W pogoni za niereglamentowaną konsumpcją – artykuły spożywcze w opowiadaniach Vladimíra Párala z przełomu lat 80. i 90. XX wieku
In Pursuit of Unrestricted Consumption – Food Commodities in the Short Stories of Vladimír Páral from the Late 1980s and Early 1990s

Summary/Abstract: Vladimír Páral's works constitute an important point of reference in the analysis of consumption attitudes in Czechoslovakia during the late 1980s and early 1990s. In his works, consumption is not limited to the material dimension, but also assumes symbolic, ideological, and social significance. Foodstuffs play a particularly important role in this narrative, functioning as markers of social status and as tools in the characters' existential strategies. In the context of normalisation and political transformation, Páral's prose reveals the inherent contradictions of a system in which economic constraints and the pragmatic necessity of everyday adaptation determine both individual choices and wider social tendencies. Paradoxically, the stories set in the reality of socialist scarcity in the 1980s can also be read from the perspective of a critique of consumer capitalist society.

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