Diffractive Reading (and Writing). On Aleksandra Ubertowska’s Book Historie biotyczne. Pomiędzy estetyka a geotraumą

The article is a review of Aleksandra Ubertowska’s book Historie biotyczne. Pomiędzy estetyką a geotraumą (Biotic Stories. Between Aesthetics and Geotrauma). The author presents the most important methodological premises and inspirations, especially the theories of the fourth wave of ecocriticism: ecomaterialism, biosemiotics, and ecodeconstructionism, which propose to perceive nature as a text. This perspective produces a specificfunction of metaphors, that is, the deconstruction of the discourse-matter, text-nature opposition through their metaphorical, sympoetic interweaving. In this strategy, one can recognize the method of diffraction reading, which excludes the position of an external, distanced observer, using a neutral, transparent language and aiming at entangling separate orders. The author also places Ubertowska’s project on the map of contemporary Polish ecocriticism.

The article is a review of Aleksandra Ubertowska’s book Historie biotyczne. Pomiędzy estetyką a geotraumą (Biotic Stories. Between Aesthetics and Geotrauma). The author presents the most important methodological premises and inspirations, especially the theories of the fourth wave of ecocriticism: ecomaterialism, biosemiotics, and ecodeconstructionism, which propose to perceive nature as a text. This perspective produces a specificfunction of metaphors, that is, the deconstruction of the discourse-matter, text-nature opposition through their metaphorical, sympoetic interweaving. In this strategy, one can recognize the method of diffraction reading, which excludes the position of an external, distanced observer, using a neutral, transparent language and aiming at entangling separate orders. The author also places Ubertowska’s project on the map of contemporary Polish ecocriticism.