[BRIEF NOTE] Apocalypse Culture
Sep. 21st, 2005 07:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldYugoslavia--its prehistory, the Kingdom and the Socialist Federal Republic, the successor states--interests me. It's the contradiction between the presentation of Yugoslavia during the civil wars of the 1990s and in the general decay of the 2000's as a collection of pre-modern societies, and the Cold War identification of Yugoslavia as a relatively dynamic and liberal Communist society, that interests me. Any polity that was willing to allow Laibach isn't exactly reactionary. Yugoslavia was intimately plugged into the wider world economy, as a destination for tourists and as a source of gastarbeiter, an importer of raw materials and an exporter of finished goods, even as a cultural and political magnet of some import. Why did Yugoslavia's image change so much for the worse? Why did Yugoslavia, suddenly and despite the evidence, get reevaluated as a pre-modern area of the world? The reluctance to see ethnic conflict as an eminently modern and even post-modern phenomenon, I suspect, played a critical role in this.
This failure of the critical imagination is a pity, not least because Yugoslavia's experiences remain quite relevant. Take Pedro Ramet essay's "Apocalypse Culture and Social Change in Yugoslavia" in the collection Yugoslavia in the 1980s (Boulder: Westview, 1985), edited by himself. In this essay, he introduces the interesting paradigm of "apocalypse culture," with reference to the Yugoslavian crisis of the post-Tito 1980s.
A nation going through an apocalypse culture phase, Ramet argues, must be a nation that is at peace but experiencing a crisis of conscience, with a dynamic and destabilizing relationship between different classes and other groups in society and a ruling elite that can't provide any solutions. Apocalypse culture manifests itself in the cultural sphere, Ramet's analysis emphasizing literature but allowing for the inclusion of music and the plastic arts, as well as in the political sphere thanks to "discontent so rampant that critical discussion cannot possibly be suppressed" (4). In the Yugoslavian context, Ramet documents how the established order was called into question by such diverse things as nationalism and rock and roll culture, the collapse of traditional peasant cultures inspiring angst amongst newly urban Yugoslavians and the dead hand of the Yugoslavian communist party inspiring calls for radical reform across the board.
As it happened, Yugoslavia's apocalypse culture resulted in the complete breakdown of the federation, a decade of civil war, the impoverishment of almost all Yugoslavians and the flight of millions from their homeland. That said, this outcome wasn't inevitable--had different people been in power, or different constitutional changes enacted, a prosperous, happy, and free Yugoslavia stretching from the Italian frontier to the Greek might have joined the European Union last year. Apocalypse culture can be enormously productive. Consider, if you would, the cultural ferment that hit Poland in the 1980s, as dissidents and workers united to establish all manner of organizations existing outside of the easy control of the Communist/military state, or perhaps the efflorescence of Argentina now in the wake of economic collapse and the discrediting of that country's elites. When your society's starting all over again, it looks like apocalypse culture can be a good tool for diagnosing and solving your society's ills.
This failure of the critical imagination is a pity, not least because Yugoslavia's experiences remain quite relevant. Take Pedro Ramet essay's "Apocalypse Culture and Social Change in Yugoslavia" in the collection Yugoslavia in the 1980s (Boulder: Westview, 1985), edited by himself. In this essay, he introduces the interesting paradigm of "apocalypse culture," with reference to the Yugoslavian crisis of the post-Tito 1980s.
By 'apocalypse culture' I mean culture which is inward-looking, absorbed in a quest for meanings, and prepared to question the fundamental political and social values of the society. Associated with normlessness and anomie, it is therefore symptomatic of deep social insecurity, and is peculiar to developed societies in decay. Its openness to radically new formulas springs from the sense--whether a belief or (as more usually) merely a mood--that the system in question has arrived at a historical turning point, that it is, so to speak, the 'end of time.' Contributors to 'apocalypse culture' view themselves, thus, as social critics, voices warning of dangers ahead, even as prophets offering new visions and new formulas. There is a degree of this present in all modern societies. What defines 'apocalypse culture' is the peculiar intensity of this introspective brooding, and the centrality it comes to occupy in social debates (3)
A nation going through an apocalypse culture phase, Ramet argues, must be a nation that is at peace but experiencing a crisis of conscience, with a dynamic and destabilizing relationship between different classes and other groups in society and a ruling elite that can't provide any solutions. Apocalypse culture manifests itself in the cultural sphere, Ramet's analysis emphasizing literature but allowing for the inclusion of music and the plastic arts, as well as in the political sphere thanks to "discontent so rampant that critical discussion cannot possibly be suppressed" (4). In the Yugoslavian context, Ramet documents how the established order was called into question by such diverse things as nationalism and rock and roll culture, the collapse of traditional peasant cultures inspiring angst amongst newly urban Yugoslavians and the dead hand of the Yugoslavian communist party inspiring calls for radical reform across the board.
As it happened, Yugoslavia's apocalypse culture resulted in the complete breakdown of the federation, a decade of civil war, the impoverishment of almost all Yugoslavians and the flight of millions from their homeland. That said, this outcome wasn't inevitable--had different people been in power, or different constitutional changes enacted, a prosperous, happy, and free Yugoslavia stretching from the Italian frontier to the Greek might have joined the European Union last year. Apocalypse culture can be enormously productive. Consider, if you would, the cultural ferment that hit Poland in the 1980s, as dissidents and workers united to establish all manner of organizations existing outside of the easy control of the Communist/military state, or perhaps the efflorescence of Argentina now in the wake of economic collapse and the discrediting of that country's elites. When your society's starting all over again, it looks like apocalypse culture can be a good tool for diagnosing and solving your society's ills.
