The History and the Legacy of Yugoslav Social Philosophy (1960-1990)

Socialist Yugoslavia was both a political project and a unique knowledge exchange hub. Although its intellectual and cultural legacy are increasingly researched and valorized, the philosophical discussions generated in the Yugoslav space around concepts key to contemporary social philosophy and neighboring fields remain largely unexplored. Filling this gap, our project is set out as a study of the history and the legacy of social philosophy in Yugoslavia in 1960-1990. We will focus on two main streams of thought, articulating two diverse modes of opposition to the dogmatic Marxism of the Yugoslav Communist Party, while maintaining a productive relationship to Marx. (I) Praxis philosophers, based in Zagreb/Belgrade, formulated a universalist vision of man as a self-creative being caught in a world of alienated labor, rejecting both Stalinist dogmatism and nationalisms. (II) The Ljubljana group embraced a structuralist approach to ideology and argued, via the concept of split subject, that alienation could be conceived as the very condition of human subjectivity. This is a pioneer research of the key conceptual developments within the two streams of thought at the crossroads of close readings and archival research, beyond the confines of national histories of philosophy. The central objective of the project is twofold: (1) to map the evolution of discussions about human productivity, alienation, split subjectivity and ideology and (2) to assess the relevance of this legacy in contemporary social philosophy. New historical and conceptual insights generated by our project will significantly contribute to the history of philosophy, advance interdisciplinary dialogue across the humanities and social sciences, enrich the field of (post)Yugoslav studies, and provide philosophical grounding for contemporary uses of the Yugoslav legacy.