov v psihologiji tako v tujini kot pri nas ter nam s tem hkrati nudi pregled eticnih standardov (Kodeks poklicne etike psi-hologov, Metakodeks etike Evropske zveze psiholoških združenj (efpa), https://doi.org/10.26493/2630-4082.56.241-244 Samanta Hervol in Lucia Rojs Univerzalna deklaracija eticnih nacel za psihologe (Mednarodna zveza psihološkihzdruženj),Moralnikodeksetike(efpa)itd.),nakateresepsi­hologi,ne glede na podrocjedela,naslanjajo. V Slovenijiza eticnikodeks psihologov skrbi Komisija za eticna vprašanja (kev), ki sledi novostim na podrocju etike in tudi aktivno izvaja dejavnosti za izboljšanje eticne zavesti. Knjiga nam v sklopu »Eticne vsebine pri delu psihologov na razlicnih podrocjih«ponujadragocenvpogledvraznolikostdelapsihologovvSlo­veniji in eticne dileme, s katerimi se pri tem srecujejo, po drugi strani pa tudi v skupna in nekatera vedno znova ponavljajoca se eticna vpraša­nja. Ceprav sepoglavjananašajo na številna razlicna podrocja,so enotno strukturirana, kar omogoca enostaven vpogled v vsebino. Tako avtorji vseh poglavij sprva orišejo podrocje, na katerem delujejo, ter izposta­vijo pomembne eticne standarde, na katere se naslanjajo, nato pa izpo­stavijo eticne dileme, ki so specificne za njihovo podrocje psihologije. V zadnjem koraku predstavijo proces eticnega odlocanja tako, da predsta­vijoustrezna eticnanacela,kisorelevantna zaspecificenprimer. Vsebin-ska širina knjige se kaže v tem, da avtorji poglavij,objavljenih v tem delu knjige, delujejo na zelo raznolikih podrocjih dela psihologa (v vzgoji in izobraževanju,vzdravstvenidejavnosti,vpsihološkemsvetovanju,vcen­trihzasocialnodelo,vvarstvenodelovnihcentrih,vdelovnihorganizaci­jah, na podrocjih medicine dela, prometa in športa, na podrocju športne psihologije, v policiji, v kriznih situacijah ob nesrecah, v Slovenski voj-ski, v zaporih, na podrocju sodnega izvedenstva, na podrocju razisko­vanja in v glasbenopsihološkem raziskovanju) in predstavijo zapletena eticna vprašanja, ki jih je na posameznih podrocjih treba ustrezno na­sloviti. V sklopu »Eticno obcutljive teme pri delu psihologov« so naslovljena podrocja,kjersoeticnipremislekišeposebejkompleksni.Posameznapo­glavjaso usmerjenavrazlicnapodrocjapraksealiraziskav,kivkljucujejo zapletene moralne vidike in zahtevajo skrbno upoštevanje eticnih nacel ter smernic. Izpostavljeni so izzivi, s katerimi se psihologi srecujejov so-dobni družbi, vkljucno z vprašanji. povezanimi s kulturno raznolikostjo, tehnološkim napredkom, samomorilnim vedenje ter z ustvarjanjem me-dijskih vsebin za otroke in mladostnike. Poglavja v tem skopu predsta­vljajo celovit vpogled v specificne eticne izzive, hkrati pa ponujajo smer­nicezaeticnoodlocanjeinravnanjevpraksi,karpredstavljakljucenvidik eticnega delovanja psihologov. Poudarjeno je, da se od psihologovprica­kujejo nenehna eticna refleksija, skladnost s strokovnimi smernicami ter sprejemanje premišljenih odlocitev, ki dajejo prednost dobrobiti in pra­vicam posameznikov, skupnosti in družbe. Nadaljejevsklopu»Eticne vsebine vprocesuucenjainformiranjapsi­hologa« predstavljeno poucevanje etike v okviru študijskih programov razlicnih oddelkov in fakultet: Oddelka za psihologijo Filozofske Fakul­tete Univerze v Ljubljani, Oddelka za psihologijo Filozofske Fakultete Univerze vMariboru, Oddelkazapsihologijo Fakultetezamatematiko, naravoslovje in informacijske tehnologije Univerze na Primorskem, Psi-hologije na Univerzi Sigmunda Freuda – podružnice Ljubljana. Posame­zna poglavja v sklopu se osredotocajo na strategije poucevanja in posre­dovanja eticnih nacel bodocim psihologom, pri cemer se poudarja ra­znolikost podrocij,na katerih delujejo. Avtorjipoglavijponujajovpogled vrazlicna podrocja,kjerse lahko pojavljajoeticne dileme,tako v formal-nem poucevanju kot tudi skozi neformalne aktivnosti. Poseben pouda­rekjenamenjenprenosu eticnihvsebinvprakso,s cimersepriznavapo­membnostodgovornostipedagoškihdelavcevinmentorjevprioblikova­njubodociheticnoozavešcenihstrokovnjakov.Poglavjaobravnavajotudi etiko v superviziji psihologov, kjer se poudarja kljucna vloga supervizije pri razvoju eticnega zavedanja in kompetenc eticnega ravnanja. Supervi­zija zagotavlja strukturirano in podporno okolje, ki s pomocjo izkustve­nega ucenja in nenehne refleksije lastnega delovanja spodbuja strokovno rast. Šeposebej psihologompripravnikom nudismernice za eticno delo­vanje ter jih spodbujak stalnemu razmisleku o eticnih standardih. Ome­njenisklopnezajemaleraziskovanjainnaslavljanjaeticnihizzivovnapo­drocjuizobraževanjavpsihologiji,ampaktudiaktivnoprispevakrazvoju pedagoškihpraks. Avtorjizagovarjajostališca,vkaterihpoucevanje etike postanedinamiceninrazvijajocseproces.Vkljucitevodprtihvprašanjna koncu posameznih poglavij dodatno spodbuja razmislek o potencialnih izboljšavah na podrocju poucevanja etike. Zakljucnisklop,»Krepiteveticnezavestiinrazreševanjeeticnihdilem«, vsebini knjige daje pomembno dodatno razsežnost, saj predstavlja smer-nice, orodja in okvire, ki služijo kot prakticni vodnik za krepitev vešcin eticnegaodlocanjavrealnemživljenju. Poudarja,daeticnazavestnizgolj abstrakten koncept, temvec dinamicna lastnost, ki jo morajo psihologi sistematicno gojiti za ucinkovito sprejemanje odlocitev v svoji poklicni praksi. V poglavjih tega sklopa je posebna pozornost namenja kljucnim nacelom pri poucevanju in ucenju etike. Poleg tega so predstavljeni raz­licni modeli in tehnike, ki predstavljajo uporabna orodja za strokovnjake pri razvoji in krepitvi procesa eticnega odlocanja. Ko govorimo o mode­ Samanta Hervol in Lucia Rojs lih in tehnikah, se nanašamo na konceptualne okvire in teoreticne struk­ture, ki zagotavljajo sistematicen pristop k razumevanju in obravnavanju eticnih izzivov. Ti modeli pogosto vkljucujejo niz nacel, smernic ali ko­rakov, kistrokovnjakomslužijokot usmeritve prireševanju kompleksnih eticnih dilem. S predstavitvijo razlicnih modelov in tehnik knjiga stro­kovnjake opremi z raznolikim naborom orodij, ki jim omogoca prilaga­janjenjihovegapristoparazlicnimeticnimsituacijam,skaterimiselahko srecajo v svoji praksi. S tem sklop prispeva k nadgradnji kompetenc in k utrditvi eticnih standardov v profesionalnem delovanju psihologov. Urednici s svojimi dolgoletnimi izkušnjami, vsaka izhajajoc iz svojega podrocja, v knjigi skupaj z drugimi avtorji sistematicno pristopita k etic­nimvsebinam napodrocjupsihologije,pricemerknjigazajematemeljne koncepte, posebnosti posameznih podrocij, primere iz praks, izzive v iz­obraževanju in prakticne strategije za eticno odlocanje. Njena struktura omogoca poglobljeno razumevanje razsežnosti etike v kontekstu psiho­logije in zagotavlja dragocen vpogled v kompleksnost teh vidikov. Kljub kompleksnosti so primeri, predstavljeni v knjigi,konkretni, scimer bral­cem omogocajo lažje ucenje in prenos eticnih nacel, vodil in zakonov v prakso. Knjiga nadgrajuje znanje in eticno orientacijo, ki ju ponujajo eticna nacela, kodeksi in pravilniki, spodbuja razvijanje visokega oseb­nega moralnega kompasa ter krepi eticno zavest. Pricujoca znanstvena monografija zato nedvomno predstavlja nepogrešljivo branje za strokov­njake z razlicnih podrocij dela, študente psihologije in vse, ki jih zanima etika v psihologiji. n e t y u e y  a k e y a t e e ) i