UNIVERSITY OF NOVA GORICA GRADUATE SCHOOL ...

In this rather ironic statement several socio-cultural issues come to the fore: secure jobs and ease
of travel with the increasingly famed ‗red passport.‘ 382 This statement, ‗unhistorical‘ in its form
and content nevertheless contains affective response to both the past and the present: by evoking
two aspects of life in Yugoslavia that from today‘s perspective feature as tenets of most basic, yet
absent, human dignity. In this view the past once again becomes a repository of (all kinds of)
cultural and historical value worth knowing about; and on the other hand, the present, a bleak
reflection of the life as once was imagined and a as far away from the socialist post-war dream of
a better future and just as distant from the liberty, opportunity, democracy famed by the
‗transitionalists.‘ As one cannot learn much factually from such statements, the resentiment and
affect are telling.
Romance Departed
If we take the issue of resentiment a bit further and connect it with the discussion of the digital
afterlife, or in fact the ‗digital post mortem,‘ an even from the 2 July 2011 provides an intriguing
insight. On that day, a Yugoslav and Serbian actress and a singer (interpret of Russian romances),
Olivera Marković had passed away. I first found about this when logging into my Facebook
account that Saturday evening, in a routine practice of what could also be termed ‗hovering
attention.‘ As I browsed through the posts on my Wall, one of the many posted by SFR
Jugoslavija brought the news:
SFR Jugoslavija – SFR Yugoslavia
ETERNAL GLORY AND MANY THANKS TO THE GREAT DIVA OF YUGOSLAV
THEATRE....
OLIVERA MARKOVIĆ - DOVIĐENJA DRUŽE DOVIĐENJA(1973)
www.youtube.com
IN MEMORIAM..... After a long and difficult illness the diva of Serbian and Yugoslav
theatre passed away in Belgrade, 2 July at the age o 87, the National Theatre, Belgrade
informed. 383
Before I realised I was involved in an act of co-creative commemoration, on-the-fly. As I was
browsing through the post and the comments, I actually witnessed a digital memorial in the
making. Within hours of the posted news over 70 people expressed their condolences in short
382 See Stef Jansen, ―After the red passport: towards an anthropology of the everyday geopolitics of entrapment in the
EU‘s ‗immediate outside,‘‖ Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 15, 2009, 815-832.
383 SFR Jugoslavija – SFR Yugoslavia, post from 2 July 2011, 14:23, accessed 21 September 2011.
202