Utopia of the Uniform

Affective Afterlives of the Yugoslav People's Army

AvTanja Petrovic

Inbunden, Engelska, 2024

Del i serien Theory in Forms

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Beskrivning

The compulsory service for young men in the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) created bonds across ethnic, religious, and social lines. These bonds persisted even after the horrific violence of the 1990s, in which many of these men found themselves on opposite sides of the front lines. In Utopia of the Uniform, Tanja Petrović draws on memories and material effects of dozens of JNA conscripts to show how their experience of military service points to futures, forms of collectivity, and relations between the state and the individual different from those that prevailed in the post-Yugoslav reality. Petrović argues that the power of repetitive, ritualized, and performative practices that constituted military service in the JNA provided a framework for drastically different men to live together and befriend each other. While Petrović and her interlocutors do not idealize the JNA, they acknowledge its capacity to create interpersonal relationships and affective bonds that brought the key political ideas of collectivity, solidarity, egalitarianism, education, and comradeship into being.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum:2024-03-15
Mått:152 x 229 x 18 mm
Vikt:567 g
Format:Inbunden
Språk:Engelska
Serie:Theory in Forms
Antal sidor:256
Förlag:Duke University Press
ISBN:9781478020943

Utforska kategorier

Antropologi inom Samhälle och politik
Europas historia inom Historia och arkeologi
Genusvetenskap inom Samhälle och politik

Mer om författaren

Tanja Petrović is Head of the Institute of Culture and Memory Studies at the Research Center of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. She is the author of numerous books, including A Long Way Home: Representations of the Western Balkans in Political and Media Discourses.

Recensioner i media

“In Utopia of the Uniform, Tanja Petrović offers a powerful and compelling narrative that provides a very much needed alternative reading of the end of socialist Yugoslavia. I particularly like the way the author mines the Yugoslav past for the possibilities of a utopian future. This book will shift the debate in a variety of fields.” - Kristen R. Ghodsee, author of (Everyday Utopia: What 2,000 Years of Wild Experiments Can Teach Us about the Good Life) “Tanja Petrović’s Utopia of the Uniform is a tender, provocative account of how men lived, thought, and felt in the Yugoslav armed forces. It is also about what happened to their friendships and solidarities when their country came apart at the seams. Petrović writes about masculinity from a place outside it. In so doing, she captures something that those who live it can’t see.” - Samuel Fury Childs Daly, author of (A History of the Republic of Biafra: Law, Crime, and the Nigerian Civil War) “Utopia of the Uniform stands out for its engaging language. The large number of first-hand testimonies and photographs transcend the hermeticism of academic literature, making it accessible to a wider readership interested in the former Yugoslavia.” - Astrea Nikolovska (Reviews in Anthropology) "The work is ethnographically rich and theoretically complex, arguing strongly that Yugoslavia was held together by such “affective infrastructures,” which made Yugoslavs see themselves as members of a collectivity. This study is an important corrective to the literature focusing on the wars that ended Yugoslavia and to the anthropology of the state. Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty." - R. M. Hayden (Choice)

Innehållsförteckning

Acknowledgments ixIntroduction. A Silent Force That Unsettles Ruins 11. History, Stories, and Selves 222. A Barbed-Wire Utopia 373. The Routine 614. The Uniform 765. The Ritual 966. Dissolution of Form 118Interlude. The Catastrophe 1287. The Aftermath 1348. Form and Life 1539. Afterlives 173Epilogue. An Infrastructure for Feelings 185Notes 195Bibliography 217Index 231