The subject of contemporary Croatian literature in this paper mainly refers to the processes and conflicts on the Croatian literary scene in the post-socialist or transition period. The scene itself is viewed through the prism of the cultural field theory of the French philosopher and sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. In addition to the cultural field and constant conflicts in the struggle for a dominant position on it, the key notions of habitus, taste and capital were used in the analysis of individual phenomena as illustrations of the contemporary Croatian literary scene. The literary field, according to the special laws of that field, functions in a specific way of anti-economic economy according to which literature is viewed as an ideal of "pure art" which should be self-evident. The thesis of this paper starts from the idea that literary production is inseparable from the demands of neoliberal market economy, and is therefore assimilated by eliminating its previously important segments such as literary criticism, which no longer takes the role of legitimizing a particular literary work. An important role is played by digital media, which open a new space in which we can follow the processes of literary and artistic integrations, literary awards, extradition of the literary scene and tabloid spectacle. Selected phenomena for analysis on the contemporary Croatian literary scene, along with Bourdieu's theory, show the peculiarities of the role that literature possesses, and the loss of previously defined legitimacy within the cultural field.