Alexander Marković | University of Illinois at Chicago (original) (raw)

I am a cultural anthropologist interested in the cultural politics of music, dance, and expressive culture in the Balkans. My work asks how notions of belonging and citizenship are politicized through intense experiences of affect. My book manuscript, "Ethnic Affects: Performance Politics and Romani Musical Labor in Serbia," explores how affective labor and music-making reconstitute ethnic power relations between Serb patrons and Romani performers. By examining how neoliberal economic transformations have retrenched Romani marginalization vis-à-vis Serbs, I interrogate how existential precarity in postsocialist Serbia shapes the affective politics of ethnic difference. Serbs increasingly denigrate Romani musical labor and invoke stereotypes to justify ruptures in Romani-Serb socioeconomic relations amidst rising poverty. Post-Yugoslav Serbian nationalism has also reshaped discourses about Romani musical performance, where Romani services at times allow for safe cultural exoticism within the nation—but also increasingly threaten reified visions of cultural heritage for Serbian nationalists. Although non-Roma often control representations of Romani musical labor, I show how Roma strategically re-deploy affective, aesthetic, and symbolic aspects of musical labor to obtain economic and cultural capital.

My next project, "Sounding Serbia: Nation-Branding, Citizenship, and Performative Affect After Yugoslavia," explores tensions between cosmopolitan capitalism and populist xenophobia in contemporary Serbia. I interrogate branding projects that use affective and aesthetic dimensions of cultural heritage to support emergent Serbian claims for belonging within a cosmopolitan Europe that embraces cultural diversity. Such endeavors often tout discourses of Serbia's cultural cosmopolitanism, as when revivalist ensembles perform Ottoman-style Sephardic Jewish music or commercial albums feature Serbian ethno-pop aimed at international audiences. Commodification of intangible heritage—like music and dance—also dovetails with neoliberal reorientations in Serbia seeking to create “authentic” brands for global culture markets and tourist consumption. Yet alternative heritage projects also facilitate populist calls for a return to true Serbian roots and cultural authenticity after the “falsehood” of Yugoslavism; they galvanize resistance to E.U. integration and advocate for the defense Serbian political, territorial, and cultural integrity. Some revivalist ensembles use older folk instruments and prioritize repertoires from Kosovo, for example, mobilizing musical affect and aesthetics to claim deep Serbian roots in this lost territory. I ask how these projects obscure regional and ethnic cultural politics, mobilizing “exotic” genres and aesthetics to facilitate particular reconstructions of cultural citizenship within larger geopolitical frameworks.

My research intervenes in anthropological debates by using theories of affect and performance to elucidate how identities are reproduced as social fact, where power relations become naturalized via corporeal experiences of intense feeling. My work sheds critical light on the popular appeal of xenophobia and populism currently sweeping U.S. and European politics, interrogating them as phenomena that rely on visceral appeals to fundamental difference often generated in performative contexts (i.e., rallies, concerts, etc.).

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