The Role of Literature in the Socio-Cultural Life of Independent Slovenia

Abstract

. The problem of changing the role of literature in the modern world is especially acute in the former socialist European countries, survived at the end of the twentieth century fundamental social and political changes. Slovenia, which gained sovereignty during the disintegration of the SFRY, is one of the typical examples. In 1991, with the transition to parliamentary democracy, new socio-economic conditions arose that influenced the cultural sphere: literature faced the problem of «survival» in the market, high competition, and an avalanche of mass translated products. The state stopped seeing book publications as an instrument of national self-identification and redirected this duty to a private publisher with its commercial interest. As a result, the Slovenian socio-cultural space ceased to be literary-centric, literature lost its traditional national compensatory, emancipatory function and began to be gradually pushed to the periphery of public life. One of the emerging trajectories for the conservation of its ethical potential by Slovenian literature is associated with the renewal of social critical discourse.