Srećko Horvat (born 28 February 1983) is a Croatian philosopher, author and political activist. The German weekly '' Der Freitag'' called him "one of the most exciting voices of his generation" and he has been described as a "fiery voice of dissent in the Post-Yugoslav landscape". His writing has appeared in ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

'',

Al Jazeera Al Jazeera Media Network (AJMN; , ) is a private-media conglomerate headquartered in Wadi Al Sail, Doha, funded in part by the government of Qatar. The network's flagship channels include Al Jazeera Arabic and Al Jazeera English, which pro ...

, ''

Der Spiegel (, , stylized in all caps) is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. With a weekly circulation of about 724,000 copies in 2022, it is one of the largest such publications in Europe. It was founded in 1947 by John Seymour Chaloner ...

'', ''

Jacobin The Society of the Friends of the Constitution (), renamed the Society of the Jacobins, Friends of Freedom and Equality () after 1792 and commonly known as the Jacobin Club () or simply the Jacobins (; ), was the most influential political cl ...

'', ''

Newsweek ''Newsweek'' is an American weekly news magazine based in New York City. Founded as a weekly print magazine in 1933, it was widely distributed during the 20th century and has had many notable editors-in-chief. It is currently co-owned by Dev P ...

,'' and ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

''.

Life

Horvat was born in

Osijek Osijek () is the fourth-largest city in Croatia, with a population of 96,848 in 2021. It is the largest city and the economic and cultural centre of the eastern Croatian region of Slavonia, as well as the administrative centre of Osijek-Baranja ...

, Croatia but lived the first eight years of his life in Germany before returning to Croatia in 1991. After returning to Croatia, he was involved in the hardcore punk scene of the 1990s, graduated with a degree in philosophy and general linguistics at the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb, started writing for Croatian magazines such as ''

Zarez ''Zarez'' () was a Croatian biweekly newsprint Newsprint is a low-cost, non-archival paper consisting mainly of wood pulp and most commonly used to print newspapers and other publications and advertising material. Invented in 1844 by Charle ...

'' and, prior to his twenty-sixth birthday, published two books, ''Protiv političke korektnosti'' (''Against Political Correctness'') and ''Znakovi postmodernog grada'' (''Signs of the Postmodern City'') in Croatia and Serbia. Since then, he has written multiple books in both Croatian and English (''Poetry from the Future'', ''The Radicality of Love'' and ''Subversion!''), many of which have been translated into other languages, among them Chinese, Korean, Spanish, Turkish and German. In 2008, he co-founded the Subversive Festival, where he served as programme director until 2013. In 2016, he co-founded, with Yanis Varoufakis, the

Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 The Democracy in Europe Movement 2025, or DiEM25, is a left-wing European political alliance founded in 2016. It operates as a pan-European umbrella for subsidiary parties sharing the same name and branding (e.g. MeRA25, MERA25), and runs el ...

, on whose Coordinating Collective he presently sits as a member.

Political thought and activity

Horvat is regarded as one of the "central figures of the new left in post-Yugoslavia". He has participated in different activist movements across the world, including the 2009 student protests in Croatia, Occupy Wall Street in 2011 and World Social Forum in Senegal and Tunisia. He has visited the 2017 G20 Hamburg summit which he described as a "dystopian nightmare", claiming that "the real problem is the dogmatic slumber of the leaders of the free world, represented at this G20 summit by Merkel, May and others, which is the origin of our current dystopian nightmare (wars, terrorism, the refugee crisis and climate change)". Since 2016, he has claimed that "the need for a progressive international movement was never as urgent as today". Asked about what the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal meant for the future of politics, he claims that "in the near future this will be remembered as the early days of a much more radical transformation of what we understand under politics". In 2017, Horvat signed the Declaration on the Common Language of the

Croats The Croats (; , ) are a South Slavs, South Slavic ethnic group native to Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and other neighboring countries in Central Europe, Central and Southeastern Europe who share a common Croatian Cultural heritage, ancest ...

Serbs The Serbs ( sr-Cyr, Срби, Srbi, ) are a South Slavs, South Slavic ethnic group native to Southeastern Europe who share a common Serbian Cultural heritage, ancestry, Culture of Serbia, culture, History of Serbia, history, and Serbian lan ...

Bosniaks The Bosniaks (, Cyrillic script, Cyrillic: Бошњаци, ; , ) are a South Slavs, South Slavic ethnic group native to the Southeast European historical region of Bosnia (region), Bosnia, today part of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and who sha ...

and

Montenegrins Montenegrins (, or ) are a South Slavic ethnic group that share a common ancestry, culture, history, and language, identified with the country of Montenegro. Montenegrins are mostly Orthodox Christians; however, the population also includes ...

Subversive Festival

Horvat was one of the founders of the Subversive Festival in 2008, an annual festival which included

Oliver Stone William Oliver Stone (born ) is an American filmmaker. Stone is an acclaimed director, tackling subjects ranging from the Vietnam War and American politics to musical film, musical Biographical film, biopics and Crime film, crime dramas. He has ...

Alexis Tsipras Alexis Tsipras (, ; born 28 July 1974) is a Greek politician who served as Prime Minister of Greece from 2015 to 2019. A left-wing figure, Tsipras was leader of the List of political parties in Greece, Greek political party Syriza from 200 ...

, Aleida Guevara,

Slavoj Žižek Slavoj Žižek ( ; ; born 21 March 1949) is a Slovenian Marxist philosopher, cultural theorist and public intellectual. He is the international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at the University of London, Global Distin ...

, Tariq Ali,

Zygmunt Bauman Zygmunt Bauman (; ; 19 November 1925 – 9 January 2017) was a Polish–British sociologist and philosopher. He was driven out of the Polish People's Republic during the 1968 Polish political crisis and forced to give up his Polish citizenship. ...

, David Harvey and

Saskia Sassen Saskia Sassen (born January 5, 1947) is a Dutch-American sociologist noted for her analyses of globalization and international human migration. She is a professor of sociology at Columbia University in New York City, and the London School of Eco ...

, among others. In 2013, he along with the programme team left the Subversive Festival "due to differences in understanding the goals and direction of the activist platforms within Subversive Forum and, more generally, the general purpose of Subversive Festival". The influence and significance of the Subversive Festival was often paralleled to the Praxis School, the Marxist humanist philosophical movement that originated in the

SFR Yugoslavia The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (commonly abbreviated as SFRY or SFR Yugoslavia), known from 1945 to 1963 as the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia, commonly referred to as Socialist Yugoslavia or simply Yugoslavia, was a country ...

during the 1960s. In 2017, Horvat published the book ''Subversion!'' which the American linguist and social critic

Noam Chomsky Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American professor and public intellectual known for his work in linguistics, political activism, and social criticism. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a ...

praised as a book "based on rich personal experience and participation in constructive subversion, along with wide reading from classics to the latest dreams of artificial intelligence". According to Chomsky, "Horvat leads us on a whirlwind tour of the maladies and discontents of modern civilization and the many ways to right what is wrong and achieve a better future".

Philosophical Theatre

In 2014, Horvat launched a project called Philosophical Theatre (''Filozofski Teatar'') at Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb. The underlying idea was to re-establish the close relationship between philosophy and theatre. It is a monthly series of public debates with thinkers and artists. His guests included M.I.A., Vanessa Redgrave, Margarethe von Trotta,

Adam Curtis Adam Curtis (born 26 May 1955) is an English documentary filmmaker. Curtis began his career as a conventional documentary producer for the BBC throughout the 1980s and into the early 1990s. The release of '' Pandora's Box'' (1992) marked the in ...

Herta Müller Herta Müller (; born 17 August 1953) is a Romanian-German novelist, poet, essayist and recipient of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature. She was born in Nițchidorf (; ), Timiș County in Romania; her native languages are German and Romanian. Si ...

Hito Steyerl Hito Steyerl (born 1 January 1966) is a German filmmaker, moving image visual artist, artist, writer, and innovator of the essay documentary.Mladen Dolar, Julia Kristeva, Eva Illouz, Tariq Ali, Bobby Gillespie, Thomas Piketty and others. According to the Croatian National Theatre, the number of visitors of the programme from 2014 to 2018 was around 20,000.

Cancellation of ''Sane Society'' television programme

In 2013, Horvat was the host and author of an intellectual TV show on Croatian National Television called ''Zdravo Društvo'' (''Sane Society'') which tried to recreate the Balkan cultural space and hosted many intellectuals such as

Renata Salecl Renata Salecl (born 1962) is a Slovene philosopher, sociologist and legal theorist. She is a senior researcher at the Institute of Criminology, Faculty of Law at the University of Ljubljana, and holds a professorship at Birkbeck College, Univ ...

Rade Šerbedžija Rade Šerbedžija ( sr-Cyrl, Раде Шербеџија, ; born 27 July 1946) is a Croatian actor, director and musician. He is known for his portrayals of imposing figures on both sides of the law. He was one of the best known Yugoslav actors ...

, Andrej Nikolaidis and Viktor Ivančić, among others. Officially, it was called off by the management because of "austerity measures". However, the Bosnian writer

Miljenko Jergović Miljenko Jergović (born 28 May 1966) is a prominent Bosnian writer. Biography Born in Sarajevo, SR Bosnia and Herzegovina, SFR Yugoslavia to Croatian parents, Jergović received his M.A. in literature from the Sarajevo University. While at hi ...

wrote that the TV show likely would not have been removed if not for an opinion piece Horvat wrote in ''

'' that criticised an anti-gay-marriage referendum and more generally the movement of Croatian society in a culturally conservative if not fascistic direction. Jergović wrote: "If he had written it in 1942 he would've ended up in

Jasenovac concentration camp Jasenovac () was a concentration camp, concentration and extermination camp established in the Jasenovac, Sisak-Moslavina County, village of the same name by the authorities of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) in occupied Yugoslavia durin ...

. If he had written it in 1972 he would've ended up in Lepoglava prison. But in 2014 he only lost his TV show because he wrote the truth about Croatia".

Bibliography

In English

* ''What does Europe want? The Union and its Discontents'' (with

), Istros Books, 2013 * ''Welcome to the Desert of Postsocialism'' (with Igor Štiks), Verso, 2014 * ''The Radicality of Love'', Polity Press, 2015 * ''Subversion!'', Zero Books, 2017 * ''Poetry from the Future'', Penguin, 2019 * ''After the Apocalypse'', Polity Press, 2021

In French

* "Sauvons-nous de nos sauveurs", Éditions Lignes, 2013

In German

* ''Nach dem Ende der Geschichte'' Laika-Verlag, Hamburg, 2013 * ''Was will Europa? – Rettet uns vor den Rettern'' (with

) Laika-Verlag, Hamburg, 2013

In Croatian

* ''Znakovi postmodernog grada'' Jesenski i Turk, Zagreb, 2007 * ''Protiv političke korektnosti. Od Kramera do Laibacha, i natrag'', Biblioteka XX. Vek, Beograd, 2007. * ''Budućnost je ovdje'' Svijet distopijskog filma, HFS, Zagreb, 2008 * ''Totalitarizam danas'' Antibarbarus, Zagreb, 2008 * ''Diskurs terorizma'' AGM, Zagreb, 2008 * ''Ljubav za početnike'' Naklada Ljevak, Zagreb, 2009 * ''Pravo na pobunu'' (with Igor Štiks), Fraktura, Zagreb, 2010 * ''Pažnja! Neprijatelj prisluškuje'' Naklada Ljevak, Zagreb, 2011 * ''Što Europa želi?'' (with

), Algoritam, Zagreb, 2013

In Spanish

* "El Sur pide la palabra. El futuro de una Europa en crisis" (con

), Libros Del Lince (2014) * "La radicalidad del amor", Katakrak, Pamplona (2016)Página de la editorial española
/ref> * "El discurso del terrorismo", Katakrak, Pamplona (2017)Página de la editorial española
/ref> * "¡Subversión! Conversaciones con Srećko Horvat" (con Alfie Bown), Katakrak, Pamplona (2019)Página de la editorial española
/ref> * "Poesía del futuro", Paidós, Barcelona (2020) * "¡Todo debe cambiar!" (con Renata Ávila), Rayo Verde Editorial (2021) * "Después del apocalipsis", Katakrak, Pamplona (2021)Página de la editorial española
/ref>

In Catalan

* ''Després de l'apocalipsi'', Arcàdia, Barcelona (2021)

Articles

"Welcome to the Desert of Transition"
Monthly Review, March 2012
"Croatia - the latest member of the EU periphery"
The Guardian, July 2013
"Croatia - a sign of the rotten heart of Europe
The Guardian, December 2013
"Ukraine's fallen statues of Lenin"
The Guardian, March 2014
"First World War: was Gavrilo Princip a terrorist or freedom fighter?"
The Guardian, April 2014

Al Jazeera, February 2014

Al Jazeera, January 2014

The New York Times, February 2014
"The Future Is Here"
NeMe, January 2011

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Horvat, Srecko 1983 births 21st-century Croatian philosophers Living people Marxist theorists Political philosophers Post-structuralists Signatories of the Declaration on the Common Language