The book “Unpredictable Past Future. About the Political Potential of Utopia”, edited by Ivana Momčilović and published by Edicija Jugoslavija, was presented recently in the Belgrade Youth Center Club.
The book examines the relationship between aesthetics, politics, and education, moving between the text of the author (Free Theories of Fiction: The Political Potential of Utopia), the text of Biljana Andonovska (Introduction to a Walk Through the Future), which positioned itself as an author through the text “Future (without) Future: the first communist literary a magazine for children in the Kingdom of SHS”, and the so far undiscovered, and published a hundred years ago, Mala Zora’s science-fiction social-utopian novel about new education “Walk through the future”.
Foto: Neđa
In the novel “A Walk Through the Future” (1924), Mala Zora envisions a desired future that centers on the social and political emancipation of children. She emphasizes the importance of education and upbringing policies that have long since moved away from traditional class-based structures. Instead, she advocates for a school of the future that fosters curiosity, imagination, feelings of freedom, equality, solidarity, and a sense of rebellion. Participants in the conversation also raised questions about political traditions and social practices that hinder progress toward this envisioned future. According to the words of Little Zora, it can also be said like this: “Don’t interfere in our games either with your requests or your instructions, but leave us alone, so that we can think for ourselves.”
The author and the research team believe that Dragutin Vladisavljević, the initiator and editor of “Budućnosti”, is most likely hiding behind the pseudonym Mala Zora and that the magazine actually paved the way for the idea of self-organization of children in various cultural, political, sports and other “interest” organizations.
Participants in the conversation – playwright, writer, and researcher Ivana Momčilović (Yugoslavia Edition), theorist and literary historian Biljana Andonovska (Institute for Literature and Art), and art historian Ana Panić (Museum of Yugoslavia, Cejus), moderated by historian Sanja Petrović Todosijević (Institute for New the history of Serbia, Cejus), observed historical memory and thinking about the future within the framework of utopia as a literary genre and in the relationship of surrealists with the KPJ, which was not always in agreement, as they say, with the educational policies it wanted to present.
What makes the magazine a complete novelty even today is the absolute absence of a predecessor, at least as it still seems, and thus a completely new type of literature with and for completely new worldviews. Precisely because of this, the bilingual edition of this book should present these postulates to the international professional public to potentially draw parallels with the literary currents of that era.
The book is dedicated to Leonard Kovačević, an active member and dreamer of the PhD In One Night platform for the aesthetic education of all.
The book can be ordered by e-mail at phdinonenight@gmail.com (with indication: new book).