ABSTRACT
Since the end of the bloody conflicts in the territories of ex-Yugoslavia, turbo-folk music has emerged as a controversial shared culture across ethnic boundaries.1 Despite its common link to Serb nationalism under Milošević, turbo-folk has outlived the regime to become one of the most popular contemporary cultural forms in the region. Using the concept of the vanishing mediator, this chapter will discuss how the representation of Serb nationalism through turbo-folk transformed into what I call ‘new Balkanness’ regionalism: a self-exoticising, transnational anti-neoliberalism.2 The vanishing mediator describes the process through which the nationalist pathology of turbo-folk was historicised into the nineties, while preserving the emotionally charged attachment to its expression of identity. Turbo-folk thus provides a broader framework for thinking through the changing meaning of cultural nationalism as a symbol of resistance to globalisation. In recent years, in Europe and elsewhere there has been a significant rise of various forms of nationalist populisms in response to economic problems. The debates that surrounded the austerity measures implemented in Greece in 2010 framed the issue around two key narratives that reinforced the presence of a ‘national perspective’. On the one hand, the intervention into the collapsed Greek economy by the Eurozone was seen as a corrective measure against the irresponsible and extravagant spending of the Greeks. On the other hand, the economic measures spearheaded by Germany were repeatedly framed in terms of economic neoimperialism (and fascism). What both perspectives demonstrated was not only a deliberate blindness to the past, but a willingness to manipulate historical stereotypes to justify the injustices of the present. The rise of turbo-folk as the primary expression of ‘new Balkan’ resistance to globalisation should be seen in this context. The ability of turbo-folk to shift from a performance of nationalism to transnational anti-neoliberalism reveals how such transformations are often accompanied by a promotion of amnesia towards the (recent) past.
