MELODRAMATIC STRUCTURES OF FEELING AND MASS BEREAVEMENTS OF CELEBRITY FOLK HEROES

Abstract

This paper presents theoretical, methodological and political considerations pertaining to the affective configuration of public collective grief and bereavement. This configuration is described relative to the specific position held by celebrity folk heroes within the broader melodramatic cultural modality. The case of the bereavement for the singer Đorđe Balašević is compared here with two other historical episodes that involved similar affective patterning and related discursive formations. The article shows how the melodramatic modality underpinning all three cases operates beyond the representational and discursive dimensions of culture to form collective affective patterns or structures of feeling that transform the underlying economies of impossibility into melodramatic bursts of pseudopolitical (im)possibility.

Keywords

• melodramatic structure of feeling
• bereavement
• celebrity folk heroes
• balašević
• affect theory
• (im)possibility