engleski

Arbitrariness of the Signifier? The Construction of Peoplehood in the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia

Who were the Yugoslavs? The identification with Yugoslavness seems to have functioned as an ideological supplement in the construction of the federalist order of Yugoslavia as it pointed both to the absence and presence of its definite centre, or, rather, to the ambiguities and contradictions inscribed in its very historical and institutional materialisation. Yugoslavness had the rold of an empty category, making possible, by way of its overdetermining nature, the unity and mutuality of all the national identifications in Yugoslavia, which meant the coexistence of the entire array of cultural, religious, linguistic differences and similarities. At the same time, as a category, it was constituted not through a substantiality of reference – a belonging to a culture or a political tradition – but through the singularity of its emergence through moments of emancipatory struggle in the forties – which is where both its appeal and its instability had resided.

Yugoslavness, nationhood, national identification, citizenship

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