REVIEWS

Czesław Miłosz: "Native Realm" *

Stefan Jonsson

There are no translations available.

Some authors fall into oblivion after their death, whereas others grow in importance. Nobel laureate Czesław Miłosz belongs to the latter category.[1] In Native Realm, a collection of essays from 1959, Czesław Miłosz restores the memory of a lost world. At the date of its publication he is 48 years old, but his experiences far surpass his age.

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Book review: "Streets of Crocodiles: Photography, Media, and Postsocialist Landscapes in Poland".

Magdalena Kania Lundholm

There are no translations available.

Streets of Crocodiles is a result of the fruitful collaboration between photographer Kamil Turowski and feminist media researcher Katarzyna Marciniak. This book has two goals: to visually document the scenery of the post-socialist urban landscape in Poland and to comment on the country's transition from the ‘old' to the ‘new' Europe. The project draws attention to the post-socialist condition in the country while engaging photography, media culture and scholarly essays. The phenomenon of post-socialism in Europe has predominantly been theorized within the framework of transformation and modernization. This book offers an alternative perspective that is, according to Marciniak, ‘beyond the politics of politeness and superficial appeasement' (p. 172).

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Between the Scylla of 'Little Homeland' and Charybdis of Globalisation

Aleksander Fiut

There are no translations available.

It is generally assumed that the inhabitant of the "global village" cannot acquire unlimited freedom of choice and unfettered access to a limitless variety of cultural patterns unless he takes for granted the demolition of the established hierarchies as well as a conversion of unique, indeed priceless, accomplishments of the human mind, imagination, and hand into a series of bland items that can be easily taken off any shelf at the global supermarket. Threats of this kind, perceived as proof of thorough Americanization of the European culture, are generally demonized in the form of the ubiquitous hamburger that seems to have replaced the sun as the source of energy and light for the future of humanity.

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Book review: "The Postcolonial Unconscious", Neil Lazarus.

Blanka Grzegorczyk

There are no translations available.

One result of the boom in postcolonial studies, Ania Loomba first pointed out in her introduction to Colonialism/Postcolonialism is that "essays by a handful of name-brand critics have become more important than the field itself" [Loomba 1998, 4]. Thirteen years later, her words take on a new relevance in The Postcolonial Unconscious, a recent study by Neil Lazarus. Significantly, Lazarus criticizes a theory dedicated to the world beyond the boundaries of Europe and North America for "mistak[ing] a discrete cultural tendency," or what he describes as pomo-postcolonialist criticism ("pomo" as in "postmodernist"), "for the only game in town" [Lazarus 2011, 34].

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The End of an Empire: On Iurii Andrukhovych's Novel "Moskoviada"

Per-Arne Bodin

There are no translations available.

Iurii Andrukhovych's novel Moskoviada was published in 1992 in Ukrainian and was translated into Russian in 2001. This novel, in addition to three other novels and various collections of poetry and essays, have rendered Andrukhovych one of the most important authors in contemporary Ukraine. Andrukhovych, born in Ivano-Frankivsk and now in his forties, is already regarded as a classic of Ukrainian literature. He is a member of the famous Bu-Ba-Bu, a literary grouping which was formed in 1985. The three syllables signify Burlesk (burlesque), Balahan (farce) and Bufonada (buffoonery), and besides Andrukhovych the members of the group are Viktor Neborak and Oleksander Irvanets. According to one critic Bu-Ba-Bu is the only literary group or movement anywhere that acknowledges Mikhail Bakhtin's writings on the carnivalesque as a major source of inspiration in its artistic practice

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Postcolonial Europe

Czesław Miłosz: "Native Realm" *

Book review: "Streets of Crocodiles: Photography, Media, and Postsocialist Landscapes in Poland".

Between the Scylla of 'Little Homeland' and Charybdis of Globalisation

Book review: "The Postcolonial Unconscious", Neil Lazarus.

The End of an Empire: On Iurii Andrukhovych's Novel "Moskoviada"

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