Prelom08.Pdf

M PRELOM Journal for Images and Politics fall 2006 Editorial Committee: Zorana Doji}, Du{an Grlja, Slobodan Karamani}, Dragana Kitanovi}, Vesna Mad`oski, Vladimir Markovi}, Sini{a Mitrovi}, Ozren Pupovac, Milan Rakita, Jelena Vesi} Copy-editing: Jason Barker and Nadja Leuba Technical assistant: Radmila Joksimovi} Covers: Biljana \ur|evi}, Systematic Examination, 2005 Design and Layout: Vojislav Ili} Publisher: Prelom kolektiv www.prelomkolektiv.org Contacts: [email protected] [email protected] Print: Akademija, Beograd Print run: 600 Editorial committee of Prelom would like to thank all of those who contributed with their effort and input to the quality of this issue. ISSN 1451-1304 This publication takes place in the framework of ALMOSTREAL. ALMOSTREAL (www.almostreal.org) is a project initiated by the European Cultural Foundation and it is an integral part of its arts programme. CONTENTS: AGAINST THE POST-SOCIALIST REASON [9] Ozren Pupovac Project Yugoslavia: the Dialectics of the Revolution [23] Slobodan Karamani} Kosovo after Yugoslavia [39] On the Margins of Europe, an interview with Rastko Mo~nik [57] Vladimir Markovi} Conservative Upheaval and Capitalist Utopia: Aftermath of the Resistence [63] Neboj{a Jovanovi} Against Post-Yugoslav Liberal Conformism IDEOLOGY AND ITS DISS(ID)ENTS [74] Sezgin Boynik Boris Buden’s Silent Albanians Politics as Nondiscursivity [79] Boris Buden From Stari Trg to Stari Aerodrom and Back: Answer to Sezgin Boynik [84] Vladimir Markovi} Dissident Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism IS IT POSSIBLE TO BE A MARXIST IN PHILOSOPHY? [93] Nina Power The Terror of Collectivity: Sartre’s Theory of Political Groups [105] Jason Barker Nothing Personal: From the State to the Master [115] Ozren Pupovac Springtime for Hegemony: Laclau and Mouffe with Janez Jan{a [137] Tim Appleton Alain Badiou and the Possibility of a Political Writing: The Case of the Labor New Left in Britain [153] Alberto Toscano Marxism Expatriated [171] Alain Badiou The Factory as Event Site: Why Should the Worker Be a Refernce in Our Vision of Politics? [177] Georges Peyrol (a.k.a. Alain Badiou) Thirty Ways of Easily Recognising an Old-Marxist [180] After the Event: Rationality and the Politics of Invention, an interview with Alain Badiou by Radical Politics "ART IS IN DANGER" [197] Branimir Stojanovi} State and Contemporary Art "INSTITUTIONAL CRITIQUE" AND THE INSTITUTION OF CRITIQUE [205] Transversalism and Institutional Critique, an interview with Gerald Rauning [217] Simon Sheikh Notes on Institutional Critique [220] Hito Steyerl The Institution of Critique [225] Hito Steyerl The Archive of Lost Objects WHO IS "GORAN \OR\EVI]" [236] Goran \or|evi} On the Class Character of Art [241] Branislav Dimitrijevi} Altered Identities: Goran \or|evi} as an Artist, SKC as an Institution [249] Story on Copy, an interview with Goran \or|evi} FROM UN-AESTHETIZATION TO ANAESTHETIZATION [272] Nenad Rackovi} Johnny Rackowitzch [291] Vesna Mand`oski No Change, Please, We are Post-Students: The Anaesthetization of Art and Society DECISIVE ENCOUNTERS [311] What’s Wrong With a Cowboy in Belgrade, conversation with Wim Wenders by Dragana Kitanovi} [318] Dragana Kitanovi} Rethinkig (Film) History Through Cinemas of Wim Wenders [329] Pavle Levi “Inevitable Wars”: On Film Form and Inter-Ethnic Relations in Post-Yugoslav Cinema [342] Pavle Levi Film Metter PRELOM The journal Prelom was founded in 2001 as a publication of the Belgrade Center for Contemporary Art. In the past five years (seven part in five volumes) Prelom has become a space for the critique of political constellations within social theory and political philosophy, of contemporary art and film in today’s post-Yugoslav context. It is a collective effort to problematize, theorize and fight against various, heterogenous and paradoxical forms of contemporary neo- liberal capitalism. In the summer of 2004 Prelom lost its former institutional support and the editorial board founded an independent organization – Prelom kolektiv, establishing itself as publisher and laying the foundations for integrating and expanding other activities beyond just the production of the Prelom journal (exhibitions, conferences, discussions, etc.). AGAINST THE POST- SOCIALIST REASON Ra{a Todosijevi}, Gott liebt die Serben, 1993 Dominant post-socialist “rationality” serves the purpose of rendering Socialism, the Communist movement and Marxism into something belonging definitively to the past. Thereby making historical, revolutionary events nowadays appear as some kind of childish illusion, unrealistic daydreams which were solely enabled by the existence of the paternal figure of welfare state (no matter whether “democratic-” or “party-”) that – by taking care of the everyday needs of its subjects – provided the leisure time for rebellious ideas and actions. Dominant neo-liberalism presents itself as a wake-up call, a reminder to everyone that it is time to “get serious” and to take responsibility of oneself, meaning to market ourselves, to become the so-called “prosumers”, to be at once, our own labor-force and employees, as well as financial, marketing and PR managers. Therefore, not to “find” but to “create” jobs, as well as to “self-organize” health security and pension funds – in short, to wager an everyday and never-ending fight for our evermore precarious place on the “open market”. However, the memory of those rebellious times and, more importantly, the practical need for some tangible alternative to the contemporary capitalist system endures. Therefore, items, images and symbols of the revolutionary past – “memorabilia” of those “naive” and “overly- enthusiastic” events – are readily recycled into artifacts for consumption circulating within the numerous retro-vogues profitable for the growing nostalgia industry. The constraint of perceiving Socialism in this nostalgic mode aims precisely for the enclosing and neutralization of any imaginable form of radical change. It is against this post-Socialist reason for “nostalgia” and, especially, so-called “Yugo- nostalgia” that Prelom is directing its critique. It aims at extricating the revolutionary historical effects of the SFRY project out of neo-liberal anti- Communist grip by re-thinking the (con-)sequences of events: the People’s Liberation struggle – revolution – self-management Socialism. This retrospective view is certainly not just some aide-mémoire of the lost possibility of “living together”, but also a viable historical experience for tackling current pressing issues. It shows the possibilities of breaking with still present political anachronisms in the post-Yugoslav space – from the reactionary nationalist apotheosis of the “fatherland”, via various religious “revivals” and the “re-traditionalization”, to liberal political and economic dogmas that scarcely conceal the brutality of “privatization”. This kind of break is quite different from the multicultural emancipation conceived as the “basic human right” to assert one’s own specific and irreducible cultural identity – which is, in fact, effectuating nationalist ravages of nation-state building, no matter how a particular “political elite” is inclined to “democratic procedures” and manifestly committed to adopt the “standards” of the European Union. In this perspective the post-Yugoslav space reveals itself as a symptom of the EU project with its own racisms, nationalisms, exclusions and fear- hatred complex. The following texts represent an effort to reflect on the political form that is nowadays foreclosed by the contemporary anti-Communist consensus – precisely that political form which is so “self-evidently” impossible within the dominant neo-liberal post-Socialist rationality – revolution. PROJECT YUGOSLAVIA: THE DIALECTICS OF THE REVOLUTION Ozren Pupovac How can we, today, think Yugoslavia? And, indeed, can we think Yugoslavia today? Is it possible at all to evoke in thought that radical political gesture of 1943? One cannot but bring out a negative starting point here. Because these questions immediately confront us with imposing difficulties. In the first place, it is clear that they stand opposed to the very givenness of the historical and ideological conjuncture which we inhabit today. Does not our immediate present, the present of the post-Yugoslav space, already proscribe the very formulation of the question of Yugoslavia? Is it not that the essential ideological consensus upon which this space is constituted, permeated as it is with anti-communist discourses and with an entire bestiary of political anachronisms – from the reactionary nationalist folklore to the political and economic dogmas of liberal capitalism - rules out by its very definition any reference, if only in thought, to Yugoslavia and to the politics that this project embodied? And if a peculiar ideological embargo is not enough, is it not that this same reference readily evokes, at the practical level, an entire variety of repressive sanctions by the juridical and political apparatuses of the State constructs established from the vestiges of the Yugoslav federation? As if the very consistency of these frail political constructions depends on a specific prohibition of thinking. But the problem of thinking Yugoslavia is not simply the one in which we can grasp the inanity of the discourse of mediocre ideologues and lawyers so predominant these days, in which all the prosaic political falsities with which we confronted on a daily basis reach a definite point of disgrace. The problem of thinking Yugoslavia

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