Srećko Horvat

Srećko Horvat
Srećko Horvat, January, 2014
Born	(1983-02-28) 28 February 1983 Osijek, SR Croatia, SFR Yugoslavia (now Croatia)
Era	Contemporary philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Continental philosophy
Main interests	Poststructuralism Ideology Political theory Film theory Marxism

Srećko Horvat (born 1983) is a philosopher, author and political activist. The German weekly Der Freitag described him as "one of the most exciting voices of his generation" ^[1] and Hollywood director Oliver Stone called him “a charismatic Croatian philosopher”^[2] Writings by him have appeared in The Guardian, Al Jazeera, Il Manifesto, El Pais and The New York Times .

Life

Horvat was born in Osijek, Croatia, but lived for the first eight years of his life in exile in Germany, before returning to Croatia in 1991.^[3] He has published extensively about the Occupy Wall Street Movement;^[4] the World Social Forum in Senegal and Tunisia; Participatory Budgeting in Porto Alegre; the Zebaleen in Cairo; Cyprus, China, Lebanon, Israel, and more. He has been involved in setting up the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM 2025) along with Yanis Varoufakis.^[5]

Political thought and activity

Horvat is regarded as one of the "central figures of the new left in post-Yugoslavia".^[6] He has participated in different activist movements in Croatia. In Germany he published the book After the End of History: From the Arab Spring to the Occupy Movement (Laika Verlag, 2013), where he is engaged in debates and interviews about Occupy Wall Street, Chinese capitalism, poststructuralism and postcolonialism with different thinkers such as Francis Fukuyama, Stéphane Hessel, Terry Eagleton, Gayatri Spivak, etc.^[7] In his work with Igor Štiks he has been advocating "direct democracy as a necessary corrective (and possibly a true alternative) to electoral democracy and partitocracy"^[8] and, more recently, he is claiming that "it is becoming more and more clear that a movement without a party is impotent, and that a party without a movement can only repeat the failures of the past".^[9]

Subversive Festival, 2013

The Subversive Festival

He was one of the founders of the Subversive Festival in 2008, a festival which included Oliver Stone, Alexis Tsipras, Aleida Guevara, Slavoj Žižek, Tariq Ali, Zygmunt Bauman, David Harvey, Saskia Sassen, etc. In 2013 together with the programme team he left the Subversive Festival "due to differences in understanding the goals and direction of the activist platforms within Subversive Forum and, more generally, the general purpose of Subversive Festival".^[10]

Cancellation of 'Sane Society' television program

During 2013 Horvat was the host and author of an intellectual TV show on Croatian National Television called “Zdravo Društvo” (Sane Society) which tried to recreate the Balkan cultural space and hosted many intellectuals such as Renata Salecl, Rade Šerbedžija, Andrej Nikolaidis, Viktor Ivančić, etc. Officially it was called off by the management because of “austerity measures”. However, the Bosnian writer Miljenko Jergović wrote that the TV show likely would not have been removed if not for an opinion piece Horvat wrote in the Guardian that criticized an anti-gay-marriage referendum and, more generally, the movement of Croatian society in a culturally conservative if not fascistic direction.^[11] Jergović wrote, "If he had written it in 1942 he would've ended up in Jasenovac concentration camp. If he had written it in 1972 he would've ended up in Lepoglava prison. But in 2014 he only lost his TV show because he wrote the truth about Croatia.”^[12]

Bibliography

In English

• What does Europe want? The Union and its Discontents with Slavoj Žižek, Istros Books, 2013^[13]

In French

• "Sauvons-nous de nos sauveurs", Éditions Lignes, 2013

In German

• Nach dem Ende der Geschichte Laika-Verlag, Hamburg, 2013
• Was will Europa? – Rettet uns vor den Rettern (with Slavoj Žižek) Laika-Verlag, Hamburg, 2013

In Croatian

• Što Europa želi? (with Slavoj Žižek), Algoritam, Zagreb, 2013
• Pažnja! Neprijatelj prisluškuje Naklada Ljevak, Zagreb, 2011
• Pravo na pobunu (with Igor Štiks), Fraktura, Zagreb, 2010
• Ljubav za početnike Naklada Ljevak, Zagreb, 2009
• Budućnost je ovdje Svijet distopijskog filma, HFS, Zagreb, 2008
• Totalitarizam danas Antibarbarus, Zagreb, 2008
• Diskurs terorizma AGM, Zagreb, 2008
• Znakovi postmodernog grada Jesenski i Turk, Zagreb, 2007
• Protiv političke korektnosti. Od Kramera do Laibacha, i natrag", Biblioteka XX. Vek, Beograd, 2007.

Articles

• "Godot arrives in Sarajevo", The New York Times, February, 2014
• "It's the Libidinal Economy, stupid!", Al Jazeera, January, 2014
• "Why are the Balkans boiling again?", Al Jazeera, February, 2014
• "First World War: was Gavrilo Princip a terrorist or freedom fighter?", The Guardian, April, 2014
• "Ukraine's fallen statues of Lenin", The Guardian, March, 2014
• "Croatia - a sign of the rotten heart of Europe, The Guardian, December, 2013
• "Croatia - the latest member of the EU periphery", The Guardian, July, 2013
• "Welcome to the Desert of Transition", Monthly Review, March, 2012

References