ROUND TABLE 100 Years since the Death of Franz Kafka

Monday, July
Kotor Creative Hub, 9:30 p.m.

ROUND TABLE
100 Years since the Death of Franz Kafka

Participants:
Pavle Milenković, sociologist
Biljana Pajić, germanist
Maja Mrđenović, moderator, philologist of general literature and literary theory

Kafka's novel The Trial is one of the most unusual and renowned works of world literature, often said to represent the code of contemporary existence with its frustrating opacity and seductive ambiguity. The adjective "Kafkaesque," which has become commonplace for Kafka's unique and peculiar literary world – a world of an individual in an environment governed by some unknown, seemingly illogical mechanism, like in a distressing dream – is par excellence a feature of our current everyday life. The deformed world Kafka creates obviously cannot be literally real, but what happens in that world to people and their feelings, thoughts, and destinies is extremely real. In this sense, paradoxically, in an absurd context, Kafka can be understood as the greatest realist among storytellers: behind all his inherent enigma, we sense simple and unequivocal truths. What converges into the omnipresent nightmare that grips us, paralyzes us, and turns us into mechanized, selfish, cowardly marionettes, insensitive in our inability to be shocked? How does The Trial, like a painfully blinding light, continuously strike the guilty conscience of humanity and act as an “axe for the frozen sea within us?”

Maja Mrđenović

Pavle (Dragan) Milenković, Full Professor at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Novi Sad, studied at the Faculty of Law and Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade. During the 1980s and 1990s, he published a number of literary texts and, for a shorter period during the 1990s, reflections on the cultural scene in Serbia and Belgrade (film, television, the art scene) in the Borba newspaper (soon after in Naša Borba). Pavle Milenković graduated, earned a master's degree, and obtained his doctorate at the Department of Sociology of the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade. Initially, he became a Research Associate at the Institute for Sociological Research, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, then an Assistant Trainee at the Faculty of Philosophy in Novi Sad, and later a Full Professor at the Department of Sociology, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Novi Sad. Pavle Milenković has participated in several national and international projects and served as Coordinator for the University of Novi Sad in the Erasmus+ project titled School-to-Work Transition for Higher Education Students with Disabilities in Serbia, Montenegro, and Bosnia and Herzegovina (Trans2Work). From 2018-2023, he served as a member of the Presidency of the Sociological Society of Serbia. Milenković has published five authored books, independently and in co-authorship, and has edited eight monographs and collections.

Biljana Pajić completed her undergraduate and master's studies in German Language and Literature at the Faculty of Philology in Belgrade, where she is currently pursuing her doctoral studies, focusing on research in the field of Translation Studies. She has published several papers on translation studies and participated in international conferences. Biljana Pajić was a scholarship recipient of the CEEPUS program in 2010 and 2017 at the Center for Translation Studies in Vienna, as well as of the Literary Colloquium in Berlin in 2021 as part of the Schritte scholarship. Since 2012, she has been employed at the Goethe Institut in Belgrade, where, among other responsibilities, she organizes literary events. Biljana Pajić is involved in literary translation, and her most recent published translations include the fourth part of the novel Anniversaries: From a Year in the Life of Gesine Cresspahl by the German author Uwe Johnson (Laguna, 2022) and the novel A Job for Otto Kwant by Jochen Schmidt (Radni sto, 2023).

Maja Mrđenović, theater researcher and critic, graduated from the Department of General Literature and Literary Theory at the Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade, where she also defended her master's thesis. She obtained a master's degree in Theater Production from the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Cetinje.  Currently, Maja Mrđenović is a doctoral student in the final year of the doctoral studies program in the Theory of Dramatic Arts, Media, and Culture at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade. She has served as a Teaching Assistant at the Faculty of Montenegrin Language and Literature in Cetinje, a Theater Critic for the Montenegrin Pobjeda daily newspaper, a member of the editorial board and contributor to the Montenegrin journal for theater, culture, and performing arts Gest, Editor of the Theoretical Program, and moderator of discussions on performances at the Kotor Festival of Theater for Children. Maja Mrđenović is one of the founders and editors of the electronic theater journal Peripetija.me. She is the author of the book Pola Porcije u Pola Cijene: Pozorište za Djecu i Mlade u Crnoj Gori (2019). She has also been involved as a discussion leader on performances, a selector, and a jury member at several theater festivals in Montenegro and the region, and has served as a mediator in numerous roundtable discussions and conferences. Maja Mrđenović is a member of the Association of Theater Critics and Theaterologists of Montenegro.