Partisan Films and the Role of the Individual in Collective Struggle

• In Event: Yugoslav Aesthetics IV: Yugoslav Partisan Film—Memories, Archives, and Afterlives

Abstract

This paper analyzes the concept of ‘the people’ in the partisan films by situating it within the following paradigm - individual versus the group, where within the group the individual is seen as a sacrificial offering, a scapegoat. I have previously analyzed the notion of the entire group--community, people—playing the role of a sacrificial scapegoat in partisan films (by employing the optics of Rene Girard). In this particular case, I aim to focus on the type of individual that is created within this community—what kind of personality and what kind of person emerges from the particular circumstances of an antifascist people’s struggle? What kind of a human being is created out of this particular experience? An important factor here is the fact that partisans were also staging a socialist revolution, and communists were heavily engaged into 'creating the new human'. The underlying thesis is that sacrificial symbolism and the figure of the scapegoat were crucially important mechanisms in this process.

Author

• Boris Djordje Petrovic, U Paris-Sorbonne- Paris 4 (France)