Transnational Dwelling of Post-Yugoslav Queer Literature and Arts
This research analyzes the ways in which a new generation of post-Yugoslav queer writers and artists deploy and adapt global creative strategies of literary and visual storytelling to narrate both their life stories and broader social histories. What are the ways in which the specific contexts of postwar, (post)transitional and Europeanization processes in the countries of former Yugoslavia reappear in queer literature, visual and performance arts? And why does the genre of queer autofiction turn to marginalized cultural objects and political values, such as the historical legacy of Yugoslav socialism, but also the popular culture of the 1990s? This project argues that a shared hallmark of post-Yugoslav queer creative strategies is a modality of belonging, a »transnational dwelling,« which complicates conventional notions of domesticity and history, and imbues them with a sense of queer meaning, healing and hope.
Slaven Crnić is a postdoctoral university assistant and researcher in the ERC project REVENANT—Revivals of Empire: Nostalgia, Amnesia, Tribulation at the Department of Cultural Studies, University of Rijeka. He was previously a visiting postdoctoral junior fellow in the Field of Excellence Dimensions of Europe, University of Graz. Slaven holds a PhD in Comparative Gender Studies from the Central European University (CEU) in Vienna. Slaven has previously taught at the Department of Gender Studies (CEU) and the Department of Cultural Studies at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (University of Rijeka). He was also a visiting PhD researcher at the Department of Slavonic Studies, University of Vienna. His current research interests are (post-)Yugoslav travel writing in the context of post-imperial literature, post-Yugoslav queer literature and performance arts, and the intertwined problematics of cultural memory, sexuality, literature and the processes of Europeanization and globalization.
»The Utopian Horizons and Pitfalls of Normative Male Camaraderie in Meša Selimović’s The Fortress«, in: Silvana Carotenuto, Maša Huzjak, Renata Jambrešić Kirin, Biljana Kašić (eds.), Feminist Trans/Formations: Media, Art, Literature, Naples: UniorPress 2024, pp. 165–183.
»Recouvrer l’insaisissable: notes sur Lejla Kalamujić«,in: Balkanologie (online), Vol. 18 n° 2, 2023. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/11qfb
»Smrt prirode i rađanje života u djelima Michela Foucaulta« [Death of Nature and the Birth of Life in the Works of Michel Foucault], in: Holon 4(2), 2014, 359–386.
»Nužne nemogućnosti: O Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak« [Necessary Impossibilities: On Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak], in: Libra Libera 33, 2013, 71–76.
While the seemingly straightforward adjective »post-Yugoslav« has been popular across disciplines since the 1990s, what exactly it is that makes something »post-Yugoslav« is still a point of contention. This lecture will probe the applicability of the designation of post-Yugoslav« when it comes to contemporary queer literature and arts.