Petar Odak

Country: 
Croatia
Year of Enrollment: 
2018

Petar Odak is a PhD Candidate of Gender Studies at Central European University and Utrecht University, working on the project that examines "The Affective Ambivalence of Socialist Legacies in the Context of the Experience Economy." The project explores the affective, ghostly presences of state socialist pasts within the vast field of experience capitalism, the focus being on performative practices of historical reenactment, immersive museums and virtual reality. By looking into bodily aspects of experience on the one hand, and the psychological mechanisms and political practices of nostalgia, hope and irony on the other - including the connection between the two - his project detects and traces ambivalence as the fundamental affective attitude towards recent socialist past. Theoretically, he employs theories and concepts developed within gender studies (affect theory and queer theory, embodiment and performance studies), as well as psychoanalysis. His research interests also include dark tourism and postsocialist studies.