The street as political space: Walking as protest, graffiti, and the student carnivalization of Belgrade (Student protest against the Balkan War)

Western assumptions of unthinking Serbian support for the policies of Slobodan Milosevic were upset by the success of popular protest in securing his removal in the autumn of 2000. In fact, just three years after his accession to power in 1989, there had already been massive student protests against the Balkan War, and these were repeated and surpassed in the winter of 1996-97, when Milosevic tried to disregard the success of the opposition in the local elections of that November. The student protests quickly took a theatricalized form, and their recurrent modes-graffiti, banners, street processions- were successfully carnivalized, to become popular performative events. This feature provided a chronology of the main developments to complement the more analytical study by Milena Dragicevic-Sesic of the nature of this organic but ironic response to an authoritarian regime, which gave old traditions a late twentieth-century voice.