A new double issue of Social Science Forum / Družboslovne razprave (n. 108-109) has just been published and is available in open access!

The issue comprises two independent articles and an extensive thematic issue titled “Memory studies for the people: Marxism and popular culture in contemporary approaches to memory studies”, co-edited by Gal Kirn and Natalija Majsova. The thematic issue consists of 6 articles and is designed to refer to some pressing conceptual and methodological challenges caused by the heterogeneity and fluidity of contemporary memoryscapces. Responding to these issues, the first section introduces materialist/Marxist research into the memory studies field from structural forgetting and remembrance in the frame of capitalist violence and debt to memorial eproduction revolving around traumatic experience in civil war. The section highlights a major blind spot most evident in the lack of dealing with politico-economic changes in memory studies and thereby provide starting points for original conceptual frameworks that allow researchers to grasp memory as a matter of lived experience and labour under specific socio-political and economic circumstances that, paraphrasing Marx, are not necessarily chosen by those living under them. The second section (a result of the MEMPOP project), in turn, zooms in on the case of post-Yugoslav popular culture to present several methodologically innovative responses to the challenges accompanying the attempts to address popular cultural imaginaries as transmedia memoryscapes generated and (re)mediated at the conjuncture of affective, political and media infrastructures that must be constantly reassessed.

Thematic issue TOC

Introduction: Memory studies for the people!

Gal Kirn and Natalija Majsova

Articles

Gal Kirn, A CONTRIBUTION TO MARXIST MEMORY STUDIES: THE STRUCTURAL NEED OF CAPITAL TO FORGET VIOLENCE AND ETERNALLY REMEMBER DEBT / Prispevek k marksističnim spominskim študijam: Strukturna pozaba nasilja in večno spominjanje dolgov kapitala 

Daniel Palacios González, MEMORY AS REPRODUCTIVE LABOUR: FROM TRAUMATIC REMEMBRANCE TO INSTITUTIONALISED VICTIMHOOD / Spomin kot reproduktivno delo: od travmatičnega spominjanja do institucionalizacije žrtve 

L. Urbina Montana, THE NARRATIVE OF A TRANSFORMATIVE LEADER: NEOLIBERAL MEMORY POLITICS AND THE REFRAMING OF AUGUSTO PINOCHET IN CHILE / Neoliberalna politika spomina in preoblikovanje podobe Augusta Pinocheta v Čilu Maria  

Jernej Kaluža, Natalija Majsova, MODERNE, POSTMODERNE IN METAMODERNE STRUKTURE OBČUTENJA: VELIKOPODATKOVNA ANALIZA SPOMINOV NA JOSIPA BROZA – TITA V 21. STOLETJU / Modern, postmodern and metamodern structures of feeling: Big data analysis of memories of Josip Broz – Tito in the 21st century  

Nina Cvar, Jasmina Šepetavc, BOLD SMUGGLERS AND DIY HEROES: COLLECTIVE MEMORIES AND ERASURES OF SLOVENIAN GAMING HISTORIES / Drzni švercerji in naredi-si-sam junaki: kolektivni spomini in izbrisi slovenskih igričarskih zgodovin  

Robert Bobnič, Jan Kostanjevec, YUGOWAVE AND SERBWAVE ON YOUTUBE: AUDIENCE ANALYSIS BY COMMUNITY DETECTION / Yugowave in Serbwave na YouTubu: analiza občinstva z metodo detektiranja skupnosti