Authoritarian trajectories of (de)alienation: political affect, invoking the state and humanist-Marxist legacies

This article works with the concept of (de)alienation to zoom in on the experiences and accounts of a new political affect articulated in the unfolding student-led antiauthoritarian protests in Serbia. It seeks to understand why the protests are seen and felt as a turning point that restores people's ability to relate to their society and reclaim a sense of the political. Apart from its main focus on an ethnographic-analytical account of the particular a(party)political character of the protest claims and practices, the article comparatively explores resonances between the present-day protest and the humanist-Marxist legacy of student protests of 1968. The article concludes by looking at Europe and the world from the vantage point of student protests in Serbia as a perspective to think about contemporary ways of invoking the state and (re)claiming the political.