On Wednesday, May 24th, 2023, at 4 PM (CET) we are hosting the online book presentation for Socialist Yugoslavia and the Non-Aligned Movement: Decolonial Contradictions–a dialogue, with guest speakers Rada Iveković, Piro Rexhepi and the book’s editor, Paul Stubbs.
Join us on Zoom:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81114080345?pwd=aEhnVWxyU2pqWVc4bzFBV1ViYzcvdz09
Meeting ID: 811 1408 0345
Passcode: 947169
About the Book
The book Socialist Yugoslavia and the Non-Aligned Movement: social, cultural, political, and economic imaginaries (edited by Paul Stubbs, published by McGill-Queens’ University Press, January 2023) explores the Non-Aligned Movement as one of a number of „antisystemic worldmaking projects“ after the Second World War, offering alternatives to East-West conflicts in the context of the Cold War and hopes of a world emerging from colonial domination of the South by the North.
The fifteen chapters in the book discuss a wide range of themes, deliberately eschewing a single narrative and, instead, allowing diverse approaches, genres, and arguments to emerge that help to reveal the contradictions, contestations and complexities of the Non-Aligned Movement itself, socialist Yugoslavia’s role within it, and the ambiguous and porous nature of geopolitical categorizations and configurations.
In a dialogue inspired by the book, but also transcending it in important ways, this workshop addresses the ambivalences and contradictions of the role of socialist Yugoslavia, enrolled in transnational forms of decolonial solidarity whilst reproducing North South divisions within the country itself. The workshop will focus, among other themes, on the contradictions of decolonial worldmaking practices; on the racialized politics of socialist Yugoslavia and the Non-Aligned Movement; on solidarity, movement and migration; and on the lessons that can be drawn in terms of challenging processes of bordering and Othering in the contemporary context.
Speakers
Rada Iveković, Piro Rexhepi and Paul Stubbs.
Contributors to the book, listed here in alphabetical order, have also been invited to contribute to the dialogue: Đorđe BALMAZOVIĆ, Chiara BONFIGLIOLI, Agustin COSOVSCHI, Leonora DUGONJIC–RODWIN, David HENIG, Tvrtko JAKOVINA, Gal KIRN, Ljiljana KOLEŠNIK, Ivica MLADENOVIĆ, Bojana PIŠKUR, Nemanja RADONJIĆ, Jure RAMŠAK, Maple RAZSA, Dubravka SEKULIČ, Mila TURAJLIĆ, Bojana VIDEKANIĆ, and Peter WILLETTS.
About our Speakers
Rada Iveković is a teacher, philosopher, indologist and writer. Her research includes feminist theory, comparative philosophy (Asian philosophy), feminist theory, political, contemporary European philosophy as well as orientalisms in (western) philosophy. The questions of nation, state and citizenship, the problem of nationalism, violence and war, the question of borders, European identity and democracy are the aspects that have been the intellectual motivation for her work. She maintains that inequality and exclusions or subordinate inclusions as well as violence (including discrimination based on gender, national citizenship, ethnicity, colonization etc.) comes from a division of reason (partage de la raison), which must and can be overcome. In the war events in the territory of Yugoslavia, she took an explicitly anti-patriarchal, anti-racist and non-nationalist position. Her latest book is Migration, New Nationalisms and Populism. An epistemological perspective on the closure of rich countries, (Birkbeck Law Press, Routledge, 2022).
Piro Rexhepi holds a PhD in Politics from the University of Strathclyde. His research focuses on decoloniality, sexuality and Islam. His recent work on racism and borders along the Balkan Refugee Route has been published in a range of mediums in and out of academia including the International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Critical Muslims, and the Guardian among others. He is the author of White Enclosures: Racial Capitalism and Coloniality along the Balkan Route, from Duke University Press (2023).
Paul Stubbs is a Liverpool-born sociologist and currently a Senior Research Fellow in the Institute of Economics, Zagreb, Croatia. He has lived in Croatia since 1993 and was an anti-war activist in the 1990s. He has edited the book Socialist Yugoslavia and the Non-Aligned Movement and is author of the Introductory chapter. His research interests include: global social policy, policy translation, new left-green urban political movements, and poverty and social exclusion. His books include Social Inequalities and Discontent in Yugoslav Socialism (edited with Rory Archer and Igor Duda, Routledge, 2016) and Making Policy Move (with John Clarke, Dave Bainton and Noemi Lendvai, Policy Press, 2015). He is currently working on a history of the New International Economic Order.
