engleski

(Dis)Belief in Banks and Credit System in Postsocialist Croatia

After the global financial crisis in 2008, the cultural narratives of disbelief in banks, bankers and especially credit system became widespread public attitude towards the pillars of financial capitalism that hit the world globally: from public distrust and rage articulated in protests such as Occupy Wall Street to various practices of critique and resistance all over the world (graffiti, blogs, movies, books etc.). Those narratives of distrust in institutions of financial capitalism created a globally accepted public image of banks as the enemies of the people, bankers as a class of privileged people and financial capitalism as a system that favors financial elite. This paper will focus on the particular case of Swiss franc loans in Croatia that led many people to bankruptcy during the years 2010-2012. The debtors in Croatia gathered their feelings about these events in the publication called The Black Book. The paper will analyze narratives in this book within their context of postsocialist Croatia, detecting the effects of despair and distrust of financial capitalism that go parallel with nostalgia towards the social security of socialist Yugoslavia. Those affects also produced the reverse effect in public presentation of banks in which disbelief in credit system even became coopted and integrated in the dominant narratives of financial capitalism.

disbelief, capitalism, credit, debt, emotions, affects

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