Paper short abstract:

This paper considers iconoclasm in ethno-nationalized post-Socialist former Yugoslavia. Its principal role is to reveal public secrets about Socialist Yugoslavia. In turn, lived realities of are rendered fantastical dreams and, ultimately, Socialist Yugoslav identification is rendered as pathology.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper - presented at a time for remembering on the thirtieth anniversary of the collapse of socialism in Europe - I consider several 'high' and 'low' iconoclasms directed at iconic pan-ethnic cultural forms in post-Socialist former Yugoslavia. These include, respectively the avant-garde practice of 'retroquotation' and monumental vandalism. I argue that these practices serve to reveal hidden 'public secrets', especially of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia having been riven by repressed ethnic tensions and of having been a state always in dissolution throughout its very construction. Ethnographically the paper focuses on a section of the population commonly referred to as 'Yugonostalgics'. In common usage Yugonostalgic holds the same pathologizing weight that the original term nostalgia was designed to convey. Nóstos denotes to return home (whether to a place or a time), and álgos to a longing or sorrow. In the case of so-called Yugonostagics a double pathologizing takes place. These are people who are seen, especially by the new ethno-nationalist states in the former Yugoslavia, as nostalgically longing not only for a golden past, but also for a golden past that never actually existed. And, the iconoclastic acts that are the main focus of the paper play a special role in this regard. Their principal effect is, I argue, to render lived realities of the past as dreamed of unrealities in the present.