The Cultural Life of Capitalism in Yugoslavia ― Post-socialism and Its Other

This edited volume explores the cultural life of capitalism during socialist and post-socialist times within the geopolitical context of the former Yugoslavia. Through a variety of cutting edge essays at the intersections of critical cultural studies, material culture, visual culture, neo-Marxist theories and situated critiques of neoliberalism, the volume rethinks the relationship between capitalism and socialism. Rather than treating capitalism and socialism as mutually exclusive systems of political, social and economic order, the volume puts forth the idea that in the context of the former Yugoslavia, they are marked by a mutually intertwined existence not only on the economic level, but also on the level of cultural production and consumption. It argues that culture—although very often treated as secondary in the analyses of either socialism, capitalism or their relationship—has an important role in defining, negotiating, and resisting the social, political and economic values of both systems.

Dijana Jelaca is Adjunct Instructor in the Department of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University, USA. She is the author of Dislocated Screen Memory: Narrating Trauma in Post-Yugoslav Cinema (2016) and co-editor of The Routledge Companion to Cinema and Gender (2017).

Ma?a Kolanovic is Associate Professor of Contemporary Croatian Literature at the University of Zagreb, Croatia. She is the author of Udarnik! Buntovnik? Potro?ac…Popularna kultura i hrvatski roman od socijalizma do tranzicije (Worker! Rebel? Consumer… Popular Culture and Croatian Novel from Socialism till Transition, 2011) and edited volume Komparativni postsocijalizam: slavenska iskustva (Comparative Postsocialism: Slavic Experiences, 2013).

Danijela Lugaric is Associate Professor of East-Slavic Languages and Literature and the Director of the Institute of Literary Studies at the University of Zagreb, Croatia. She is the author of Ruski bardi: modusi popularnog u kantautorskoj poeziji Bulata Okud?ave i Vladimira Vysockog (Russian Bards: Popular Aspects in the Author’s Song of Bulat Okudzhava and Vladimir Vysotsky, 2011).