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Zpth – Zeitschrift Für Politische Theorie 2-2017 www.ssoar.info Praxis Philosophy's 'Older Sister': the Reception of Critical Theory in the Former Yugoslavia Ivković, Marjan Veröffentlichungsversion / Published Version Zeitschriftenartikel / journal article Zur Verfügung gestellt in Kooperation mit / provided in cooperation with: Verlag Barbara Budrich Empfohlene Zitierung / Suggested Citation: Ivković, M. (2017). Praxis Philosophy's 'Older Sister': the Reception of Critical Theory in the Former Yugoslavia. ZPTh - Zeitschrift für Politische Theorie, 8(2), 271-280. https://doi.org/10.3224/zpth.v8i2.10 Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Dieser Text wird unter einer CC BY-SA Lizenz (Namensnennung- This document is made available under a CC BY-SA Licence Weitergabe unter gleichen Bedingungen) zur Verfügung gestellt. (Attribution-ShareAlike). For more Information see: Nähere Auskünfte zu den CC-Lizenzen finden Sie hier: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.de Diese Version ist zitierbar unter / This version is citable under: https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-60685-8 Praxis Philosophy’s ’Older Sister‘ The Reception of Critical Theory in the Former Yugoslavia Marjan Ivković* Without any doubt, the former Yugoslavia was among the more fertile soils globally for the reception and flourishing of the tradition of Critical Theory over a span of several decades. Practically all major works by both the ‘first’- and ‘second-generation’ critical theorists were translated into Serbo-Croatian in the 1970s and 1980s. Not only were there translations of the most influential studies of Critical Theory’s history and theoretical legacy of that time (Martin Jay, Alfred Schmidt and Gian-Enrico Rusconi), there were also studies by local authors such as Simo Elaković’s Filozofija kao kritika društva (Philosophy as Critique of Society) and Žarko Puhovski’s Um i društvenost (Reason and Sociality). Contemporary Serbian political scientist Đorđe Pavićević remarks about Critical Theory in Yugoslavia that “this group of authors can perhaps be considered the most thoroughly covered area of scholarhip within political theory and philosophy in terms of both translations and original works up to the early 1990s” (2011: 51). Yet, throughout socialist times, the broad and differentiated reception of Critical Theory never really crossed the threshold of a truly original appropriation, whether it be attempts to elaborate existing perspectives in Critical Theory, modify them in light of particular socio-historical circumstances of the local context, or apply them as a research framework for the empirical study of society. The peculiarity of such a voluminous, yet theoretically restricted reception can only be properly understood if one bears in mind that the appearance of Critical Theory in Yugoslavia largely coincided with the only period in which this, otherwise academically peripheral region, had a presence on the global ‘intellectual map’ – the time of the Yugoslav ‘Praxis School’ of unorthodox Marxism, a current of thought that resonated to a great extent with the spirit and aims of Critical Theory, and thus inevitably assumed the role of its competitor within the global New Left. This in turn was reflected in the attitude of (parts of) Critical Theory itself – Adorno and Horkheimer never wrote a word about the Praxis School, even though they must have been aware of its existence. Other key authors, such as Habermas, Marcuse and Fromm, not only wrote about Praxis, they visited Yugoslavia on numerous occasions in the 1960s and early 1970s. In 1985, Slobodan Žunjić was already in a position to reflect on the peculiar nature of the Yugoslav reception of Critical Theory: * Marjan Ivković, Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, Belgrade Kontakt: [email protected] Marjan Ivković: Praxis Philosophy’s ‘Older Sister’, ZPTh Jg. 8, Heft 2/2017, S. 271–280 https://doi.org/10.3224/zpth.v8i2.10 272 Zeitschrift für Politische Theorie, Heft 2/2017 “The history of the Yugoslav, especially Serbo-Croatian reception of the Frankfurt School could generally be defined as a history of a simultaneous cultural openness and intellectual resistance towards the stimuli that came from the Critical Theory of society. On the one hand, the sheer number of translations and references in one relatively small language, to which practically all im- portant original (and reconstructive) works of the Frankfurt School have been translated, is impres- sive. On the other hand, however, this primarily cultural-historical presence of Critical Theory on the Yugoslav intellectual scene can hardly be said to have sparked some noticeable theoretical reac- tion, let alone a productive appropriation of the Frankfurt School’s accomplishments – this latter has so far been completely missing” (Žunjić 1985: 79). Žunjić explains this lack of profound engagement with Critical Theory primarily as the result of Praxis philosophy’s reservations about, even rivalry toward, a more established and globally influential ‘competitor’. Thus, although special issues of locally influential academic journals such as Theoria and Philosophical Investigations (Filozofska istraživanja) were dedicated to Critical Theory, and prominent Yugoslav philosophers such as Gajo Petrović and Milan Kangrga reflected on the intricacies of the critical- theoretic project, reflection too often assumed the form of an implicit weighing up of the relative advantages of Praxis philosophy with respect to Critical Theory, even after the former had ceased to exist as a project in the mid-1970s. Paradoxically, as I will briefly illustrate in the conclusion, only in recent years have we witnessed some truly original appropriation of key figures and themes in Critical Theory in the region of former Yugo- slavia, long after the ‘golden era’ of Yugoslav unorthodox leftist thought. Yet despite the rivalry and theoretical restraint displayed by members of the Praxis group, the presence of Critical Theory in Yugoslavia at the height of this group’s influence was indeed impressive. The at the time well-known Korčula Summer School, organized by the Praxis group between 1963 and 1974, saw not only the participation of Herbert Marcu- se, Erich Fromm, Jürgen Habermas, Alfred Sohn-Rethel, but more generally of such influ- ential Neo-Marxist thinkers as Lucien Goldmann, Ernst Bloch, Agnes Heller, Leszek Ko- lakowski and Karel Kosík. After the School’s demise, in 1975 Jürgen Habermas founded the (by now famous in critical-theoretic circles) Philosophy and Social Sciences Colloquium at the Inter-University Center (IUC) in Dubrovnik, an annual conference envisaged as the successor to the Korčula School, but dominated from the start by Habermas’ ‘new para- digm’ of Critical Theory.1 As Yugoslavia violently disintegrated in 1991 and its successor states descended into a decade of warfare and social unrest, the unique intellectual and soci- etal ambience which provided the backdrop for the reception of Critical Theory also seemed to have disappeared without a trace. But as the region slowly emerged from the mayhem in 2000s, the interest in Critical Theory (of all ‘generations’) was reignited to some extent. So what were those unique circumstances that first sparked this long-lasting engagement with the tradition of Critical Theory in this volatile region? 1 The history of this annual conference has been somewhat of an adventure: founded in Dubrovnik in 1975, it convened for the last time in Yugoslavia in May 1991, literally as the city was being besieged. Since 1993 it convenes annually in Prague, and has celebrated its 25th anniversary this year. Marjan Ivković: Praxis Philosophy’s ‘Older Sister’ 273 1. The political and intellectual context: Yugoslav self- management socialism and the Praxis School The openness and receptivity of the Yugoslav academic scene for Critical Theory in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s might seem somewhat peculiar to an observer unfamiliar with the unique political context of post-war Yugoslavia which made this real-socialist society a welcoming terrain for ‘non-dogmatic’ strands of Marxism. The politically autochtonous socialist leadership of post-war Yugoslavia proved capable of breaking geopolitically with the Soviet-led socialist world in 1948, but the break was not underpinned by a genuine ideological disagreement – it was a strategic and ‘realpolitik’ move that required some a posteriori ideological justification. The latter came in the form of the ideology of ‘self- management socialism’, a new model of socialism laid out by its principal intellectual ar- chitect, the Slovenian Edvard Kardelj in 1950. The term ‘self-management’ referred to the decentralization (less central planning) of the Yugoslav economic reproduction, and it denoted the political elites’ new conviction that the entire social reality cannot and should not be ‘planned’ according to the vision of a desired (socialist) society through constant intervention on the macro- and micro-level. In Yugoslavia, the political and economic liberalization that the ideology of self- management brought was reflected in the (often exclusively nominal) devolution of polit- ical power to constituent republics and opening up of space for regulating some limited aspects of economic activity through the logic of the market. Another important aspect of ‘liberalization’ in Yugoslavia meant a somewhat higher threshold of tolerance by the po- litical elites for challenges to its principles of legitimation, that is for ‘criticism’ coming from various dissident
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