WHY DO WE NEED CRNJANSKI?
WHY DO WE NEED CRNJANSKI?

Summary/Abstract: n his text The End of Art, Gadamer writes that in the course of the 19th century people gradually gained a self-understanding of the tradition of Christian humanism. “Thus losing a shared myth”,1 concludes Gadamer, taking myth to mean something everyone believes in, something a society does not doubt. The consequences of this epochal change with respect to art are significant: since there is no longer a collective myth to faithfully convey, it remains jobless. Thus, a time of leisure sets in: during this time of leisure modern art, as well as modern literature, have the opportunity to examine their inner being, to contemplate, to distance themselves from new myths, though still remembering their old humanistic, Christian employer. One of these new myths could be money, the frightful leveler, as referred to by Simmel, which reduces the once diverse values of the pre-modern world to the same denominator. Completely in the spirit of positivistic philosophy or neoliberal capitalism, there is no reality until we measure it, and this notion, transferred to literature, marks the moment when the modernistic rebellion against the bourgeoisie, mass culture and the culture industry is replaced by a writer’s desire to find his place in this world of circulating capital: novels begin to resemble screenplays, which are published right before a movie or series is made and sold after they are aired, linked to the infatuation of consumer masses who buy everything that has to do with a blockbuster movie or series.

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