Paper short abstract:

This paper analyses how the phenomenon of nostalgia for Yugoslavia among younger generations, that do not have a lived experience of the former country, can be an agent of liberation from oppression of contemporary hegemonic discourses and practices.

Paper long abstract:

The starting point of the research was the interest in the phenomenon of nostalgia for

Yugoslavia among younger generations that do not have a lived experience of the former

country. While most authors dismiss nostalgia as 'false' and 'irrelevant', my argument is that

Yugonostalgia can be a resistance strategy since, during the 1990's, the former

Yugoslav countries underwent the 'terror of forgetting' in order for new nationalisms to arise

and most of the socialist memory was 'confiscated'. In the first part of the paper, I

provide the reader with the historical context surrounding Yugoslavia, the formation of the

pan-Yugoslav identity and its decay. Another argument I present is that the project of

Yugoslavia in itself was a nostalgic idea since it contained desires of a viable supranational

unity. Further on, I analyse the concepts surrounding nostalgia and post-memory, mostly

relying on work by Svetlana Boym and Marriane Hirsch. After reflecting on the rise of

regional artworks based on post-memory I find that their particularities lie in the narrative transition from macro to micro histories and the questioning of the East/West binary.