Form and Life

Abstract

Archival bits and memories of the service in the Yugoslav People’s Army are capable of questioning the ethnonational logic that prevailed after Yugoslavia and of pointing to alternatives to it. This chapter’s focus is on this faculty, and describes conditions that make it possible. Specifically, it explores the relationship between ritualized and monotonous forms of military service and affect, as well as the modalities through which these forms did not work as mere performative means, but became constitutive of life amid the liminality and long-lasting temporality of military service. The particular focus is on male friendship and economies of solidarity and care as part of an extremely profound emotional fabric that resulted from the monotonous, ritualized, and performative patterns of life on military bases.