After Yugoslavia: The Cultural Spaces of a Vanished Land (Stanford Studies on Central and Eastern Europe)

The book brings together many of the best known commentators and scholars who write about former Yugoslavia. The essays focus on the post-Yugoslav cultural transition and try to answer questions about what has been gained and what has been lost since the dissolution of the common country. Most of the contributions can be seen as current attempts to make sense of the past and help cultures in transition, as well as to report on them. The volume is a mixture of personal essays and scholarly articles and that combination of genres makes the book both moving and informative. Its importance is unique. While many studies dwell on the causes of the demise of Yugoslavia, this collection touches upon these causes but goes beyond them to identify Yugoslavia's legacy in a comprehensive way. It brings topics and writers, usually treated separately, into fruitful dialog with one another -- Provided by Publisher Contents......Page 8 Contributors......Page 12 Acknowledgments......Page 18 Notes on the Pronunciation of Proper Names and Words Given in Original Spelling......Page 20 Introduction - Marijeta Božovic ́......Page 24 Part I - My Yugoslavia: Personal Essays......Page 44 1. My Yugoslavia - Maria Todorova......Page 46 2. Yugoslavia: A Defeated Argument? - Vesna Goldsworthy......Page 61 Part II - Histories and Common Culture......Page 76 3. The Past as Future: Post-Yugoslav Space in the Early Twenty-First Century - Dejan Djokic ́......Page 78 4. What Common Yugoslav Culture Was, and How Everybody Benefited from It - Zoran Milutinovic......Page 98 5. Discordia Concors: Central Europe in Post-Yugoslav Discourses - Vladimir Zoric ́......Page 111 Part III - Legacies of Yugoslavia: Cultural Returns......Page 136 6. “Something Has Survived . . . ”: Ambivalence in the Discourse About Socialist Yugoslavia in Present-Day Slovenia - Mitja Velikonja......Page 138 7. Vibrant Commonalities and the Yugoslav Legacy: A Few Remarks - Gordana P. Crnkovic ́......Page 146 8. Zenit Rising: Return to a Balkan Avant-Garde - Marijeta Božovic ́......Page 158 Part IV - The Story of a Language......Page 170 9. Post-Yugoslav Emergence and the Creation of Difference - Tomislav Z. Longinovic ́......Page 172 10. What Happened to Serbo-Croatian? - Ranko Bugarski......Page 183 11. Language Imprisoned by Identities; or, Why Language Should Be Defended - Milorad Pupovac......Page 192 Part V - Post-Film......Page 206 12. The Vibrant Cinemas in the Post-Yugoslav Space - Andrew Horton......Page 208 13. Marking the Trail: Balkan Women Filmmakers and the Transnational Imaginary - Meta Mazaj......Page 223 Part VI - The New National Literatures......Page 240 14. Traumatic Experiences: War Literature in Bosnia and Herzegovina Since the 1990s - Davor Beganovic ́......Page 242 15. Culture of Memory or Cultural Amnesia: The Uses of the Past in the Contemporary Croatian Novel - Andrea Zlatar-Violic ́......Page 251 16. Cheesecakes and Bestsellers: Contemporary Serbian Literature and the Scandal of Transition - Tatjana Rosic ́......Page 264 17. Slovene Literature Since 1990 - Alojzija Zupan Sosic......Page 288 18. The Palimpsests of Nostalgia - Venko Andonovski......Page 296 Part VII - Return to the Provinces......Page 310 19. The Spirit of the Kakanian Province - Dubravka Ugrešic ́......Page 312 Notes......Page 330 Index......Page 354 This volume looks both back and ahead to focus on what has been lost and what has been achieved two decades after the dissolution of Yugoslavia.