Multi-genre and Transdiscursive Textuality of Semezdin Mehmedinović’s (Trans) Novel Me’med, Red Bandana and Snowflake Cover Image

Poližanrovska i transdiskurzivna tekstualnost (trans)romana Me'med, crvena bandana i pahuljica Semezdina Mehmedinovića
Multi-genre and Transdiscursive Textuality of Semezdin Mehmedinović’s (Trans) Novel Me’med, Red Bandana and Snowflake

Author(s): Selma Raljević
Subject(s): Bosnian Literature, Theory of Literature
Published by: Filozofski fakultet, Sveučilište Josipa Jurja Strossmayera, Osijek
Keywords: Me’med; Red Bandanna and a Snowflake (Me’med, crvena bandana i pahuljica); Semezdin Mehmedinović; hybrid; multi-genre; trans-discursive and trans-artistic narrative; identity; memory and memory loss;

Summary/Abstract: Semezdin Mehmedinović’s 2017 hybrid (trans)novel Me’med, Red Bandana and a Snowflake (Me’med, crvena bandana i pahuljica) employs a conceptual art medium to present its content. Among others, it deals with the themes of identity, memory and memory loss, trauma, war, migration, belonging, nostalgia, health, family, love, and art. Being himself a transnational Post-Yugoslav Bosnian and Herzegovinian/South Slavic/Eastern European-American writer with immigrant experience, Mehmedinović challenges the normative conception of identity by exploring identity construction in terms of personal and social identity as well as of the identity of narrative that disrupt the idea of “pure” identity. In its multi-genre, trans-discursive and trans-artistic storytelling, the novel shows the need of abandoning the idea of pure identity and embracing instead hybridity, which, among other things, envisions a coexistence of differences, deconstructs the construction of binaries (whether between nations, cultures, races, classes, or genders), and also reflects and (re)shapes many key features of contemporary human experience, configuring the realm of transgressed “imaginary” borders and articulating a voice of unassimilable identity of alterity.

  • Issue Year: 7/2020
  • Issue No: 1
  • Page Range: 1-23
  • Page Count: 23
  • Language: Croatian