Punk as Praxis: History, Philosophy, and the Making of Slovenia’s 1980s Alternative Culture

Join the History and Philosophy Seminar to learn about the rise of Slovenia’s alternative culture in the 1980s as a historical phenomenon and a philosophical provocation.

Guest presenter, Martina Vuksan from Charles University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Historical Studies, will discuss the specific conditions in which the punk scene emerged, almost parallel to the British punk scene, and evolved under Yugoslav socialism.

This spirit of defiance expanded into a broader countercultural movement—shaped by DIY ethics, anti-mainstream critique, and resistance to socialist orthodoxy—projected through semi-official platforms that enabled artists and thinkers to navigate, test, and push the limits of state-sanctioned expression which laid the groundwork for Slovenia’s civil society and transition to democracy.

Punk’s immediacy gave way to experimental practices that interrogated authority, communism, and the meaning of civic life. The constellation of activities—from underground gay parties, publication of radical poetry, to avant-garde art collectives—did not merely resist power but opened conceptual space for reimagining society.