TRANSITIONAL RECONFIGURATION OF BOSNIAK’S IDENTITY IN NOVEL “PAUČINA“(COBWEBS) BY SAMEDIN KADIĆ

Abstract

UDK 821.163.4(497.6)-31.09

We here analysed recent configurations of Bosniak identity in Samedin Kadić’s novel Paučina (Cobweb), comprehending identity as a dynamic category, that is as an effect of a web of conflicting discursive regimes. The novel, as a whole, is dedicated to this thematic complex, but the mentioned dynamics is clearly evident in a chain of literary-effective, fragmented micro-units, which are offered in the form of mise en abyme, as a kind of keys for inner reading of the novel. Kadić takes Islam as the central component of identity construction, conceived as per solar model that makes the whole novel function as a sort of astrolabe that scans the entire collectivity, but also various individual ‘bodies’ (personalities) and establishes varying parameters – distance from the centre, angle, size, shape, and changes of orbital path. In all this the author tries to ensure that the centre itself, however indisputable it is, does not remain privileged by scholastic protectionism of any kind nor exempted from critical views and questionings, moreover, for Kadić, Islam is the idea which requires perpetual confirmation, in all the circumstances and in all possible conventional and avant-garde ways. Aware of his own subjective position, the author gives a detailed deconstruction of traditional identity metanarrative.