Yugoslav (Re)Visions III: What is a People? Yugoslav Perspectives

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

This panel approaches one of the fundamental questions of political theory, social history, and cultural studies: what is a people? While posing the question in terms of being, the panelists do not presuppose a given identity as much as inquire into the process of becoming: by what political operations, forms of association, and modes of labor organization is a people constituted? Drawing on diverse case studies from the history of Yugoslav socialism, the papers brought together in this session examine—both historically and conceptually—how new artistic practices, social division of labor, and class politics enabled qualitatively different projects of emancipation during the Yugoslav socialist conjuncture.

Sub Unit

• Anthropology, Cultural Studies

Chair

• Kathryn Coyne, UC Berkeley

Papers

• Forms of Peoples: Yugoslavia and the Politics of Socialist Transition - Grega Ulen, Tsinghua U (China)

• The Expertise of an Amateur: Building the Canon of Socialist Artistic Production during the Yugoslav Partisan Struggle - Ana Hofman, Scientific Research Centre SAZU (Slovenia)

• Are Artists Working People?: Labor, Art, and the People in Yugoslav Socialism - Katja Praznik, SUNY Buffalo

• The Art of Bogorodica Ljeviška for All - Sezgin Boynik, Rab-Rab Press

Discussant

• Zhivka Valiavicharska, Pratt Inst