Nostalgia and Postmodernity in Post-Yugoslav Feminist Narratives
Nostalgia and Postmodernity in Post-Yugoslav Feminist Narratives

Summary/Abstract: The question of nostalgia is at the centre of the debates on postsocialism, modernity and post-modernity. The mainstream discourse treats nostalgia in the post-communist world as a “malady”, an anachronism, a dysfunctional attitude that disables post-socialist subjects from properly fitting into the global narratives of progress. In this paper I shall analyse the phenomenon of Yugo-nostalgia among feminist activists in Serbia and Croatia. My initial assumption is that the issue of Yugo-nostalgia, and postsocialist nostalgia in general, cannot be perceived as separate from the global post-modern processes. In addition to this, Yugo-nostalgia used to be identified as an anti-nationalist strategy during the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s, present among feminist anti-nationalist and anti-war activists. My concern here is for that which has been changed in the discourses about nostalgia in post-Yugoslav feminist narratives spanning the period between the 1990s and the 2000s. Upon this basis, I shall try to give an answer to the question related to the nature of the alternative narratives of the post-Yugoslav societies and postsocialist subjects articulated via nostalgia, as well as to examine whether these are necessarily escapist and paralysing.

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