“THE PERIPHERY – THE PLACE THAT REVEALS THE FUTURE” (BETWEEN THE EAST AND THE WEST – BOUNDARIES AND IDENTITIES)

Abstract

The study was inspired by several key ideas essential to the contemporary literary situation – times of testing literary studies, when outside the debate on the sustainability and content of the established forms of literary research, the constant subordination of culture in its entirety to the market laws is associated with the perpetual encroachment on the humanities and with the implicitly declining importance of literature as a cultural phenomenon. We share the idea that the cultures that stay isolated wither away, the cultures that remain confined within themselves deform, and only those cultures that maintain the balance of borrowing and lending tend to be healthy and thriving; hence the insistence on the interaction between the different cultures on the basis of equality and mutual respect. The discussed literary works pose the questions whether multiculturalism is a positive element of modern cosmopolitanism, whether it unites races and cultures in the idea of the hybrid man or it s simply a social propaganda that reinforces the stereotypes about otherness and perpetuates racism, etc. Probably what also unites the characters here is the feeling of loss, as well as the shared grief. Addressing the personal heartache, they talk about things that are universal and continue to move people. The common thing to the two types of culture and the studied works is derived from Homi Bhabha’s idea that both the stories created in the Balkans and the narratives of the cross-cultural writers are part of that model of cultures capable of turning their own marginality into a kind of center.