Nebojša Šavija-Valha& Ranko Milanović-Blank
On the occasion of publicizing UBLEHA in English
Sharing or whatever
We started writing Ubleha surely before 2004, when it was first published in dobardanski language. Thereafter, it was read throughout the “region” without making any change in readers’ lives or understanding of either them or Ubleha or whatsoever. Exactly as it is meant to be: whatever you do in the world of Ubleha, you cannot go/see/think beyond Ubleha.
Its original was written in dobardanski, but its metaphysical roots are in English, the one that came into being within Ubleha. The circle is over-complete by translating Ubleha “back” to English. Let us be frank with you: no chance!
If original (sic!) Ubleha is an endogenous cultural compendium, an all-encompassing (trying-to-be) description (if not the canon) of a bare cultural phenomenon, then its translation is – we dare say – a masterpiece (although futile) of re-description of the phenomenon. By transposing the meaning – and, of course, demolishing it at least on the surface – from one meaningless world to another, it does not only make the mass more chaotic while conquering the naïve conqueror (inverted imperialism of Ubleha) but it also re-writes Ubleha itself in another final vocabulary and so increases Ubleha’s ironic capacity (See Capacity Building; also Rorty).
At least, this translation is a nice piece of socio-cult/ural anthropology. We keep creating that piece, but we keep failing. Ironically (which is elementary vallecula of Ubleha), by constantly trying to make Ubleha referential – namely to really influence the “state of affairs” (how naïve for exactly those who have been growing in culture of fundamental impossibility of something like that; or it is only about schizophrenia) – and, in fact, non-Ubleha, the time was lacking to re-describe the Ubleha itself, which is finally the only possible act (the only reality).
Exactly this translation demonstrates that Ubleha exists and proliferates regardless – or despite – of phantasmatic (and other?) realities to which it allegedly refers.
(February 2013)