The post-Yugoslav subject: Mobility, liminality, and post-war trauma in Goran Vojnović’s novel Jugoslavija, moja dežela (Yugoslavia, My Fatherland)

The article focuses on the novel Jugoslavija, moja dežela ( Yugoslavia, My Fatherland ) by the Slovenian author Goran Vojnović, one of the key works of post-Yugoslav literature, combining reflection on migration in the territory of the former Yugoslavia with an analysis of the crisis of identity following the violent dissolution of the political community. The study explores the individual experience of migration as a reflection of a broader generational condition, as well as a form of spatial mobility that alternately emerges as necessity and as a quest – for the father, for identity, for the recovery of memory, and for confronting post-war trauma. It argues that migration is not merely a thematic concern of the novel, but a structuring principle that shapes its narrative architecture, spatial configuration, and construction of subjectivity. The protagonist is portrayed as a hybrid, transnational, liminal figure who moves between non-places, negotiating the meaning of homeland/fatherland while grappling with his sense of responsibility for the crimes committed by his father.