Naslov
Embodying Memory, Commemorating the Past: the Day of Youth Celebrations in Kumrovec

Autori
Škrbić Alempijević, Nevena

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Sažeci sa skupova, sažetak, znanstveni

Skup
Nostalgia on the Move

Mjesto i datum
Beograd, Srbija, 29.09.2016. - 30.09.2016

Vrsta sudjelovanja
Pozvano predavanje

Vrsta recenzije
Nije recenziran

Ključne riječi
memory; Josip Broz Tito; Kumrovec; postsocialism

Sažetak
This paper focuses on the collective memory expressed through the contemporary celebrations of Josip Broz Tito's symbolic birthday, still marked more than thirty years after his death in his birth village of Kumrovec. The author raises the question: what happens to the celebration and to the place, once declared the central topos of Yugoslav ideology and the cradle in which "the greatest son of our nations and nationalities" was rocked, in a new political framework, when the socialist past has been deliberately forgotten. The results of an ethnographic research conducted on several occasions in a long time span from 2004 up to the present show that there is incongruence between the politics of remembering, which veils the event in official silence, and mnemonic cultures and practices, which constantly turn the locality into a “realm of memory”. Still nowadays people keep coming to Kumrovec to take part in celebrations of May 25, whether the political elites regard it a forbidden place or not. They come to Kumrovec for diverse reasons: to express their nostalgia, to create continuity between their past and their present, to criticize their current circumstances and the power relations, or just to have fun with their old comrades and enjoy the picturesque scenery. In Kumrovec they tell, re-enact and embody the stories rarely told in the public spheres of today’s Croatia. The nostalgia performed in the public space of Tito's birthplace cannot be treated primarily as a conservative and uncritical reflex towards the past. In line with previous studies of Yugo-nostalgia and Titostalgia (cf. Velikonja 2008 ; Petrović 2012), nostalgia can also be viewed as a dynamic and propulsive phenomenon that can add to innovation, self-identification, new cultural receptions and productions, always in relation with the current context of those who perform nostalgia.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Etnologija i antropologija

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