Contemporary Slovenian Literature in Context: Between Marginality and Globality

Abstract

This article analyzes the structural shift in modern Slovenian literature embedded in the parallel processes of globalization on the one hand and marginalization on the other. The discussion takes place at two levels: literary aesthetics and cultural or political history. It starts by presenting the social background of Slovenian literature. It determines that literature also performed an emancipating function from the postwar era up until Slovenian independence. Texts by older modernists led to the establishment of a special manner of reading that revealed metaphors criticizing the system. In contrast, younger modernists abandoned social engagement with allegiance to intertextuality and freedom of language. After 1975 there appeared various manners to overcome the crisis of modernism, among which the most robust proved to be postmodernism. This article draws attention to the genre-specific features of Slovenian postmodern literature and analyzes the shift from political postmodernism to pronounced metafiction and self-referentiality. In recent years, contemporary Slovenian prose and plays have struck new chords in their themes and content, justifying the thesis that the latest Slovenian literature (Andrej Blatnik, Matjaž Zupančič, etc.) is becoming socially engaged, especially in the sense that it critically reflects the globalized world of global consumption, neo-liberal ideology, and the rule of multinational corporations. Despite such an orientation, minimalism and intimism remain important factors of the latest Slovenian literature. Together with the rehabilitation of the poetic self, “new intimism” has also become established in contemporary Slovenian poetry, in which it is generally more difficult to express a socially critical stance. The article then sketches out the position of Slovenian literature under the conditions of globalization today. Regarding its social function, it is marginal, but at the same time it is precisely this marginality that offers insight into the core of what is social and individual, and what is global and local.