Student Rebellions and the Meaning of Democracy

Every crisis of representative democracy seems to encourage the search for new forms of democracy. This applies even to some countries on the semi-periphery of Europe. For example, in Croatia in 2009, there was a student rebellion that rejected the principles of representative democracy. The students wanted to warn that 'knowledge is not a commodity'. They introduced a relatively new political language that was filled with concepts such as plenum, blockade and direct democracy. Student plenums were organized as democratic forums that tried to perform various activities within their 'jurisdiction'. The student rebellion accepted the understanding that democratic will (or 'the real') "is not represented, it is presented" (Badiou, 2007). Although perceived as a kind of political innovation, this rebellion didn't survive. Namely, it could not establish an order that delegitimizes the "necessity of the existence of other orders that surround it" (Kovačević, 2009). However, the student rebellion in Serbia at the end of 2024 took over the heritage of the rebellion in Croatia in 2009. First, its political vocabulary is like the one that was created during the student revolt in Croatia. Unlike that rebellion, Serbian students managed to block all state universities in their country. Because the parliamentary opposition in Serbia is not particularly strong, they took over its political role in the fight against the Vučić regime. Thus, the concept of student became a political concept that could no longer be reduced to its sociological content. Moreover, the blocked universities have also become places of politics, which is a confirmation that politics does not have its 'natural' place. General strike is the next concept that became discursively 'operational'. There are two meanings of it in current Serbian political discourse. The first is the one highlighted by the students and is close to Sorel's understanding of the myth of the general strike. In that myth "the revolution appears as a revolt, pure and simple" (Sorel, 2004) since it ”rejects every kind of program, of utopia” (Benjamin, 1921). Another meaning is the one promoted by the opposition parties and their intellectuals. They defined the general strike as political because it should 'strengthen the state' or its institutions (ibid.). According to them, students and others should return to their 'natural' duties after the strike ends. In this way, promotors of that attitude ignore ”democratic apeiron” with which the students managed to shake Vučić's rule (Ranciere, 2007).