Oldal 159 [159]
OCR
The Historical Other as a Contemporary Figure of Socialism case. (...) To the historical imagination, ‘we’ is a juncture in a cultural genealc de . . . . . c des ogy, and ‘here’ is heritage. To the anthropological imagination, ‘we’ is an entry in a cultural gazetteer and ‘here is home’ (Ibid.). Defining this state of affairs as a professional ideal until his time, Geertz underlines the changes in the ecology of learning that has “driven historians and anthropologists, like so many migrant geese, onto one another’s territories” (Ibid.). But far from the disciplinary perspectives of “we” situated in “now” and “then”, and far from the diagnosis of blurring the genres that Geertz warns us about—in order to understand the never-ending fluctuations of the past, the present, and the future— we need to step beyond the linear conceptions of the time. In this case to answer the question of why has Matija Gubec, the sixteenth-century historical figure, so-called leader of the peasant revolt in Hrvatsko zagorje (north-western part of modern Croatia), made his way into the popular imaginings of the socialist period, we need to step beyond the situatedness of time and periodisational taxonomy. In the time of deterritorialisation, or as Arjun Appadurai notes, in the time of postblur blur (cf. 1996: 51), when the notions of culture, space, and identity have been uprooted from the traditional scenery on which they have been staged, when the antidote positions of the fantasy and the imagination have come together through the mass media—thus making the utopia of the possible the pragmatism of reality—the case of Matija Gubec as a socialist contemporary warns us of the importance of memory that operates in the “multiplicity of social time” (Halbwachs 1992: 53). Having in mind this disciplinary perspective, the goal of this chapter is to analyse how the historical figure of Gubec has been articulated in the popular culture and political discourse in the socialist period in Yugoslavia. What are the perspectives of the socialist everyday life attached to the historical figure and how has the historical image of Gubec been transformed and adapted to the new social, cultural, and political contexts? How do these meanings interrelate and negotiate diverse perceptions of the past, the present, and the future? In what way has the socialist “state of mind” made the historical figure of Gubec an argument of the plausibility of its ideology? And further, how has the popular culture opposed or agreed with the ideologically orchestrated interpretations of the past? Was the popular culture a platform for social critics or a stepping stone for a political propaganda? The questions of historically inspired identities and diverse identification strategies highlight the concept of social memory that considers, problematizes, and negotiate different views of the past. Therefore, the notion of socialist contemporary that I address in the title does not limit itself to the socialism conceived of as a mere historical period. The story goes beyond the socialism usually perceived as periodisation category to postsocialist perspectives and cultural practices. Despite postsocialist reflections as the purpose of this chapter, I shall mainly consider socialism and its social, political, and ideological context. Finally, the aim of this chapter is to describe the dynamic transformations and renegotiations of socialist identities articulated through the character of Matija Gubec. 157
