“What Is an Author Made of” : Dubravka Ugrešić and Literary Production in the Age of Uncertainty
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| Year of publication | 2021 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | The paper presented takes as its starting point Zygmunt Bauman’s concept of excess (excess of information, consumer goods, people) as one of the difficulties of navigating the contemporary life in what he terms liquid modernity. Parallels are drawn with the postmillennial essays of Dubravka Ugrešić from her collections Thank You for Not Reading (2003), Karoke Culture (2011), Europe in Sepia (2014) and The Age of Skin (2020). Bauman’s excess is reflected here in Ugrešić’s preoccupations with the comodification and uniformity of the contemporary literary works, as well as the reshaping of the traditional view of the author as an idiosyncratic thinker into a standard dictated by the celebrity culture, the literary market and the popular demand. Finally, these 21 century phenomena are brought into relation with Ugrešić's self-perception as the author and the way that self-perception shapes and informs her essays. |
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