Discussion on Raymond Williams’ Methodology of Drama Criticism

Raymond Williams is one of the representative figures of British cultural Marxism and British cultural research. His cultural research, especially mass culture research, focuses on literary criticism. Among them, drama criticism is one of Williams’ most important forms of cultural criticism methodology. Williams’ drama criticism is based on drama history criticism. Through the historical analysis of drama content and form as well as the synchronic analysis of modern drama in different historical periods, including the ongoing drama history, Williams proposed the notion of “structures of feeling.” The emergence of this concept opened up the social critical dimension of Williams’ drama criticism. Drama criticism has become a window for examining, analyzing, and grasping the current social emotional structure or social culture. Furthermore, by implanting tragic plots in the drama, a potential practical strategy of social and cultural revolution can be realized.

“If you want to be classy, have Yugoclass.” Postmodern Cultural Images of Josip Broz Tito

The article deals with internet memes related to the person of the socialist leader of Yugoslavia, Josip Broz Tito. For purposes of our research, we define internet meme as conventionalized text-iconic composition, built on a basis of a specific scheme. In intentions of contemporary narratology we also consider it as a text of its kind and its creating, reproduction, transformation and reading process – as a special discursive activity. Based on analysing the primary material occurring and spreading on internet, we provide a typology of the representations of Tito from a narratological and semiotic point of view, and regarding its function in current discourse on socialist Yugoslavia. We focus mainly on cultural meanings generated by this meme culture, its relation to the narratives formed in the context of official and unofficial representations of the leader during the socialist era and to a wider context of contemporary popular culture. Pursuant to the analysis, we try to follow the features of postmodern cultural images of the socialist Yugoslavia and its leader, and relation of these narratives to nostalgic and social-critical attitudes in the contemporary world.

News Text: Genre Transformation

The article considers a news text as a secondary type of text where news content undergoes modifications as a result of humorous interpretation. New trends in media coverage, which lead to a change in its format and linguistic content, are analyzed. The creation of a secondary news text / genre is shown as performed through transforming the main (primary) news text. The secondary media text belongs to the comic picture of the world, the modeling of which becomes possible due to various means of the comic which fulfill social-critical, aesthetic and entertainment functions. The empirical material of the study comprises 530 news texts telecast at the beginning of the program "Evening Urgant" on Channel One in 2017–2020. The identified mechanism of news transformation includes the use of irony, sarcasm, comic exaggeration and understatement, references to precedent phenomena, the techniques of allegory, comic dissonance and comic surprise, comic exposure, etc. The analysis of the news transformation mechanism revealed a reduction in the primary news component with a simultaneous "build-up" of a pragmatic component through the use of various means and techniques of the comic. This leads to the construction of a secondary news text, which, in turn, is characterized by a recombined semantic content and subjective interpretation of the primary news piece.

The City of Oslo in Jan Erik Vold’s Poems

"The City of Oslo in Jan Erik Vold’s Poems. The aim of this paper is to examine, from a cultural and social perspective, the Norwegian urban areas and everyday situations in Jan Erik Vold’s (b. 1939) poems. Our close-reading technique reveals important social aspects, different places and streets, located in the capital city of Norway, Oslo. These urban poems written by the contemporary Norwegian poet Jan Erik Vold contribute to the reconstruction of a new Norwegian cultural identity as it is reflected in a selection of poems taken from Mor Godhjertas glade versjon. Ja (Mother Goodhearted’s Happy Version. Yes, 1968), followed by the poet’s wanderings in the city of Oslo in En som het Abel Ek (One Named Abel Ek, 1988), and concluding with his bitter social criticism in Elg (Moose, 1989) and IKKE. Skillingstrykk fra nittitallet (Not: Broadsides from the Nineties, 1993). Vold’s urban poems emphasise the transition from nyenkle (new simple), friendly and descriptive poems which present closely the city of Oslo on foot, to short, political and social critical poems from the 90s. Thus, it is of great importance to traverse various urban ‘landscapes’ in different periods of time, beginning with the 1960s, followed by the 80s and the 90s. Keywords: Jan Erik Vold, urban poems, social criticism, Norwegian urban areas, the city of Oslo "

Novels about the “erased”: The social-critical discourse in Slovenian prose of the 2010s

The increasing attention that writers pay to the consequences of cardinal political and sociocultural changes in the life of Slovenia is one of the trends observed in the national prose in the first decades of the 21st century, indicating that the socio-critical discourse has been gradually returning to literature. At this time one of the most pressing problems of independent Slovenia comes to the attention of novelists’ field of vision — that is, the fate of the so-called “erased”, persons with Yugoslav passports, who at the time of the proclamation of sovereignty were living and working in Slovenia and for political and bureaucratic reasons were excluded from the register of its permanent residents. In 1992, the newly proclaimed democratic state deprived them of their citizenship status, that resulted in ethnic cleansing of over 25 thousands of such people. The truth about this “inconvenient” episode has been hushed up or falsified for years. The writers M. Mazzini, P. Glavan and D. Bauck in their novels “Izbrisana” (2014), “Kakorkoli” (2014) and “Konec. Znova” (2015) seek to use the ethical potential of the artistic word to convey the practice of empathic experience. Despite the difference in genre varieties (thriller, social novel, novel with elements of surrealism), all three texts are united by the mimetic method proposed by the authors to overcome the collective trauma and collective guilt through artistic expression. Drawing the readers’ attention to the actual social conflict, writers, each in their own way, seek to destroy the stereotypes of its perception existing in the society.

SARS-COV-2: Rise and fall of the Croatian scenario. An ethnography of the corona-politics in the Croatian pandemic crisis management

The oscillations in the Croatian scenario of the struggle with the pandemic are followed by the considerable rearrangements of the key social actors. The initial success in the controle of the disease, as well as goverment measures for the rescue of national economy (recognized as the return of social state), have led to the unprecedentent public suppport and hope in the renowal of the disturbed social cohesion. The optimism was projected in the unexpected cognitive collectivity awaken by trust in the credible and expert management of the crisis, clear of political manipulations. Nevertheless, the divergence in both political and professional judgements of the coming changes of epidemiological measures, aimed to balance the public health and the social-economic risks, have led to the unexpected realignments of the social-critical stances, especially concerning the cultural understanding of labour economic relations, marked by the conflict of the public and private sector.

The Un-Heideggerian Core of Marcuse’s Most Heideggerian Text

This chapter argues that Herbert Marcuse's Freiburg writings formed a continuous effort to redirect Martin Heidegger's philosophical revolution from solipsistic existentialism toward a critical theory of capitalism or concrete philosophy. It discusses how Marcuse did not see himself simply as criticizing Heidegger but rather persuading him to recognize the social-critical, Hegelian-Marxist elements of Being and Time. It also sheds new light on Lucien Goldmann's famous claim about Heidegger's debt to Georg Lukács by showing that Marcuse had suspected such debt in the 1920s. The chapter looks at Marcuse's experience as part of the failed socialist revolution in Germany after World War I that is crucial in understanding why he could become enthusiastic about Heidegger. It mentions Marcuse's goal to reconstruct the philosophical premises of Marxism.

Data search computing based on the similarity-dıfference metric

Models, methods and algorithms for cyber-social computing and machine learning implies the use of the metric of similarity – difference of unitary coded information for processing big data in order to generate adequate actuator signals for controlling cyber-social critical systems. A set-theoretic method of data search is being developed based on the similarity – difference of the frequency parameters of primitive elements, which makes it possible to determine the similarity of objects, the strategy of transforming one object into another, and also to identify the level of common interests, conflicts. Computational architectures of cyber-social computing and metric search for key data are being created. The definitions of the fundamental concepts in the field of computing are given on the basis of metric relations between interacting processes and phenomena. A software application is proposed for calculating the similarity-differences of objects based on the formation of vectors of frequencies of two sets of primitive data. A high level of correlation of the application results with the well-known system for determining plagiarism is shown. Key words: computing, cybersocial computing, decision making, unitary data codes, similarity – difference, data retrieval, plagiarism