Publisher: Biblioteka XX vek

Antička miturgija: žene

Author(s): Svetlana Slapšak / Language(s): Serbian

„Daddy, you are a myth.“—Laura. I saw a memorial notice with this text on the notice board of a small church outside the town of San Severino, in the Italian province of Marche, in September 2009. Laura informed everybody who read the notice, a well as her deceased father, that he had become a myth. He qualified to be a myth by virtue of the fact that he died. Butt hat is not the only possible interpretation: it is also possible that Laura’s father had already been a myth before he died, and that he had to be reminded of it after his death. Or that he did not know that he was a myth and that it was time, at last, that he be informed. In any case, death is the most important, and possibly the only, condition for entry into myth – but to actually accomplish entry it is necessary to have the help of the person who announces and legitimises the entry. The informer, or if you prefer the legitimator, is therefore the main figure in the creation of myth. Laura’s intervention is essential if we understand myth as a set of everyday gestures of remembrance, in which the individual participates freely and criteria are not imposed. In any event, this anthropological datum is consistent with the approach of the most prominent schools of thought on myth and mythology, in particular the two authors who I consider to be my main teachers on the topic, Roland Barthes and Jean-Pierre Vernant. Roland Barthes fundamentally grasped the concept of myth, because he drew the connection between the everyday manipulation of myth and the dominant and prescriptives modes of (mythic) narration. [1] By doing so he opened up the possibility of tying together the everyday production of myths with the modes of myth production in the past. Unfortunately, specialists in ancient mythology do not make use of this possibility. For the most part they have remained in the theoretical fields that operate with elevated ideas about mythology: mythology as the source of collective identities in the worst case, or in a somewhat better case mythology as a source of knowledge about early civilisation ort he history of consciousness. Jean-Pierre Vernant was sharply critical of this type of thinking, on the ground that a thinker and researcher looking from the point of view of the present in the absence of self-reflexivity constitutes the negation of a critical perspective: the object of his criticism in particular was Mircea Eliade and his psychoanalytical approach. He did not draw associations to Barthes’ conception of everyday production of myth. The intervention by Barthes is broader, and takes the traumas of the modern age as given. For his part, Barthes understands myth as a constant, permanent psychologigal inscription of myth, by way of which culture is necessarily transformed into „nature,“ and the person of western culture (whatever that may mean) is attributed a kind of anthropological universality, in the form of an insistent and highly stereotyped abuse on the part of discourses connected with power. Barthes distinguishes three types of readings of myth: there is the orientation toward the empty signifier, when the signified regains meaning in the form of a symbol – this ist he construction of myth through the search for a form for an exiting concept; there is the orientation toward the full signifier.

Antropolog među navijačima

Author(s): Ivan Đorđević / Language(s): Serbian

Ivan Đorđević (b. 1977, Belgrade) is an ethnographer and anthropologist, and a research associate at the SANU Ethnographic Institute. He received bacherlors. masters and doctoral degrees from the Department of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Belgrade. His main areas of research interest are anthropology of sport, literary studies, and political anthropology. He has published many articles in scientific journals and the book Anthropology of science fiction (SANU Ethnographic Institute, 2009). The book An anthropologist among the football fans represents a revised and updated version of his doctoral diseertation entitled The role of football in the construction of local and global identity in contemporary Serbia, defended in 2014 at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Belgrade.

Antropologija potrošnje

Teorije i koncepti na kraju XX veka

Author(s): Ildiko Erdei / Language(s): Serbian

U pet poglavlja ove knjige (I. Antropologija i istraživanja potrošnje, II. Predistorija savremenih istraživanja potrošnje – klasici i preispitivanja, III. Savremena antropologija potrošnje – teoretičari strukture, IV. Savremena antropologija potrošnje – teoretičari procesa, V. Bez jedinstvene teorije), autorka izlaže predistoriju i savremene elaboracije koncepta potrošnje da bi opi­sala i ob­ja­snila sve in­ten­ziv­ni­ju uklju­če­nost lju­di u svet ma­sov­nih ro­ba i ulo­gu ro­ba u kre­i­ra­nju dru­štve­nih ve­za i ko­lek­tiv­nih i lič­nih iden­ti­te­ta u sa­vre­me­nim po­tro­šač­kim dru­štvi­ma i oni­ma ko­ja se na njih ugle­da­ju.

Balkan - teror kulture

Ogledi o političkoj antropologiji, 2

Author(s): Ivan Čolović / Language(s): Serbian

Ivan Čolović is an ethnologist, an essayist, and the founder of The 20th Century Library (1971). He has published thirteen books and numerous articles on issues and problems of literature, urban ethnology, ethno-linguistics, and political anthropology. In the thirteen essays of which tis book consists the author speaks of culure as a detonator of hatred and wars in the Balkans. ”I had seen it at work over the years of crisis and war in former Yugoslavia, then I saw it come out of that cisis and those wars more or less intact and ready, to serve – if need be – the same purpose – that of detonating. This prompted me to pay particular attention to the post-war ”patriotic” discourse about culture in Serbia and other Balkan countries in order to determine in which manner, thanks to these retorical strategies, it manages to preserve its explosive potential. Thus, I became interested in myths of the so called ”national spiritual and cultural space” or those of ostensible organic oneness between the Balkan nations and the soil on which they live, and to which they lay exclusive claim. My attention was focused on cults of the national tongue, of poets and their tombs and monuments, of the epic tradition and its main symbol ”the gusle”.(From the Foreword).

Epika i politika

Author(s): Aleksandar Pavlović / Language(s): Serbian

This book can, I hope, be read as a story. The plot develops during the first decades of the nineteenth century, when schiolars began to take interest in the Montenegrin oral tradition and when the first transcriptions and anthologies appeared. The story has its heroes: a bishop, Petar Petrović Njegoš, who was also the ruler and creator of Montenegrin statehood; a professional gusle singer, Đura Milutinović, who was also literate, educated, with a great respect for books and education, a fiery nationalist close to Serbian and Montenegrin political leaders; and of course Vuk Karadžić, the central figure in establishing the oral tradition as the foundation of national culture, and in many respects the central figure of Serbian culture in general.Thanks to the by now classic work of Smith, Gellner and Hobsbawm, we are familiar with the decisive role of cultural and political elites in „the invention of tradition“ and the genesis of national-romantic ideas and movements in Europe in the first half of the nineteenth century, and the significance of folk epics in this process amoing the South Slavs has long been noted. Although we are all familiar with the results, in this case the establishment of the Montenegrin and Herzegovinian epic as a national tradition, it seemed to me that the whole story, involving the growth and establishment of a new paradigm and its connection to the oral tradition, had not been told. In that context I recalled Sartre’s observation that Foucault wonderfully demonstrates that paradigms change, but tells us nothing about how they change and who are its agents (Sartre 1966: 87). Oral poetry may not offer the most gratifying grounds for such analysis because it is, in contrast with written text, a fluid, collective creation which is, from a methodological point of view, lacking in authors, beginnings, history. But that does not mean that the oral tradition is immune to change or influence from written culture and „politically influential figures,“ as we would now call them. This book represents an effort to identify those changes and influences through the example of a Montenegrin epic published in one of Karadžić’s anthologies.Some readers will, I hope, find the theoretical and methodological framework used in this research and its conclusions persuasive. Others might observe that neither I nor my predecessors in this field, after all, have indisputable evidence that Bishop Petar I or Đura Milutinović personally introduced new poems or rewrote old ones, and in that way reconfigured the oral tradition. Those readers might approach this book as a work comprised of an assortment of documentary and scientific facts in which concrete personages are not necessary, and possibly represent the fruit of the author’s romantic imagination. Maybe other readers, who remain committed to positivistic convictions on scientific rigour reliability, if such readers still exist, might save some time and effort and choose something else to read.***This book is based on the text of the doctoral dissertation, titled “From Traditional to Transitional Texts: Montenegrin Oral Tradition and Vuk Karadžić’s Narodne srpske pjesme,” which I defended at the University of Nottingham in 2012. In the preparation of the thesis I received great help from my supervisors David Norris and Vladimir Zorić, and also from the examiners Vladislava Ribnikar and Zoran Milutinović. My debt to Vladimir Zorić is especially great. He was my amicus certus, my source of support in the long process of applying for admission, seeking fellowships, writing the thesis and all of the challenges that involves. I also owe great thanks to my friends and colleagues (now scattered around the world), Stijn Vervaet, Alexander Dunst, Ivana Đurić, Stefanie Petschick, Adity Singh and Teodora Todorova for their perceptive comments and suggestions, and also for their help in confronting the linguistic, theoretical and existential dilemmas faced during my stay in England. My long friendship with Saša Ćirić has also left its traces in this book. But above all I owe thanks to Jelena, Ksenija and Ljiljana for the support they offer me in life, and Sofija, who brought into it a pleasure greater than any books or research.A.P., July 2014

Filigranski pločnici

Bosanski tranzitorijum 2004-2006

Author(s): Muharem Bazdulj / Language(s): Bosnian

Muharem Bazdulj was born 1977 in Travnik, where he completed his high school education. He graduated from Sarajevo University with a major in English (English and American literature). He regularly writes cultural and general interest articles for the Sarajevo weekly ”Dani” (Days) and for the Belgrade weekly ”Vreme” (Time), and occasionally for the Zagreb-based “Zarez” (Comma), the web site http://www.pescanik.net, Skopje-based “Forum” and for other publications within the space of former Yugoslavia. He has published nine books of prose fiction, poetry, and essays. The most recent of them, a collection of short stories, entitled “Magic” was published in 2008 by the publishing house Gradac from Čačak (Serbia). His books have been translated into English, German, and Polish. He is an editor at the Zagreb-based magazine for culture ”Tvrđa” (Fortress) as well as at the Sarajevo daily newspaper ”Oslobođenje”(Liberation). Filigree Pavements consist of fifty articles published in Bazdulj’s column of the same title in the Sarajevo weekly ”Dani” (Days).

Grad kao tekst

Author(s): Srđan Radović / Language(s): Serbian

The time has long passed since we could say about anthropologists that they are “well known to be agoraphobic and antiurban by definition,” considering that a broad set of circumstances have brought researchers closer to the “other” and “exotic” in their own surroundings, frequently in urban surroundings. The city and urban culture have by now become traditional terrains of anthropology and ethnology, as well as an object of research in other disciplines. The city has become over time a site of general interest, a theme of both academic and public discussion, and questions related to the urban are considered and analysed from the most diverse perspectives. This interest in the problematics of the city is entirely predictable if one takes into account what appears to be the irreversible course of advancing urbanisation and the ever-increasing success and visibility of urban environments. In this light it is understandable that one might say, “if it is true that we are part of a civilisation that is irredeemable urban … then it is natutal that there should appear a growth in interest for something that we might call destiny .” Or, as a well-known Yugoslav architect observed, “the fact that since time immemorial, the idea of the city has been surrounded by a rich halo of picturesque images, tells us that humans have always been obsessed with the search for the meaning of the city; that could also be taken to mean that humans early on sensed its central importance.”

I drugi su pjevali o ratu

Author(s): Muharem Bazdulj / Language(s): Serbian

Jezici u potkrovlju

Author(s): Ranko Bugarski / Language(s): Serbian

This book includes works that were written, or especially for this publication expanded, revised or translated, during the past two years; the only exception is an obituary of much earlier origin which appears as Chapter 9. Details on the sources and of earlier publications of the works included, of which several were conference presentations, are given in the bibliographical notes at the end of the book.Composed of four sections, the content and structure of this book follow the model that is represented in the author’s previous books published by Biblioteka XX vek. The first section contains four works dealing with topics of contemporary European language policy, with an accent on the protection of minority languages, multiligualism and multiculturalism, as well as on the relation between language and national belonging. Which the author has been engaged with over the last decade as an expert consultant to the Council of Europe for the charter on regional and minority languages. This document is presented in detail in the introductory chapter, and is thematically engaged in the following four chapters. The title of the book refers to the challenges faced by many minority languages which struggle to survive under a shared European roof, while they are confined to the attic, while spacious rooms are occupied by the more widely used languages – among them English, the spread of which is discussed in the fifth chapter. This section ends with an essay on the idea of tradition, especially in linguistics.The second section of the book comprises four chapters on the Serbian language: the first on its identity, and the remaining three on multilingual portmanteaus (slivenice) and slang terms, material which the author has followed and researched for over twenty years, reporting his findings in a series of books in this edition; these chapters represent, thus, a continuation of earlier research. The third section carries three obituaries dedicated to distinguished interpreters of linguistic phenomena, especially in their social context, as well as three recent interviews on various linguistic themes. Finally, the fourth section offers a continuation of the author’s sociolinguistic bibliography of Serbia, concentrating on the period from the middle of 2014 to the end of 2015 (with added material from earlier years).Belgrade, February 2016

Jezik i identitet

Author(s): Ranko Bugarski / Language(s): Serbian

Language and Identity consists of essays entitled ”Language and Identity”, ”Ours and Alien in Language”, ”Protecting Minority Languages and Applied Linguistics”, ”An outline of a Professional Autobiography”, ”An Experiment in writing a Linguistic Memoir”, ”A few more Slang and Amalgamated Expressions”, and ”Selected Bibliography of Sociolinguistics for 2009 – 2010”.

Jezik i moć

Ogledi iz sociolingvistike i stilistike

Author(s): Duška Klikovac / Language(s): Serbian

Language and Power consists of sixteen essays, subdivided into three thematic wholes: 1. On Serbian Language, 2. On Functional diversification of the Serbian Language, 3. On Texts. The book deals with different varieties of Serbian language – aspects it takes on according to its various uses, various occupation, manners in which it manifests itself (whether it is spoken or written), occasions of its use (public or private), uses by particular authors, as well as in various types of texts. The title of her book was chosen in reference to the dominant theme of her book, which is exercising power through language. The entire first part of the book is devoted to bureaucratic language, which is articulated around its basic purpose – manipulation of people.

Kritika vatrene moći

Author(s): Teofil Pančić / Language(s): Serbian

Something old died slowly without ever maturing, and nothing new was on the horizon and probably will not be for the foreseeable future; in that constellation of events, on the horizon appeared (it could be said without exaggeration, like a vampire) something older than old, and it tried to present itself as something completely new and completely good – even more, as something we have always been waiting for. But probably we did not know that we were waiting for just that, and that it would look just like that. It is disconcerting to see how much people believed in that, and even more who believed in it… Critique of Firepower principally tries to “capture” the moment at which things had not completely come together (or come apart) in that direction, but they were clearly rushing that way. In that regard it probably makes sense to regard this book as the last in the series I have called “Life and death in Serbian post-Communism.” Why the last? Because one epochal circle has been closed. Urban Bushmen followed the “proud stumble” across the 1990s and the slow, painful birth of the “October 5 Revolution,” as the first twelve year of the 21st century in Serbia might be called. The following books Keepers of the Bengal Fire, Through the Cliffs and Refitting the Time Machine (also Karmacoma, as a stand-alone “project”) chronicle the various meanderings of that revolutionary order, which was undertaken with more hope than reason, power or, especially, moral or any other kind of constancy. This book traces, by looking at the three-year period from 2010 to 2012, something that could be called without exaggeration the death and departure of the “Republic of 5th October.” This republic begins its life on the basis of a (declarative) break and discontinuity with the Serbian 1990s, and, it is understood, with the period that preceded. And it ends with the resurrection of the people we remember from our dark(est) past, as its creators and enablers, to come to power again ostensibly to do us the favour of lifting us out of that very past. With that, a new era has arrived. My job remains to announce its arrival and to trace its development. It will definitely not be dull, and you will have more to read – if we have the chance. Teofil Pančić September 2013

Leteći pilav

Author(s): Svetlana Slapšak / Language(s): Serbian

This book presents a collection of essays about food that I have published beginning in the 1990s. The first essays, which were published in the “Time for enjoyment” section of the magazine Vreme (Time), with the exception of an essay about French cheeses, which I revised according to a different conception about twenty years later. Also not in this collection is the text of an introduction to Apicius’s recipe book which I published in Latin in 1989 and translated for the collection of classic texts published in the Zagreb journal La­ti­na&Gra­e­ca, because that was writing for a specific purpose. The collection also does not include my research on cabbage and sexuality, which appeared at the end of last year in Slovenian. I particularly regret that my book of recipes Poverty Cuisine, which I delevered for publication just before the war to the publisher “Knji­žev­na za­jed­ni­ca No­vi Sad,” was never released. Technical and other conditions were such that the manuscript has simply – at least for me – disappeared. On the other hand, this collection includes many essays that have never been published before, but which are inspired by the basic theme and my approach to it.

Lingvistika Milke Ivić

Author(s): / Language(s): Serbian

Besides the editors, Predrag Piper and Milorad Radovanović, this collection of sholarly articles also fetures: Dragoljub Petrovic, Zuzana Topolinjska, Sasmina Grković-Major, Aleksandar Mladenović, Darinka Gortan-Premk, Rajna Dragićević, Sofija Miloradović and Milena Marković. The editors write in their preface: ”There are bodies of sholarly work so diverse and multi-faceted that they can hardly be grasped by a single person, so large that they can hardly be graded by a single hand, but whose overall significance would nevertheless remain insufficiently visible and rcognized if no attempt were made to introduce them, at least competently and in general features, in a single place. The open schoarly and scientific opus of Milka Ivić belongs among such bodies of sholarship. In this book, her own collaborators, almost all of whom were, at one time or another, her students, write about directions, outcomes, and echoes of her researches… In addition to being motivated by sholarly needs, this book is also en expression of gratitude, love, and respect felt by disciples, collaborators, and friends of the Serbian Academy of Science and Arts member, Milka Ivić.

Narodno Pravoslavlje

Author(s): Dušan Bandić / Language(s): Serbian

Dr Dušan Bandić (1938-2004) bio je profesor etnologije na Filozofskom fakultetu u Beogradu i jedno vreme šef Katedre za nacionalnu etnologiju i antropologiju. Bavio se istraživanjem religije Srba. Objavio je oko pedeset naučnih radova i četiri knjige: Neke novije promene u životu i kulturi stanovništva okoline Beograda (Etnografski institut SANU, 1979), Tabu u tradicionalnoj kulturi Srba (Biblioteka XX vek, 1980), Carstvo zemaljsko i carstvo nebesko (Biblioteke XX vek, prvo izdanje 1990, drugo, dopunjeno izdanje 1997) i Narodna religija u sto pojmova (Nolit, prvo izdanje 1991, drugo 2004.) Dobitnik je nagrade „Tihomir Đorđević” Etnološkog društva Srbije za 1980. i Nolitove nagrade za 1991. godinu. Narodno pravoslavlje sadrži Bandićeve radove koji nisu ušli u sastav drugih njegovih knjiga, a koje je prikupila i za štampu priredila dr Lidija Radulović. Sadržaj: I deo – NARODONO PRAVOSLAVLJE : O narodnom pravoslavlju danas, Tajni život kosovskog mita, O đavolu u narodnom pravoslavlju, Verski identitet savremenih Srba,Sveti Sava kao srpski Prometej, O narodnoj religiji. II deo – IZ ISTORIJE PROUČAVANJA NARODNE RELIGIJE I FOLKLORA: Sima Trojanović kao istraživač narodne religije, Erdeljanovićev rad na proučavanju religije,Milenko Filipović kao istraživač, Narode religije Južnih Slovena. DODATAK: O izboru direktora u jednoj naučnoj ustanovi, Ispit kao ritualni čin.

Nova lica jezika

Author(s): Ranko Bugarski / Language(s): Serbian

Knjiga Nova lica jezika, s podnaslovom Sociolingvističke teme, pojavila se 2009. godine u svom drugom izdanju. Kako sam autor u Predgovoru napominje, u ovo izdanje nisu unete nikakve izmene u odnosu na prvo izdanje iz 2002. godine, a teme kojima se ova knjiga bavi ostaju jednako aktuelne i zanimljive kao i pre sedam godina. Nadovezujući se tematski na prethodno objavljenu knjigu Lica jezika. Sociolingvističke teme (2001), ova knjiga sadrži šesnaest poglavlja, podeljenih u tri celine.

O rečima

Kognitivni, gramatički i kulturološki aspekti srpske leksike

Author(s): Milka Ivić / Language(s): Serbian

Mil­ka Ivić je­ redov­ni član Srp­ske aka­de­mi­je na­u­ka i umet­no­sti, kao i ne­ko­li­ko ino­stra­nih aka­de­mi­ja. Njene stručne i naučne prokupacije mogu se razvrstati u nekoliko osnovnih oblasti: istorija lingvistike, opšta lingvistika, lingvistička teorija, sintaksa i semantika slovenskih jezika, savremena serbokroatistika. Naj­po­zna­ti­ja de­la Milke Ivić objavljena su u Biblioteci XX vek: Prav­ci u lin­gvi­sti­ci – 1963 (u devet iz­da­nja, i u pre­vo­di­ma na de­se­tak je­zi­ka sve­ta); Lin­gvi­stič­ki ogledi­ – 1983, 1995, 2008; O je­zi­ku Vu­ko­vom i vu­kov­skom – 1990; O ze­le­nom ko­nju. No­vi lin­gvi­stič­ki ogle­d – 1995; Lin­gvi­sič­ki ogle­di,tri – Be­o­grad, 2000; Red reči. Lingvistički ogledi četiri, 2002; O rečima. Lingvistički ogledi pet, 2005 i Je­zik o na­ma. Lin­gvi­stič­ki ogle­di, šest. 2006. Predrag Piper i Milorad Radovanović priredili su zbornik radova u čast Milke Ivić pod naslovom Lingvistika Milke Ivić (Biblioteka XX vek, 2008). Prvi deo knjige O rečima posvećen je kognitivnim i gramatičkim, a drugi kulturološkim aspektima srpske leksike.

Putopis po sećanju

Author(s): Ranko Bugarski / Language(s): Serbian

A person who has lived long enough may at some point feel a certain need to commit something of what he has experienced to paper, so as to leave some trace; in contrast with memoirs written for a purpose or autobiographies, the texts that come to life in this way are not directed to anybody in particular, and do not necessarily arise from the intention that they be published in the form of a book. This was the case with me: in the summer of 2012, during a pause between two more serious jobs, I began to rummage through my memories and pulled out the laptop to write down some of the things that I found there, that could eventually be assembled into a totality that I had barely glimpsed the outlines of in the beginning.Of course, right from the beginning it was clear that the most serious issue was making a selction. I immediately decided that this would not be a scholarly biography, except occasionally and in a few details; after all, much of that material is already covered in the appropriate parts of my books Language and Identity (2010) and Portrait of a Language (2012), in the introductory text of the collection Language in Use (2011) dedicated to me, and in the bibliograohy of my Collected Works (8th edtion, 2013). I have also, except for a short treatment of the most important events, excluded my private life – emotional connections, marriage, fanily and other purely personal things which are not necessarily of interest to anybody.

Rastanak s identitetom

Author(s): Ivan Čolović / Language(s): Serbian

Ivan Čo­lo­vić (born in Belgrade in 1938) is an ethnologist and the publisher of Biblioteka XX. vek. His best known books include: Wild literature (1985), The warriors’ bordello (1993; German translation 1994, French tranlations 2005 and 2009), Ethno (2006; Polish translation 2007) and The Balkans: The terror of culture (2008; Polish translation 2006, English translation 2011, German translation 2011, Macedonian translation 2012). He is the recipient of the Herder prize (2000), the Légion d’honneur (2001), the “Konstantin Obradović” prize of the Belgrade Centre for Human Rights (2006), the “Vitez poziva” award (2010), an honorary doctorate from the University of Warsaw (2010), and the “Konstantin Jireček” medal (2012)

Sarmagedon u Mesopotamaniji

Author(s): Ranko Bugarski / Language(s): Serbian