Dr. Veska Gyuviyska, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nikolay Tsankov, Assoc. Prof.
South-West University “Neofit Rilski”
Absract. The study is a socio-pedagogical reading of Ruben Gallego’s novel ‘White on Black’, an autobiographical narrative about homes for disabled children in Soviet Russia in the 1980s. Gallego is a Spanish boy, born with cerebral paralysis whose childhood is spent in institutions for disabled children in Russia. Regardless of his disability, Gallego manages to preserve his will for life and creative potential. The novel White on Black is a Booker Prize laureate in 2003 and is a discovery in Russian literature. The conceptual argumentation of the novel is in the context of postmodernism and authors such as Pierre Nora, Maurice Halbwachs, Michel Foucault. It mainly analyses the social institutions as spaces of authority. Basic ideas and concepts include P. Nora’s ‘realms of memory’, Maurice Halbwachs 'collective memory' and M. Foucault’s 'heterotopia', which allows the highlighting of new dimensions in postmodern institutions and their relation to the uses of authority. The article also offers an empirical study with students from ‘Special Pedagogy’ majors at the pedagogical departments of some Bulgarian universities. The aim is to discover the personal expression and professional reflection of students in the artistic projections of the socio-pedagogical knowledge.
Keywords: socio-pedagogical knowledge; artistic projections; social space; realms of memory; collective memory; heterotopia; homes for disabled children
Log in to read the full text