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Aleš Debeljak

ALEŠ DEBELJAK (1961-2016) graduated from the University Ljubljana in 1985 with a degree in comparative literature. He obtained his PhD in sociology of culture at Syracuse University in 1989. He became a Senior Fulbright Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, and did research at the Institute for Advanced Studies Collegium Budapest, the Civitella Ranieri Center and the Bogliasco Liguria Study Centre for the Arts and Humanities. He is currently professor of Cultural Studies at the Faculty of Social Studies of the University of Ljubljana. Besides poetry and cultural criticism, Debeljak has also worked as a columnist for the most important newspaper in Slovenia, Delo. His works include Reluctant Modernity: The Institution of Art and its Historical Forms and The Hidden Handshake: National Identity and Europe in The Post-Communist World.

ONE TOWN, MANY BOOKS

I’m a modern Everyman. I use books to find for myself a dwelling place, if only a temporary one, within the pastiche of narratives and experiences, facts and fantasies. I leaf through the books, do not drink and do not drive – I smoke and fly, through the tunnel under

EUROPE WITHOUT EUROPEANS

In the 1990s, the European Union aimed to achieve two ambitious goals: to end the wars of Yugoslav succession and to lead the former communist countries in Eastern Europe toward economic and social prosperity. Both of these goals proved elusive. The Dayton Accord, brokered by the United States in 1995,