Disobedient: Activist Choirs, Radical Amateurism, and the Politics of the Past after Yugoslavia
Author(s):
Ana Hofman
Publication Year:
2020
Type:
journal article
Journal/Book Title
Ethnomusicology
Publisher
Editor(s):
Pages:
89-109
Volume:
64
Issue:
1
Abstract:
From 2000 on, the emergence of activist choirs has greatly influenced practices of political activism in the territory of the former Yugoslavia. In this article, I analyze how activists, singers, and listeners repurpose antifascist music legacy in order to experiment with new forms of political engagement. I propose the concept of radical amateurism, a political community that fuels the politicization of a field of leisure, which enables people to form new audiosocial alliances at local, regional, and global scales. Locating my theoretical framework within the field of affective politics of sound, I show that political potentiality, when related to music and sound, is inscribed in the complex relationship between imagined and real, exception and everydayness, emerging and routinized, and impossible and possible. In conclusion, I scrutinize contingencies of affective politics and discuss the ways affective encounters enable a new framework for practicing political engagement in a moment of apathy and neoliberal exhaustion.
Citation (Chicago Author-Date):
Hofman, Ana. 2020. “Disobedient: Activist Choirs, Radical Amateurism, and the Politics of the Past after Yugoslavia.” Ethnomusicology 64 (1): 89–109. https://doi.org/10.5406/ethnomusicology.64.1.0089.