Memory and Trauma in Post-Yugoslav Novel

Vojne ob razpadu Socialistične federativne republike Jugoslavije so imele velik vpliv tudi na literarno produkcijo, ki se je v devetdesetih letih oddaljila od postmodernistične metafikcije in se ponovno približala družbeni resničnosti. Pri tem sta prevladovala predvsem dokumentarni in avtobiografski žanr ter v različni meri avtofikcijska dela, vsem pa je skupno, da so precej družbeno kritična oziroma angažirana. Magistrsko delo poskuša v tako opredeljenem kontekstu raziskati, kako se postjugoslovanske družbe soočajo s polpreteklo zgodovino. Z analizo izbranih romanov in teoretičnimi pristopi Aleide Assmann in Todorja Kuljića prevprašuje odnos med kolektivno in individualno percepcijo preteklosti oziroma spominom, pri čemer se ustavlja pri ključnih pojmih kulture spominjanja, kot so revizionizem, priča, travma, pozaba, nostalgija, pomemben del pa predstavlja tudi soočanje s travmami vojnih zločincev.The wars which followed the dissolution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia greatly impacted literary production in the area, which moved away from postmodern metafiction and (re)turned to societal realities in the 1990s. In this respect, documentary and autobiographic genres as well as different forms of autofiction were predominant, all of which were characterised by a high level of social criticism and engagement. In this context, the master’s thesis analyses how post-Yugoslav societies confront their not-so-distant past. By analysing selected novels and theoretical approaches of Aleida Assmann and Todor Kuljić, the thesis examines the relationship between collective and individual perceptions of past and memory. It builds on key concepts of culture of remembrance such as revisionism, witness, trauma, forgetting, nostalgia as well as the question of facing the trauma of war criminals