Talk:Srđan Srdić

Conflict of interest

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest AnaQy (talk) 05:11, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Satori section

I'll try to justify the edits of other users' contributions, in order to prevent the back and forth of adding and removing material.

Some edits in the section have been rearranged to fit the rest of the text, and have been reformulated, so as to eliminate the repetitions, overlaps and clunkiness.

The time and place of Satori's completion was removed. While it was repeated several times in the media, it is hardly relevant in a short overview of a writer's work. Also, the Edo Budisa award is mentioned in the Espirando section. The reference to http://krr.rs/english.html was removed, since the page doesn't contain any information about the subject of the article. The subject's page on the krr.rs website serves both as a reference and an external link, so this really seemed superfluous.

The part about setting of on a bildungsromanlike journey and abandoning the family was partially rewritten and moved, and partially eliminated. It sounded like a boilerplate summary handed out to interviewers, and is more an interpretation than a fact. It also wasn't adequately referenced. AnaQy (talk) 05:11, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

The Introduction

I have, again, removed "Serbian" from the first sentence, and feel like I should try and explain why, since it is a wide-spread convention and hence was put back several times by the same user. To be clear, this isn't a discussion about whether a person belongs to this or that group, or about the importance of various kinds of belonging, but an attempt to state what it is that we are talking about and what kind of place it has in an encyclopedia, i.e. about finding our way about.

I am willing to back down if my arguments don't end up convincing enough.

1. In sentences with the form "Y is an X-ian writer", it is not clear what the ethnic identifier X refers to - citizenship, nationality, origin, religion, language, some abstract way of belonging etc. and whether it refers to Y as a person or Y as a writer. Not only is the term not specified, but these terms also tend not to have a clear definition, and to overflow with meaning. Also, those meanings change with time and place, often within the lifetime of Y. It is not clear whether we are talking about the person's preference, or the place assigned to her by others (but then, who are the others who get to decide?), and we get into extra trouble when talking about people from different periods using the same terms. This vagueness of the X-ian type identifier leads to the conclusion that it is not a simple fact, but an interpretation. Now, this interpretation can be seen as highly important, but then at least it should be dealt with at length, with care, references, and explanations of the terms used instead of a summary reductive categorization, so as to respect the complexity of human social relations.

2. Placing the X-ian identifier in the first sentence, even before the reason why the subject has a wiki page (in this case, being a writer), gives it a hell of a significance. The only information we get prior to it are the name and time of birth/death. Both of these are facts, and obviously relevant. The value of a work of art is inevitably a function of time, whereas it being a function of X-ianness, while a claim that can be argued, isn't a universally accepted and applicable view. (an identical Anna Karenina written in the 21th instead of the 19th century just isn't the same book, an identical Infinite Jest written by an Iro-Carribean instead of an American writer is still Infinite Jest). Again, I am not, in this context, denying the legitimacy of the interpretations in the key of X-ianness, merely that insufficiently examined and formalized conventions, vague terms with a surplus of meaning, and pretending that those are clear facts, promote it into ideology. People don't argue about dates of birth, they very much argue about belonging.

3. Why is the ethnic identifier assumed to be superior to gender, sexual or political orientation, or artistic movement? We could write "Y is a postmodern writer." Now, one could reply that writers often fall within several categories, that they often disagree with the categories assigned to them, but that they also aren't the only authority on their work, and that we are not even sure what postmodern means. But how is that different from the ethnic identifier?

4. In this case, the facts, the place of birth, the alma mater, the setting of Srdić's novel, etc. clearly indicate that he is connected to Serbia, without excluding his connections with other countries, nations, literary scenes, etc.

5. So I hope I've shown that a short overview of a writer's life and work, in an encyclopedia trying to be as precise and as neutral as possible, should refrain from making this kind of statements. I cannot go to war with the entire Wikipedia, but can at least try to make the point on the pages I've been editing extensively. If there are disagreements, please join the discussion first, so that we may at least try to make a compromise. AnaQy (talk) 05:11, 12 November 2013 (UTC)