Taja Kramberger, Ph. D.
Director and Project Manager of Addenda
Teacher, Author, Translator, Researcher Taja Kramberger is a historian, poet, writer, editor, researcher, and translator. In another lifetime, before the university purge in Koper, Slovenia, in 2010, she was an engaged university teacher, researcher, and editor, as well as a cultural and community animator. She was also tirelessly active in the struggle for human and social rights. She has published around thirty books and translated an additional ten books by other authors from French, English, Spanish, and Italian into Slovene. In 2001, she founded the multilingual anthropological journal Monitor ISH. Following the coup at ISH in Ljubljana in 2004, politically acceptable scholars took over the journal and narrowed its scope. The original magazine was forced to change its name to Monitor ZSA: Journal of Historical, Social, and Other Anthropologies. The magazine established a new publisher, first the Tropos Association, and then the Publishing House of the University of Primorska in Koper. Taja Kramberger was the editor-in-chief until 2010 when the journal stopped being published due to the university purge and editor's exile. After spending an intensive decade fighting for basic human and women's rights and democratic procedures in a Slovene democracy in disguise, only to be wiped out finally by her "colleagues" in a politically orchestrated university purge, she moved to France with her husband, Drago Braco Rotar, at the end of 2016. She now directs a small digital publishing house, Addenda, and teaches English. She also gives lectures and literary readings and continues her research and writing projects. RECOMPENSES: Many literary and scientific fellowships, national and international, and invitations to some 50 literary festivals worldwide. Some final-circle (shortlisted) nominations for poetry books. In Slovenia, she got the “Veronika Poetry Prize” (2006); in France, she received “Simone Landry-Femme, Poésie, Liberté” Prize (2018, ex æquo). In social sciences and humanities, two of her books were proclaimed “highest scientific achievement” by the Agency of Slovene science (2007-Historiographic Divergence; 2011-Invisible Evidences. To think “Idola Tribus,” the latter in co-authorship with Drago Braco Rotar). In 2012, she was chosen by the European reading public as the only Slovene representative at the World’s Poetry Parnassus, an accompanying cultural event of the Olympic Games in Southbank Centre in London.
MORE ON HER WEB-SITE BIO-BIBLIOGRAPHY |
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Drago Braco Rotar, Ph. D.Retired University Professor, Researcher,
Author, Proof-reader, Translator Drago Braco Rotar is a retired university professor and researcher. He graduated with a degree in the history of art and archaeology and earned a Ph.D. in sociology and the semiotics of art. During the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, he was known as one of the most renowned former Yugoslav and Slovenian intellectuals. After Yugoslavia dissolved, he helped establish new democratic procedures. He was briefly engaged in the Socialist Party but left as soon as he realized that ex-communists and political police members had divided themselves among all the democratic parties to better control them and prevent or demolish democratic changes. He introduced semiotics, structuralism, and historical anthropology to Slovenia and helped establish a psychoanalytic terminology. In his youth, he was a poet, writer, and translator who won notable Yugoslav literary prizes. In the early eighties and nineties, he founded and directed two important national-level intellectual institutions in Ljubljana: the pioneering publishing house of integral social science and humanities translations, Studia Humanitatis, and the first private postgraduate humanities school in Slovenia, the ISH (Institutum Studiorum Humanitatis). Nevertheless, you won't find his name in the histories, which are now run by the purgist "scholars" (S. Slapšak, L. Škof, P. Tratnik, D. Darovec, and many others) who forced him to leave his native country at age 75 and who, of course, couldn't care less about the truth ever coming to light. Following the university purge in Koper and Rotar's exile to France, his name was removed - the same happened to Taja Kramberger - from many of his life achievements. He was discredited and detracted — along with his wife and intellectual collaborator of more than twenty-five years, Taja Kramberger — because he refused to bow politically to the uniformity of a camouflaged democracy. The official disqualification occurred in two waves of lynching. The first occurred during Svetlana Slapšak's coup at the ISH in Ljubljana in 2004, when a politically subservient team took over the institution and dismissed (totally illegally) eight collaborators who refused to adapt to the new, cheap "science" and political instrumentalization. The second exclusion occurred in 2010, when a brutal purge of critical intellectuals took place at the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Primorska/Littoral in Koper. This purge eliminated those who had previously helped build a new, young university on the Slovene coast with much enthusiasm and dedication. Among those eliminated were Drago Braco Rotar and Taja Kramberger. After the ISH putsch, they took refuge in Koper and wrote a program for historical anthropology that was accredited by the state. Students loved it. Following the second purge, the couple engaged in two years of futile daily struggles in various social and cultural fields, including the university, literature, social rights, translation, and law in corrupt courts. Ultimately, they realized that they had no future in Slovenia. They moved to France. They first spent three years in a modest (and expensive) Paris studio before moving to France permanently. Meanwhile, their native state had become increasingly oppressive and tyrannical. The old methods of neo-Stalinism (in its provincial perfidious elaboration of Kardeljism) had become normalized and were being applied almost everywhere, albeit well hidden from outside view. Neither Taja Kramberger nor Drago Braco Rotar allowed themselves to be broken or swayed by the regime's offers. As a result, their names were erased from their real achievements and their intellectual, cultural and symbolic capital, some of which has been obliterated or seized by the "right people" who are obedient and "on the acceptable "political line." In France, Drago Braco Rotar continues to research and write about the 20th century in Central Europe, and collaborates with Taja Kramberger on Addenda projects. RECOMPENSES: He was highly praised in former Yugoslavia for his innovative work in poetry and prose, particularly his contributions to the nouveau roman genre in the 1960s. In 1968, he won the Mladost literary prize in Belgrade. However, disillusioned with the demands of the literary establishment, he soon left the literary field to devote his life to the social sciences and humanities. In 1981, he won the Oton Župančič Prize for his pioneering monographs on the history and semiotics of urbanism. He received several scientific fellowships abroad. He was named an Officier des Arts et des Lettres of the French Republic in 1999.
LEAF THROUGH A PREVIEW OF HIS SELECTED WORKS, Vol. I: , 2022 (to be published in 2026) BIBLIOGRAPHY |
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The pleasure of sharingFor nearly twenty-five years, we - Taja and Braco, the driving forces behind the Addenda - have collaborated fruitfully and creatively on literary, scientific, research, translation, and editorial projects. We cannot think of a greater pleasure in work or in life than sharing the insights and joy of cognition that we have gained—and are still gaining—over the decades, first with each other and then with others. During the summer of the 2021 shutdown epidemic, we (re)wrote a bilingual poetry book of our old verses in dialogue and titled it Plaisir de Partager (see below; the eBook version is on sale in our store). It was such a relaxing and enjoyable experience. A poetic cognition and perspective on the world remains one of our most significant connections. At Koper University in Slovenia, where we introduced open debate in 2004 based on confrontation and coherent argumentation, our lecture halls and seminars were always filled to capacity — as were our students' grades among the highest at the university. In France, where we have lived and worked for the past decade, there may be fewer students and clients, but the pleasure of debate is no less, as communication is more intensive, challenging, and protracted in a country of mature pluralism and vibrant humor. We have decades of experience in academia, literature, editing, translation, and organization. On top of that, we have harsh dissident experiences. While the latter are less pleasant and more exhausting, they are crucial and indispensable in so many ways. Without them, many aspects of our deceitful homeland would remain hidden from us forever. Thus, our latest creative-intellectual project, Addenda, is the culmination of all our endeavors. We believe we can offer you top-quality writing and valuable insights into the world behind the mirror and beyond all mirrors in various fiction and nonfiction genres. Furthermore, our Addenda books feature beautiful cover designs, professional fonts, and a clear layout, thanks to our amiable French friends, as well as Canva and its leading team. Taja's experience teaching English in the French school system has been invaluable in designing her own English courses. Our new colleagues and friends in France occasionally assist with linguistic, computational, and legal aspects of Addenda. They are highly qualified individuals. We owe them our deepest gratitude. Our products and activities are numerous, diverse, and cognitively influential. We firmly believe that our broader reading audience can share in the pleasure we experienced in creating our eBooks. Take a good look at our pages and leaf through the previews of our eBooks. If you like them, please purchase some! This small gesture of support is invaluable to us and will help us generate new ideas and texts. You can also sign up below to receive our free annual catalog of Addenda eBooks, which we compile at the end of each year. We strive to ensure that each visit to the Addenda site and each interaction with our texts or lectures leaves a lasting impression. We apply the same principle to the Addenda project as we did in our university lecture rooms. We are happy when you, our readers and customers, are satisfied with our products! The beauty of life is that we all learn from each other. |
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