'My dream can also become your burden': Semezdin Mehmedinović’s Poetics of Self-Determination

Despite the impact that the dissolution of Yugoslavia had on the continental imaginary during the early 1990s, writers from the region have been banished to the edges of the European cultural map. Over the last 25 years, Bosnian novelists have been seeking ways to enter a European public sphere that has traditionally marginalised or silenced voices from the country. This essay will examine the issue via a study of Semezdin Mehmedinović’s Autoportret s Torbom (Self-Portrait with a Satchel, 2012), a semi-autobiographical merger of essays, short stories and drawings. As Mehmedinović’s work illustrates, Bosnian writers are not only challenging the customary denigration of the country in (western) European discourse, but also reclaiming space for the written word at a time when literature is becoming increasingly overpowered by visual culture.