UNIVERSITY OF NOVA GORICA GRADUATE SCHOOL ...

different socialist systems. Regardless, in post-Yugoslavia such discourses are frequently used as
ammunition in daily political struggle ignoring as they do significant portions of Yugoslav history
that could fruitfully be used to position new states within a tradition of progressive social welfare
and cosmopolitanism. Thus, the memory politics in the former Yugoslavia produce to a great
extent a self-castrating discourse that directly impedes these societies from becoming fully fledged
members of transnational social, cultural, economic and political constellations.
With this in mind, the central focus of the dissertation is on strategies and practices of representing
and renarrating Yugoslav past(s) in DME, i.e. the uses and applications of internet enabled
functionalities to create, co-create, share and distribute vernacular interpretations of Yugoslav
past. More precisely, I look at the ways the internet media are used to provide alternative
narrativisations, interpretations and evaluations of Yugoslav past. In particular, the analysis looks
into ‗digital posts‘ 108 of several mythistorical kernels which have significantly defined and
delimited the imaginary, symbolic, cultural and political coordinates of the Socialist Federative
Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), and in many respects continue to do so: the WWII, popular
culture (film and music in particular), and the myth of Josip Broz Tito. Thus, the analysis will
yield crucial insights into the work of memory and remembering in DME. These topics or
Yugoslav ‗mythistorical kernels‘ even today stir strong emotions, ignite political and historical
debates, and also fuel contemporary art production. This makes them all the more relevant topic
for investigation, particularly in view of post-socialist social, cultural and political
transformations.
After the disintegration of Yugoslavia in 1991 these topics were actively being forgotten/effaced
or rewritten/revised by the new regimes. Often they were incidentally dropped out of ‗official‘
―frames of attention, valuation and use.‖ 109 In the post-Yugoslav countries these topics mostly
tend to be used in dominant political discourses, when the flaws and violence of the ‗communist
regime‘ need to be pointed out and/or for discrediting political opponents. Yet, they remained
present in the everyday lives and vernacular memories of post-Yugoslavs. This is evident in
narrative practices and also in continuous cherishing of the memory of Tito, hoisting Yugoslav
banners and flags on various anniversaries (particularly at WWII-related events), great interest in
and availability of second-hand and new merchandise (books, pictures, stamps, epaulettes etc.) at
flea markets and in souvenir shops, recurrent popularity of ex-Yugoslav (and post-Yugoslav)
popular music and cinema across the former country.
108 Posts here refer both to posts as online submissions and also to imply a temporal marker.
109 Aleida Assman, ―Canon and Archive,‖ 98.
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