The Materiality of the ’Real’: The (Un)historical Moment of Serbia’s Failed Historical Process in Milena Marković’s Deca

The paper will examine the genre and structure of Milena Marković's poetry-novel Deca [Children], as tools for the author's representation of history, constructed out of an unstoppable flow of language as personal confession and memory.The analysis will show how the generations of a family are marked by various forms of sexuality which becomes the main vehicle of expression of personality grounding the historical process.This is captured in the image of the Narrator's son with a congenital disability who lives in the present, imprisoned in his flesh, for whom there is no change and no future.The future is a tiny path out of the native Belgrade of the Narrator, onto the planes of Vojvodina and beyond, into modern Europe.But it is not a path left open to the Narrator, only the next generation.