Rethinking Yugoslav Culture II: Arrested Development in/and Contemporary Yugoslav Culture

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

Arrested development—a state in which growth has stalled, prematurely ended, regressed, or deviated from a certain developmental logic—is both a fitting and problematic metaphor for postsocialism, now in its third decade. Semiperipheral societies and economies like the former Yugoslavia are marked by “de-development” (Blagojević), and new generations have come of age to inherit “neoliberal capitalist and post-conflict precarity” (Jelača), conflicting identities and narratives about the past, and a repatriarchalized society (Burcar). This panel examines these and other forms of arrested development in contemporary ex-Yugoslav culture that impede individual and collective growth or reconciliation, as well as new unsanctioned or alternative developments that resist the limitations of dominant developmental logics. These papers analyze recent cultural production and engagement in a variety of mediums—film, literature, art, architecture—to provide a provisional, incomplete picture of what a “contemporary” Yugoslav or post-Yugoslav culture might be and how it engages with or deviates from what came before.This panel hopes to contribute to the field of New Yugoslav Studies.

Sub Unit

• Literature: 21st Century

Chair

• Gordana Crnkovic, U of Washington

Papers

• The Art of Resistance: Against Censorship of Albanian Artists in Serbia - Dejan Vasic, Stanford U

• Genealogy and Ambivalent Attachments in the Works of Nora Verde and Marija Andrijašević - Samantha Farmer, U of Michigan

• Grappling with Victimhood Nationalism: Arrested Development on Screen in Post-Yugoslav Documentary - Katie Kasperian, U of Michigan

• The Figure of the Father in the Contemporary Post-Yugoslav Novel and Arrested Development as a New Symptom of Post-Yugoslav Times - Tatjana Rosic Ilic, Singidunum U (Serbia)