Utopia of the Uniform : Affective Afterlives of the Yugoslav People's Army / Tanja Petrovic.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Petrović, Tanja, Author.

, ZRC SAZU, Author.

Contributor:

Slovenska akademija znanosti in umetnosti. Znanstvenoraziskovalni center, Funder.

Series:

Theory in Forms : 15

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Yugoslavia. Jugoslovenska narodna armija--History.

Yugoslavia.

Draft--Social aspects--Yugoslavia--History.

Draft.

Draft--Yugoslavia--History.

Yugoslavia--Armed Forces--Social aspects.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (255 p.)

Place of Publication:

2024.

Durham : Duke University Press, [2024]

Language Note:

In English.

Biography/History:

Tanja Petrović is Head of the Institute of Culture and Memory Studies at the Research Center of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. She is the author of numerous books, including A Long Way Home: Representations of the Western Balkans in Political and Media Discourses.

Summary:

The compulsory service for young men in the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) created bonds across ethnic, religious, and social lines. These bonds persisted even after the horrific violence of the 1990s, in which many of these men found themselves on opposite sides of the front lines. In Utopia of the Uniform, Tanja Petrović draws on memories and material effects of dozens of JNA conscripts to show how their experience of military service points to futures, forms of collectivity, and relations between the state and the individual different from those that prevailed in the post-Yugoslav reality. Petrović argues that the power of repetitive, ritualized, and performative practices that constituted military service in the JNA provided a framework for drastically different men to live together and befriend each other. While Petrović and her interlocutors do not idealize the JNA, they acknowledge its capacity to create interpersonal relationships and affective bonds that brought the key political ideas of collectivity, solidarity, egalitarianism, education, and comradeship into being.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction. A Silent Force That Unsettles Ruins

1 History, Stories, and Selves

2 A Barbed-Wire Utopia

3 The Routine

4 The Uniform

5 The Ritual

6 Dissolution of Form

Interlude. The Catastrophe

7 The Aftermath

8 Form and Life

9 Afterlives

Epilogue. An Infrastructure for Feelings

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

This eBook is made available Open Access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 20. Mar 2025)

OCLC:

1409429969