Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.15378/1848-9540.2025.48.06
Tomorrow Will Be Now. Analysing the Relationship between Slovenia’s Nation-Building during the Nineties and the Youth in Contemporary Slovenian Literature
Marco Jakovljević
orcid.org/0009-0007-0270-6225
; PhD candidate, University of Zagreb, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
Abstract
This paper examines the relationship between nation-building in 1990s Slovenia and the construction of youth identity as represented in contemporary Slovenian literature. Focusing on three novels – Dino Bauk’s Konec. Znova, Sebastijan Pregelj’s V Elvisovi sobi, and Kazimir Kolar’s Glas noči – the article explores how literary portrayals of youth critically reflect and reframe dominant narratives of Slovenia’s transition from socialism to liberal democracy. Using a combined narratological and cultural memory framework, complemented by Marxist literary theory, the paper demonstrates how these works destabilize linear accounts of national progress through fragmented structures, nostalgic tropes, and representations of alienated subjectivities. The protagonists – marked by disorientation, loss, or silence – highlight generational tensions and unprocessed historical trauma, offering a counter-archive to official memory. Ultimately, the study argues that Slovenian youth literature functions not only as a cultural reflection of transition, but as a critical intervention into how post-socialist identity, memory, and belonging are reimagined in the literary field.
Keywords
identity, post-socialism, transition, Slovenian novel
Hrčak ID:
342184
URI
Publication date:
23.12.2025.
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