Slovene Partisans or the Art and Historiography of Utopia

Abstract

The article investigates the relationship between historiographic and artistic narratives on history through the close reading of three narratives on Slovene partisans in WW2 – France Štiglic’s movie Na svoji zemlji (On our own land, 1948), Vitomil Zupan’s novel Menuet za kitaro (na petindvajset strelov) (Minuet for [ 25 – shot] guitar, 1975) and Miklavž Komelj’s philosophic and historiographic essay Kako misliti partizansko umetnost ? (How to think partisan art ?, 2009) – on the background of several scholarly sources. The theoretic starting point of the study are the theories of the philosopher Paul Ricoeur and the historian Hayden White stating 1) the narrativity of every report of history and 2) the presence in narrativity of both analytic (source-fact/ reason-logics/ system/ detachment) and aesthetic (fiction/ emotion/ associative thinking/ engagement) elements. The interpretative tools of Ricoeur’s and White’s theories seem particularly apt to deal with historiographic and artistic narratives related – like the one on partisans – to Socialism, a utopian form of understanding and experiencing the world which is per definition based, in history as well as in art, not only on rational detachment but also on emotional commitment. The utopian frame of Socialism tends to polarize every kind of historic narratives, dividing them in supporting and opposing ones – before as well as after 1989 (or 1991 for Slovenia). Moreover, a second kind of polarization seems to come up in Slovene society : the one between players taking actively part in the conflict of narratives (i. e. taking side for or against partisans) and players feeling the fatigue to be continuously faced with a topic systematically demanding to take sides. One could call it “ the uneasiness of utopia.”