Problematisation of Indigenisation and Alienationin the Self-Confession Prose of Milovan Danojlic

• Authors: Zorana Opacić
• Languages of publication: SR

Abstracts

EN

The paper focuses on the problematisation of the sense of belonging/indigenisation in the prose of the modern Serbian writer, Milovan Danojlic. In it, the author fictionalises his own life experience in the form of lyrical records. The thematic focal point of this prose is the painstaking effort of the narrator-hero to build his own identity. Changing places of residence, the narrator is constantly faced with the cognizance that he has always been on the borderline between two worlds, ever unaffiliated and having the need to (critically) identify himself in relation to both these planes. Being on the borderline becomes the essence of his self-being, and the change in the narrative position (and the place of residence) results in the creation of different identities: personal, local, national and cultural. The feeling of estrangement and the deeply controversial, yet emotional relationship to what he considers as his own results from his childhood and a traumatic relationship with his father, which represents an obsessively recurrent topic in Danojlic’s prose. Feeling somewhat alien everywhere (identifying himself with a cactus), first in his own family, then as a farm kid in town, and finally as a member of one culture who lives in another, the narrator is faced with the paradoxical cognizance: the more he tries to escape from his homeland, the more powerfully he recognizes it in himself.

Keywords

EN

autofiction; homeland; foreign land; borderline; attitude towards one’s own and alien; cactus symbolism

• Publisher: Uniwersytet Opolski
• Journal: Studia Slavica
• Year: 2013
• Volume: 17
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 43-52

Contributors

author

Zorana Opacić

• Universitet u Beogradu
• Ucitelski fakultet