Digitizing a Collective Personal Archive of the Non-Aligned Movement

Recent scholarship on the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) stresses its significance to the historical memory and cultural identity of Yugoslays and citizens of other NAM member states. Much of what comprises the NAM "archive," however comes from the Museum of Yugoslavia and Archive of Yugoslavia, and includes images of Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito with heads of state, Tito's speeches while abroad, and the fruits of Yugoslav international collaborations and outreach all which reinforce the archive as a relationship between "knowledge and power" (Friedrich, 140, 2018). The NAM was much more than these official manifestations, however. It became foundational to the identity of NAM member states and remains a memorialization of the Yugoslav "ideal family" XI of constituent Yugoslav ethnicities and "colorful" brothers, or citizens of NAM member states (Vlahovid, 16-17, 1961). Despite the lack of official discoverable items related to the movement, memories of the movement persist in stories, images, and experiences of individuals who participated or believed in the might of it. The question is, however, how to formalize that archive and what can it contribute to knowledge production? "Digitizing a Personal Archive of the Non-Aligned Movement" examines what a digitized transnational personal archive of the NAM might include and how such a format may prove more "elastic" (Manhoff, 18) in the musealization of not just the official, but the personal, and rein fuse the significance of the socialist citizen to the movement. Without those images, stories, and experiences, the archive of NAM remains incomplete.