Предпосылки будущего в настоящем (по роману Дойны Галич Барр Город удовольствий)

Abstract

The article deals with an artistic experiment in the creative work of Dojna Galich Barr (1932–2010) – an influential American émigré writer of Serbian origin. In the postmodernist playful dystopian novel The City of Pleasure (2008) the author represents an apocalyptic vision of the contemporary world exemplified by an imaginary contemporary technocratic megalopolis. Parody, irony, grotesque, genre hybridity, intertextuality, and complex narrative strategies are used to create the image of a high technological consumer society; the destructive long-term tendencies which take place in this hypocritical world are exposed. The main problems of “the city of pleasure” which symbolizes a contemporary multicultural and poly-ethnic community are the transformation of people’s consciousness and their world perception, false values, distorted norms of behaviour, alienation from society, and dehumanization of interpersonal relations. There is a growing concern about the new waves of immigration and ecological problems. All the alarming processes in “the city of pleasure” lead to the rapid destruction of the environment, society and humankind.