Imaginary homelands
How is one's own homeland remembered from afar? What factors influence this? What constitutes nostalgia and why are some images so strongly anchored in our minds? Urh Ferlež poses these and other questions in his dissertation on literature by emigrants of Slovenian origin.
In his dissertation, Urh Ferlež examines the works of Slovenian authors who emigrated for various reasons and in different eras, such as France Papež, Tone Rode, Zorko Simčič and Tine Debeljak, whose traces he is currently following as part of a research stay in Argentina. He is particularly interested in how his own homeland is perceived and remembered over time. Is it demonised or idealised? And how are these memories transported within an emigrant community - sometimes across generations?
In his research, Ferlež is guided by the concept of "imaginary homelands" introduced by author Salman Rushdie in his essay collection of the same name. According to Papež, Ferlež distinguishes between three different forms of the Slovenian word: the living word within the borders of Slovenia, the suppressed word in the countries where the autochthonous Slovenian minority lives (especially Italy and Austria) and the dying word in the Slovenian diaspora throughout the world.
Anticipated nostalgia
In order to be able to examine and categorise these different homelands depicted in literature more closely, Urh Ferlež works intensively with authors in Europe, Argentina, the USA and Canada and - where still possible - conducts interviews with them. He also refers to the concept of "nostalgia", as addressed by Svetlana Boyms in the study "The Future of Nostalgia" (metis 2009); in it, she explores the question of what people miss most and comes to the conclusion that it is not the big things or the political systems, but a frame of reference of the everyday, the banal. Based on this, Ferlež wants to find differences in the imagined homelands of various Slovenian exile communities, but also whether there is a common imagined homeland or elements that are repeated.
Urh Ferlež studied French and Slovenian linguistics and literature at the University of Ljubljana and completed research stays in Cologne, Trieste, Vichy, Nice and Buenos Aires. Since September 2024, he has been working as an assistent professor at the Department of Slavic Studies with Andreas Leben, where he is working on his dissertation "Looking backwards in space, looking backwards in time. The image of the homeland in the works of selected Slovene émigré writers".