Taja Kramberger

Biography

Born in Ljubljana, she spent her childhood (between age 4 and 11) at the seaside – in the bilingual old-Venetian town of Koper-Capodistria near Trieste. She has finished there 4 years of primary school (Pinko Tomažič), and then moved with a family to Ljubljana. There she has finished primary and secondary school Gimnazija Bežigrad. She obtained BA from history at the University of Ljubljana (1997), and took the position of a postgraduate young researcher at the Institutum Studiorum Humanitatis (abr. ISH) in Ljubljana. There she founded an anthropological journal Monitor ISH which was later (in 2004) later appropriated by the others at the ISH, though the journal and its founding editorial board continued to publish the journal under the name Monitor ZSA (outside the institution). After the transition changes, when lucrative and socially applicable science was placed in the first plan at the ISH, she has - among dozen others - left the institution (2004), and moved with Drago B. Rotar to Koper-Capodistria, where a new University of Primorska has started its route. There Taja Kramberger together with Drago B. Rotar, established the whole program of historical anthropology (from undergraduate to postgraduate level) which found its nest at the Department of Anthropology. The program was accredited by the State and worked really well, as both teachers were liked by the students, and their classrooms always full, till the university purge in 2010.

Beside in literature and historical anthropology she was/is engaged in civil actions and confrontations against clientelism and corruption in the scientific domain in the frames of Slovenia. In May 2000 she co-directed together with Sabina Mihelj a big public manifestation with cultural program in Ljubljana against corrupted politics of the Ministry of Science and Technology. In 2004 she fought against illegal takeover of the institution ISH and insisted to publish all crucial documents, personal testimonies of the takeover as well as reflections of the events from the perspective of the people who finally left the ISH from indignation with their ex-colleagues. In 2010 she, again, was an active militant against the total neoliberalization, venalization and degradation of the university as an autonomous institution and against the decomoposition of its fundamental scientific disciplines at the Faculty of Human Sciences Koper, University of Primorska.

The same regressive social changes occurred simultaneously also in the literary field in Slovenia. In 2004 when a writer and translator Iztok Osojnik as a director of the Vilenica International Literary Festival was ousted from the position of Vilenica's director at the Slovene Writers' Association(abr. SWA). She was among the tiny minority who supported him against mostly State implemented and maintained elite and all-regime supported writers and authors, meanwhile majority of writers remained quiet – also around two then ardently debated subjects of growing nationalism and humiliation of women writers and translators in the frames of the SWA. After that Taja Kramberger distanced herself from the SWA’s network. She writes and translates literature by her own vocation and ethical standards.

Since she lives in France (from 2012) she also stepped out of the SWA with an open letter in December 2014 (denied by all Slovene mass-media and suppressed by the president of the SWA) represents only herself and her apatrid chair in Paris. As she writes in one of her poems: Nothing remains./ But life is still here,/ and it speaks the guerrilla alphabet. (...) I am without home,/ I belong to / the invisible community of the banished./ Remove the ethnic adjective / from my name.

Conceptualization of the collective memory and its distinctions from remembrance and history

Taja Kramberger introduced studies of collective memory, based on Halbwachsian instrumentarium and numerous later improvements of this conceptualization into Slovenian university sphere, mostly composed of linear descriptive social sciences and humanities and hostile towards any changes. In 2000/2001 she held a course of Conceptualization of the collective memory about conceptual differences of Maurice Halbwachs, Frances Amelia Yates, Pierre Nora and Aleida Assmann at the Institutum Studiorum Humanitatis in Ljubljana. In 2000-2001 she wrote an extensive introduction to the Maurice Halbwachs' Slovenian translation of La mémoire collective. Not many scholars in Slovenia followed - for any critical thinking - highly important distinction between memory (mémoire) and remembrance (souvenir), as the editorial board of the Slovene Halbwachs' translation unilaterally and against all protests of the translator (Rotar) and of the introductory writer (Kramberger) decided to translate all words of mémoire and souvenir into just one notion of spomin, that is of remembrance (souvenir in French). With this the theoretical aspect of the Halbwachs' differentiated concept (that is one of his most important life intellectual achievements) was ruined for the Slovene readers. Still some rare researchers seem to understand the distinction (among them Marija Jurič Pahor and Samuel Friškič), so they were able to grasp the further categorical substantial differences between the notions of memory and history. However, Kramberger's works expose her incontestably broad knowledge, highly pertinent argumentation and subtle discursive skills, which are not easy to contest.

Critical Reflexivity of the Slovenian Historiography

Kramberger has also started with the extensive categorical critical reflexivity in the field of history in Slovenia, and has released many angry reactions in the history field, but mostly she left the historians - unable to confront its own shadows from the past - silenced. Although polemic, which would definitely clarify the discipline’s past erratic wanderings and amnesias and an almost total theoretic oblivion in the field of history in Slovenia, is not a usual tool of scientific communication in these regions, it is nevertheless clear that Taja Kramberger has opened (among some other researchers, such as Drago Braco Rotar, Rastko Močnik, Maja Breznik, Lev Centrih, Primož Krašovec, in a small, theoretically much less pertinent part also Marta Verginella and Oto Luthar) an important segment of future debates, which are needed to elucidate some of the neglected and spontaneously transmitted chapters of the Slovenian (distinctly ethnocentric and Sonderweg) history.

Representations and aspects of the Dreyfus Affair in the Slovenophone World

Taja Kramberger was also the first Slovenian historian who had written about various dimensions and echoes of the Dreyfus Affair in the Slovenian social space during the affair and later. She has opened up a complex theme of anti-Semitism strangely neglected and only partially elucidated in the Slovene history. She connected this exclusive phenomenon to the categories and imaginary and specific discursive practices. Introducing a research seminar at the undergraduate level she exposed how the anti-Semitic discursive formations can mobilize people and public opinion in the country with not many Jewish people. She demonstrated how even in social spaces with a scarce population of Jews strong mechanisms of social exclusion nonetheless operate smoothly - often even more aggressively and viscerally than in bigger countries. In the frames of this theme she directed – together with her students in 2007/2008 and 2008/2009 – an ample exhibition on the Dreyfus Affair (1894–1906), showing its entangled and differentiated European context(s), its highly important civic extensions, and its specific reception in the continental Centro-European spaces of Slovenia and Trieste. The latter two mostly based on spontaneous, normalized and career promising anti-Semitism, though not at all innoxious. The exhibitions was set up and shown to the public in Koper (2008), Trieste (2009), Maribor (2010) and Murska Sobota (2011).

Besides implementing many fresh intellectual ideas, pedagogical and theoretical innovations (rather bothersome for the Slovenian socio-political and 'intellectual' common sense) Taja Kramberger has written numerous critical articles on various aspects of Slovenian history, cultural life, but also on broader European History and culture, e. g. on Spanish Civil War, different models of Enlightenment in Europe and the recurrent Enlightenment features in the works of Anton Tomaž Linhart, on epistemic divergence between Enlightenment's and Historismus's paradigms of historiography, on anthropology of translation, history of university and the formation of university habitus fr:Habitus (sociologie), on literary and cultural fields fr:Pierre Bourdieu#Théorie des champs in the 1930s in Slovenia (by then partially covered by the administrative unit of Dravska banovina) and on the role of women in the constitution of these fields etc. For years lecturing a course on social and anthropological aspects of women history and gender constructions, she translated into Slovenian Michelle Perrot's classical work Women or the Silences of History.

Bourdieuian Studies in the frames of Slovenia

Her intellectual trajectory is partly connected to the Bourdieuian perspective and apparatus in social sciences. She has written about Pierre Bourdieu and Loïc Wacquant, translated some of their texts (as a guest editor of the journal Družboslovne razprave, no. 43, 2003), and in 2006 edited a monograph titled Principles of Reflexive Social Science and for a Critical Investigation of Symbolic Dominations (Načela za refleksivno družbeno znanost in kritično preučevanje simbolnih dominacij) (in Slovenian, together with Drago Braco Rotar). She held lectures – among other subjects – on Bourdieuian approach, instrumentarium and methodology at the University of Primorska in Koper.

Poetry

She has published eight books of poetry. Her poems have been translated in more than twenty-five languages and published in different literary journals, anthologies in Slovenia and abroad. Book selections of her poetry came out in Hungarian (Ezernyi csend : válogatott versek, Pannónia könyvek, Pécs, Pro Pannonia Kiadói Alapítvány, 2008, ISBN 978-963-9893-07-8) [9] [10] and Croatian language (Mobilizacije, Naklada Lara, Zagreb, 2008, tr. Ksenija Premur, ISBN 978-953-7289-31-7) [11]. She has been an invited guest of around 100 international literary meetings and festivals in Europe (Belgium, England, Lithuania, Portugal, Croatia, Latvia, France, Hungary, Italy, Austria, Germany, Croatia, Macedonia, France, Lithuania, Finland, Ireland etc.) and Canada (Quebec and Ontario).

Taja Kramberger, as the committee of Veronika Award (2007) [12] for the best poetry collection of the year 2006 wrote, is one of the strongest and most accomplished poetic voices in the contemporary Slovenian poetry; a voice which introduces many innovations "so in the poetic proceedings as in the audacity of the chosen subjects, but also in the courage to tell things in an intelligent and a deeply moving way, which does not follow the predominant poetry models, but supplies itself outside of them, in a everyday situations ...". Simple words, entangled with highly elaborated intellectual comprehensions - another benefit of Kramberger's poetic language, in Taja Kramberger’s poems change themselves into "multilayered compositions" and subtle messages. These are "able to reach out to the world, and are surely not here for the intimacy of the poet" and neither for sentimental grounds of the reader. And still this poetry is deeply moving, at the same moment emotionally charged and brightly intelligible, light-coloured in spite of breathtaking "gestuary of crime" denuded by the Kramberger's verses, as Osojnik observed in her later poetry book in which the poet is narrating the Dreyfuss Affair through the cycle of poems (Opus quinque dierum, 2009). These features, together with poet’s precious "poetically analytical mind", which is able to convert a "stale literary canon and criticism into an inspiration for the highest level of poetry", so says the "Veronika Award" committee, are innovations, which "give her poetry a seal of world importance and actuality" (Explanation for the Veronika Award 2007) [13].

Jad Hatem, a French poet himself and a professor of philosophy and literature fr:Jad Hatem, in an original way also noticed that a privileged topos in Taja Krambeger’s poetry is her outstanding ability of a simultaneous theoretic reflection, inscribed along with the poetic thought of her poems (La Poésie slovène contemporaine : l’écriture de la pierre, 2010) [14]. From a very different angle Slovenian poet Iztok Osojnik sees this rare privilege, that is the poet’s critical ability to transform ideologically contaminated and narrow representations of reality in a poetic way into more bearable representations of reality, which bring us much closer to the core of events, as a tool of the political poetry [15] in its best and noble sense (Apokalipsa, no. 134/135)[16].

Translations, organizations of cultural events

Next to numerous translated poems and some prose texts of other writers published in journals, she translated into Slovene language a book of poetry of Italian poet Michele Obit (Leta na oknu, ZTT EST, Trieste, 2001, ISBN 88-7174-054-8), a selection of poetry of Argentinian poet Roberto Juarroz for a book Vertikalna poezija (Vertical Poetry - with her introduction, ŠZ, Ljubljana, 2006, ISBN 961-242-035-1), a book of Gao Xingjian (Ribiška palica za starega očeta/Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather, 1986–1990, from French together with Drago Braco Rotar) (Didakta, Radovljica, 2001, ISBN 961-6363-62-X), a book of poetry written by Lithuanian poet Neringa Abrutyte (Izpoved, CSK, Aleph, Ljubljana, 2004, ISBN 961-6036-50-5) and a book of fairy tales for kids by Lucy Coats (100 grških mitov za otroke/Atticus the Storyteller, 2004; MK, Ljubljana, 2004, reprinted in 2009, ISBN 978-86-11-16964-4.).

At the ISH – Graduate School of Humanities in Ljubljana, Taja Kramberger arranged exhibition place for fine arts and between 2000 and 2003 organized five exhibitions of Slovenian and of foreign figurative artists (painters, photographic artists, designers, installation artists).

In 2002, Taja Kramberger directed and coordinated international project of poets’ and translators’ (22 from 10 countries) "Linguaggi di-versi / Different Languages / Različni jeziki / Langages di-vers" in a seaside town of Ankaran near Koper in Slovenia. Project established a series of translation workshops between 1999 and 2004 in Central-European States (Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovenia, Italy and Austria). In 2004 the publication Različni jeziki / Linguaggi di-versi / Different Languages / Langages di-vers[17] in 10 languages came out of the project (published by the Edition Libris Koper) and it was edited by T. Kramberger and Gašper Malej. Anne Talvaz [18] [19], a French writer and translator, and Bulgarian translator Stefka Hrusanova have broadened the scope of the workshop and organized in 2008 and 2010 its presentations in Spain (Barcelona) and Italy (Milan).

Another bigger international project Taja Kramberger conducted in 2006 was a Slovenian segment of the international project "Sealines / Morske linije / Linee di mare" which through one-month’s literary residences in 6 European bilingual ports (Cardiff, Galway, Helsinki, Koper, Riga, Valletta) connected writers from 6 European states [20]. Project was supported by the program Culture 2000 of the European Union [21], and was led by the LAF – Literature Across Frontiers office in UK, Manchester [22]. In Slovenia it was executed by the Association Tropos and its then president Taja Kramberger.

From 2007 to 2009, Kramberger was a president of the Collegium artium (abr. CA) – an association of teachers and students at the Faculty of Human Sciences Koper, University of Primorska, aimed at organizing different cultural and social events at the faculty (literary readings, music concerts, theater and film performances, round tables, conferences, commemorations, exhibitions of figurative arts, other specialized exhibitions etc.). In the frames of the institution CA more than 150 cultural events took place in less than two years.

Essays, studies and criticism

Her essays and introductory studies to the other poets (Roberto Juarroz, Michele Obit, Gašper Malej) mark quite different approach from other Slovenian literary critics. They are attentive analyses of poetic language and imaginary constellation behind it. With the essay titled Similis simili gaudet. Ali o kerkopski literarni kritiki v slovenskem literarnem polju (Similis simili gaudet. On the Kercopian Literary Criticism in the Slovenian Literary Field)[23], written with a rare combination of fine irony and piercing analytical style, on drastically unrefexive criticism in Slovenian literature she has shown how important it is for a critic to be disposable and open to the artistic work and at the same time able to produce analytical distances in relation to the work read and evaluated, and in the next step to compound both experiences into a certain perspective, which can come out as his/her own distinctive approach and a singular way of seeing things and works of art. Without that (minimal) cognitive engagement, so Taja Kramberger, there can be no artistic criticism, but only an unconscious and ritualized activity - she calls it a Kercopian literary criticism - that is a (grinning) mimesis of common sense and stereotypes about literature and authors. In her interviews she talks about cognitive dimensions of literature and their transformational potential in a society. Transformational discourses and discursive practices, which are open to changes and interventions, as the opposite of the transfirmational discourses with closed semantic structure and clear signs of mental immobility are original analytical categories of her conceptualization and apparatus. In scholary texts (cf. her article Doxa et fama, 2003, her dissertation, or her interview for the journal Literatura in 2006) Taja Kramberger further identifies transfirmational discourses as the systemic feature of the longue durée provincial mental structure, unable to subdue itself to changes and open to the external/outer world. Taja Kramberger is without any doubt among those few Slovenian writers (Iztok Osojnik, Miklavž Komelj, in a way also Barbara Korun) which are studiously oriented, and do not recognize (pure) inspiration as a sufficient cause for creative artistic work. In their artistic work there’s a strong component of social sensitivity and a constant ethical reference to attain the equilibrium of social justice.

Literary

Scholary

Poetry

Literary studies, essays and criticism

Literary editorship

Principal publications

Selection of articles

Scholary Editorship

Literary References