Brownbag:(Post)Yugoslav Memories as Resistance Strategies - the Political in Yugonostalgia

Demolished Partisan monument in Osijek (Croatia), laying abandoned in a courtyard (Author's archive, 2017) - 13:00 - 14:00 VeranstalterIn Zentrum für Südosteuropastudien Teilnahme Termin vormerken BB: Milica Popovic - (Post)Yugoslav Memories as Resistance Strategies - the Political in Yugonostalgia Embracing the social-constructivist concept of the past, my research takes an interdisciplinary approach to nostalgia, bringing together political science and cultural memory studies. Valuing the importance of emotions (Nussbaum, 2013; Hassner, 2015) in the political field and acknowledging the ascent of contentious politics (Tilly, 2006; McAdam, Tarrow & Tilly, 2001; Tilly, 2008); in a world where official memory discourses are constructing and reconstructing history, this thesis conceptualizes nostalgia as another contentious expression. With the aim to answer the main research question on the meaning of Yugonostalgia for politically active last pioneers and its reflection in their politics; the thesis is based on extensive research of the narratives of the generation of the last pioneers (born between 1974 and 1982), in three (post)Yugoslav countries: Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia. Avoiding methodological nationalism (Wimmer and Schiller, 2003) and implementing Constructivist Grounded Theory in data analysis (Charmaz 2004), through political ethnography, in-depth interviews and participant observation, in the course of 2017 and 2018, 62 political actors were interviewed from the whole of the political spectrum.