Authors

Discussion

In this work I am observing a specific position of the Yugoslav poet, essayist, playwright, and intellectual Jovan Hristić (1932-2003). Although his literary work and his public appearance resemble a politically neutral, distant, Blanchotian-intellectual, his essays and plays challenge the political structures, socio-economic situation in Yugoslavia, socialist aesthetics, the notion of freedom, revolution, and power. He polemicized about Sartre’s ideas on political commitment (Clean Hands, Orestes) and Camus’ philosophy of a revolution (Savanarola and His Friends, Seven against Thebes), as well as Marx’s concept of alienation (Terrace) and we find those wrapped in his plays, supported by essays. However, those interpretations remained unnoticed in the public intellectual space (Rancière) of Yugoslavia.

Jovan Hristić’s polemicist writing and its polylogue with European intellectual ideas are a great example of how Yugoslav literature is positioned within the system of world literature (Moretti) and within its own artistic/political system. In order to explain the complex mechanisms that Hristić was using to communicate the issues of then-Yugoslav political and aesthetic structures, I will focus on his play Clean Hands. The play offers an insight into Hristić’s literary commitment (Sartre), his metaphorical language, approach to systems and power (Luhmann), freedom (Camus) and his polemics with Sartre by writing a direct philosophical answer to Dirty Hands. In Clean Hands the narrative of Oedipus transforms Yugoslav idea of self-management, political power and freedom of choice while communicating with European literary heritage.

Through this play and Hristić’s entire oeuvre, I trace his approach to political literature in a limiting environment; to world literature and as a result – the relationship between world literature, seen as an unequal system (Moretti), and socialist Yugoslavia.