dr. Milica Popović; Visiting Fellowship 2023/24
Biography:
Dr. Milica Popović (Sciences Po CERI) is a political scientist, specializing in Memory Studies, Political Sociology and Higher Education Studies. She obtained a PhD in Comparative Political Sociology at Sciences Po Paris and in Balkan studies at the University of Ljubljana. She has been Postdoctoral Fellow and Project Lead at the Global Observatory on Academic Freedom at Central European University in Vienna from 2021 to 2023, and for her work at CEU she is a recipient of DAAD Fundamental Academic Values Award for Early Career Scientists. Popović also worked as a lecturer at Sciences Po Paris.Currently, she is working as an independent researcher and consultant on various projects within and beyond higher education, including her contractual researcher position at the Institut Jacques Delors in Paris, where she researches issues regarding the Western Balkans and accession to the European Union. She has been Fernandes Visiting Fellow at the Department of Sociology at the University of Warwick (November 2021), and has been awarded a Visegrad Scholarship Fund at Open Society Archives in Budapest for January/February 2024. While finalizing her monograph on Yugonostalgia and the memory narratives of the generation of the last pioneers in the (post)Yugoslav space, she is currently developing a new research project on the memory narratives of deserters in Yugoslav wars of the 1990s.
Visiting Fellowship October 2023
Motivation:
A one-month stay at INZ in Ljubljana will be the most important first phase of the development of my new project under the tentative title "The silence of saying no. Narrating desertion". Putting the act of desertion and draft resistance in the frame of cultural memory studies and political sociology, the project aims to answer the question how, in the interplay of public and private, memory narratives create a story of the deserter of the Yugoslav wars in today’s (post)Yugoslav space. The project aims to expand the cultural understanding of desertion in a post-conflict society: understanding colored by dissent and resistance, shame, and silence. With little, if any, official data accessible, silence in public spaces, and hegemonic discourses, the narratives of deserters throughout Europe and history remain silenced, hiding the cracks in the monolith nationalist discourses of victors and victims.
Even 30 years after the wars in Yugoslavia started, we faced a lack of knowledge on the topic. The desertion rates in Serbia, all unofficial, appear in various reports in the range of 40–90%. As for some, desertion was not an option, due to a number of reasons much more complex than the issue of their personal agreement or not with the war; some desertion did not translate into an articulation of anti-militarism and anti-war activism (Aleksov 2013). This mnemonic community, beyond activists, has so far remained unresearched. Not necessarily heroes or anti-war leaders, the ordinary deserters have nonetheless refused to participate in the ethno-nationally framed Yugoslav wars. In the aftermath of the war, the last Yugoslav Defense Minister, Veljko Kadijević, claimed that draft resisters and deserters were the key factors for undermining the capacity of the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) in the Yugoslav wars (Kadijević 1993) and thus, possibly, contributing to the shorter duration of the conflict and end of the war. Already in 1995, Stojan Cerović, a famous opposition journalist, called for the erection of a monument to An Unknown Deserter – as the only true heroes of the Yugoslav wars who deserve a monument. Yet, to this day there is not a single monument in the (post)Yugoslav space dedicated to deserters and draft resisters. In squatted art spaces and digital museums, some memory is preserved, yet without any significant impact on hegemonic memory discourses.
During my stay at INZ, I would like to conduct archival research in the Archives of the Republic of Slovenia, as well as the initial mapping of other relevant data, including the nongovernmental archives and mapping of possible interviewees. The purpose of my stay would also be an excellent opportunity to develop and deepen my contact with colleagues in Slovenia, with the aim of finding suitable collaborators for the project.
List of publications (selection):
Popović, Milica, Matei, Liviu and Joly, Daniele. (2022). Changing Understandings of Academic Freedom in the World at the Time of Pandemic. Vienna: Global Observatory on Academic Freedom.
Popović, M. and Natalija Majsova. (eds.) (2020). Memory landscapes in (post)Yugoslavia. The Historical Expertise. 4 (25): 61-209.
Popović, M. and Rupnik, J. (2019). Dopo la Iugoslavia: dalla dissoluzione alla iugonostalgia e alla iugosfera. In Europa. Un’ utopia in construzione. Culture e società. Vol. III. Pp. 93-100. Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana Treccani.
Popović, M. (2018). Yugonostalgia – the Meta-National Memory Narratives of the Last Pioneers. In Nostalgia on the Move. Pp. 42-50. Belgrade: Museum of Yugoslavia.
Popović, M. (2016). Exhibiting Yugoslavia. Družboslovne Razprave. 32(81): 7-24.
Popović, M. (2015). La Yougonostalgie – la Yougoslavie au regard des derniers pionniers. Etudes Balkaniques. 2013/1-2014/1 (19/20): 303-324, https://doi.org/10.3917/balka.019.0303
Popović, M. and Belc, P. (2014). Jugonostalgija – Jugoslavija kao metaprostor u suvremenim umjetničkim praksama/Yugonostalgia – Yugoslavia as a meta-space in contemporary art practices. Život umjetnosti. 94 (1): 18-35.
