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

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).