Dealing with the Yugoslav Past

The term “social memory” is multidisciplinary and is used in a wide range of scientific fields. Pierre Nora used it to apply to historical knowledge, and Novick used a similar vision. Maurice Halbwachs applied it in sociology, Cole in anthropology, Schudson in media studies, Middleton in psychology, and Fussell in literature. Along with the given term, several other terms with similar meaning are used. Thus, Halbwachs calls it “collective memory,” Bodnar “public memory,” Seixas “historical consciousness,” and one can also find other synonyms, such as “cultural memory,” “historical memory,” and so forth (Olick and Robbins 1998).

The given term is used in different approaches.

The first approach (chronologically) is the structural-functional approach. The aim is to study the collective’s memory function, which helps the group to be integrated. The presence of common memory allows combining and giving it the necessary stability and awareness of its own integrity. Perhaps the most prominent representative of this approach is Maurice Halbwachs. He is known as the most influential theorist of collective memory (Crane 2000, 6). In the context of this study, I would like to stress Halbwachs’s postulate that all individual memories rely on the “framework of collective memory” for their articulation. “Although individuals hold personal memories, their remembrance and expression depends on the changing context of the multiple communities and times in which individuals live” (Ibid.).

The phenomenological approach presented in the works of Husserl, Shutz, Ricker, Berger, and Luckmann aims to establish a correspondence between the supply of the social memory and the life world of the person. In this approach, one will find the direct interaction between the individual and other forms of the common memories, which have a social character. Social memory creates conditions for the successful continuation of communication and is typical of each social group.

The structuralist approach is represented by Levi-Strauss, Foucault, Lacan, and Barthes. It has a similar methodological background as the cultural-semiotic approach and mainly focuses on the consideration of timeless structures that permeate all layers of social reality.

The post-structuralist approach considers the dynamics of the transformation of social phenomena (including social memory) in the spatial dimension, which suggests the formation of the concept of the “topology of the social memory.” Baudrillard, Derrida, Bourdieu, Foucault, and Nora might be included on the list of representatives of this approach. Thus, when discussing museums, Nora points out that museums and monuments emerged in the late nineteenth century as “sites of memory,” because collective memory no longer functioned in an organic or natural way (Crane 2000, 6). Kavanagh points out that museums are usually using official and formal version of the past called histories, which is “different from the individual or collective accounts of reflective personal experience called memories” (Kavanagh 1996, 1).

As a term, “collective memory” is sometimes criticized as being a poor substitute for older terms, such as “commemoration,” “political tradition,” or “myth” (Olick 1999, 334). Olick suggests avoiding the term because of the imprecision of its definition and bearing in mind that memory has different dimensions, both as a pre-social individual memory and its implications in the public. However, it is always the same phenomenon. Thus, national memory, acts of commemoration, and personal testimonials are examples of memory but on different levels. These different forms of remembering have different levels of importance, one of which would predominate depending on the particular case (Olick 1999, 346). Since the invention of the term “collective memory” used by Maurice Halbwachs, which was understood as the constructed and nonessential nature of the individual memory included into the social context, the understanding of the term has been significantly altered. Collective memory can be understood as a discourse about events and the ways how to interpret them. Such discourses deal with two important aspects: the selection of both “important knowledge” and that which is “non-important.” Having a selective nature, collective memory is hegemonic, contentious, and politically instrumental. The political characteristics of the term significantly connect it to another relevant term: “the politics of memory.”

The two terms not only have similarities because of the usage of the same world (“politics”) but also because of the unsettled definition for both of them. These terms are usually used as having a meaning that is intuitively clear but, of course, such setup shows the undeveloped nature of the new vocabulary. For example, sometimes we encounter the titles of articles and even academic books that contain the given terms, but throughout the text, one will hardly be able to find a single clear explanation of the term.

The term “political” is often used in our daily language. This seeming openness of the meaning helps and misleads simultaneously precise understanding of the term that we try to utilize.

I would agree with the definition provided by Lasswell, and later followed by Stocchetti, and share their understanding of the politics “as the competition for the control over the distribution of values in society” (Stocchetti 2011, 14). Applying such a vision of politics to the private and public use of images, the authors argue that the public use of images cannot be both politically neutral or/and socially irrelevant and always either supports or disturbs the given distribution of values (Stocchetti 2011, 14).

Another term that might also be confusing for understanding the process of distribution of values in the museums is politics of memory. I understand it as a strategic plan and agenda by which events are remembered, selected, and displayed. The leading role in this process is given to the way the event or certain period is constructed via political leverage and how it uses the collective memory in an instrumental way to create a politically engaged historical construct.

Similar to the aforementioned term, but with more specific focus, is the concept of museum politics. It is understood here as the paradigm of the interpretation and representation of the past adopted by the stakeholders of the museum who construct the image of the past in the frames of the existing public narrative(s). The product of the museum politics is the exhibition as such and the relations toward the visitor that could vary from perceiving the visitor as an active contributor in the creating of the narrative to a passive consumer.

I have already mentioned the term “representation” many times and have used it with different meanings. Two main meanings correspond to the political and the visual connotations of this concept. In general terms, representation means “making experiences from the past present again in the form of narratives, images, sensations, performances” (Plate and Smelik 2013, 6). Perhaps, we could propose the shortest definition: representation is the “embodied performance of the past” (Wortel and Smelik 2013, 185). The representation may mean both visual embodiments of the historical narrative and also verbal, oral, or other types of narratives that are dealing with the construction of the history. Thus, a history textbook will be the essential representation of history as well as the consumer cinema that shows “the past.” Representation is always connected to the constructionist scientific paradigm, to which the idea of narrative and discursive formations belongs.

Representation is closely related to another important term historical revisionism, which has several meanings, one of which has a negative connotation. In essence, it means the reinterpretation of the traditional dominant opinion on different historical processes. With such a meaning, it is the process of normal development of the scientific opinion and the accumulation of knowledge. However, the given term has produced a fixed negative connotation by which it means the reinterpretation of the past that is in favor of a new political and ideological order. In this study, the term was predominantly used by the experts with negative connotations, which will be clear from the text.

Other concepts that are applicable hereinafter and require special attention are Yugo-nostalgia and Tito-nostalgia. Nostalgia is one of the multiple strategies toward an interpretation of the past. It resonates with findings from several exhibitions I have explored. Starting with some general description of post-socialist nostalgia, it follows reflections on one of its dimensions (Yugo-nostalgia).

Some findings on nostalgia

Yugo-nostalgia is evident in almost every corner of the former state (Buric 2010; Velikonja 2008; Volčič 2007) and may be included in the broader context of nostalgia as a cultural phenomenon. The given phenomenon “has become a key term in discussions of the varieties of remembrance commonly practiced and represented in contemporary Western culture” (Radstone 2007, 112). We are observing the emergence of a new dimension of remembering throughout Europe, which might be called “the nostalgia boom.” This boom is the reaction to the rapid social changes in the form of activated attempts to preserve the continuity of identity (Davis 1977, 419). According to Dames (2001), it acts first of all as a reaction to the modern crisis of identity. Identity construction is closely tied to the political dimension because the individual is constructing the imagined world of comfort and sanctuary as a reaction to the non-satisfactory contemporary conditions of his or her life.

According to Velikonja (2008, 28), the main traits of a nostalgic narrative are ex-temporality, exterritoriality sensuality, complementarity, conflicted story lines, unpredictability, polysemism, and an episodic nature.

The key element that is easy to find when describing the nostalgic phenomenon would be its episodic nature, which eventually aids in understanding the mechanism of its vitality because it gives the “green light” to use a partial image of a complicated reality and to dismiss the political background of this event (Velikonja 2008, 28).

Traditionally, nostalgia was associated with false memories and forgetting, when the individual was seeking refuge from turbulent situations (Lowenthal 1989, 21), with an abuse of history and a lack of depth (Radstone 2007, 114). It has different dimensions, including cultural, political, and economic. Nostalgic affiliation may be divided into three perspectives: (1) nostalgia as a world phenomenon, (2) post-socialist nostalgia, typical for countries of the former socialist block, with a similar modus of collective remembering, and finally (3) Yugo-nostalgia, a typical phenomenon of the post-Yugoslav countries.

Consequently, as with any other form of remembering, post-socialist nostalgia “works as a form of selective amnesia, idealizing the past by referring to the low unemployment rate and strong sense of community” (Cooke 2005, 104). It is criticized for structuring knowledge in such a way that the real problems of the existence are ignored, for instance, the problems of human freedom, lack of transparency, or antidemocratic rule (Cooke 2005, 104).

When generalizing the features of the second dimension, that is, the post-socialist nostalgia, Boyer (2010) defines five main characteristics of them:

1. Nostalgia is heteroglossic.

Boyer uses Bakhtin’s term to stress the plurality of images and ideas that ground the nostalgic discourse(s). Not all of them homogeneously deal with a grief for, or an obsession with the past, but rather “represent the dialogical gossamer of idiosyncratic references, interests, and affects that are channeled through nostalgic discourse” (Boyer 2010, 20).

2. Nostalgia is indexical.

This means seeing nostalgia as an indexical practice, the process of the ongoing identification of the person with the world in which one had previously lived with an accent on the collective memory experience (personal versus collective identification).

3. Nostalgia is allochronic.

The given phenomenon is not only spread in one region (Eastern Europe), and is not only the product of local actors, but also the constructions provided by the postcolonial thinking of former empires.

4. Nostalgia is symptomal.

Nostalgia is a living trend in many countries and is symptomatic of contemporary societies.

Svetlana Boym identifies two types of nostalgia: restorative and reflective. The first “category of nostalgic does not think of themselves as nostalgic; they believe that their project is about truth. This kind of nostalgia characterizes national and nationalist revivals all over the world, which engage in the anti-modern myth-making of history by means of a return to national symbols and myth” (Boym 2001, 41). Restoration (from restaure, reestablishment) signifies a return to the original stasis (Ibid., 49), where reflective nostalgia’s focus is “on the meditation on history and passage of time” (Ibid.). In the empirical part of our research, we will be able to observe what kind of nostalgia is represented in the exhibitions on Yugoslavia, but before moving to the analysis, we would like to introduce some findings on the Yugo-nostalgia phenomenon.

Some findings on Yugo-nostalgia

The bars and restaurants spread throughout the territory of the ex-Yugoslav countries that are decorated in a socialist aesthetic, with particular reference to Yugoslavia as a key structure of their design concept, are one of the examples of Yugoslav nostalgia. Such are the cases from Sarajevo (Velikonja, 2008), Podgorica, or Ljubljana (Boym 2001). The hotels or hostels decorated in similar styles and rock bands using the Yugoslav context for their songs (Volčič 2007, 33) are just some of the examples collecting the activation of Yugoslav context reactualization. The barbershop where one can order a hairdo à la Jovanka Broz or signs on the restroom in the form of Tito and Jovanka are other examples of the given phenomenon. The two main Serbian football teams still use the red star as a part of their emblem and use the socialist names Partisan and Red Star.