OSAMOSVAJANJE SLOVENIJE V PRIZMI KULTURE SPOMINJANJA: VLOGA IN POMEN REVIJE MLADINA.

This paper analyzes the role of Mladina – a Slovenian weekly that entered the collective memory of the nation as an important actor in the processes of democratization and achieving independence – in terms of its contribution to the rearticulation of the Slovenian integrative discourse in the interregnum of the 1980s. By employing the theory of the cultural memory (Aleida Assmann, Todor Kuljić) the author analyzes all editions of Mladina published in the 1980s to examine the role of Mladina in the processes of democratizing interpretations of the Yugoslavian (recent) history, but also taking into account – in relation to Slovenian ‘sites of memory’ (Philippe Nora) – Mladina’s reflections of the possibilities and pitfalls of the unification of Sloveneness on essentialist foundations. The paper is based on the thesis that Mladina in the 1980s had indeed taken maverick role in the processes of democratization of Slovene society, but it entered the collective memory also due to establishing itself as an open forum in which the Slovenian ‘sites of memory’ were being reflected and transformed. Therefore, the author first analyzes the various approaches with which Mladina’s writers acquainted their readers with inconvenient, even silenced topics from Yugoslavian recent history, then focuses on the process of transforming the identification points of Sloveneness, as reflected in Mladina’s articles, which is further elaborated by an analysis of the discourses of unity and disunity within then Slovenian and Yugoslavian political and publish sphere. Since the situation in the 1980s also required from a liberal weekly such as Mladina to reflect upon the contents of integrative discourse, the author spirally connects his findings with the theses of those social theorists, who claim that nowadays problems with ‘self-image’ and collective memory in most of the Eastern European and Western Balkans countries – often taking forms of unresolved trauma – stem from the antagonistic as well as insufficiently reflected understanding of the relationship between democracy and identities in the societies of the 1980s. On this basis, in the conclusion the author addresses the theoretically challenging and topical question of the ability and disability of liberalism as a political philosophy in the reflection of those aspects of community discourse that are grounded in pre- or post-Enlightenment doctrines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]