Ewa Wojciechowska

The article is a review of Kacper Kutrzeba’s book Kalekująca nowoczesność a literatura. Dialektyczne przygody u zarania polskiej nowoczesności [Crippled Modernity vs. Literature. Dialectical Adventures at the Dawn of Polish Modernity], understood as an attempt to re-interpret the canonical works of Polish Romanticism by means of philosophical concepts of modernity (Georg Hegel, Karol Marks, Friedrich Nietzsche, Max Weber, Marshall Berman).

The paper discusses the question of empowerment in management education and attempts to present internal contradictions of aforementioned concept. The main objection to the empowermet theory in management education here is the fact of concealing fundamental violence that defi nes relations within institution of academy. Removal of the question of confl ict from the concept of empowerment deprives it from real emancipating power. In contrast to empowerment, Harol Bloom’s idea of subjectivity as an agon is presented.

Using August Wilhelm Schlegel’s definition of the short story and Tvetan Todorov’s concept of the fantastic, the essay presents three Romantic fantasy short stories. The author focuses on the representation of the body and corporeality. The works analyzed attempt to challenge the post-Enlightenment materialistic perspective and redefine the body and soul dichotomy. The essay discusses three models of presenting the body in the selected short stories. The first model, in Życie po śmierci [Life after Death] by J. I. Kraszewski, follows the logics of the grotesque and presents the body as not only the object, but also the vehicle of narration. The second model, in Lekarz magnetyczny [The Magnetic Doctor] by Józef Dzierzkowski, indicates the physiognomical understanding of the body as a sign, a call for interpretation. The third model, in Dentysta [The Dentist] by Henryk Rzewuski, involves the process of a radical suspension of the body and soul dichotomy: the body is conceived as pure surface.