CREES Annual Borka Tomljenović Lecture. Reading through the Double Archival Grain: Yugoslav Socialist Humanitarianism and its Whiteness

For the 2026 Annual Borka Tomljenović Lecture, Professor Čarna Brković will consider different forms of affective engagement with humanitarian activities in socialist Yugoslavia, including irony and nostalgia. Ironic engagement assumes that Yugoslav solidarity with formerly colonized populations during the Cold War was empty rhetoric, driven by a pragmatic desire to establish the country as a significant player on the geopolitical stage. Nostalgic engagement, by contrast, is shaped by the belief that Yugoslavs were motivated by an honest ideological commitment to solidarity and anti-racism that ultimately placed them on the “right side” of history. Both ironic and nostalgic engagements with socialist humanitarianism evaluate the past through contemporary ideas about solidarity, socialism, capitalism, and their interrelations.

To understand socialist humanitarianism on its own terms, Brković proposes reading it through the double grain of state socialism and the end of history. Such an analytical approach illuminates the role of racial socialism—socialist ideologies of “race” and local racial projects—and its interactions with global racial hierarchies, showing how these ideologies were shaped by particular value constellations.

By discussing a 1961 humanitarian initiative of the Yugoslav Red Cross that brought sixty children and young people from the Congo to Tivat, Montenegro, this talk sheds light on the workings of socialist whiteness. This was not a colourist project but rather a normative regime of political value with two key characteristics: it ascribed superiority to Yugoslavs on the basis of their greater socialist experience, and it overlooked present problems in favour of a future in which “race” would no longer matter.

Čarna Brković is professor of cultural studies and European ethnology at the University of Mainz. Dr. Brković has a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Manchester and a BA in Ethnology and Anthropology from the University of Belgrade. In her European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant “Racial Socialism” (2026-2031) as well as in her book Realigning Humanitarianism in the Balkans: From Cold War Politics to Neoliberal Ethics (Indiana University Press, 2026), she studies historical projects of integrating the world differently, such as socialist humanitarianism and Europeanization.

If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact us at CREES@umich.edu. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.