The article discusses the question of political implications of French feminist theories, also known as feminist avant-garde. Referring to the strategic re-reading of the concept French Feminism by Christine Delphy, it is argued that such projects as écriture féminine have been appropriated by postmodern Anglo-American critique, which tends to fetishize the strategies of displacement and aestheticization of the political field. The aim of the article is to examine whether contemporary feminist theories can take up the challenge of French feminist avant-garde by going back to its political roots.
Celem artykułu jest poruszenie problemu zastosowania instrumentarium krytyki feministycznej do badań nad literaturą polskiego oświecenia. Jak dotąd, nie cieszy się ona popularnością w środowisku rodzimych znawców tej epoki. Wskazano zalety feminizmu w literaturoznawstwie jak również potencjalne zagrożenia, związane z aplikowaniem kategorii gender do badań nad literaturą dawną. Największym zagrożeniem wydaje się nieuwzględnianie kontekstu historycznego i społeczno-kulturowego. Przywołano prace odnoszące się do innych epok lub literatur obcych, które mogą stanowić punkt wyjścia do badań piśmiennictwa polskiego oświecenia. Jedną z nich jest monografia Marka Jastrzębca-Mosakowskiego, zatytułowana Strategie wymazywania. Kobiece bohaterki w męskich tekstach francuskiego Oświecenia. Wymieniono badaczy polskiego oświecenia, którzy dostrzegają potencjał gender studies (Barbara Judkowiak, Weronika Pawlik-Kwaśniewska). Wskazano obszary badań i możliwości, jakie daje użycie narzędzi krytyki feministycznej. Spodziewane efekty to przywrócenie imienia anonimowych dotąd autorek, odkrycie lub ponowne odczytanie ich twórczości, otwarcie nowych przestrzeni dla jej opisu i interpretacji.
EN
The article raises the problem of the use of the feminist criticism apparatus in research on the Polish Enlightenment literature. The method has not been popular among Polish experts of the epoch. The article discusses the advantages of feminism in literature studies as well as the potential risks associated with the application of the category gender to research on early literature. The greatest threat seems to be the failure to take into account the historical and socio-cultural context. The paper refers to other epochs or foreign literature, which may constitute a starting point for research into the literature of Polish Enlightenment. One such work is a monograph by Marek Jastrzębiec-Mosakowski entitled Strategie wymazywania. Kobiece bohaterki w męskich tekstach francuskiego Oświecenia [Strategies of erasure. Female heroines in the male texts of French Enlightenment]. The article lists researchers of Polish Enlightenment who notice the potential of gender studies (Barbara Judkowiak, Weronika Pawlik-Kwaśniewska) and points to the areas of research and possibilities offered by the use of feminist criticism tools. The article aims at restoring the names of the previously anonymous female authors, discovering or re-reading their work, as well as opening new spaces for their description and interpretation.
The aim of the article is to discuss the phenomenon of a ‘newly born woman’ that appears in the writing of the French theoreticians of gender, Hélène Cixous and Luce Irigaray. The author of the article distinguishes between the views of the two researchers and aims to reveal the specificity and uniqueness of each of them. This approach goes beyond the frames of ‘essentialism’ designed by Anglo‑American critics of the eighties.
The article is an attempt to re-interpret Knížka s červeným obalem by Alexandra Berková which is shown as a text having very strong connotations with works of European literature. The author of the article indicates many intertextual references that can be found in the Berkova’s text both on the intertexual, as well as hypertextual level (according to Gérarde Genetta’s thypology), which relate to the output of writers such as primarily James Joyce, but also Bohumil Hrabal, Josef Škvorecký or Giacomo Boccacio. Despite previous classification of Knížka s červeným obalem as a short stories cycle, the author proves that the text is a novel that reflects the scheme of a Bildungsroman and a metaphorical picture of women’s experiences, women who live through each stage of their lives and at the same time search for the possibility of expressing themselves in the text of culture. The article discusses also the issue of écriture feminine and the question whether Berkova’s text can be classified as “women’s writing”.
The article shows the relationship between philosophical thought and feminist art in terms of searching for subjectivity in women’s creations. This is a review of the theories proposed by Luce Irigaray, Hélène Cixous, Julia Kristeva, and by Judith Butler, Donna Haraway, and Rosi Braidotti, which, as this article proves, manifest themselves in the art that defines itself as feminist. Monstrosity is an important prospect here. The author presents écriture féminine and women’s literature, namely Charlotte Roche’s Wet Places and Izabela Filipiak’s Total Amnesia. Moreover, visual arts by Cindy Sherman, Chili Kumari Burman, Jo Spece, as well as a performance by Carolee Schneemann and ORLAN are discussed.
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