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Editorial
It is likely that anyone who encounters the term otherness for the first time would think it describes something different from us and yet akin to us. And they would be right, just as they would simultaneously be wrong. Otherness is an exceptionally complex term, which cannot be understood separately from the idea of the self. When we want to articulate who is, to us, the other, we also have to articulate who is their opposite – the latter being us. Therefore, when speaking of the other, we inevitably speak of ourselves. The coupling of terms myself/other was mentioned already by Hegel, who emphasized that the identification of the Other enabled the synthetization of one’s own identity (112). The Other (who is often identified within ethnic, racial, religious, geographical, and many other cultural and social categories) functions as a mirror. For Georg Simmel, for example, the Other is more than a stranger who is either close to or distant from us. The Other is an element that can simultaneously be a member of the group, outside of it, and in a confrontation with it (144). For Emanuel Levinas, the Other is what I am not. It is identified as one similar to us, but also different and extraneous. Precisely this extraneousness, which Levinas also refers to as alterity, illuminates a subject’s path toward himself by demonstrating that which is intrinsic – where he belongs (43, 48). By identifying the Other, a person or a group is labeled in a process in which we construct our own roles, our position within the society, and the meaning of ourselves. To have an Other is essential to creating an identity, for by identifying the Other, we facilitate the understanding of that which is “here” and that which is “there” because, as Antony Smith emphasized, identity is not created merely from one’s own experiences, memories, and myths, but through positioning oneself in relation to the collective identities of Others (11-36, 43). This process of synthetization of one’s own identity consists of forming an awareness of an in-group, which is based on a necessary delimitation toward an out-group. ...
when we were astronauts in training
we spun around at a breakneck speed
in a shining sphere in the dark
until our eyes ended up
on the other side of everything
when we were cosmonauts in training
we had to endure with a smile
the pin that pricked the left side of our chests
the pin that bore the badge of a hero
combusting in flames
somewhere far away
when we were astronauts in training
our lady friends
our future wives had to smile and
tap their fingers on a burnt down cigarette
their hands, red nails and
the soft arm of a child intertwined
when we were cosmonauts in training
we had to sing with others
eat with the chosen ones and dance as if
we’re already floating in a capsule
through the depths of dark
when we were astronauts in training
we were told we must believe
in ourselves and the future that was already there
that we had to go out there
that we were the best of all of those
who stood around us and now clapped
we climbed the cross alone
that’s how mad we’d gone
when we were cosmonauts in training
good old earth do not cry we said
good old earth do not be afraid
the days passed oh
stay put do not budge
this is between us and the future
between our capsule swirling
along the edge of what
can only mean
you’ll never see us again
when we were in training
we drove in the sun
by the lake where the fishermen cast their
shoulders into the sludge
and muddy waters
through the crowns in which the dry leaves
quivered
when we were in training
we were already dying of boredom and the prospect
of chasms in our lives
we found ourselves beside
a very old dog
it’s Rufus you said
it’s Laika
I tried to cheer you up
and then came a woman strapped with a bomb
stood between us and set herself off
the vacuum sucked up all the bloom
all the sudden future and our running had to stop
when we were astronauts in training
when we were cosmonauts in training
the training lacked something
only the ferns grew around us
as we sat back into the evening splattered
with mud
large concrete blocks crumbling down
and a cloud of dust and ashes rising into a very dark night
and then came a woman strapped with a bomb
with a fair face and a fixed gaze
she set herself off
and so it goes on for this whole afternoon
the night
the uncertain morning in a vacuum
Rufus has lost a leg
Laika is dead
we have to accept it
while on our faces
in the dust the bluish images flash
the flame and great clouds
of ashes rise up in the end
into that vast space
and finally finally
Dog-headed Creatures as the Other: The Role of Monsters in the Construction of the Croatian Identity
This paper analyzes four reports concerning dog-headed creatures (pasoglavci) published in the late 19th and early 20th century in the Journal of Folk Life and Customs of Southern Slavs (Zbornik za narodni život i običaje Južnih Slavena). In order to determine who the dog-headed creatures represented in the Croatian folk culture of the time and why reports concerning them got published in the first ethnological journal in Croatia, it was necessary to study the concept of dog-headed creatures from the perspective of the process of othering. The conclusion was that the specific historical and cultural circumstances that existed in the area from which the reports originated stimulated the construction of the idea that the dog-headed creatures existed, which was used both to demonize other ethnoreligious groups and to create a positive image of the original group’s own identity.
I have never yet written
I’ve only scribbled this or that nor was it ever true
I now can write and can see, what it is.
True.
Such truth as is reality itself, like that which is not like itself
A mathematical dream:
An absolute good. On the cube.
Now I will write no more, I’ll merely jeer.
Jeer even Anatole France himself and I surely can write yet surely more can cry and even more can endure... if someone requires it of me.
It bothers me greatly that there is no reasoner... measurer.
Since I cannot write poetry
I’m trying it more often. Perhaps then it will be beautiful
The way kitsch was, like an alien continent,
Where never before have I walked and yet
Have led there among great dangers... others
And could do it bravely.
And on a little branch I walked there myself.
I’ve just seen it. It was not a joy ride, just
what was shown to me by those fevered, willing friends
Since then I’ve feared having a passion.
Like cocaine. Like this familiar moment (?)...
Hypnotized. Useful. Custom-made.
U mom gradu sigurno niste bili, ali znate taj tip. Izlaz s autoceste, industrijska zona, kino s pet dvorana, kilometar kvadratni grada nakrcan stoljetnim pabovima. Atlantik je blizu; blizu je kvrgava čeljust obale s rtovima pod vječitom najezdom galebova. Ljetne večeri; miris balege naliježe na pašnjake okolnih naselja dok ravnodušni volovi podižu glave da bolje osluhnu riku friziranih jurilica koje klinci ganjaju zabačenim cestama.Mlad sam, a nas mladih ovdje nema mnogo, pa se može reći da se sve nas pita. Nedjelja je. Gotov je vikend, taj trodnevni festival drobljenja. Nedjelja je dan pročišćenja i kajanja; dan omekšanih lubanja, uzburkanih želudaca i šupljih obećanja da se više nikada, ali nikada nećemo tako razvaliti. Veseli te što dan ide svome kraju prije nego što je uopće počeo. Osam sati već je odavno prošlo, ali vani se još nije smračilo; topla svjetlost prožeta je onom ugodnom melankolijom koja prati srpanjske večeri na zapadu. Sa mnom za stolom, u prostoru za pušače vani pre...
Breath
1
misty tulips
a mist of tulips
of tulips
of tulips
a morning spread like a dream
over rivers...
don’t you wake up Atlas’s son
don’t
don’t
let him sleep
with his head resting
on a pillow of tulips
2
white tulips
son’s light
light
yellow tulips
son’s sun
sun
red tulips
red
red
father’s sunset
like fire through backbone
fire
3
a mist of purple
over rivers
over rivers
the dreamy migrates anew
from tulip to tulip
purple in a bed of mist
purple
a sweet melody
of river
of fire
Assen, Netherlands
August 2018
That blue tulip!
That tulip hidden between two trunks
deep in the woods, deep in there,
dreams every instant
of sipping a little more dew.
Honey dew,
as the sun sets down at dusk...
That blazing-body tulip,
that blue tulip!
Amsterdam, August 2018
To You
This season, you lull under a sky superior to mine;
the thin hoarfrost on trees is fog respiration only,
which shreds our landscapes in crystals of lethargic winters...
Wake up, for the nature’s spirit is raving in feminine heat,
under guitar strums that grunt for love
and whisper no farewell to forget-me-not flowers...
Freeze like dusk in front of abrupt light,
in a land shivering of lonely tunes, under a sky
where the sun doesn’t shine to merely show-off!
Freeze in the flames
slumbering lustily in the blood of spring embers,
freeze, and still show up on doorsteps
shiny like this sky, my handsome one!
A Cat Like No Other...
Latest media news:
“Billionaire Lagerfeld willed his whole estate to his cat, Choupette.”
There is now a cat
with her fur much more expensive
than all of the ladies’ fur coats in Broadway!
A royal cat, whimsical and pampered,
that has folks wonder of the eventual male suitor
she’ll drive mad to the point of committing suicide!
Our dearest little heiress, with her bluest eyes,
now outshines the enthusiastic ornithologist,
who lectures on and on about birds
to an audience of huge fans of stunning fowl photos,
feathers and chirps,
who claims absolute expertise on flying,
but knows nothing of children in Aleppo!
Accursed...
In the alpine Accursed Woodlands,
where time stands still,
breath stands no chance to breathe,
o traveler!
At the Blessed Bridge,
do not pin your hopes on the stone,
if waters first didn’t bless your trip,
o Man!
The Coolest Loser
Blind eyes, sleepy,
across worldly winters –
eyes sunk into blooming abysses, my loser.
Please take a quick look at the sun by dawn,
it’s a lamp brighter than an eye’s pupil...
O coolest loser, with three lanterns in hand,
no loony got enlightened under moonlight;
springtime wolves grow white-haired like men,
hunters, though, can hardly spot them out in snow!
This text discusses the discursive construction of the body of a woman/witch as a threatening Other under Article 60 of the Criminal Practice, which served both as a criminal law and as a criminal procedure law in Hungary, and thus Croatia and Slavonia, during the period of mass witchcraft trials from 1699 to the mid-18th century. Otherness is approached from a psychoanalytic, Lacanian point of view because it opens up the possibility of understanding the collective affective politics of fear as a reflection of the unconscious in the language that created the witch imaginary, which takes its origin from the register of the imaginary and the mirror stage, i.e., in the psychological economy of structuring of the self/ego. The legal procedures that are analyzed in the text as part of the symbolic register seek to socially channel and discipline fear first by inscribing on and into women’s bodies various deviations and transgressions of the human, which are then entirely annulled through d...
