The authors and titles presented at the Skhole Library – ranging from critical theory to the literature and poetics of contemporary art – outline the horizon of life in contemporary capitalist societies. The red thread of the library link is imperative to establish innovative methods and concepts, and thus different sensibilities of the staff to detect what is coming from the future.
Sylvain Lazarus: May ’68, Politics, History – Conversations (2018)
Sylvain Lazarus, a French anthropologist, sociologist and political activist, in his original 2008 booklet, looks back at the events of 1968 and their impact on another different political opinion and action, not from the state’s point of view, but from the point of view of the people.
Goran Sergej Pristaš: Exploded Gaze (2018)
Varied in shapes and rich in styles, from personal art records to scientific insights, this book, recapitulating two decades of work in theatre and art, dazzles the reader as a rare treat of poetry and political and philosophical thought at the same time. In virtuoso style, this volume brings fresh perspectives on viewing, timing and production through which the imaginative and critical forces of theatre are reinvented across the boundaries of theatre. Like Jean-Luc Godard, Mladen Stilinović or Anne Boyer, Goran Sergej Pristaš (HR) breathes new life into the compact thinking from art itself that can change our worldview if we follow its wise implications.
Didier Eribon: Returning to Reims (2019)
Returning to Reims has been an indispensable subject of debate for the last few years. Didier Eribon (FR) expands Bourdieu’s notion of autoanalysis, transforming it into a new genre that links the personal confession of origin and growing up with sociological study and a political manifesto. In the book, the depiction and analysis of the ideological transformation of the working class alternates with the presentation of the conflicts of authors and social norms in the process of becoming a subject and the political articulation of conflicts or overlaps of different social identities.
Giovanna Franca Dalla Costa: The Work of Love (2019)
The Work of Love, originally published in 1978, is a key feminist text on the issue of violence against women in contemporary society. Here, violence represents the very working relationship in which a woman is forced to perform reproductive work without monetary compensation within the capitalist economy. Giovanna Franca Dalla Costa (IT) also recognises the significant role that the state has in perpetuating violence against women, and accordingly, The Work of Love offers the politicisation of the question of gender-based violence, which includes the fight against work and the state.
Dubravka Ugrešić & Davor Konjikušić: There’s nothing there! (2019)
Dubravka Ugrešić (HR) is undoubtedly the most noted Croatian author in the international sense, and in her provocative essay on the example of spas – she examines life in post-socialist Europe and Croatia. The former topos of civic culture, as a kind of marker of escape to perfection beyond social life, has become, in a new historical context, the most poignant metaphor of the devastation of a semi-continent. The essay is accompanied by a photo series by Davor Konjikušić (BA), who visited several spas in Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina with the writer.
Anne Boyer: Garments Against Women (2019)
Since its initial publication in 2015, the poetry collection in the prose Garments Against Women by Anne Boyer (US) has not only experienced an enviable reception but has also, with it being printed by the Penguin Publishing House in the autumn of 2019, positioned the author as the new big name in American literature. The New York Times described it as “a sad, beautiful, passionate book that captures the political economy of literature and life as such.” In addition to this collection, we have included the author’s collection of essays, A Handbook of Disappointed Fate, in the volume we publish.
Sana Perić: The draft of a dissertation on pain (2020)
The draft of a dissertation on pain – this modest philosophical fiction is the working title of a debut novel, in which the author offers a new vision of everyday life by pushing autobiographical elements through a filter of naïve but fresh philosophy. Reflecting on topics such as physicality, womanhood, motherhood, work, relationships and the meaning of life, Sana Perić (HR) writes about them with a combination of an irritatingly omniscient narrator, which enables her to have a striking effect, and from the perspective of a female subject who provides a naïve interpretation of conditione feminis in the first person, not without the ludicrous accentuation of her own dual position.
Franco Moretti et al: Forms and Interpretation – Stanford Literary Labs pamphlets (2020), canon/archive
The Stanford University Laboratory of Literature, under the direction of Franco Moretti (IT), is a leading site for literature research supported by computational and algorithmic methods. This collection of articles is the result of collective work and presents the most striking experiments conducted at the Lab. It is an approach that not only revolutionises the understanding of art but also has implications for the fields of historiography and the social sciences.
Steven Shaviro: Discognition (2020)
What is consciousness? What does it mean to feel pain, or to perceive the colour red? Do robots and computers really think, or do plants and amoebas? If we ever meet intelligent aliens, will we be able to understand what they say to us? Philosophers and scholars are still unable to answer these questions or similar ones. But maybe science fiction can do that. In this book, American theorist Steven Shaviro writes about science fiction novels and stories that question the extreme possibilities of human and non-human consciousness and sensuality.