(Po)etičke osobenosti Romana o Srebrenici Isnama Taljića
(Po)ethical Specifities of Isnam Taljić’s Roman o Srebrenici (The Novel about Srebrenica)

Summary/Abstract: This paper analyzes the poetic and ethical characteristics of Isnam Taljić’s Roman o Srebrenici (The Novel about Srebrenica), the first literary testimony about the Genocide in Srebrenica. The novel is part of the corpus of Bosniak and Bosnian-Herzegovinian literature of so-called “(anti)war writing” and “the poetics of testimony,” within which the so-called “Srebrenica text” is becoming increasingly significant and numerous. In this context, the novel is read as a story from the perspective of a witness and victim, and it is ethically engaged. In line with postmodern tendencies of crossing genre boundaries, the novel is marked by the blending and intertwining of different discourses and numerous forms and genres. This hybridization of the text blurs the line between fiction and fact, document and imagination. The novel is structured as a fragmented and montage-like whole, which reflects the fragmentation of trauma, enhances the impression of documentary authenticity, and slows down the reading process. The transgenerational vertical of memory and rich intertextual networking play an important role, inscribing the Srebrenica tragedy into a much broader literary, cultural, and historical context. The work stands as an ethical act of witnessing and a literary warning against forgetting, denial, and relativization of Genocide.

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