This book provides a critical, outsider’s view into the subversive worlds of trailblazing communities of nonconformist Serbian artists, curators, cultural managers, and scholars, their lived experiences in the post-Yugoslav space, sites for staging and contesting citizenship, and sources for hope. Readers will explore how renegade theoreticians and practitioners of the arts in Serbia, in response to the maelstrom of social and political changes in October 2000 and up until 2020, dismantled the neoliberal ideology of the state apparatus and proposed new critical alliances between the creative economy and progressive politics, both in their choice of topics and in their methods of work. Interdisciplinary in its scope, the book characterizes them as regionalizing actors and presents new theoretical tools for investigating their collaborative practices of cultural production, civic engagement, and performing citizenship outside of state channels through a number of case studies. Amani Anderson coins the term “pan-Yugoslav radical imaginations” to highlight the radical potential of critical theory and contemporary art practices and critiques in Serbia and the countries of the former Yugoslavia. She theorizes grassroots regional cooperation on skills, training, and knowledge transfer in the cultural occupations across the region of the former Yugoslavia as a civic virtue and a form of opposition to both ethno-nationalism and neoliberalism. This book appeals to a wide readership, including those with no previous knowledge of the topic. It is essential reading for students and scholars of cultural and performance studies, political science, and Balkan or Southeast European history. It offers valuable insights for anyone interested in understanding how creative dissensus can be a powerful instrument in bringing about change in society and institutions.

Amani Anderson, PhD, is a research affiliate at the Research Centre for Communication and Culture (CECC) at the Universidade Católica Portuguesa in Lisbon, Portugal. Her writing has appeared in the Journal of Aesthetics & Culture, International Journal of Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies, Allegra Lab, and Crannóg Magazine. Born and raised in Tartous, Syria, Amani now lives with her family in Cambridge, UK.