Confronting (Post-)War Precariousness and Precarity: Socialist Yugoslav Literature for Children

Accepted Manuscript of an article published in the journal International Research in Children’s Literature. 2024 (17), nr. 3, pp. 306–320. https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/ircl.2024.0581?download=true&journalCode=ircl

In this article I examine how literature for children re-established itself in the socially, economically, and institutionally devastated and nascent revolutionary precarious situation of the post-war period. I draw on a larger study of socialist Yugoslav literature for children (1945–91) and with reference to the first post-WWII issues of the Slovenian children’s magazines Ciciban (1945–present) and Pionir (1945–90). I also explore how the emergent literature for children, particularly magazines, addressed a generation who had experienced violence, persecution, orphanhood, flight, internment, famine, occupation, and armed resistance, followed by post-war daily life. I draw on the concepts of ‘precariousness’ and ‘precarity’ (Butler) in the sense of an insecure existential state and the conditions for it. Instead of a top-down approach derived from totalitarianism research (usually employed in the examination of immediate post-war socialist production), a bottom-up approach that considers the complex relationships between (cultural)-political, (infra)structural, material, interpersonal, and affective contexts (as well as the historical objectifications that are embodied in the post-war production for children discussed here) allows a consideration of the past in a more complex light. It also highlights the overdue need for discussion on how to approach the topic of war with children in times of ‘more or less permanent war’ (Butler).

Key words: children in war, precariousness, (post-)war literature for children, institutional forms, war trauma, socialist Yugoslavia (1945–91)