The Politics of Literary Play: The Luddite in Ludism

This article examines the concept of Slovenian “ludism,” a modernist literary movement conceived by Taras Kermauner in the 1970s as a provocative play (_ludus_) inspired by French structuralist theory. In a period of accelerated literary development that coincided with the modernisation and relative liberalisation of the Yugoslav system of socialist self-management, ludism emerged as a reaction to the constraints of socialist and bourgeois aesthetics and as an attack on the Slovenian tradition of cultural nationalism, challenging literary norms through the open textuality of linguistic experimentation, irony and carnivalisation. The study highlights Tomaž Šalamun’s seminal poetry collection _Poker_, the conceptualist OHO group, and the political engagement of the Slovenian neo-avant-garde during the student movement in order to establish a link between their subversive tendencies and the global trends of the long 1968. The article also draws a theoretical parallel between Slovenian ludism and English Luddism by looking at how both movements sought to disrupt the dominant socio-economic structures, be it through industrial sabotage or playful textual rebellion against ideological state apparatuses.