Page 33 - Vinkler, Jonatan, Ana Beguš and Marcello Potocco. Eds. 2019. Ideology in the 20th Century: Studies of literary and social discourses and practices. Koper: University of Primorska Press
P. 33
Negotiating the Discursive
Circulation of (Mis)Information
in the Face of Global Uncertainties:
The Fiction of W. G. Sebald
and the Theatre of Oliver Frljić
Tomaž Toporišič
Literature and Theatre in the Uncertainty of ‘Glocal’ Societies
We live in a decade of powerful uncertainties regarding the means, goals
and borders of ‘glocal’ societies,1 which are being confronted by human-
itarian catastrophes, terrorism and post-colonialism. In order to inves-
tigate how literature and art are included in the flow of significations
and representations that build societal truth, we will use two case stud-
ies. First, the novels of Winfried Georg Sebald, with his special narra-
tive technique of connecting the textual and the visual, words and pho-
tographs, a literary journey among signs, interrupted by black-and-white
photographs. Nicolas Bourriaud perceives them as a symbol of mutation
in our recognition of space and time, in which history and geography
complement each other, sketch the path and weave a network. The other
example is the work of Oliver Frljić, the Bosnian-Croatian theatre direc-
tor who intervenes into his shocking productions after his own personal,
war and political traumas, in order to ask universal questions about the
borders of artistic and social freedom, individual and collective responsi-
bility, tolerance and stereotypes.
If in his criticism of the contemporary world Sebald is implicit, then
Frljić is explicit, almost even demonstrative. He is convinced that “we
1 We understand local society and glocalisation in the sense of the sociological inter-
pretations of this concept, as it has been developed by Roland Robertson: the colli-
sion of external and homogenising processes and the local, which diversifies them
(27). As well as Marko Juvan’s understanding of global literature, which is also “al-
ready ‘glocalised’, that is, present through the network of local entries, presentations,
thought perceptions and perspectives (2009, 188).
Circulation of (Mis)Information
in the Face of Global Uncertainties:
The Fiction of W. G. Sebald
and the Theatre of Oliver Frljić
Tomaž Toporišič
Literature and Theatre in the Uncertainty of ‘Glocal’ Societies
We live in a decade of powerful uncertainties regarding the means, goals
and borders of ‘glocal’ societies,1 which are being confronted by human-
itarian catastrophes, terrorism and post-colonialism. In order to inves-
tigate how literature and art are included in the flow of significations
and representations that build societal truth, we will use two case stud-
ies. First, the novels of Winfried Georg Sebald, with his special narra-
tive technique of connecting the textual and the visual, words and pho-
tographs, a literary journey among signs, interrupted by black-and-white
photographs. Nicolas Bourriaud perceives them as a symbol of mutation
in our recognition of space and time, in which history and geography
complement each other, sketch the path and weave a network. The other
example is the work of Oliver Frljić, the Bosnian-Croatian theatre direc-
tor who intervenes into his shocking productions after his own personal,
war and political traumas, in order to ask universal questions about the
borders of artistic and social freedom, individual and collective responsi-
bility, tolerance and stereotypes.
If in his criticism of the contemporary world Sebald is implicit, then
Frljić is explicit, almost even demonstrative. He is convinced that “we
1 We understand local society and glocalisation in the sense of the sociological inter-
pretations of this concept, as it has been developed by Roland Robertson: the colli-
sion of external and homogenising processes and the local, which diversifies them
(27). As well as Marko Juvan’s understanding of global literature, which is also “al-
ready ‘glocalised’, that is, present through the network of local entries, presentations,
thought perceptions and perspectives (2009, 188).
