Page 38 - 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. 38
Ideology in the 20th Century: studies of literary and social discourses and practices
readers’ or spectators’ horizon of expectation, simultaneously, they play
with Iser’s implied reader.3
The Deconstruction and Ironising of the Horizon of Expectation
Both authors who are the subject of our treatment, deconstruct and
ironise the horizon of expectation as an achievement of civilisation, since
it is a metaphor, which they most often use as a goal of this expectation,
death, its inevitability and its repetitions. This can be disruptive for read-
ers and spectators who expect either hermeneutic or mimetic certainty,
just as it can be a pleasure to the readers and spectators, to whom are
close, for example, the resistance produced by interpretations of the texts
of Franz Kafka or Heiner Müller.
Thus Sebald and Frljić both play with a series of theoretical and civ-
38 ilisation signifiers and new age mythology, for example, the death of the
author and the birth of the reader, which they paratactically interpret
through irony. Both have an almost ‘pathologically’ sharp sense of real-
ity, which they introduce within different media and cultural-political
contexts, by all means they are joined by their ability to create uncertain-
ty and destabilise us.
Frljić in an interview before the premiere of Our Violence and Your
Violence emphasises that uncertainty as the essence of his directorial po-
etics:
I think that the greatest quality of the production Our Violence and Your
Violence is precisely the situation in which the spectator is lacking a frame
that would clearly determine in which mode the performance is operat-
ing—ironic or non—ironic. But let’s remember: even Handke’s Offending
the Audience never got the right to citizenship in the institutional bourgeois
repertoire, despite that being one of the key drama texts that breaks down
different types of theatrical mimesis and the ideology upon which it rests.
I’ve never set the goal for myself to become some type of moral arbitrator.
I myself also participate in the manufacturing of the structural violence,
which is needed for the ‘normal’ functioning of Europe (Toporišič 2016, 4).
3 We refer to the quality that Mateja Pezdirc Bartol put forth in regard to Iser in the ar-
ticle “The Role of the Reader in the Principal Literary Theory Directions of the 20th
Century”, when she noted the specific interaction between the work and the read-
er, which is interesting also in reading Sebald’s prose and in watching Frljić’s produc-
tions: “The expression marks active participation of the reader in the reading process,
but the expression belongs neither to the text nor to the reader, but to both, since
it includes the prestructure of the text and the reader’s actualisation of the possible
meaning” (Pezdirc Bartol 44).
readers’ or spectators’ horizon of expectation, simultaneously, they play
with Iser’s implied reader.3
The Deconstruction and Ironising of the Horizon of Expectation
Both authors who are the subject of our treatment, deconstruct and
ironise the horizon of expectation as an achievement of civilisation, since
it is a metaphor, which they most often use as a goal of this expectation,
death, its inevitability and its repetitions. This can be disruptive for read-
ers and spectators who expect either hermeneutic or mimetic certainty,
just as it can be a pleasure to the readers and spectators, to whom are
close, for example, the resistance produced by interpretations of the texts
of Franz Kafka or Heiner Müller.
Thus Sebald and Frljić both play with a series of theoretical and civ-
38 ilisation signifiers and new age mythology, for example, the death of the
author and the birth of the reader, which they paratactically interpret
through irony. Both have an almost ‘pathologically’ sharp sense of real-
ity, which they introduce within different media and cultural-political
contexts, by all means they are joined by their ability to create uncertain-
ty and destabilise us.
Frljić in an interview before the premiere of Our Violence and Your
Violence emphasises that uncertainty as the essence of his directorial po-
etics:
I think that the greatest quality of the production Our Violence and Your
Violence is precisely the situation in which the spectator is lacking a frame
that would clearly determine in which mode the performance is operat-
ing—ironic or non—ironic. But let’s remember: even Handke’s Offending
the Audience never got the right to citizenship in the institutional bourgeois
repertoire, despite that being one of the key drama texts that breaks down
different types of theatrical mimesis and the ideology upon which it rests.
I’ve never set the goal for myself to become some type of moral arbitrator.
I myself also participate in the manufacturing of the structural violence,
which is needed for the ‘normal’ functioning of Europe (Toporišič 2016, 4).
3 We refer to the quality that Mateja Pezdirc Bartol put forth in regard to Iser in the ar-
ticle “The Role of the Reader in the Principal Literary Theory Directions of the 20th
Century”, when she noted the specific interaction between the work and the read-
er, which is interesting also in reading Sebald’s prose and in watching Frljić’s produc-
tions: “The expression marks active participation of the reader in the reading process,
but the expression belongs neither to the text nor to the reader, but to both, since
it includes the prestructure of the text and the reader’s actualisation of the possible
meaning” (Pezdirc Bartol 44).
