Dialogi
Eurozine
Dialogi
2003-04-07
Summary for Dialogi 1-2/2003
The editorial signed by Andrej Fistravec deals with the US and the issue of war. The author concludes that US politics has been colonized by multinational companies creating a need for war. The higher the price paid for this war by the world in general, the higher profit for the US; the greater global poverty, the richer America.
Boris Vezjak talked to Bozidar Kante, a professor of analytical philosophy and aesthetics and Head of the Department for Philosophy at the Faculty of Education in Maribor. They discussed professor Kante's book entitled Filozofija umetnosti (Philosophy of Art) published last year, and some current topics of the theory of art and the state of art philosophy i.e. aesthetics in Slovenia.
This issue of Dialogi also features two scientific essays about literature. Marjan Dovic presents modern views on literary canon and its social role. Even though the concept of literary canon is relatively young, over the past decades it has evolved into one of the main theoretical concepts of the contemporary science of literature. It coincides with a growing interest in the nature of mechanisms that determine which works will live on in the memories of future generations, the manner in which canonic works become established inside a specific cultural community, the criteria by which the value of literary works is judged, and ideologies that are involved in literary communication. Attention has shifted away from literary works to institutions and social and economic circumstances in which literary communication takes place, and ideologies inside and outside literary works. The author of the second essay entitled Erotizem v sodobnem slovenskem romanu (Eroticism in Contemporary Slovenian Novel) is Primoz Zevnik. He looks into several novels dating from the 1970s and 1980s concluding that sexuality was the platform used by the authors working under rigid state control to express their vitality and social engagement oriented towards freedom.
The literary section opens with new translations by Vito Taufer of several less known poems by T.S. Eliot. The poet Veno Taufer translated the majority of T.S. Eliot's opus into Slovene. This section further includes an excerpt from the latest novel by Dusan Merc and two short stories by Vinko Mödendorfer, both renowned Slovene authors. These are followed by the works of three younger authors: poems by Jana Putrle and Stanka Hrastelj and an excerpt from a novel by Maja Gal Stromar.
Ales Maver critically assesses the book entitled Quid lacrimus by Darja Sterbenc who analyzes the social role of women in ancient Rome as discernible through Roman funeral rites. Andrej Adam writes about the Slovenian translation of Geneza kopernikanskega sveta (Genesis of the Copernican World) by Hans Blumenberg. The art critic Boris Gorupic writes about the exhibition of paintings by Natalija Seruga and establishes a link between her paintings and the heritage of surrealism.
The diary in this issue has been written by one of the best theater directors in Slovenia, Dusan Jovanovic. It was written during the directing of Margaret Edson's play Wit for the Maribor theater Drama.
Finally this issue of Dialogi introduces a new section entitled Social diagnosis. In this section we will publish answers to questions addressed to various individuals and institutions. These questions will pertain to current social and cultural topics. The first is related to the establishment of the Faculty of Arts in Maribor. The University of Maribor lacks certain departments and particularly deficient in the area of the humanities. The debate about the reformation of the existing Faculty of Education and the establishment of the faculty of arts has recently subsided owing to the preparations for the establishment of the faculty of medicine. The editorial board of Dialogi has now revived the question about the fate of the faculty of arts and addressed it to Zeljko Knez, Head of the University of Maribor, and Joso Vukman, Dean of the Faculty of Education.