Katarzyna Trzeciak

Communicational Utopia in Action. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Language of Emancipatory Literature and Architecture

The article presents and comments on the activity of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, an American suffragette, writer, and activist for the emancipation of women. The dominant feature of the presentation is a reflection on the project of utopian communication, to which Gilman subordinated her literature and plans for the reform of domestic space. In the essay, I present the issues of language, voice, and status of women’s speech, inscribing them into the framework of the communication utopia as an ideal of a rational society

How does the contemporary Polish weird fiction scare us?

The text concerns different strategies of constructing weird fiction by contemporary Polish writers. In two anthologies published in 2013, authors of weird novels reinterpret the classic paradigm of weird fiction (associated with Lovecraft) as well as try to refer it to the present reality. Polish writers, inspired mainly by Stefan Grabiński’s work, use his best known motives, such as weird trains and desolate stations. The second source of inspiration is Poe’s dead subject (from The Facts in the Case of M. Waldemar), who acts as a living one and generates the horror. These inspirations, however, do not help contemporary writers with creating a new paradigm of weird fiction but rather close them in the circle of constant inspirations and dependence on their predecessors.

The necessity of rythm

This article is a review of the book Typografie by Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe. The article refers firstly to the problem of Polish reception of Lacoue-Labarthe’s philosophy, then discusses the question of the subject and finally concerns the main problem of relations between philosophy, literature and aesthetics presented in the book. The review also touches upon the question of Lacoue-Labarthe’s interpretation of Heideggerian ontology and political engagement in fascism which is explained in the context of his visions of both politics and aesthetics.

 

Occupation: Writer. Notes on the Polish Literary Field after 1989

The article is based on the analysis of the recent study Literatura polska po 1989 roku w świetle teorii Pierre’a Bourdieu. Raport z badań which deals with the diagnosis of 25 years of Polish literature by using Bourdieu’s theory. The article comments the results of the study as well as proposes wider perspective for the sociology of literature. The main question in the text relates to the condition of the literary field and its main actors which are writers. The autonomy of literary field postulated by Bourdieu has a problematic status in Polish literature after 1989. Similar problems affects the writer’s habitus which depends on market regulations and other non-literary aspects. In the conclusion the article concerns different possibilities of using such problematic condition of the literary field for future activities of certain actors of the field.
 

Against the Sameness Principle

Artykuł jest próbą spojrzenia na powojenną eseistykę Hanny Mortkowicz- -Olczakowej w perspektywie socrealistycznej poetyki i jej indywidualnego negocjowania. Głównym przedmiotem analizy jest zbiór eseistycznych reportaży o Nowej Hucie, do których lektury przydatna jest wojenna biografia pisarki, zasymilowanej Żydówki inteligentki, stosującej do opisu socjalistycznej inwestycji anachroniczne literacko stylizacje.

On the Genealogy of Polish Queerness. On Dezorientacje. Antologia polskiej literatury queer

The article is a review of the book Dezorientacje. Antologia polskiej literatury queer by Alessandro Amenta, Tomasz Kaliściak and Błażej Warkocki, which is the first anthology of Polish queer literature, gathering literary material from XVIIIth century to the present moment. The reviewer concerns particulary the introductory part of the anthology, and puts a few polemical questions around the book’s main assumptions.

‘MORE LIFE’. AGATA BIELIK-ROBSON’S PROJECT OF MESSIANIC VITALISM
This text is a review of the latest book by Agata Bielik-Robson as seen in the context of all her intellectual projects. The authors point to a significant shift of Bielik-Robson’s interest which leads her toward the reinterpretation of the texts of Jewish philosophers who represent messianic vitalism. The reviewers also try to present what for Bielik-Robson is the main opposition between Eros and Thanatos and explain what Erros is – the third way which is proposed by the philosopher as an alternative for the subject defined by the tragedy of existence. The authors of the review also point in a slightly polemical mode to the philosophical contexts only marginally presented in the book (mainly Vattimo’s pensiero debole) which need to be defined more precisely but are sometimes deliberately ignored by the author.