Metaphor of (Lost) Reign: Policies of Paternity and Post-Yugoslav Cultural Space

• In Event: Facts of Fiction in post-Yugoslav Culture(s): the Lost Wars for 'Better Worlds'

Abstract

Starting from the thesis that concepts of fatherhood are deeply metaphorically related to the concepts of political power and that father-son relationship is particularly important for the understanding of traditionally masculinst cultures of the post-Yugoslav region, this paper discuses new representation of the policy of fatherhood in the context of regional culture of memory. Considering the gathered social trauma of civil war and the breakup of Yugoslavia, the paper discusses the contemporary post-Yugoslav literary production of the dynamics of the father-son relationship in the novels Ultramarine (2010) by Serbian writer Mileta Prodanovića, Father (2012) by Croatian writer Miljenko Jergović and Yugoslavia, My Country by Slovenian writer Goran Vojinović (2012).

Author

• Tatjana Rosic Ilic, Singidunum U (Serbia)