Page 66 - Darko Štrajn, From Walter Benjamin to the End of Cinema: Identities, Illusion and Signification. Ljubljana: Educational Research Institute, 2017. Digital Library, Dissertationes, 29.
P. 66
from walter benjamin to the end of cinema
Looking from the Perspective of an Object of a Case Study
While searching for literature, documents and other references for this
chapter, it happened that I came across an elaborate paper, which address-
es a phenomenon of the weekly magazine Mladina (meaning Youth in the
Slovenian language), where I myself happened to be employed from 1976
until late 1986 and where I continued to contribute opinion columns and
articles for another five or six years. The article, written by Patrick Hyder
Patterson (published in the year 2000), gives a very informed report on the
journalism in the magazine and its political context especially at the time
before and after 1989. Patterson’s article represents an approach to recent
history that demonstrates how some case studies of the critical phenome-
na and some critical moments in the transition might shed some light on
what happened, and what were the main driving forces within the events,
deemed instantly to be “historical”. Since such valuable work as Patterson’s
is still rather rare and unknown to a wider public, this recent history is of-
ten understood in a simplified way, or it is interpreted – or rather appro-
priated – from a very narrow political or economic perspective. So, let me
quote an extensive bit of Patterson’s article, where he quotes one of my own
opinion columns in Mladina. In his observation, which makes use of my
article from November 1989, many aspects of society concerning politics
and culture and their implication in the processes of change are captured as
in a snapshot of the moment before the period, which was later on grasped
in the term of transition.
Especially revealing is a column by Štrajn that appeared in Novem-
ber 1989, as Hungary and Poland were disappearing down their
paths away from socialism. Looking on, Štrajn could not help feel-
ing that Yugoslavia, with its incendiary domestic politics and halt-
ing progress toward democratization, suffered miserably by com-
parison:
Beyond the eastern and western borders of Yugoslavia…
formerly unresolvable conflicts are being resolved with
rational dialogue, with the introduction of democracy,
with a great measure of tolerance, etc. Although, to be
sure, events in the socialist world are still marked by the
encounter with the spirits of the dark past, events there
nevertheless cannot hold a candle to the spectacle of
the Yugo-Scene. Let’s take for example the end of com-
64
Looking from the Perspective of an Object of a Case Study
While searching for literature, documents and other references for this
chapter, it happened that I came across an elaborate paper, which address-
es a phenomenon of the weekly magazine Mladina (meaning Youth in the
Slovenian language), where I myself happened to be employed from 1976
until late 1986 and where I continued to contribute opinion columns and
articles for another five or six years. The article, written by Patrick Hyder
Patterson (published in the year 2000), gives a very informed report on the
journalism in the magazine and its political context especially at the time
before and after 1989. Patterson’s article represents an approach to recent
history that demonstrates how some case studies of the critical phenome-
na and some critical moments in the transition might shed some light on
what happened, and what were the main driving forces within the events,
deemed instantly to be “historical”. Since such valuable work as Patterson’s
is still rather rare and unknown to a wider public, this recent history is of-
ten understood in a simplified way, or it is interpreted – or rather appro-
priated – from a very narrow political or economic perspective. So, let me
quote an extensive bit of Patterson’s article, where he quotes one of my own
opinion columns in Mladina. In his observation, which makes use of my
article from November 1989, many aspects of society concerning politics
and culture and their implication in the processes of change are captured as
in a snapshot of the moment before the period, which was later on grasped
in the term of transition.
Especially revealing is a column by Štrajn that appeared in Novem-
ber 1989, as Hungary and Poland were disappearing down their
paths away from socialism. Looking on, Štrajn could not help feel-
ing that Yugoslavia, with its incendiary domestic politics and halt-
ing progress toward democratization, suffered miserably by com-
parison:
Beyond the eastern and western borders of Yugoslavia…
formerly unresolvable conflicts are being resolved with
rational dialogue, with the introduction of democracy,
with a great measure of tolerance, etc. Although, to be
sure, events in the socialist world are still marked by the
encounter with the spirits of the dark past, events there
nevertheless cannot hold a candle to the spectacle of
the Yugo-Scene. Let’s take for example the end of com-
64
