Generacija. Osemdeseta: Pojmovnik novega kulturnega polja 3

The third volume of the the lexicon The Eighties: A Conceptual Lexicon of the New Cultural Field, discusses the understanding of the concept of generation within the framework of cultural sociology and cultural history, from modern sociological understanding after the First World War to the constructivist reinterpretation of the concept, which understands generation as a historically produced discursive formation. In conclusion, using interviews with protagonists of the Yugoslav 1980s in various fields of cultural production, author investigates how the concept can help resolve the tension between biography and structure in the analysis of social change, and about the general analytical utility of the concept in the analysis of radical social change.

The author concludes that the concept of generation, as used today in popular discourse or promotional discourse, which treats it as a homogeneous demographic category, radically different from those born ten years earlier, has in reality no more validity than a horoscope. However, if we reconceptualise the generation as the result of historically specific regimes of subjectivation and transformations of subjectivity that are condensed at a certain moment of crisis, and if we understand it not only through this sociological existence, but also through its discursive existence and experientiality (naming, labelling, practicing and experiencing), then it can serve as an analytical tool for understanding the social transformations and symbolic revolutions.