Original scientific paper

NECESSARY FREEDOM AND HER TRIBUNI PLEBIS: OLIVER FRLJIĆ AND MATE MATIŠIĆ

Nataša Govedić

Abstract

Who are our contemporary tribuni plebis? What is their representative intent? What kind of communal response they receive, both from »elite« and from »common« interpretative communities? What kind of public resistance and public persecution follow from their choice to speak as the public representatives? The text understands public sphere as a contesting ideological and aesthetical field and therefore approaches works of Oliver Fljić and Mate Matišić as two artists who fiercely challenge the irresponsibility of the Croatian community and insist on public duty of intellectuals and artists to reveal both structural patterns and private schemata of social injustice. The fact that both of them are oftentimes accused in the media for their »lack of patriotism« is viewed as a grotesque form of social hypocrisy, since Matišić and Frljić demonstrate consistent care about the most wounded parts of our political community, therefore building intense field of social empathy and communal ethics of care. Text also includes voices of Mate Matišić and Oliver Frljić in response to the questions the author made.

Keywords

Oliver Frljić; Mate Matišić; persecution of public intellectuals; representative function; public sphere; history as narrative trauma; shared responsibility for the multiple political trauma

Hrčak ID:

192182

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/192182

Publication date:

8.5.2017.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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