Jivetz and Writing the Afterlives of Protests in Bulgaria

Abstract

This dissertation explores political and anticipatory stances and endeavors through an ethnographic lens, focusing on the 2013-2014 mass protests and student university occupations in Bulgaria. It is a collection of stories gifted by interlocutors that describe encounters with others, as well as with material things, spaces, poetry, and photography, which create desire and inspire hopeful imaginations. The writing does not aim at accurate descriptions but seeks to break open established narratives that summarize the protests and disappoint, as well as to offer a counterpoint to the “politics of the antis” by tracking a vibrant and enchanting political (“jivetz”) that continues to reverberate. Of primary concern in this dissertation is how to engage with this hopeful political without describing and explaining it, without freezing and deadening its effects. To address this, the writing is nervous and experimental, seeking not to discipline the contradictory, confusing, and odd, or to make fragments and stories whole, but instead to track, attune to, mimic, and replicate the desires and hopes often found in the small, eccentric, and singular. It remains open and anticipatory itself, allowing the outlines of something possible to emerge.