THE POETICS OF MEMORY IN THE NOVELS THE MAN'S FAMILY AND THE HISTORY OF DISEASE BY TVRTKO KULENOVIĆ

Abstract

Memory relates subversively to the order established in consciousness, as stated by Aleida Assman, and in this work, the starting point is that memory has a disruptive dimension. Since the research was based on a literary text, the paper examined how events from the past are represented in Kulenović's novels from the narrator's memories, in which we follow the drama of an individual who found himself in the vortex of terrible historical events, showing the subversive side of memories that call memory into question collective and historical discourse. Literary narratives produce a deconstruction of the social model of memory, which calls into question the ideological and political hierarchy and destabilizes the ruling interpretations of historical events. A literary text makes it impossible to stabilize cultural memory and turn it into a static space, by remembering what is suppressed in us. Reconstructing the past through memory, Tvrtko Kulenović's novels search for unwritten pages of history, untold human destinies pushed to the margins of history, and the narrator confronts different concepts of the official with his individual/personal memory, describing moments from everyday life, childhood and youth. It is precisely this activation of the edges of cultural memory that has a subversive effect on official history.