LANGUAGE AND IDEOLOGY

This paper deals with the connections established between language and ideology. Ideology forms (produces) signifying structures by which it defines domains of a subject’s actions. The subject takes on the role of an ideology signifier, interpellating itself into the given ideological order. Also, ideology forms structures of a subject’s understanding by having previously interpellated them with the signifying praxis. In this manner, ideology establishes forms through which it conceives and explains the understanding of reality. Reality is then explained by adequate recognizable schemes which are defined by cultural tradition. Furthermore we will notice that every ideological center of power (e.g. regarding social groups which strive to achieve certain goals) forms a specific discourse to assert belonging to a certain sphere of interest. Each interest group speaks in a certain way. The paper ends with an analisys of the problem of symbolic domination as a cultural (signifying) hegemony which one group exerts over another.

GLOBALIZATION, IDENTITY, COMMODITY: THE CASE OF STINKY ONION (TAMARA JECIĆ) AND THE PENULTIMATE JOURNEY (GORDANA ĆIRJANIĆ)

This paper discusses the issue of identity formation focusing on the transformative potential of hybridity, in two contemporary Serbian novels: Gordana Ćirjanić’s The Penultimate Journey (Pretposlednje putovanje, 2001) and Tamara Jecić’s Stinky Onion (Stinky Onion, 2009). The novels relate the stories of displacement of two Serbian migrants at the end of the 20th century. In their difficult endeavor to localize themselves in an increasingly globalized world, the protagonists negotiate their identities through computer-mediated communication and consumerist societies. Their identity formation is analyzed through a hybridity paradigm, which, as proposed by the postcolonial theoretician Homi Bhabha, has the potential to challenge the dominant mechanisms of the construction of meaning allowing for the emergence of new meanings and identities.

OBJECTS IN MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR: ON THE NATURE OF FICTIONAL RETURNS TO THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

The aim of this paper is to explore the recent boom of neo-Victorian narratives in today’s literary and mass culture production and to analyse the nature of these fictional returns to the nineteenth century. The paper comments on the global nature of the trend, which seems to transcend the British context and resonate within the wider postmodern cultural framework. The approaches taken by neo-Victorian texts have been very diverse, as have critical reactions to them, ranging from revisionary narratives seeking to unearth marginal voices previously absent from the Victorian text to playful reinventions of well-known figures or tropes highlighting their own artificiality. What most of them share is the desire to revisit and reassess the predominant notions of the Victorian held today and to investigate the potential investment of contemporary cultural discourse in the continuation or discontinuation of such representations.

UNIVERSITY IN LITERATURE: UNIVERSITY NOVEL IN ANGLO-AMERICAN AND NORWEGIAN LITERATURE

In Western literature University has long been imagined as a metaphorical “ivory tower“ whose inhabitants had very little to do with the “common man”. However, the insular character of the academe did all but inhibit the development of a very vivid imagery concerning scientists, university professors and students. The stereotypical portraits of scholars as buffoons or occult magicians formed in early narratives like Plato’s dialogues and medieval legends, have survived to this day in global popular culture. In the nineteenth century, the literatures of Norway, Great Britain and North America saw the birth of a new genre: the university novel which was primarily concerned with depicting certain segments of the academe. The new rather romanticized or optimistic representations which have emerged in these novels can be interpreted in relation to the gradual popularization of university education in the respective countries. In the Anglo-American context, a real breakthrough occurred in the 1950s and 1960s, with the publication of several classics of the genre. In Norway, the university novel did not expand until the 1990s, coinciding with a renewed interest in the genre in the English-speaking world. The world of academia evoked in these often satirical works is quite different from the world of the nineteenthcentury novels, as they explore ideological debates of the time, question the postulates of the academia, and for the first time present the university man as the “common man”. 

WRITING ON THE BORDER: TRIESTE AS A SMALL AREA OF GREAT DIFFERENCES

Multilingualism has been an important element in the history of Trieste, a prosperous seaport with a lively cultural scene, situated at the crossroads of Germanic, Latin and Slavic cultures. The mash of various influences on this small area of great cultural differences is pictured in the novels by probably the best Istrian author Fulvio Tomizza (an Italian who was born near Umago and moved thirty kilometers up north to spend the greatest part of his life in Trieste), and his younger contemporary Marko Sosič, a writer and theatre director, who is one of the most notable representatives of the Slovene community in Italy. They both write their novels against the backdrop of ethnic and linguistic otherness, extensively exploring both the multilingual situation of their environment and the individual histories of characters displaced and uprooted for various reasons. Sosič uses different linguistic varieties in his novel Ballerina,ballerina, with the intention of depicting a specific multilingual situation of the Slovene community in Italy. 

MEDIA GLOBALIZATION

Starting from intertwining relations of the two media – photography and literature – this article is an attempt at describing how ubiquitous processes of media globalization actually reflect on some esthtetic facts. The thesis is supported by analysis of three narratives from recent Croatian literature: O biografiji (1987) by Irena Vrkljan, Krhotine (1991) by Željka Čorak and Muzej bezuvjetne predaje (1997) by Dubravka Ugrešić. 

GLOBALIZATION AND TURKISH LITERATURE

Globalization has become a synonym for a process of worldwide integration that arises from interchange of products, ideas and cultures. It affects every single part of the world and every single culture. There are two main processes qualified as results of globalization. The first one is unification of cultures under the primarily Western or American influence and the second one is affirmation of cultural differences. Throughout history, Turkish literature has been exposed to global cultural processes mainly as a part of the Islamic civilization. Globalization in our times has both positive and negative effects on Turkish literature. Due to the fact that Turkish is not a language spoken worldwide, for a long time Turkish literature has been unavailable to most of the world. However, globalization has increased interests for different and less known literatures and has supported translations and publishing Turkish authors. Globalization involves a certain “culture of freedom” that enables everybody to create their own identity and offer it to the world. Under this influence and thanks to their postmodern style Turkish authors have become more “global” and much more understandable for the rest of the world. Orhan Pamuk is the most global Turkish writer nowadays. But there are also other successful authors who write not only for Turkey but for the world such as Elif Şafak, Nedim Gürsel, Zülfü Livaneli, Serdar Özkan. It is obvious that Turkish literature has finally found its authentic response to the challenges of the globalized world literature.

(POST)COLONIALISM IN (POST)COMMUNIST DISGUISE: LÁSZLÓ KRASZNAHORKAI’S THIRD JOURNEY TO CHINA

Travelogues about the Far East are an important part in the work of the contemporary Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai (1954), despite the fact that they went relatively unnoticed compared to the wide international recognition of his earlier books, especially his first two novels, Satantango (1985) and The Melancholy of Resistance (1989). This article deals with some cultural aspects of Krasznahorkai’s non-fictitious travelogue Destruction and Sorrow Underneath the Sky (2004) in which the author/narrator gives an account on his third journey to China undertaken in May 2002. He goes there with the presumption that China is the only country in the world where a productive symbiosis of the ancient cultural and spiritual heritage on one hand and the (post)modern way of life on the other is still possible. However, as the journey progresses, his disappointment grows bigger and bigger. He realizes that in today’s market and business-oriented China all the important historical sights (even the seemingly most hidden, once inapproachable Buddhist monasteries) have been ruthlessly turned into vulgar tourist-attractions. The vast majority of the interviewed subjects (mostly directors of major national cultural institutions) give irritatingly shallow and dogmatic answers to almost all the questions posed by the narrator. The only genuine and honest answers about their reparable and tragic gap between the traditional values of the ancient Chinese civilization and the contemporary westernized lifestyle based on consumerism and comfort, come from marginalized individuals without any influence on the society or the decision-makers. Stressing the importance of these marginalized voices seems to remain one of the greatest values of Krasznahorkai’s writing, along with the trademark of his earlier books – the extremely long sentences – which give his works a unique and inimitable pulsating rhythm. 

FRAGMENTS OF GLOBALIZATION AND LITERATURE

In an attempt to reconsider the current position of the notion of globalization, the paper takes two different directions in observing globalization and its relation to culture and literature, from a literary and then an economic aspect. The often heard postulate that contemporary literature has assumed the features of a commodity taking part in market competition is tested by placing literature in some of the main globalization strategies from the point of view of economists. The inter-relation of literature and globalization determined by syntagms such as globalization of literature, global literature and literature of globalization is a globalization-fragmentary response to a complex issue of their inter-relations, which is by no means exhausted in this paper, just as neither globalization nor literature gives an impression of waning in transformation.

EDITOR’S NOTE