History of the journal Monitor ZSA
Between 2001 and 2010 Taja Kramberger founded (together with some other young researchers at the ISH in Ljubljan) and edited 38 numbers of the anthropological journal Monitor ISH (till 2004)/Monitor ZSA (from 2004-2010). First two numbers before 2001 were not a proper journal of social sciences, but a thin fascicule of ISH-Newsletters on some 32 pages. Monitor ISH reached its full form in 2001 with Vol. III, No 1-2 with Sabina Mihelj as Managing Editor, Taja Kramberger as Editor in Chief, and with an important and firm suport of the founding and by then actual Dean of the ISH Drago Rotar.
Volontary direction of Monitor ISH/ZSA was for all those who were devoted to the project a constant and exhausting struggle with the Slovenian authorities, since a normalized clientelistic division of State budget in the country was (and still is) an obstacle for every serious project that could not (and cannot) be easily accomodated to the postulates of the power. The journal was from the beginning a broad platform od discussion that aimed at transformation of idle (a permanent stasis like) intellectual research and somewhat petrified conceptual thinking in social and human sciences in Slovenia.
Over the years, many translations of key-texts in historical and social anthropology were published in Monitor ISH/Monitor ZSA (Michel Foucault, Michel de Certeau, Jacques Le Goff, Roland Barthes, Lucette Valensi, Ian Kershaw ...), and some Slovene authors had written important texts throwing a light on how to use thinking tools, instruments of different axiologies in examination of the traumatic Slovene reality, prone to amnesia and spontaneous political instrumentalisations.
Very probably this potential for social transformation was one of the basic points causing that the journal was decisively unacceptable for the "intellectual milieu" of deeply anti-intellectual environment. Anti-intellectualims in Slovenia is, of course, an omnipresent and hegemonic mentality in the society and not just a sporadic social strategy. It percieves itself - in the constitutive apparatus of collective identity - as a highly articulated "intellectualism". Therefore pop-science achievements and profit oriented applications easily reign high above the basic intellectual efforts of rare individuals or small teams.
The journal actually never got more than a minimal State support to cover the elementary design and print expenses (only sometimes language supervisors too), so all other work had to be done with a strong vision, dynamic energy and belief in its mission.
Over the time the journal gradually and succesfully improved.
At the time of a sudden "university purge" at the University of Primorska in Koper in 2010 (in which Taja Kramberger - liked by the students and respected by the citizens, engaged in many faculty activities, and even elected to the Direction of the Academic Trade Union some months ago by the same colleagues who were ready to lynch her after the purge only some months later - abruptly and totally illegally lost her university position) the journal, paradoxically, came to its first peek.
In 2010, two big numbers of basic texts for students and other interested readers were published (together more than 650 pages; see here Vol. XII, No 35-36 and Vol. XII, No 37-38), and could be used as excellent debate starting-points in the years to come. Best students of anthropology and history were invited to join the editorial board, and actively participated in the journal with book-reviews and small contributions. But, unfortunately, there were no years to come. The violent purge came instead. These were the last two volumes of the Monitor ZSA.
During a decade of hard and obstinate work, the Editor-in-Chief (Taja Kramberger) and the Editorial Board went through many constraints, ruptures, polemics, struggles and changes, among which the first was already at its home institution - at the ISH.
In 2004, an arrogant document of censorship postulated to the journal Editorial Board by the then new Dean of the ISH Mme Svetlana Slapšak for whom the journal which was not led by herself and her venal pop-science satelites was obviously a nuisace.
Mme Slapšak has just been contentiously elected - in Ionesco style - with her own "self-confirmation" at the corridor of the ISH - as she didn't obtain enough votes at the official Senate session where she was absent. Two of her initial gestures as a Head of the ISH were rude suppressions of the Monitor ISH and of the newly established Centre for Jewish and Hebrew Studies (founders were Irena Šumi, Hannah Starman, Drago Rotar and Taja Kramberger - all named and many more left the institution in 2004 because of the indignation of the new leadership).
Absurd and no less than lunatic events at the time of the "putsch at the ISH" are described in the red number of the Monitor ZSA, Vol. VII, No. 1-4, 2005, where some of "the legalists" - i.e. a dozen of intellectuals who finally left the institution - also published some crucial documents of the putsch. These documents were latter well hidden or denied by the putschist team. Some visible people of the Slovene political, legal and cultural scene became implicated in the putsch: for example a known jurist Matevž Krivic, who came as a "friendly helping hand", took from "legalist side" some documents and the audio-recordings of the contestable Session of the Senate ISH and simply gave it to the other side. That's called justice in Slovenia. Svetlana Slapšak later untruthfully stated at many occassions that audio-recordings were falsified, but how can anybody sane ever falsify the basenessof her intrigues, her half-mastery of Slovene language (idiosincratically mixed with the Serbian) and her voice? The plaint at the Public Prosecutor's Office of the Republic of Slovenia and appeals to the foreign institutions about the total illegality of the procedures at the ISH at the time of the putsch was left unheard or was manipulated by the further camouflage and lies of the putschists. It seems that the big European institutions (the principal disappointment being the ex-colleagues of the EHESS in Paris) prefered to believe the politically backed up versions of the oppressors than read the documents being sent to them.
Decoding the criminal strategies of the many Central European (inner-national) institutions would lead to uncovering of the many similar gangsterlike takeovers - if the West European countries and their visible institutions would only have a slight interest in justice and peace in these regions. If the lives of people who really work seriously would count for them. For now it is the oppostite, West Europeans happily and letargically back up the worst kind of "confirmed elites" in the region.
But when the journal at the ISH once was appropriated by Mme Slapšak and her young assistant Maja Sunčič (later engaged in the Slovene populist media politics oscillating between intrigues of the Ultra Right and Ultra Left using a discourse of vulgar magazines) there were no moral or epistemic obstacles any more not to get a State blessing. The journal served just fine to those people. Their seized journal of Monitor ISH was however rapidly minced in volume and less elaborated in structure, as it served the only reasons of its existence: a self-promotion of the autors and their better positioning in the local system of ranking and points. That was just what they wanted from a "journal", but were - for one reason or the other - unable or too idle to formally establish it themselves. This truncated Monitor ISH (after 2004, edited by Maja Sunčič, still in existence) went on easily inside the Slovene academic structure. In "ever changing" opportunistic Slovene socio-political regime Monitor ISH was now solidly funded and could publish n'importe quoi with an official confirmation for decades to come, whereas the real founders of Monitor ISH had to fight on for survival for years.
Firstly, they had to establish a new legal-subject, an association (TROPOS), outside of the ISH. Then they had to change the offcial name of the journal to Monitor ZSA (Svetlana Slapšak didn't allow the use of the name any more), acquire a new ISSN and start form zero again. By that time, the regulation for a financial aid was that in order to get the State subvebtion you had to have already 3 previous years of publishing continuity - with this gesture people at the ISH who did nothing (in a gangster-like act) gained the continuity of those who worked (thus, this was a wilful baseness of the new Dean). So, the editorial team was preocupied for months with all the necessary administrative things and with logistics in order to be able to simply go on with a journal that this team set up in the first place.
1. IN THE FRAMES OF THE ISH (1999-2004) THE FOLLOWING NUMBERS OF MONITOR ISH WERE PUBLISHED
Obstacles that caused a rupture of 2004:
- CENSORSHIP BY MME SVETLANA SLAPŠAK (freshly "self-elected" Dean of the ISH) - document of the censorship is here
- CLIENTELISM OF THE CORRUPTED STATE MINISTRY IN PARTITION OF BUDGET MONEY (abundant State support is attributed only to the "verified people" - competent of not - or projects led by them - all other evaluations are just arrogant spectacles for the naive)
- PUTSCH AT THE ISH (provincial-neoliberal triumph of the lucrative and venal pop-scientists at the ISH in 2004, the ISH was taken over by Svetlana Slapšak, Janez Justin, Jože Vogrinc, Jure Mikuž, Dragica Bac and the likes) - thematic number of Monitor ZSA about the putsch is here
2. IN THE FRAMES OF THE ASSOCIATION TROPOS (2004-2007) THE FOLLOWING NUMBERS OF MONITOR ZSA WERE PUBLISHED
2004: the number that should have been published at the ISH was published with a delay needed to found the Association TROPOS and needed to officially rename the journal to Monitor ZSA - Review of Historical, Social and Other Anthropologies (ZSA being the Slovene abbreviation of the subtitle "Historical and Social Anthropologies" - i.e. HSA in English). The Editorial Board decided to go on with numbers' counting as the whole project was entirely the idea of individuals who left the ISH, and work had to be seen and valued from the start. Therefore, Monitor ZSA, Vol. VI, No. 1-2, 164 pages, with a new ISSN: 1854-0376, was published in Summer of 2004
2004: Monitor ZSA - Review of Historical, Social and Other Anthropologies, Vol. VI, No. 3-4, 164 pages, ISSN: 1854-0376, thematic number on the "ANTHROPOLOGY OF LANDSCAPE"
2005: Monitor ZSA - Review of Historical, Social and Other Anthropologies, Vol. VII, No. 3-4, 468 pages, ISSN: 1854-0376, thematic number entitled "MONOGRAPHY ABOUT THE ISH: IMMEDIATE HISTORY-EVENTS AT THE ISH IN 2004 & ELEMENTS OF REFLEXION"
2006: Monitor ZSA - Review of Historical, Social and Other Anthropologies, Vol. VIII, No. 1-2, 231 pages, ISSN: 1854-0376, thematic number "REFLECTIONS ON OPERA" (V. Kotnik ed.)
As publishing and distributions of Monitor ZSA was a big effort for just a few individuals, the TROPOS Association members - that is the Editorial Board of Monitor ZSA - in 2007 decided to join the publishing house Annales by the young University of Primorska in Koper which had an already established academic publishing infrastructure. The other decisive point was also that the Editor-in-Chief Taja Kramberger and a member of editorial borad Drago Rotar held positions of Historical Anthropology at the Deaprtment of Anthropology of this university (the whole programme of Historical Anthropology from undergraduate to postgraduate studies, accredited by the State, was written by the two of them; two years after the purge the programme was removed or dissapeared from the schedule as if it never existed). The transfer of the journal to the new publisher was an oportunity to change the design of the journal: the old one was made by Alenka Koderman (academic painter) and the new one by Jože Požrl (book designer and photograph).
3. IN THE FRAMES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PRIMORSKA IN KOPER (PUBLISHING HOUSE ANNALES OF THE ZRS KOPER) THE FOLLOWING NUMBERS OF MONITOR ZSA WERE PUBLISHED
2007: Monitor ZSA - Review of Historical, Social and Other Anthropologies, Vol. IX, No. 1-2 [23/24], 237 pages, ISSN: 1854-0376, thematic number "TERITORIALNE IN IMAGINARNE MEJE IN IDENTITETE OD ANTIKE DO DANASNJIH DNI (S POUDARKOM NA BALKANU) / FRONTIÈRES ET IDENTITÉS TERRITORIALES ET IMAGINAIRES DE L’ANTIQUITÉ AUX TEMPS MODERNES (ACCENT MIS SUR LES BALKANS) / CONFINI ED IDENTITÀ TERRITORIALI E IMMAGINARIE DALL’ANTICHITA AI GIORNI D’OGGI (CON L’ACCENTO SUI BALCANI)" Cover-page
2007: Monitor ZSA - Review of Historical, Social and Other Anthropologies, Vol. IX, No. 3-4 [25/26], 125 pages, ISSN: 1854-0376, Cover-page
2008: Monitor ZSA - Review of Historical, Social and Other Anthropologies, Vol. X, No. 1-2 [27/28], 436 pages, ISSN: 1854-0376
2008: Monitor ZSA - Review of Historical, Social and Other Anthropologies, Vol. X, No. 3-4 [29/30], 290 pages, ISSN: 1854-0376
2009: Monitor ZSA - Review of Historical, Social and Other Anthropologies, Vol. XI, No. 1-2 [31/32], 235 pages, ISSN: 1854-0376, thematic number "ART-RESISTANCE, SUBVERSION, MADNESS" (P. Tratnik ed.) Cover-page
2009: Monitor ZSA - Review of Historical, Social and Other Anthropologies, Vol. XI, No. 1-2 [33/34], 312 pages, ISSN: 1854-0376, thematic number "RASIZMI IN DRUŽBENE REPREZENTACIJE ROMOV" [RACISMS AND SOCIAL REPRESENTATIONS OF THE ROMA PEOPLE] (A. Janko Spreizer ed.)
2010: Monitor ZSA - Review of Historical, Social and Other Anthropologies, Vol. XII, No. 1-2 [35/36], 425 pages, ISSN: 1854-0376, thematic number TEMELJNA BESEDILA ZA ZGODOVINSKO, SOCIALNO IN DRUGE ANTROPOLOGIJE 1 [BASIC TEXTS FOR HISTORICAL, SOCIAL AND OTHER ANTHROPOLOGIES 1], a production of 10-years of editorial translating and researching selected, and printed as scripta for students and other interested reading public (T. Kramberger, D. Rotar and A. Tominc eds.)
2010: Monitor ZSA - Review of Historical, Social and Other Anthropologies, Vol. XII, No. 1-2 [37/38], 235 pages, ISSN: 1854-0376, thematic number "TEMELJNA BESEDILA ZA ZGODOVINSKO, SOCIALNO IN DRUGE ANTROPOLOGIJE" 2 [BASIC TEXTS FOR HISTORICAL, SOCIAL AND OTHER ANTHROPOLOGIES 1], a production of 10-years of the editorial translating and researching, selected and printed as scripta for students and other interested reading public (T. Kramberger, D. Rotar and A. Tominc eds.)
THE WHOLE PROJECT was VOLONTARY and a constant struggle with the omnipresent anti-intellectualmental levelling and financial deprivation politics performed by the official or "confirmed" structures of the Republic of Slovenia.
In a whole decade of hard work the key members of editorial borad did not recieved more than 500-700 € of compensation per capita for their multiple efforts, coordinations and skills. The money simply could not be obtained - neither from state budget neither from the respective publishers. Editor in Chief Taja Kramberger even had to pay the print of last two numbers in 2010, cca. 1500 € from her own pocket, as during the university purge Publishing House Annales in Koper - in the person of M. D. Darovec (otherwise, one of the principal figures executing the university purge, it will be remembered as the man who as a private person sold many of his private Audi cars to himselfs - now as the Director of the science institution ZRS in Koper - with no real legal consequences) - and Slovene State Research Agency - in the person of Mme V. Vičič - didn't keep their promise to respect the contract of financial aid allocated to the journal for 2010.). The journal's goal was from the beginning an establishment of a new, more consistent and democratic, more interdisciplinary and less instrumental episteme of doing history and social anthropology in Slovenia. For attaining such a goal the journal, along its way, offered many instruments, concepts and methodological procedures and, above all, a firm, open, communicative and stable debate grounds.
Today, one can see at the pages of T. Kramberger's Academia.edu that the journal Monitor ZSA is still solidly read (even more than before) and continues to inspire young and other people.
Post scriptum: T. Kramberger had discovered with some astonishment after the purge in 2010 (preparing a plaint against the University of Primorska for a totally illicit dissmisal from the university post and for its lateral and well hidden intrigues on the national level) that the journal was meanly kept in the storehouse of the Publishing House Annales and not even distributed at two local Koper's bookstores (at least students could buy it), no to mention the absent distribution to other libraries around the country (with an only expception of the visible Konzorcij bookshop in Ljubljana). This discovery raises many further questions: were copyrights for translations and other elementary administrative matters of publication between 2007 and 2010 - which were in the first place reasons for entering of the journal to the provincial publishing house of ZRS Annales - regulated at all (!?). Was there any distrubution or exchange of volumes to the other countries (journal being occasionally multilingual and had some connections and established exchange with other journals in the period 2001-2007) and has the exchange of journals that Monitor ZSA kept for years done at all (!?)
In the country of constant mimicry, purges, official blatant lies and falsifications and of simultaneously accomodating camouflage identities we have no means to ever find this out.
Despite all the mistakes and errors on one hand that the editorial of the Monitor ISH/Monitor ZSA committed between 2001 and 2010 in not friendly circumstances, and in spite of all the disillusions and deceptions that the editors experienced during their work in that time on the other hand, the project of Monitor ISH/Monitor ZSA was still worth of doing.
It is/was a huge pioneer work done in the middle of social and intellectual immobility and it can now be seen and read in its totality. Its appearance and cessation in Slovenia should be measured and evaluated in the frames of increasingly hostile circumstances in which the journal was made: with no real and concrete support (with the only exception of the first ISH Dean Drago Braco Rotar), with no money for the working individuals (just for the design and print, only sometimes for language supervision - which was a crucial default), with incessant obstacles, rumors and intrugues along the way, and with a permanent degradation of its content and collaborators by the "provincially confirmed elite structures". Probably these same structures - in a pocket country (with only three state universities and so to say no brave public intellectuals) - gladly supported the final purge of the journal's main editors in 2010, either actively, camouflagely or with silence and absence of reaction.
Volontary direction of Monitor ISH/ZSA was for all those who were devoted to the project a constant and exhausting struggle with the Slovenian authorities, since a normalized clientelistic division of State budget in the country was (and still is) an obstacle for every serious project that could not (and cannot) be easily accomodated to the postulates of the power. The journal was from the beginning a broad platform od discussion that aimed at transformation of idle (a permanent stasis like) intellectual research and somewhat petrified conceptual thinking in social and human sciences in Slovenia.
Over the years, many translations of key-texts in historical and social anthropology were published in Monitor ISH/Monitor ZSA (Michel Foucault, Michel de Certeau, Jacques Le Goff, Roland Barthes, Lucette Valensi, Ian Kershaw ...), and some Slovene authors had written important texts throwing a light on how to use thinking tools, instruments of different axiologies in examination of the traumatic Slovene reality, prone to amnesia and spontaneous political instrumentalisations.
Very probably this potential for social transformation was one of the basic points causing that the journal was decisively unacceptable for the "intellectual milieu" of deeply anti-intellectual environment. Anti-intellectualims in Slovenia is, of course, an omnipresent and hegemonic mentality in the society and not just a sporadic social strategy. It percieves itself - in the constitutive apparatus of collective identity - as a highly articulated "intellectualism". Therefore pop-science achievements and profit oriented applications easily reign high above the basic intellectual efforts of rare individuals or small teams.
The journal actually never got more than a minimal State support to cover the elementary design and print expenses (only sometimes language supervisors too), so all other work had to be done with a strong vision, dynamic energy and belief in its mission.
Over the time the journal gradually and succesfully improved.
At the time of a sudden "university purge" at the University of Primorska in Koper in 2010 (in which Taja Kramberger - liked by the students and respected by the citizens, engaged in many faculty activities, and even elected to the Direction of the Academic Trade Union some months ago by the same colleagues who were ready to lynch her after the purge only some months later - abruptly and totally illegally lost her university position) the journal, paradoxically, came to its first peek.
In 2010, two big numbers of basic texts for students and other interested readers were published (together more than 650 pages; see here Vol. XII, No 35-36 and Vol. XII, No 37-38), and could be used as excellent debate starting-points in the years to come. Best students of anthropology and history were invited to join the editorial board, and actively participated in the journal with book-reviews and small contributions. But, unfortunately, there were no years to come. The violent purge came instead. These were the last two volumes of the Monitor ZSA.
During a decade of hard and obstinate work, the Editor-in-Chief (Taja Kramberger) and the Editorial Board went through many constraints, ruptures, polemics, struggles and changes, among which the first was already at its home institution - at the ISH.
In 2004, an arrogant document of censorship postulated to the journal Editorial Board by the then new Dean of the ISH Mme Svetlana Slapšak for whom the journal which was not led by herself and her venal pop-science satelites was obviously a nuisace.
Mme Slapšak has just been contentiously elected - in Ionesco style - with her own "self-confirmation" at the corridor of the ISH - as she didn't obtain enough votes at the official Senate session where she was absent. Two of her initial gestures as a Head of the ISH were rude suppressions of the Monitor ISH and of the newly established Centre for Jewish and Hebrew Studies (founders were Irena Šumi, Hannah Starman, Drago Rotar and Taja Kramberger - all named and many more left the institution in 2004 because of the indignation of the new leadership).
Absurd and no less than lunatic events at the time of the "putsch at the ISH" are described in the red number of the Monitor ZSA, Vol. VII, No. 1-4, 2005, where some of "the legalists" - i.e. a dozen of intellectuals who finally left the institution - also published some crucial documents of the putsch. These documents were latter well hidden or denied by the putschist team. Some visible people of the Slovene political, legal and cultural scene became implicated in the putsch: for example a known jurist Matevž Krivic, who came as a "friendly helping hand", took from "legalist side" some documents and the audio-recordings of the contestable Session of the Senate ISH and simply gave it to the other side. That's called justice in Slovenia. Svetlana Slapšak later untruthfully stated at many occassions that audio-recordings were falsified, but how can anybody sane ever falsify the basenessof her intrigues, her half-mastery of Slovene language (idiosincratically mixed with the Serbian) and her voice? The plaint at the Public Prosecutor's Office of the Republic of Slovenia and appeals to the foreign institutions about the total illegality of the procedures at the ISH at the time of the putsch was left unheard or was manipulated by the further camouflage and lies of the putschists. It seems that the big European institutions (the principal disappointment being the ex-colleagues of the EHESS in Paris) prefered to believe the politically backed up versions of the oppressors than read the documents being sent to them.
Decoding the criminal strategies of the many Central European (inner-national) institutions would lead to uncovering of the many similar gangsterlike takeovers - if the West European countries and their visible institutions would only have a slight interest in justice and peace in these regions. If the lives of people who really work seriously would count for them. For now it is the oppostite, West Europeans happily and letargically back up the worst kind of "confirmed elites" in the region.
But when the journal at the ISH once was appropriated by Mme Slapšak and her young assistant Maja Sunčič (later engaged in the Slovene populist media politics oscillating between intrigues of the Ultra Right and Ultra Left using a discourse of vulgar magazines) there were no moral or epistemic obstacles any more not to get a State blessing. The journal served just fine to those people. Their seized journal of Monitor ISH was however rapidly minced in volume and less elaborated in structure, as it served the only reasons of its existence: a self-promotion of the autors and their better positioning in the local system of ranking and points. That was just what they wanted from a "journal", but were - for one reason or the other - unable or too idle to formally establish it themselves. This truncated Monitor ISH (after 2004, edited by Maja Sunčič, still in existence) went on easily inside the Slovene academic structure. In "ever changing" opportunistic Slovene socio-political regime Monitor ISH was now solidly funded and could publish n'importe quoi with an official confirmation for decades to come, whereas the real founders of Monitor ISH had to fight on for survival for years.
Firstly, they had to establish a new legal-subject, an association (TROPOS), outside of the ISH. Then they had to change the offcial name of the journal to Monitor ZSA (Svetlana Slapšak didn't allow the use of the name any more), acquire a new ISSN and start form zero again. By that time, the regulation for a financial aid was that in order to get the State subvebtion you had to have already 3 previous years of publishing continuity - with this gesture people at the ISH who did nothing (in a gangster-like act) gained the continuity of those who worked (thus, this was a wilful baseness of the new Dean). So, the editorial team was preocupied for months with all the necessary administrative things and with logistics in order to be able to simply go on with a journal that this team set up in the first place.
1. IN THE FRAMES OF THE ISH (1999-2004) THE FOLLOWING NUMBERS OF MONITOR ISH WERE PUBLISHED
- 1999: Monitor - Interno glasilo ISH, No. 1, Newletter of the ISH, Editor Tina Uran, 24 pages, no ISSN.
- 2000: Monitor - Interno glasilo ISH, No. 2, Newletter of the ISH, Editor Žanet Šajn, 42 pages, no ISSN.
- 2001: Monitor ISH - Review of Humanities and Social Sciences, Vol. III, No. 1-2, 325 pages, ISSN: 1580-688X
- 2002: Monitor ISH - Review of Humanities and Social Sciences, Vol. IV, No. 1-4, 420 pages, ISSN: 1580-688X
- 2003: Monitor ISH - Review of Humanities and Social Sciences, Vol. V, No. 1-2, 250 pages, ISSN: 1580-688X
- 2003: Monitor ISH - Review of Humanities and Social Sciences, Vol. V, No. 3-4, 161 pages, ISSN: 1580-688X
- in early spring of 2004: a newly edited number of the Monitor ISH - Review of Humanities and Social Sciences, Vol. VI, No. 1-2, 164 pages, ISSN: 1580-688X, waited to be published when the chain events of the putsch started at the ISH. In the overal confusion, lies, falsified documents, usurpations and intrigues, the Editorial Board of the journal got the document in which Mme Slapšak demands "the whole number and its content to be submitted to her before being published" and refused to give the money needed for a print of the journal (needles to add that all the work was done unpaid). Namely, the journal didn't recieve the State support for the year 2004, and instead of helping the young team, Mme Slapšak tried to present, in every possible way, the journal as "unsuccesful". The Editorial Board refused such an restrictive order and started to prepare legal basis for a journal to get published outside of the institution that turned an academic freedom over night into a Stalinist practice.
Obstacles that caused a rupture of 2004:
- CENSORSHIP BY MME SVETLANA SLAPŠAK (freshly "self-elected" Dean of the ISH) - document of the censorship is here
- CLIENTELISM OF THE CORRUPTED STATE MINISTRY IN PARTITION OF BUDGET MONEY (abundant State support is attributed only to the "verified people" - competent of not - or projects led by them - all other evaluations are just arrogant spectacles for the naive)
- PUTSCH AT THE ISH (provincial-neoliberal triumph of the lucrative and venal pop-scientists at the ISH in 2004, the ISH was taken over by Svetlana Slapšak, Janez Justin, Jože Vogrinc, Jure Mikuž, Dragica Bac and the likes) - thematic number of Monitor ZSA about the putsch is here
2. IN THE FRAMES OF THE ASSOCIATION TROPOS (2004-2007) THE FOLLOWING NUMBERS OF MONITOR ZSA WERE PUBLISHED
2004: the number that should have been published at the ISH was published with a delay needed to found the Association TROPOS and needed to officially rename the journal to Monitor ZSA - Review of Historical, Social and Other Anthropologies (ZSA being the Slovene abbreviation of the subtitle "Historical and Social Anthropologies" - i.e. HSA in English). The Editorial Board decided to go on with numbers' counting as the whole project was entirely the idea of individuals who left the ISH, and work had to be seen and valued from the start. Therefore, Monitor ZSA, Vol. VI, No. 1-2, 164 pages, with a new ISSN: 1854-0376, was published in Summer of 2004
2004: Monitor ZSA - Review of Historical, Social and Other Anthropologies, Vol. VI, No. 3-4, 164 pages, ISSN: 1854-0376, thematic number on the "ANTHROPOLOGY OF LANDSCAPE"
2005: Monitor ZSA - Review of Historical, Social and Other Anthropologies, Vol. VII, No. 3-4, 468 pages, ISSN: 1854-0376, thematic number entitled "MONOGRAPHY ABOUT THE ISH: IMMEDIATE HISTORY-EVENTS AT THE ISH IN 2004 & ELEMENTS OF REFLEXION"
2006: Monitor ZSA - Review of Historical, Social and Other Anthropologies, Vol. VIII, No. 1-2, 231 pages, ISSN: 1854-0376, thematic number "REFLECTIONS ON OPERA" (V. Kotnik ed.)
As publishing and distributions of Monitor ZSA was a big effort for just a few individuals, the TROPOS Association members - that is the Editorial Board of Monitor ZSA - in 2007 decided to join the publishing house Annales by the young University of Primorska in Koper which had an already established academic publishing infrastructure. The other decisive point was also that the Editor-in-Chief Taja Kramberger and a member of editorial borad Drago Rotar held positions of Historical Anthropology at the Deaprtment of Anthropology of this university (the whole programme of Historical Anthropology from undergraduate to postgraduate studies, accredited by the State, was written by the two of them; two years after the purge the programme was removed or dissapeared from the schedule as if it never existed). The transfer of the journal to the new publisher was an oportunity to change the design of the journal: the old one was made by Alenka Koderman (academic painter) and the new one by Jože Požrl (book designer and photograph).
3. IN THE FRAMES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PRIMORSKA IN KOPER (PUBLISHING HOUSE ANNALES OF THE ZRS KOPER) THE FOLLOWING NUMBERS OF MONITOR ZSA WERE PUBLISHED
2007: Monitor ZSA - Review of Historical, Social and Other Anthropologies, Vol. IX, No. 1-2 [23/24], 237 pages, ISSN: 1854-0376, thematic number "TERITORIALNE IN IMAGINARNE MEJE IN IDENTITETE OD ANTIKE DO DANASNJIH DNI (S POUDARKOM NA BALKANU) / FRONTIÈRES ET IDENTITÉS TERRITORIALES ET IMAGINAIRES DE L’ANTIQUITÉ AUX TEMPS MODERNES (ACCENT MIS SUR LES BALKANS) / CONFINI ED IDENTITÀ TERRITORIALI E IMMAGINARIE DALL’ANTICHITA AI GIORNI D’OGGI (CON L’ACCENTO SUI BALCANI)" Cover-page
2007: Monitor ZSA - Review of Historical, Social and Other Anthropologies, Vol. IX, No. 3-4 [25/26], 125 pages, ISSN: 1854-0376, Cover-page
2008: Monitor ZSA - Review of Historical, Social and Other Anthropologies, Vol. X, No. 1-2 [27/28], 436 pages, ISSN: 1854-0376
2008: Monitor ZSA - Review of Historical, Social and Other Anthropologies, Vol. X, No. 3-4 [29/30], 290 pages, ISSN: 1854-0376
2009: Monitor ZSA - Review of Historical, Social and Other Anthropologies, Vol. XI, No. 1-2 [31/32], 235 pages, ISSN: 1854-0376, thematic number "ART-RESISTANCE, SUBVERSION, MADNESS" (P. Tratnik ed.) Cover-page
2009: Monitor ZSA - Review of Historical, Social and Other Anthropologies, Vol. XI, No. 1-2 [33/34], 312 pages, ISSN: 1854-0376, thematic number "RASIZMI IN DRUŽBENE REPREZENTACIJE ROMOV" [RACISMS AND SOCIAL REPRESENTATIONS OF THE ROMA PEOPLE] (A. Janko Spreizer ed.)
2010: Monitor ZSA - Review of Historical, Social and Other Anthropologies, Vol. XII, No. 1-2 [35/36], 425 pages, ISSN: 1854-0376, thematic number TEMELJNA BESEDILA ZA ZGODOVINSKO, SOCIALNO IN DRUGE ANTROPOLOGIJE 1 [BASIC TEXTS FOR HISTORICAL, SOCIAL AND OTHER ANTHROPOLOGIES 1], a production of 10-years of editorial translating and researching selected, and printed as scripta for students and other interested reading public (T. Kramberger, D. Rotar and A. Tominc eds.)
2010: Monitor ZSA - Review of Historical, Social and Other Anthropologies, Vol. XII, No. 1-2 [37/38], 235 pages, ISSN: 1854-0376, thematic number "TEMELJNA BESEDILA ZA ZGODOVINSKO, SOCIALNO IN DRUGE ANTROPOLOGIJE" 2 [BASIC TEXTS FOR HISTORICAL, SOCIAL AND OTHER ANTHROPOLOGIES 1], a production of 10-years of the editorial translating and researching, selected and printed as scripta for students and other interested reading public (T. Kramberger, D. Rotar and A. Tominc eds.)
THE WHOLE PROJECT was VOLONTARY and a constant struggle with the omnipresent anti-intellectualmental levelling and financial deprivation politics performed by the official or "confirmed" structures of the Republic of Slovenia.
In a whole decade of hard work the key members of editorial borad did not recieved more than 500-700 € of compensation per capita for their multiple efforts, coordinations and skills. The money simply could not be obtained - neither from state budget neither from the respective publishers. Editor in Chief Taja Kramberger even had to pay the print of last two numbers in 2010, cca. 1500 € from her own pocket, as during the university purge Publishing House Annales in Koper - in the person of M. D. Darovec (otherwise, one of the principal figures executing the university purge, it will be remembered as the man who as a private person sold many of his private Audi cars to himselfs - now as the Director of the science institution ZRS in Koper - with no real legal consequences) - and Slovene State Research Agency - in the person of Mme V. Vičič - didn't keep their promise to respect the contract of financial aid allocated to the journal for 2010.). The journal's goal was from the beginning an establishment of a new, more consistent and democratic, more interdisciplinary and less instrumental episteme of doing history and social anthropology in Slovenia. For attaining such a goal the journal, along its way, offered many instruments, concepts and methodological procedures and, above all, a firm, open, communicative and stable debate grounds.
Today, one can see at the pages of T. Kramberger's Academia.edu that the journal Monitor ZSA is still solidly read (even more than before) and continues to inspire young and other people.
Post scriptum: T. Kramberger had discovered with some astonishment after the purge in 2010 (preparing a plaint against the University of Primorska for a totally illicit dissmisal from the university post and for its lateral and well hidden intrigues on the national level) that the journal was meanly kept in the storehouse of the Publishing House Annales and not even distributed at two local Koper's bookstores (at least students could buy it), no to mention the absent distribution to other libraries around the country (with an only expception of the visible Konzorcij bookshop in Ljubljana). This discovery raises many further questions: were copyrights for translations and other elementary administrative matters of publication between 2007 and 2010 - which were in the first place reasons for entering of the journal to the provincial publishing house of ZRS Annales - regulated at all (!?). Was there any distrubution or exchange of volumes to the other countries (journal being occasionally multilingual and had some connections and established exchange with other journals in the period 2001-2007) and has the exchange of journals that Monitor ZSA kept for years done at all (!?)
In the country of constant mimicry, purges, official blatant lies and falsifications and of simultaneously accomodating camouflage identities we have no means to ever find this out.
Despite all the mistakes and errors on one hand that the editorial of the Monitor ISH/Monitor ZSA committed between 2001 and 2010 in not friendly circumstances, and in spite of all the disillusions and deceptions that the editors experienced during their work in that time on the other hand, the project of Monitor ISH/Monitor ZSA was still worth of doing.
It is/was a huge pioneer work done in the middle of social and intellectual immobility and it can now be seen and read in its totality. Its appearance and cessation in Slovenia should be measured and evaluated in the frames of increasingly hostile circumstances in which the journal was made: with no real and concrete support (with the only exception of the first ISH Dean Drago Braco Rotar), with no money for the working individuals (just for the design and print, only sometimes for language supervision - which was a crucial default), with incessant obstacles, rumors and intrugues along the way, and with a permanent degradation of its content and collaborators by the "provincially confirmed elite structures". Probably these same structures - in a pocket country (with only three state universities and so to say no brave public intellectuals) - gladly supported the final purge of the journal's main editors in 2010, either actively, camouflagely or with silence and absence of reaction.