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Wielogłos

Journal of the Faculty of Polish Studies of the Jagiellonian University

Description

Wielogłos – The Journal of the Faculty of Polish Studies of the Jagiellonian University is an academic quarterly dedicated to issues of literary studies, theatrology and cultural studies. Founded in 2007, it owes its existence to the idea of Teresa Walas.

In accordance with the intention expressed in the title, Wielogłos, meaning “Polylogue” in Polish, aims to be a place where different views and visions of literature and art are debated, different ideas and research trends intermingle, and different ways of reading and interpreting artistic phenomena are confronted. The Journal has two sections: “Articles and essays” (where we publish articles and essays on the theory, history, and criticism of literature) and “Reviews and discussions” (where we include critical discussions of selected Polish and foreign academic books). In addition, Wielogłos presents discussions that revolve around problems particularly important for the Polish Studies community and outstanding book publications, as well as translations of works by foreign researchers and critics representing new trends in literary studies and related fields of humanities.

ISSN: 1897-1962

eISSN: 2084-395X

MNiSW points: 70

UIC ID: 485869

DOI: 10.4467/2084395XWI

Editorial team

Editor-in-Chief:
Monika Świerkosz
Executive Editor:
Tomasz Kunz
Editors:
Tomasz Bilczewski
Paweł Bukowiec
Jakub Czernik
Katarzyna Deja
Karolina Górniak-Prasnal
dr hab. Barbara Kaszowska-Wandor

Affiliation

Jagiellonian University in Kraków

Journal content

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Issue 4 (66) 2025

Publication date: 19.12.2025

Editor-in-Chief: Monika Świerkosz

Executive Editor: Tomasz Kunz

Issue Editor: Karolina Górniak-Prasnal

Issue content

Articles

Jarosław Woźniak

Wielogłos, Issue 4 (66) 2025, 2025, pp. 5-36

https://doi.org/10.4467/2084395XWI.25.029.22419
The article presents a critical analysis of new materialisms as a foundation for environmental thought, with a particular focus on eco-Marxist perspectives. In recent years, new materialist concepts have dominated ecocriticism and the environmental humanities, influencing social sciences, art, and literature. The author critically examines the utility of this philosophy as a basis for environmental thinking, interrogating its ontological, ethical, and political assumptions. The discussion addresses controversies surrounding the agency of matter, the rejection of dualisms and anthropocentrism, and highlights internal contradictions as well as their potential ethical and political consequences. By contrasting new materialisms with Marxist critical traditions, the article emphasizes the significance of historical and social context in analyzing ecological crises. It identifies limitations in the monistic approach of new materialisms and advocates for a more critical, dialectical engagement with the nature-culture relationship. The author points to elements within new materialist philosophy that may undermine its capacity to address ecological challenges. Additionally, the article critiques new materialisms’ tendency to prioritize affirmation over critique, which risks the fetishization of matter and the neglect of crucial social, political, and historical dimensions. Critics argue that while new materialisms acknowledge non-human agency, they may inadvertently obscure human accountability for the ecological crisis. The article concludes that effectively addressing these issues requires a critical analysis of human-nature relations and engagement with the material conditions underpinning the climate crisis.
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Piotr F. Piekutowski

Wielogłos, Issue 4 (66) 2025, 2025, pp. 37-61

https://doi.org/10.4467/2084395XWI.25.030.22420
The article reflects on econarratology, which integrates postclassical narratology with theories from the environmental humanities. This heterogeneous and still emerging subdiscipline is examined in the context of the material turn. The author reconstructs proposals for understanding storied matter formulated by theorists of posthumanism, ecocriticism, and new materialism. Nonhuman agency entails reconfiguring matter and discourse, including the analysis of the materiality of narrative practices. The evolution and assumptions of non-anthropocentric narrative theory are presented against a background of its divergence from the anthropocentric bias of narrative and the antimimetic project of unnatural narratology. The challenge of econarratology is to articulate a new concept of form adapted to the Anthropocene epoch and a relational analysis based on textual and extratextual interdependencies.
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Marta Rakoczy

Wielogłos, Issue 4 (66) 2025, 2025, pp. 63-83

https://doi.org/10.4467/2084395XWI.25.031.22421
This article examines The Adventures of Marcelianek Majster-Klepka and, more broadly, the children’s literature created by Franciszka and Stefan Themerson, analyzed against the backdrop of discourses on raw materials and energy as key drivers of material-world transformation. Their narrative of modernisation depicts a conscious and extensive transformation of matter–steam, electricity, and gas–into works and inventions. This reflects a conviction later articulated by Peter Sloterdijk in cultural philosophy. According to Sloterdijk, the novelty of the 20th century was not primarily an ideological conflict, but “departure from agrarian culture,” marked by a technological and energy revolution that produced a Western system of mass comfort reliant on fossil fuels and an extensive welfare state. Sloterdijk characterizes the century as one of material rather than ideological revolution, emphasizing transformations in “metabolic regimes” and the exploitation of energy sources. The Themersons’ works can be seen as literary expressions of this awareness, although their vision of modernisation remains complex and nuanced.
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Wojciech Sławnikowski

Wielogłos, Issue 4 (66) 2025, 2025, pp. 85-107

https://doi.org/10.4467/2084395XWI.25.032.22422
The validity of interpreting Krystyna Miłobędzka’s poetry in relation to the Far Eastern context has at times been questioned. Through juxtaposed analyses of poems and the main features of the traditional aesthetics of Japan and China, the author shows that the collection wszystkowiersze (2000) enters into dialogue with these aesthetics in three aspects. The first aspect is the materiality of notations, in which the contexts of concrete poetry and Eastern calligraphy coincide. The second is elusiveness, thematised in wszystkowiersze and central in Japanese aesthetics, notably in haiku. The third aspect is paradox, inherent to the poems and fundamental to Zen philosophy. Together, they form a complex set of connections, demonstrating the influence of the East on Miłobędzka’s poetry. The conclusions of the text can be useful in a more general study of Far Eastern inspirations in Polish poetry, as well as in considering the poetic forms that give meaning to the very matter of the text.
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Katarzyna Uczkiewicz

Wielogłos, Issue 4 (66) 2025, 2025, pp. 109-123

https://doi.org/10.4467/2084395XWI.25.033.22423
Vladimír Páral's works constitute an important point of reference in the analysis of consumption attitudes in Czechoslovakia during the late 1980s and early 1990s. In his works, consumption is not limited to the material dimension, but also assumes symbolic, ideological, and social significance. Foodstuffs play a particularly important role in this narrative, functioning as markers of social status and as tools in the characters' existential strategies. In the context of normalisation and political transformation, Páral's prose reveals the inherent contradictions of a system in which economic constraints and the pragmatic necessity of everyday adaptation determine both individual choices and wider social tendencies. Paradoxically, the stories set in the reality of socialist scarcity in the 1980s can also be read from the perspective of a critique of consumer capitalist society.
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Grzegorz Olszański

Wielogłos, Issue 4 (66) 2025, 2025, pp. 125-147

https://doi.org/10.4467/2084395XWI.25.034.22424
This paper explores the theme of material objects, their relationship with people, and their significance in the contexts of memory, identity, and death. Drawing on the ideas of Bruno Latour as well as other representatives of the “thing turn” in the humanities, the author examines the role of objects as carriers of history and as symbolic participants in mourning processes. Illustrative examples include books such as Umarł mi by Inga Iwasiów, Kontener by Marek Bieńczyk, Bezmatek by Mira Marcinów, Rzeczy, których nie wyrzuciłem by Marcin Wicha, and Początek wszystkiego by Bogdan Frymorgen.
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Ewa Pogonowska

Wielogłos, Issue 4 (66) 2025, 2025, pp. 149-174

https://doi.org/10.4467/2084395XWI.25.035.22425
The article examines the role of things in Polish non-fiction of the 21st century, based on the works of Michał Olszewski and Mariusz Szczygieł. The main focus is on the relationship between people and things in the era of consumption, as well as the biography of a thing, particularly after it has lost its owner or relevance. Through the use of anthropomorphism, enumeration, and empathetic narration, the authors reveal a specific function of things as a repository of nostalgia or as a medium of knowledge about final matters.
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Zofia Paetz

Wielogłos, Issue 4 (66) 2025, 2025, pp. 175-195

https://doi.org/10.4467/2084395XWI.25.036.22426
The article focuses on Andrzej Stasiuk’s descriptive strategies, analyzed in terms of the descriptive turn and studies on presence, which make it possible to construct a refreshed formula of realism that takes into account current developments in epistemology and literary theory. Drawing on Horst Bredekamp’s study of the alternative history of mimesis, in which the concept of representation is replaced by mimesis understood as an imprint, the text shows how the idea of imprinting works in literary practice: not as imitation, but primarily as a mode of bearing witness to the experience of real presence. The article is thus a reading of Stasiuk’s literary descriptions through the prism of the categories of imprint, photosensitivity, and trace, and considers the notion of fidelity, familiar from realist prose theory, on an ethical level, proposing a reading approach in which literature is experienced as a form of witnessing presence.
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Maria Zielniewicz

Wielogłos, Issue 4 (66) 2025, 2025, pp. 197-217

https://doi.org/10.4467/2084395XWI.25.037.22427
This paper analyzes Olga Tokarczuk’s novel Empuzjon. The text draws on the methodological assumptions of Jacques Derrida’s hauntology and the concept of the trace, focusing on what lies at the border of materiality. Both traces and spectres, appearing ephemeral or difficult to grasp, are characterized by a specifically understood agency, which constitutes an important aspect of the philosophy of new materialism. Their presence influences the space of Görbersdorf, shapes Mieczysław Wojnicz’s identity, and simultaneously disrupts the linear temporal order. This enables tracing different tensions between past and present at the level of historical events as well as the protagonist’s personal experiences. By reflecting on issues such as gender identity, ‘repressed femininity, collective and individual memory, and justice for women, the article problematizes the role of materiality and its limits in the represented world.
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Maria Wiktorska

Wielogłos, Issue 4 (66) 2025, 2025, pp. 219-240

https://doi.org/10.4467/2084395XWI.25.038.22428
This article examines the role of junk in two contemporary novels: Pustostany by Dorota Kotas and Trash Story by Mateusz Górniak. The discussion contributes to broader reflections on the materiality of leftovers in contemporary literature. The author seeks to expand classical studies on objects by drawing on materiality theory (Elaine Freedgood, Walter Benjamin). Employing anthropological and soteriological perspectives, she introduces the term “junkology” as a method of analyzing liminal objects–things that exist on the boundary between trash, keepsake, and artifact. By exploring two key spaces–the bazaar (in Kotas’s novel) and the Silesian home (in Górniak’s work)–the article illustrates how discarded objects not only preserve generational memory but also create alternative, intergenerational networks of people and things. Further, referring to the analyzed characters, the author introduces the figure of the “junk-messianist” (Piotr Sawczyński), who, by collecting discarded objects, engages with the residual fabric of the world. The article concludes that the materiality of leftovers can serve as an act of resistance against the capitalist logic of object circulation.
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Reviews and discussion

Michał Kopczyk

Wielogłos, Issue 4 (66) 2025, 2025, pp. 241-255

https://doi.org/10.4467/2084395XWI.25.039.22429
This article offers an interpretation of Kora Tea Kowalska’s book Look Under Your Feet. On Collecting Things through the lens of the so-called material turn that has shaped the humanities in recent decades. In the book, Kowalska assigns objects the role of active participants in the processes of constructing biography and individual identity. This issue carries both a theoretical dimension—pertaining to the definition of the archaeologist’s profession—and a personal one, rooted in collecting, which constitutes her lifelong passion. The author of the present article investigates both aspects, concluding that the ambiguity and distinctive fluidity of Kowalska’s protagonist generate a portrait of a personality coherent in its own unique way, one that emerges from the interweaving of the public and private spheres, as well as the professional and the passionate. This, in turn, underscores the autobiographical nature of Kowalska’s narrative. Its nostalgic quality derives from reflections on the impermanence of existence, evoked by the presence of material traces of the past.
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