“Deciding and Building Their Everyday Society” Reflections on Yugoslavia With Gal Kirn and Dubravka Sekulić

This is part 1 of a 2 episode discussion on Socialist Yugoslavia, the legacy of the Yugoslav Partisan struggle, and on how we think about and understand transition with relation to Yugoslavia and post-Yugoslav context. For this discussion we are thrilled to welcome Gal Kirn and Dubravka Sekulić to the podcast. 

Gal Kirn is Assistant Professor of Sociology of Culture at the University of Ljubljana. Kirn's research has focused on the theme of transition in (post)socialist context, in particular in the fields of art, politics and memory in the period of national liberation struggle and the socialist Yugoslavia. He published two monographs Partisan Ruptures (Pluto Press, 2019) and The Partisan Counter-Archive (De Gruyter, 2020), and recently co-edited (with Natasha Ginwala and Niloufar Tajeri) a volume Nights of the Dispossessed. Riots Unbound (Columbia Press, 2021), and with Marian Burchardt Beyond Neoliberalism (Palgrave, 2017)

Dubravka Sekulić is an architect, educator, and theorist. She is interested in popular spatial literacy and her research explores how political economy and legislative frameworks produce built environment. She teaches at the Royal College of Art, London (UK). Her  work includes PhD thesis called Constructing Nonalignment: The Work of Yugoslav Construction Companies in the Third World 1961-1989 and she is a co-author of Surfing the Black: Yugoslav Black Wave Cinema and its Transgressive Moments among other projects. 

In this first part of the discussion we will talk about the transition out of Yugoslav socialism, and we talk a bit about histories of Yugoslav self-management economically, politically and culturally. We also discuss social or societal property, anti-fascism as a positive transnational political project, and why the nationalist and genocidal war in Yugoslavia was necessary to breaking up certain structures of Yugoslav socialism. 

In part two we will discuss more of Yugoslavia’s role within the nonaligned movement, some of its interesting legacies of design, development and construction. And we think about Yugoslavia and racialization, including Yugoslavia and the various Post-Yugoslav states within a context of whiteness and what it means to be European. 

We were able to hit our goal in March both for postage for our incarcerated reading group, and also for patreon. We’ll be picking a new book soon for the book club. Our monthly goal for patreon is to add 40 patrons this month again, to keep up with non renewals and help us continue to sustain our work here. So kick in $1 a month or whatever you can spare at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism and join the wonderful folks who make this show possible and you’ll also get a notification when our study group starts back up later this month where we will be studying Frantz Fanon’s Wretch of the Earth.