Impression management of a contested past: Serbia’s evolving national calendar

Abstract

The basic argument outlined in this article is that the Serbian political elite has managed Serbia's contested past through covering and cultural reframing rather than public acknowledgement. I show here that in the creation of a current Serbian calendar, as a state-sponsored practice, there is an extensive usage of impression management techniques which enabled a different reading of the calendar at both the domestic and international levels. It is further claimed that the calendar serves multiple functions and meanings: on the one hand, it tends to present Serbia as a democratic and progressive state, but on the other hand, it legitimizes a wide range of emotions at the local level. In other words, the new Serbian calendar is made both to meet European expectations and further Serbian interests to join the European Union, but also to allow wider audiences in Serbia to express feelings of animosity, injustice, and frustration as a means of settling historical accounts.

Marching the Victorious March: Populism and Memory Appropriation of the Yugoslav Partisans in Today’s Serbia

“…The Board is also in charge of establishing a program of commemorations of events and persons related to liberation wars. The State Program for Commemorating the Anniversaries of Historic Events of the Serbian Liberation Wars, as the program is officially called, describes “the significant anniversaries, commemorative days, national and religious holidays, as well as important Serbian personalities, together with a brief description of why specific days are commemorated and exhaustive explanations of the protocol for each of them” (David 2014, 477). The most recent versions of the program were passed in 2009, 2013, and 2016 (Odbor za negovanje tradicija oslobodilačkih ratova Srbije 2009; 2013; 2016).…”

From lines to networks: Calendars, narrative, and temporality

“…Scholarship on national holidays has focused predominantly on the commemoration of single holidays and on the roles they play in the formation of identities (see, for example, David, 2014; Etzioni and Bloom, 2004; Fridman, 2015; Johnston, 1991; Lentz, 2013; Marschall, 2013; Schwartz, 2008). Among a wide range of memorial sites and practices, national days are commonly perceived as “commemorative devices in time and place for reinforcing national identity” (McCrone and McPherson 2009: 1).…”

Revisitingthe social organisation of national memory: A look at the calendars of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia

“…Within memory studies at large, Eviatar Zerubavel’s (2003, 2004b) chapter ‘Calendars and History: A Comparative Study of the Social Organization of National Memory’ as well as his later book Time Maps have intuitive appeal. Indeed, many papers that deal with calendrical matters, including entries that appeared in Memory Studies (David, 2014; Fridman, 2015), often reference these two titles. Despite that, scholars tend not to touch upon or merely refer to his methodological tools, even though they could help us to better navigate ‘a sociomental topography of the past’ (Zerubavel, 2004b: 1; e.g.…”