Slovenia’s social uprising in the European crisis: Maribor as periphery from 1988 to 2012
Keywords:
industrialization, Jacques Rancière, people, surplus population, uprising
Abstract
This article contextualizes the recent social uprisings in Maribor as a political articulation of the periphery in both the local Slovenian and the more general European context. The case of Maribor is of particular interest to anyone who wants to excavate different temporalities within “transition”: Maribor is not only the name of a failed capitalist de-industrialization, but was, 25 years ago, also the site of a failed socialist industrialization. My thesis explores the continuity and discontinuity of Maribor as a privileged site of popular resistance, while on a more theoretical level, it presents the unfolding of politics of dissensus. The author uses Rancière’s concept of “the people” as the most adequate figure for addressing the specificity of the most recent struggles. Also, the question of “periphery” as the site of utmost importance for contemporary political imagination and experimentation is brought to the reader’s attention.
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Balibar, Etienne and Immanuel Wallerstein (1991). Race, nation, class: ambiguous identi- ties. London: Verso.
Balazic, Milan (2004). Slovenska Demokraticna Revolucija. Ljubljana: Liberalna Aka- demija.
Banac, Ivo (1988). The National Question in Yugoslavia. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Deutsch, Karl (1996). Nationalism and social communication. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bockman, Johana (2011). Markets in the Name of Socialism: The Left-wing Origins of Neo-liberalism. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
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Mocnik, Rastko (1999). 3 teorije: ideologija, nacija, institucija [3 Theories: Ideology, Na- tion, Institution]. Ljubljana: Zalozba/*cf.
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Negri, Antonio (1999). Insurgencies: Constituent Power and the Modern State. Minneapo- lis: University of Minessota Press.
Pupovac, Ozren (2008). Post-Marxism and Post-Socialism. London: Open University, dis- sertation thesis.
Ranciere, Jacques (1999). Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy. Minneapolis: Universi- ty of Minnesota Press.
Ranciere, Jacques (2002). “Peuple ou multitudes?” Multitudes 9 (2002). http://www. multitudes.net/Peuple-ou-multitudes/
Samary, Catherine (1988). Le marche contre l’autogestion: l’experience yougoslave. Paris: Publisud, Montreuil.
Slavec, Andreja (1992). Industrija Maribora. Ljubljana: FF.
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Tomsic, Samo (2012). “The People Returns: A footnote to protests in Slovenia.” Critical Legal Thinking, January 16, 2013. http://criticallegalthinking.com/2013/01/16/ the-people-returns-a-footnote-to-protests-in-slovenia/.
Wachtel, Andrew (2002). Making a Nation, Breaking a Nation: Literature and Cultural Politics in Yugoslavia. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Woodward, Susan (1995a). Balkan Tragedy. Washington DC: The Brookings Institution. Woodward, Susan (1995b). Socialist Unemployment: The Political Economy of Yugoslavia 1945–9. Princeton: Princeton UP.
Zerdin, Ali (1997). Generali brez kape. Ljubljana: Zalozba Krtina.
Zizek, Slavoj (2000). Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left. London: Verso.
Zizek, Slavoj (2013). “The west’s crisis is one of democracy as much as finance.” The Guardian, January 16, 2013. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/ jan/16/west-crisis-democracy-finance-spirit-dictators.
Published
2014-06-25
How to Cite
Kirn, G. (2014). Slovenia’s social uprising in the European crisis: Maribor as periphery from 1988 to 2012. Stasis, 2(1). Retrieved from https://stasisjournal.net/index.php/journal/article/view/66
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Articles
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