Thirty years after the break-up of Yugoslavia : the primitive (dis)accumulation of capital and memory; or, how (not) to make this country great again

Kirn, Gal (author)

The contribution sheds a critical light on the thirty years since the break-up of socialist Yugoslavia. It presents three hypotheses for a critical reorientation of the 1989–91 sequence. Firstly, rather than seeing 1989 as the start of the longue durée of a democratic process, for Yugoslavia this trajectory was ‘realised’ as political chaos and ethnic wars in 1991. Secondly, criticising the chronological view of ‘post-socialism’, it posits post-socialism as having already emerged after 1965, marked by market reforms that ‘withered away’ socialism. Thirdly, and specific to the 1990s, in order to facilitate the transition to capitalism, a ‘primitive accumulation’ of memory and a high degree of violence unfolded, which actually dis-accumulated the socialist infrastructure and socialised means of (re)production. The post-Yugoslav transition proved a genuine ‘contribution’ to ‘making our country great again’: ethnically cleansed nation-states on the horizon of European peripheral capitalism. The contribution concludes on an affirmative note, pointing to the slow resurgence of the Left.

• Language: English
• Keywords: postsocializem, spomin, družbeni vidik, kolektivni spomin, nacionalizem, jugoslovanske vojne, 1989-1991, tranzicija, kapitalizem, ideologija, levica
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: FF - Faculty of Arts
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Publication date: 20.04.2022
• Publisher: Brill
• Year: 2022
• Number of pages: Str. 3-29
• Numbering: Vol. 30, iss. 1
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-137260
• UDC: 316.74:159.953.3
• ISSN on article: 1465-4466
• DOI: 10.1163/1569206X-20222261
• COBISS.SI-ID: 110980867
• Publication date in RUL: 08.06.2022

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Historical materialism
• Shortened title: Hist. materialism
• Publisher: London School of Economics, Koninklijke Brill, Turpin Distribution [distributor]
• ISSN: 1465-4466
• COBISS.SI-ID: 512213785

Licences

• License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
• Description: The most restrictive Creative Commons license. This only allows people to download and share the work for no commercial gain and for no other purposes.
• Licensing start date: 08.06.2022

Secondary language

• Language: English
• Keywords: primitive accumulation of capital, primitive accumulation of memory by the state, nationalist repossession of memory, nationalisation of the means of (re)production, re-orientation of 1989, post-Yugoslav wars, critique of post-socialism, transition, dis-accumulation of socialist infrastructure and wealth, national-neoliberalism, ideological over-determination, break-up of yugoslavia

Projects

• Funder: ARRS - Slovenian Research Agency
• Project number: J6-3144
• Name: Protesti, umetniške prakse in kultura spomina v post-jugoslovanskem kontekstu