EVENT:
Humboldt University in cooperation with SERBINALE
Tuesday, April 21st 6:00 - 9:00 pm
From postsocialism in socialism to the limits of post-political freedom in postsocialism
On the occasion of publication of two books, Filip Balunović’s Notebooks from freedom (Serbian), and Gal Kirn’s Partisan ruptures and contradictions of market socialism in Yugoslavia (Slovenian) we will discuss a few burning topics of the past and present (post)Yugoslav context.
Speakers: Boris Buden (respondant), Natalija Miletić (moderator) and Djordje Tomić (respondant) will discuss with the authors Gal Kirn and Filip Balunović.
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Despite two books covering two historically different periods, and topics, the discussion will attempt to address a few central contradictions of both periods that relate to the project Yugoslavia. The discussion will point out on where and why the things went wrong with the socialist transition in the past, and what has been going wrong with the post-socialist transition presently.
One of the central stakes of the authors is to deconstruct the underlying ideological contours of those “transitions”, which could be ascribed also to the rise and persistence of the discourse of liberalism in its plural guises (decentralization, market, individual freedom, entrepreneurialism).
One of Kirn’s book’s concluding points was to re-asses the ambivalence of self-management and its internal contradictory movement towards capitalism. According to Balunović, on the other hand, the post-Yugoslav situation saw liberalism, apart from nationalism, a core ideological base for transitional elites.
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Filip Balunović, a political scientist from Belgrade (Serbia).
Gal Kirn, a political philosopher from Ljubljana (Slovenia), currently research fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung in Berlin.
Natalija Miletić, a political scientist and free-lance journalist from Serbia.
Boris Buden, a cultural theorist and visiting professor from the University of Weimar.
Djordje Tomić, finished his PhD in history on the transition in Vojvodina at HU. __
Humboldt Universität - August-Boeckh-Haus Dorotheenstraße 65, 10117 Berlin 5th floor, room 557