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In this book, Ales Debeljak offers a refreshing alternative to
postmodernists such as Baudrillard, who declare the death of art
conceived as yet another source of rootless, circulating fictions.
Inspired by the melancholy critical theory of Adorno and Benjamin,
and drawing on Weber, Debeljak shows that with the dawning of
modernity, art was made autonomous. Art production was effectively
emancipated from the exigencies of everyday life and its guiding
ideal of purposive rationality. The Renaissance brought on the
first stage in a long, gradual withdrawal of art from the hitherto
dominant mythological, religious, and aristocratic legitimization.
Yet it was not until the 18th century that art assumed the separate
status of a commodity to be bought and sold. However, art paid a
price for its autonomy; through commodification art production
ultimately become an extension of capitalist logic and control. The
deterioration of bourgeois liberal individualism into the
narcissism of mass society accompanied the decomposition of art
into simplified mass art and commercialized kitsch. Maintaining its
formal autonomy (museums, galleries, etc.), its content became the
universal object of indirect corporate exploitation. Today
postmodern art, argues Debeljak, is subjected to infinite
reproducibility, total integration into mass society, and political
resignation-no longer representing an alternative reality. The
postmodern institution of art thus cannot be simply cured of modern
structures and assumptions, but is, instead, fated to a continuous
and painful relationship with modernity.
The Hidden Handshake uses four distinct, yet intertwined essays to
address the questions surrounding our notions of citizenship,
national identity, and cosmopolitan belonging. The violent
disintegration of Yugoslavia and the undercurrent of EU enlargement
stand out as two contrasting movements that highlight the
importance of having a national identification while also defying
it to avoid both the rigidity of nationalist exclusivism and the
blithe nonsense of "global citizenship." Through the exploration of
sociohistorical material and artistic visions as well as the
author's layered identity as a Slovene, a Yugoslav, a Central
European, and a European, Ale? Debeljak tries to show that it is
possible to remain faithful to geography, history, and community
even as one fosters links to global cultural movements. Not
surprisingly, the book itself shares some of this hybrid identity.
It uses not only theoretical concepts and empirical data, but also
historical sketches on art, national life, and society, along with
poetic autobiographical reminiscences and personal anecdotes.
Ultimately, the book calls for an adoption of liberal nationalism,
which is commensurate with democratic order, and for a more
ecumenical understanding of artistic visions that does not
discriminate on the grounds of one's place of origin.
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Smugglers (Paperback)
Ales Debeljak; Translated by Brian Henry
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R396
R296
Discovery Miles 2 960
Save R100 (25%)
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Out of stock
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The poems in Smugglers move through rapid historical shifts and
meditations on personal experience, exploring the depths and limits
of comprehension through the people and geography of the Balkans.
Ultimately, Ales Debeljak's urban imagination creates a
mosaic-intimate and historical-of a vanished people and their
country. Every poem in Smugglers is sixteen lines long-four
quatrains, a common form for Debeljak. This structural regularity
is reinforced by a commitment to visual balance, with each poem
working as a kind of grid into which the poet pours memories and
associative riffs. From "Bookstore": At least you are blessed.
Winter's here. In darkness, awake since yesterday, I came to browse
again through the titles of old books, wobbly skyscrapers, writers
of my youth and stiffened honey. No opening hours on the door, a
minor poet with no woman sits behind files in the front. I know him
from when we all shouted in one loyal voice, collected works on
sale for a handful of cents, read the holy Kapital like zealots.
Well, okay: not exactly all. Some of us took another road ...Ales
Debeljak's books have appeared in English, Japanese, German,
Croatian, Serbian, Polish, Hungarian, Czech, Spanish, Slovak,
Finnish, Lithuanian, and Italian translations. He teaches in the
department of Cultural Studies at the University of Ljubljana in
Slovenia. Brian Henry is the author of ten books of poetry and won
the 2011 Best Translated Book Award. He teaches at University of
Virginia in Richmond, Virginia.
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