Scholarly Article
Georgi Gospodinov's Struggle with the Category of Time During the Crisis Period
Szwat-Gyłybowa, Grażyna
2022-02-10 · Poznańskie Studia Slawistyczne · Adam Mickiewicz University Poznan
Abstract
The article is devoted to a reflection on the category of time in Georgi Gospodinov's novel Vremeubežiŝte (2020), where the author undertakes a reflection on the processes of culpable and non-culpable self-destruction of societies that have rejected the rules of Enlightenment rationalism. Using the tools of dystopia, he creates a world gripped by collective madness, the sources of which he derives from extra-literary reality and links to contemporary political and cultural processes. Leszek Kolakowski's concept of time as the vault of the human home, which is based on four pillars: reason, God, love, death, remains the philosophical point of reference for my deliberations. In turn, the concept of retroutopia of the sociologist of culture Zygmunt Bauman provided me with tools to reflect on a new type of rationalism after the conservative turn. René Girard's concept of mimetic competition was helpful in considering the structure of the world presented in the novel.
Keywords
Gospodinov, Bulgarian literature, dystopia, imitation, pop-nationalism
Citation Details
Poznańskie Studia Slawistyczne, pp. 295-320