Description
Book SynopsisPublic discourse and everyday life during the last days of Yugoslavia
Trade ReviewAnthropologist Živković takes readers a long way toward a long overdue, fair-minded, and full analysis of the Serbian imaginary. . . . Highly recommended.
* Choice *
Serbian Dreambook is a must-read for all—graduate students and scholars in social sciences, even political scientists and journalists—interested in European identities, particularly southeastern European identities: how they are created, perpetuated, and sustained. It also contributes to the further understanding of present-day political realities in Serbia.
* AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST *
[E]ssential for anyone interested in Serbian and Yugoslav history and Balkan studies more generally.
* SLAVIC REVIEW *
[The author] analyzes the ways in which intellectuals contributed to and directly supported the nationalistic discourse of Milosevic's Serbia, relying on the Kosovo narrative of victimhood and exceptionalism.
* WORLD LITERATURE TODAY *
Živković proves to be an engaging, but also well-informed, guide to ways in which certain key aspects of Serbian history, geography and culture are not only produced but also endlessly debated and assigned new meanings. Primarily addressed to readers in social and cultural anthropology, the book will also be of use to historians: the theory is sophisticated, but worn relatively lightly, with attempts to engage the lay reader. Quite lengthy endnotes provide necessary context and explanation for the uninitiated, as do a dozen or so suggestive illustrations.
* English Historical Review *
[A] fascinating addition to Indiana University Press's series on 'New Anthropologies of Europe,' as well as a contribution to the broader academic literature related to the decline of the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Unlike most studies of this period, which focus on the larger ethnonationalist, political, and historical processes that divided Yugoslavia under the leadership of Slobodan Milošević, Živković draws attention to the private narratives that Serbian civilians used to make sense of their shifting roles and social realities in the new Serbia. In doing so, Živković reveals a complex matrix of ethnonationalist mythologies that were revised and reinvented by Serbian civilians in their efforts to come to terms with the lived experiences of political upheaval, war, and mass atrocities. 40.1 2013
* ORAL HISTORY REVIEW *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction
1 Belgrade
2 Serbia's Position in European Geo-Political Imaginings
3 Highlanders and Lowlanders
4 Tender-hearted Criminals and the Reverse Pygmalion
5 Serbian Jeremiads: Too Much Character, Too Little Kultur
6 Glorious Pasts and Imagined Continuities: The Most Ancient People
7 Narrative Cycles: From Kosovo to Jadovno
8 "The Wish to be a Jew," or the Power of the Jewish Trope
9 Garbled Genres: Conspiracy Theories, Everyday Life and the Poetics of Opacity
10 Mille vs. Transition: a super informant in the slushy swamp of Serbian politics
Conclusion: Chrono-tropes and Awakenings
Notes
Bibliography
Filmography
Index
