The relationship between post-colonial and post-socialist studies is extraordinarily complex. Post-colonialists might argue that it can be approached from different perspectives as well as different power positions of knowledge production. As a result, I have chosen a specific trajectory that intersects and challenges the static power positions and is able to trace the debates and the unfolding of the complex problem over time. As a long-time scholar in this area, and moreover, one who has taken many different roads in both fields, I will describe this relationship from the perspective of my own scholarly biography.

However, my professional career has spanned several decades and surpassed the transient trends and fashions within this scholarly field. As such, it can only be depicted as an extensive narrative comprising multiple episodes.

Each episode showcases its unique scientific intrigue and unravels its own methodological peripeteia, all of which contribute to the overarching story I wish to share. Such complex material required a specific structure and organization, leading to the formation of three distinct parts of the story. These parts are published in sequence across the double issue of the journal Studia Litteraria, devoted to forms of engagement in contemporary Southern and Western Slavic literatures.

The relationship between post-colonial and post-socialist studies is extraordinarily complex. Post-colonialists might argue that it can be approached from different perspectives as well as different power positions of knowledge production. As a result, I have chosen a specific trajectory that intersects and challenges the static power positions and is able to trace the debates and the unfolding of the complex problem over time. As a long-time scholar in this area, and moreover one who has taken many different roads in both fields, I will describe this relationship from the perspective of my own scholarly biography.

However, my professional career has spanned several decades and surpassed the transient trends and fashions within this scholarly field. As such, it can only be depicted as an extensive narrative comprising multiple episodes, published in sequence across the double issue of the journal Studia Litteraria, devoted to forms of engagement in contemporary Southern and Western Slavic literatures. Part 3 discusses soft and hard variants of the complex “powers/knowledge”.

The subject of my analysis is a review of the public engagement of Sarajevo writer and intellectual, Ivan Lovrenović. I am primarily interested in his transition from engaged interventionism to explaining the milieu of postbellum Bosnia and Herzegovina, evident in his writings, and his self-reflection on his own particular engagement. Essential for my analysis is the moment of the author’s transition from a phase of active participation in the public debate regarding the form of the state, i.e., Bosnia and Herzegovina and its cultural community, to the position of an outsider by choice, i.e., withdrawing to the sphere of “good solitude”. This stage, however, does not mean resignation from the attitude of the committed intellectual and complete abandonment of activism for change within the social and political space. In my opinion, Lovrenović does not turn away from the world in which he lives, nor does he rid himself of a sense of responsibility. Rather, he gradually shifts from journalism towards literary fiction. The main interpretative material spurring the present analysis is Lovrenović’s Sizifova sreća [Sisyphus’s Happiness, 2018], which overall offers an interesting example of the revision of his public engagement, while a broader timeframe of my reflections covers the years 1994–2018.

In this article, the author analyses the novel The National Valley (2016) by the contemporary Czech writer Jaroslav Rudiš. The main argument of the analysis focuses on the concept of modernity and modern subjectivity as outlined by the American philosopher, Marshall Berman, who in his book All That Is Solid Melts into Air (1988) describes modernity as a process of constant changes in reality. The author of the article interprets the Czech capitalist system after 1989 as a process of modernisation that forces certain elements of reality to disappear. Using the tools of semiotics provided by Yuri Lotman (1984), he analyses the structure of space in the novel, whilst also focusing on the issues of masculinity, family relations and subjectivity in capitalist modernity. The protagonist of the novel, shaping his identity in opposition to the current model of modernity, has only limited possibilities of achieving subjectivity. The values he considers important do not fit into the realities of modernity, which means that the protagonist, as well as the milieu he inhabits, is doomed to marginalisation.