Pеrforming Antifascism: Intangible heritage or not?

Abstract

Grasping of what may or may not be considered as Yugoslavia’s heritage proves to be a complex and more often than not a conflicting task. As an intangible property, antifascism has an unquestionably positive connotation, and as such it has been the most problematic value of the former state to be distanced from following the dissolution of socialist Yugoslavia. For a long time it was not to be truly discussed, and then a decomposition of its carriers came and brought new participants in the movement, the new carriers of the ideal and the new victors to the arena of public memory. Taken as a default we do not need to discuss, it never entered the process of heritagization and was never valorized as a heritage object. Nevertheless, appropriation of its meanings and its value took place. The proposed paper aims at investigating the meanders of heritage-based appropriation of antifascism in Serbia since the year 2012. It is based on the analysis of the antifascism- related performances in public space, with an emphasis on the reappearance of commemorative practices seemingly gone from the realms of the public memory. The paper proposes the understanding of antifascism as the only viable value the current state system can share with the only proclaimed values of the EU community it wishes to belong to.