Signs in Disguise

The essay discusses Miriam Toews’s novel Women Talking by focusing on the trauma of rape. Based on a true event that happened between 2005 and 2009 in a remote Mennonite colony in Bolivia, the novel follows the story of women and girls in the colony who were raped and now suffer from memory loss, traumatic memories, and the return of the repressed. By talking to each other and planning their escape, the women gain insight into the injustice of patriarchy within such a small religious community. The narrative moves from the idea of memory being synonymous with imagination, through the idea of traumatic memory as a trap, to the final idea of regained memory that, in the case of the raped women, serves as an epiphany. This essay will explore the ways in which memory functions in the novel to unravel the patriarchal discourse that keeps the women submissive and guilty of their own victimization. Traumatic memory will be examined through the lens of trauma theory (Caruth, Herman, Stampf, Pe...

This paper explores the philosophical elements present in Tim O’Brien’s novel The Things They Carried (1990), with particular emphasis on the concepts of authenticity, alienation, and truth, which assume a distinctly existential dimension throughout the text. Although O’Brien’s work has frequently been examined through the lenses of ethics, war poetics, and the problem of truthfulness, the philosophical dimension of his writing has received comparatively less attention. Through a comparative reading of the novel alongside selected philosophical insights, primarily those derived from Nietzsche’s philosophy, this paper demonstrates how O’Brien portrays the experience of everyday wartime life as a space of tension between individual authenticity and enforced dehumanization. The analysis shows that motifs of alienation, fragmented subjectivity, and the search for meaning emerge as fundamental elements of the narrative, while the concept of truth is revealed as fluid and closely connected t...

Although the crab is a widely spread animal and is even part of culinary traditions, its presence in literature is surprisingly minimal. In culture, the crab is associated with beliefs tied to the astrological sign and constellation, which hold specific roles in both astronomy and mythology. As beliefs are directly connected to time and place, the crab also has a particular role in the medieval bestiary. The richly diverse bestiary of Italian literature teems with animals, both real and mythical. Some are more prominently featured than others, directly reflecting their role in daily urban or rural life, especially in folk beliefs. In Italo Calvino's collection Italian Folktales (Fiabe italiane), there are only two tales where the crab plays a central role and is mentioned in the title. In one tale, the crab symbolises prosperity, while in the other, it serves as a magical means of transportation. In children's literature, the crab often represents human negative traits such as envy and...

The socio-political landscape in Serbia has been marked by a series of crises, protests, and turbulent events in recent years. In such an environment, video games have increasingly emerged as a form of response to current developments, creating digital spaces for the expression of social critique, irony, resistance, and civic participation. The paper analyzes video games developed in Serbia between 2022 and 2025 that engage with socio-political events and processes, addressing issues such as corruption, protests, elections, clientelism, and other aspects of political and social life, as well as game jams as specific environments in which many of these games were produced. The research examines how these games represent and comment on current socio-political realities, how their creators employ procedural rhetoric, satire, irony, and humor to articulate social critique or political positions, and to what extent such games can contribute to political activism, civic participation, or edu...

The aim of this research is to surpass clichéd definitions of autism and focus on a new perspective that transcends conventional medical approaches, opening up space for understanding neurodiversity through a metaphorical world. This world, filled with symbols and narratives, allows the shaping of subjective reality through artistic language, questioning identity in the context of transience, stigma, and self-acceptance. The research focuses on the identity of autistic women through the literary expressions of comics and graphic novels, specific forms of expression in which they articulate their identity of invisible disability, confronting challenges of acceptance and fear of stigma. The goal is to discover whether there are unique linguistic, narrative, and visual structures that reflect their neurodiversity and how, through symbolic language, they reinterpret their own reality. Keywords: identity, autistic women, comics, graphic novels, self-help strategiesIdentitet ženskog autizma ...

Though N. V. Gogol’s “Vij” is commonly recognized as a work of horror, the elements motivating this interpretation still lack sufficient, systematic research through a contemporary horror studies apparatus. This paper offers a cognitive stylistic analysis of “Vij,” integrated with a biocultural perspective on horror. It aims to identify and explain the mechanisms through which “Vij” evokes fear by analyzing its language and the cognitive structures and processes underpinning it. Drawing on conceptual blending theory, the study demonstrates how horrifying entities—especially the witch—are constructed through the incremental integration of mental spaces, yielding emergent concepts grounded in cultural tradition and evolved fear circuits while remaining contextually specific. Special emphasis is placed on the role of sight, from perceptual instability to predation, demonstrating how linguistic patterns engage deep-seated fears. The paper further argues that the narrative’s exploitation of...