Embodying Liberation, Fleshing Vision: Corporeal Affective Strategies in Socialist Yugoslavia's Memorial Complexes

• In Event: Rethinking Yugoslav Revolution I: Remembering Liberation: Socialist Yugoslavia’s Memorial Complexes and Their Social Roles

Abstract

The paper argues that Yugoslav expanded memorial complexes functioned as a form of social infrastructure that provided ground not solely for the remembrance of the historical events of fascism but also for enabling the kinds of embodied experiences and solidaristic sentiment across geographical, generational, and ethnic boundaries required to prevent its resurgence. The artworks and monuments included in these complexes engage bodies and sensibilities in place of conventional presentations of information about the war in order to orient visitors toward an affective solidarity with the antifascist dead.

Author

• Jessy Bell, Northwestern U