Original scientific paper

https://doi.org/10.21857/y54jof510m

Productive Tension and the Hermeneutics of Recognizability: An Analytical Model of Oliver Dragojević’s Vocal Narration

Diana Grgurić ; University of Rijeka, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Rijeka, Croatia *
Jernej Kaluža ; Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia

* Corresponding author.

Abstract

This paper proposes an analytical model of vocal refiguration aimed at examining the role of Oliver Dragojević’s vocal narration in processes of national memorialisation. The model is based on Ricoeur’s (1984) mimetic arc, which, in combination with Jauss’s (1978) concept of the horizon of expectations, is developed into an operational methodological framework for analysing vocal interpretation.
At the level of prefiguration (Mimesis I), pre-performance conditions are analysed: the materiality of the voice is interpreted through Barthes’s (1977) concept of the »grain of the voice,« while song lyrics are approached as a system of dominant metaphorical patterns following Lakoff and Johnson (1999). This level establishes the foundational conditions of genre-based and affective recognisability. The configuration phase (Mimesis II) encompasses a micro-analysis of vocal performance and the relationship between voice, text, and music, drawing on Kristal Spreadborough’s (2022) intersemiotic approach. Within this framework, interpretation is understood as a dynamic articulation of affective and generic codes. The final phase (Mimesis III) integrates the findings through the hermeneutics of recognizability, identifying the process of the reconstitution of the listener’s horizon. Within this stage, a central hermeneutic finding is revealed: aesthetic pleasure stems from the intensity of re-actualizing the familiar. Consequently, vocal narration constitutes archetypal experience as an affectively ‘new’ reality, functioning as a permanent symbolic measure of the lived time of community. This manifests the relevance of Dragojević’s vocal interpretation and voice as the central mechanism of the symbolic mediation of the Dalmatian homeland.

Keywords

Oliver Dragojević; Ricoeur’s mimetic circle; Dalmatian chanson; vocal refiguration; hermeneutics of recognisability

Hrčak ID:

349924

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/349924

Publication date:

29.7.2026.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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