Since antiquity, art has been understood as a skill (ars) that, with the masterly use of the given stock of themes and forms, gives rise to works appropriate to the purpose and conventions, while, on the other hand, it has been perceived as the work of inspired obsession (mania, furor poeticus), consciously replacing skill with a string of ideas of a transcendental origin. Post-Enlightenment ideologies of art, which gave priority to the idea of inspiration, interpreted the creative suspension of conscious thought processes in various terms. During the process of social modernisation, the initially (pseudo)religious, mythological and metaphysical explanations of the transcendental sources of inspiration gave way to clinical, psychological, psychoanalytical and anthropological ones. In the present article, I understand the expression art as skill that, with its devices within the frameworks of the modern literary field, through a deliberate plan creates the impression that the literary work originates from “not thinking”, beyond the author’s conscious control and the self-awareness of Cartesian cogito.
B.03 Paper at an international scientific conference
COBISS.SI-ID: 36191021In recent decades, the defamation court cases that involved dealing with literary works posed a challenging set of questions that have not yet been adequately addressed by comparative literature and literary criticism (cf. the cases of Klaus Mann, Thomas Bernhard, Salman Rushdie, Michel Houellebecq, Breda Smolnikar, Maxim Biller, Matjaž Pikalo, Goran Vojnović, etc.). Such questions involve the concept of literary autonomy, the structure of literary communication, relationships between legal and literary hermeneutics, the problem of fiction vs. reality, and the problem of different social subsystems competing in imposing their definition (or interpretation) of “fictionality”, “facts”, “literariness”, etc. In place of simplistic explanations, this paper will seek to expose incommensurabilities in the relations between the two social systems, artistic and legal, that seem to hamper any adequate judicial treatment of authors, books, and (offended) readers. Relying on discursive analysis of various kinds of texts, produced in connection with the respective court case, and a small-scale empirical investigation, I concentrate on a single “literary defamation” case: the astonishingly long trial (1999–2007) against the Slovenian writer Breda Smolnikar and her book Ko se tam gori olistajo breze (When the Birches Up There are Greening, 1998) that can be labeled paradigmatic because of its extreme complexity. At the end, some theoretical arguments that could prove effective in the future, when new relationships between literary and legal systems are negotiated.
B.03 Paper at an international scientific conference
COBISS.SI-ID: 36191277In the years 1899-1901, Karel Štrekelj (1859-1912) held a course on Slovenian literature at the University of Graz. These are the first university lectures on Slovenian literature in the Slovenian language. However, Štrekelj's history is more than this: it is a monumental, classically balanced synthesis of all the former knowledge of Slovenian literature, given against rich historical, social, and linguistic backgrounds.
C.02 Editorial board of a national monograph
COBISS.SI-ID: 265906176This monograph points to the poetic developments of Jure Detela and indicates the political consequences of his radical exposition of the transformation of the human relationship with animals. Detela engaged in a dialogue with romantic ideas and poetic processes, whereas his proto-theory of poetry radically surpasses the concept of ecopoetry. The contributors also consider connections between Detela, on the one hand, and contemporary philosophers (Derrida, Agamben, Rancière, Žižek) on the other, examine parallels between Detela and WS Marwin, draw attention to the poet Jibanananda Das, discuss on translating Jure Detela’s 1983 collection Mah in srebro into English, and compare the language of poetry and fine art.
C.01 Editorial board of a foreign/international collection of papers/book
COBISS.SI-ID: 20295432The life of J. L. Schönleben, historian, rhetorician, theologian and polymath, was largely influenced by his priesthood. On the other hand, his close integration into the broader European context should be taken in consideration, as it is demonstrated by his extensive and varied opus. Research in Schönleben’s biography reveals a multitude of social, cultural and physical spaces, which largely influenced the course of his life, shaped his scholary interests and determined his opus. The article presents the influence of these spaces on Schönleben’s life and his creativity. The emphasis was on the presentation of the Jesuit spiritual and mental space, which most strongly determined Schönleben’s life and directed his endeavours even after his departure from the Jesuit order.
B.06 Other
COBISS.SI-ID: 36086573