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The Street as Political Space: Walking as Protest, Graffiti, and the Student Carnivalization of Belgrade

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2009

Milena Dragićević-Šešić
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Abstract

Western assumptions of unthinking Serbian support for the policies of Slobodan Milošević were upset by the success of popular protest in securing his removal in the autumn of 2000. In fact, just three years after his accession to power in 1989, there had already been massive student protests against the Balkan War, and these were repeated and surpassed in the winter of 1996–97, when Milošević tried to disregard the success of the opposition in the local elections of that November. The student protests quickly took a theatricalized form, and their recurrent modes – graffiti, banners, street processions – were successfully carnivalized, to become popular performative events. This feature provides a chronology of the main developments to complement the more analytical study by Milena Dragićević-Šešić of the nature of this organic but ironic response to an authoritarian regime, which gave old traditions a late twentieth-century voice.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Theatre Quarterly , Volume 17 , Issue 1 , February 2001 , pp. 74 - 86
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2001

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References

References

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Sources for the Chronology

Ilić, Dragan, ‘Hronika protesta Zajedno’ [‘The Chronicle of the Zajedno Protest’], in Setnja u mestu [Walking on the Spot], Belgrade: Radio B92, 1997.Google Scholar
Radonić, Masa, ‘Hronika studentskog protesta’ [‘The Chronicle of the Student Protest’], 1997.Google Scholar
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