Podcast Summary: New Books Network – Tanja Petrovic, "Utopia of the Uniform: Affective Afterlives of the Yugoslav People's Army" (Duke UP, 2024)
Host: Dragana Pravulovic | Guest: Tanja Petrovic | Date: September 21, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode features anthropologist and linguist Tanja Petrovic discussing her book, Utopia of the Uniform: Affective Afterlives of the Yugoslav People's Army. The conversation explores the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) as a unique social and political project, its enduring emotional and cultural resonance in post-Yugoslav societies, and methodological insights from Petrovic’s extensive research. Key topics include the army’s utopian and inclusive aspects, its exclusions, the afterlives of collective experience following the Yugoslav wars, and the personal challenges of researching this history.

Main Themes & Key Discussion Points

1. The Enduring Significance of the Yugoslav People's Army

[02:12–05:22]

• The JNA was more than a military force; it was a vital institution cementing a sense of Yugoslav community during socialism, despite the country's eventual fragmentation.
• Petrovic’s motivation: Her personal and academic exposure to ex-Yugoslav contexts highlighted the lasting importance of army experiences across vastly disparate social groups.
  • Quote:
    “It does not take a lot of anthropological skills to realize that this experience... is still important for so many men in former Yugoslavia and basically serves as a connecting tissue which still connects these people.” (Petrovic, 03:32)
• Her research asked why the army experience continued to resonate for such different people: academics, villagers, businessmen, and former soldiers.

2. The Army as a Utopian Social and Educational Project

[05:22–08:54]

• The JNA’s roots lay in the socialist Partisan struggle of the Second World War and was imagined as a unifying, citizenship-building project.
  • Universal male conscription exposed young men to not just military training, but education (literacy, crafts, culture) and ideological formation.
• The army’s extraterritorial principle assigned recruits to mixed units, ensuring contact and camaraderie across ethnic and social divides.
  • Quote:
    “These men really lived intimately together and were radically different at the same time. But the uniform and all the routines... served as a great equalizer.” (Petrovic, 08:04)

3. Individual Expression, Diversity, and Paradoxical Inclusion

[08:54–14:55]

• Despite military discipline, the JNA recognized, used, and encouraged the diverse skills of its conscripts; the institution respected individual talents, even among “dangerous” political elements or known troublemakers.
  • Example: Notable filmmakers, artists, or provocateurs were supported in creative endeavors during service.
  • The self-management ethos allowed soldiers to transcend class and background within the military context.
  • Quote:
    “Mobilizing different skills by different people was essentially important for the army... The army used resources by soldiers, but also respected their knowledge and would put that knowledge at the first place.” (Petrovic, 11:38)

4. Exclusions: Limits to the Utopian Project

[14:55–23:01]

• Women and Minorities: The army was not fully inclusive—women’s integration was attempted only briefly, and linguistic diversity was sacrificed for unit cohesion.
  • LGBTQ individuals and those not speaking Serbo-Croatian faced challenges in belonging.
• The Albanian Experience: While facing surveillance and difficult conditions, some Albanians still valued military service as access to Yugoslav citizenship.
  • The JNA prioritized integration, resisting ethnic hierarchies seen in other socialist armies.
  • Quote:
    “I think it would be very incorrect to claim that any of the Yugoslav nations... would be privileged. The army was very, very keen to be extremely inclusive and not make hierarchies on ethnic terms among these men.” (Petrovic, 17:01)
• The utopian quality was experienced retrospectively—after the loss of Yugoslavia, possibilities for non-ethnic social existence diminished, giving former recruits a sense of what was lost.

5. War, Catastrophe, and Afterlives

[25:03–29:39]

• Petrovic’s book is structured around a “before and after” framing: Yugoslav times, and post-Yugoslav aftermaths, with a personal interlude discussing the wars’ destruction.
• The aim is to show how catastrophic violence redefines self and society, but also how earlier collective experiences stubbornly persist and unsettle the present.
  • Quote:
    “I thought it’s very important to show how this destructive and horrendous process of violence and war alters forever all of us… not only my interlocutors.” (Petrovic, 25:37)
• She is critical of scholarship that treats the 1990s war as the only defining moment, and wants to give voice to the “ordinary” millions whose lives bridge the divide between heroics, activism, and everyday experience.

6. Afterlife as Concept: Memory, Nostalgia, and Social Connection

[29:39–34:18]

• Petrovic distinguishes her approach from nostalgia studies, focusing instead on the lingering, often unspoken force of collective memory—“afterlives”—and the emotional forces that persist after catastrophe.
  • “I was interested in this tension… these afterlives as some affective emotional force that is capable of unsettling this givenness of the world in which we live in the aftermath of catastrophe.” (Petrovic, 33:40)
• Examples: Former soldiers think about reaching out to their army friends but hesitate, troubled by uncertainty about how those friendships survived the intervening wars and divisions.

7. Methodology, Positionality, and Ethnographic Challenges

[34:18–41:12]

• Petrovic reflects on researching masculinity and military experience as a woman who did not serve in the army. She emphasizes co-construction of the narrative and respecting her interlocutors’ willingness to share.
  • She chooses not to anonymize her main subjects, working with men she often knew over the years and whose stories were deeply personal.
  • Focus was on what her subjects wanted to share, not stories beyond their comfort, even if this left some aspects (e.g., sexuality) less explored.

8. Petrovic’s Ongoing Research

[41:20–43:15]

• She’s currently studying both the culture of comic books in socialist Yugoslavia (a male-dominated field) and the careers of female partisan doctors during WWII.
  • Quote:
    “Most of comic book authors were also men... My daughter is always critical of me and always asks, ‘why are you only writing on men?’” (Petrovic, 41:44)
  • The latter project aims to balance gender focus and illuminate women's unique war experiences and their later lives.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “[The JNA] serves as a connecting tissue which still connects these people.” (Petrovic, 03:32)
• “The uniform and all the routines... served as a great equalizer that made these men similar, equal, and able to make meaningful relationships.” (Petrovic, 08:04)
• “Those men who were good in what they were doing... had autonomy, which was not easily overwritten by institutions and the system itself.” (Petrovic, 12:36)
• “I think we need to consider that... the army had to sacrifice... linguistic plurality for efficiency and unity.” (Petrovic, 20:38)
• “This utopian character... emerges retrospectively... a lost political horizon of existence outside identity frames.” (Petrovic, 22:14)
• “I was interested in this tension... these afterlives as affective emotional force... unsettling the givenness of the world in which we live.” (Petrovic, 33:40)
• “I really wanted to share what people want to share... given who I am... I’m a woman, I’m a Serbian woman, I never served in the army, I live in Slovenia. All this mattered in kind of negotiation.” (Petrovic, 38:17)

Timestamps for Key Segments

• [01:33] — Introduction and context for the Yugoslav People’s Army
• [02:12–05:22] — Petrovic on personal motivation and lingering impact of the JNA
• [05:22–08:54] — JNA as social project, structure, and unifying practices
• [08:54–14:55] — Tolerance of diversity, creativity, and “dangerous” elements in the ranks
• [14:55–23:01] — Exclusions: women, ethnic and linguistic minorities, the Albanian perspective
• [25:03–29:39] — Catastrophe of the 1990s and book’s split temporal structure
• [29:39–34:18] — Afterlife and affect: emotional, silent, and persistent legacies
• [34:18–41:12] — Ethnographic challenges, positionality, and methodological reflections
• [41:20–43:15] — Current and future projects

Conclusion

This episode offers a rich exploration of the Yugoslav People’s Army as both a lived experience and an enduring emotional legacy. Petrovic’s nuanced ethnography attends to history’s complexity, highlighting the creation of cross-ethnic solidarity, the limits of socialist inclusion, and the unspoken afterlives of loss and catastrophe. Grounded in personal narrative and critical scholarship, the conversation illuminates why the JNA still resonates as a utopia lost—and how its memory unsettles the ethnically-organized present.

For more, read Tanja Petrovic’s Utopia of the Uniform: Affective Afterlives of the Yugoslav People's Army (Duke UP, 2024).