Subversive Festival 2013, 2nd Balkan forum 12-14 May 2013, Zagreb, Croatia
Panel: Against capitalism, nesting orientalism, conceptual ghettos and self-imposed colonialism: regional emancipatory projects in the Balkans/West Balkans/Eastern Europe/Central Europe
time and place: Saturday, May 12th Hall II, 12:00 – 13:30
panelists: András Szépe (Position Working Group,HU), Dan Cirjan (Central European University, HU), Matija Medenica (Marks21,SE), Raja Apostolova (Social Center Xaspel, BG)
organizers: Agnes Gagyi (Position Working Group,HU) & Mariya Ivancheva (Social Center Xaspel, BG)
The panel focuses on regional taxonomies and conceptual ghettos of the Balkans/West Balkans/Eastern Europe/Central Europe. It asks how such taxonomies worked through recent history: if and how these divisions and units of analysis and political action can be reconsidered if a critical global perspective was applied to these regions as loci of global capitalism . The panel also aims to investigate historical emancipatory projects and their conceptualization of the region – e.g. the idea of federalism and its historical traditions. We ask what contemporary struggle can learn from these traditions. Can we think of types of emancipatory projects that would conceptualize the region in a way that helps contemporary struggle? How does the recognition aspect of contemporary emancipatory projects look like? Can we transcend nesting orientalism and self-colonizing gestures, also in the way we relate to each other regionally? What kind of emancipatory projects would allow us to do that? Our main intention is to connect streams of regional discussions and possible units of political action that have been historically divided, but can be mutually inspiring.
Provisional topics:
András Szépe,
“Federalist concepts and visions from Jászi Oszkár and others from the beginning of the 20th
century”
Raya Apostolova,
Refugees on new borders of Europe: how Eastern European countries deal with being entry
points of the “West”
Dan Cirjan,
“Glimpses of a Non-Capitalist Eastern Europe: The Interwar Agrarian Movement and its Social
Project”
Matija Medenica,
Against divide-and-rule: towards a common Balkan alternative