Michael Taussig is a contemporary anthropologist, whose main interest lay in South-American peasentry and it’s relevence to world’s capitalist system. His writings deal with problems which are the goals of so-called „postcolonial theory” but to this day it wasn’t clearly reconsidered. My aim is to re-think the Taussigian „culture of death”/”space of death” concepts in perspective of Walter Benjamin’s messianic theory, but to do it with accordance to the question: what could postcolonial theory learn from it? It is important to rewrite the history of postcolonial theory, but with being aware of falling into one of two main aporias: marxism and postmodernism. The shamanic ritual opens for us a space from where the dead are calling the living and thus, transcends any material culture into some kind of endless passage of ancestors.
The author shortly presents a new paradigm of social research on multiculturality as called the postcolonial indigenous paradigm. He bases in this presentation on the book by Bagele Chilisa, professor at the University of Botswana who is researcher represented this paradigm and author of methodological monograph under the title Indigenous research methodologies (2012). Postcolonial indigenous paradigm is synergy and transgression of three known paradigms in social sciences as means: critical theory, constructive, and participative ones. The author asks for possibility of using postcolonial indigenous paradigm in social research on multiculturality in Poland. His answer to this question is an exemplification of research project concerning problems of the Roma education in Polish schools. He proposes looking for new political concepts and practical solutions of problems of multiculturality with regards to ideas of postcolonial indigenous paradigm.
My article will take issue with some of the scholarship on current and prospective configurations of the Caribbean and, in more general terms, postcolonial literary criticism. It will give an account of the turn-of-the century debates about literary value and critical practice and analyze how contemporary fiction by Caribbean female writers responds to the socioeconomic reality that came into being with the rise of globalization and neo-liberalism. I will use David Scott’s thought provoking study-Refashioning Futures: Criticism after Postcoloniality (1999)-to outline the history of the Caribbean literary discourse and to try to rethink the strategic goals of postcolonial criticism.
Ostatnio zarówno w naukach społecznych, jak i humanistycznych można zauważyć bardzoduże zainteresowanie pamięcią, w tym pamięcią zbiorową. Zasadniczą kwestią, którąchcę przedstawić w niniejszym tekście, jest ukazanie relacji pomiędzy pamięcią opowiadanąz hegemonicznego punktu widzenia dominującej większości a mniejszością, którejopowieść o przeszłych wydarzeniach niekoniecznie musi być/jest spójna z tą wersją. Ponadtonależy się zastanowić, do kogo pamięć należy, czyja jest pamięć zbiorowa, kto – jeśliw ogóle – odpowiada za to, co pamiętamy (ale też i za to, czego pamiętać nie chcemy/nie musimy). Historia oddolna czy też subaltern (podrzędnych) jest równorzędną historiąw czasach demokracji, w czasach, gdy naród stał się społeczeństwem obywateli. Historięma naród, pamięć ma społeczeństwo. Równie ważne są miejsca pamięci (lieu de mémoire),których znaczenie podkreśla Pierre Nora (1974, 2011) (por. Szpociński 2008).
When defining memory, we may look at it as a multiphase process or as a quality of a particularperson. What is most interesting is the fact that several individuals might have different memories of the same event. Past events, significant ones (or perceived as such)from the point of view of a community, become part of the oral or written history. It isnot important for memories to be based on actual events, just that the community sharesa belief in their authenticity. This same mechanism applies to their interpretation: it isonly important that a community interprets events in the same way. This is one of thecrucial elements bonding the community together. Collective memory is a part of cultureand it uses its own criterion for truth: true is what society decides to be true, not necessarilywhat is true according to historical facts. Collective memory involves two psychologicalmechanisms which are worth exploring: the subjective interpretation of events andthe collective system of meanings. Ethnic minorities create their own concepts of socialworlds, and they also create specific interpretations of historical events. It must be notedthat in modern times, when minorities do not live in isolated enclaves, they must maintainequilibrium between two worlds: their own and the one of the dominant group. The dominantmajority has at its disposal the public and mandatory educational system, as well asthe media and cultural institutions, often subsidized by the state. It is in the interest of theminority to reach a situation in which it can in its own culture.
The aim of my paper is to present the concept of postcolonial aesthetics, as well as to analyse the phenomena of multicultural aesthetics in public discourse in Poland. In my work the sociological perspective is accompanied with pedagogical one. I point out that aesthetics may be considered as space for identity formation. While analysing multicultural aesthetics in Polish public discourse, I focus on several phenomena. First, I describe invisibility of multicultural aesthetics in art discourse, as well as in educational discourse, and analyse the representations of multicultural aesthetics. I reconstruct the discourse of superiority of The Global North civilisation, and a parallel discourse of primitivism of the Global South. Next, I describe the proces ses of commercialisation and folklorization of multicultural aesthetics occurring in public sphere, especially in mass culture. Finally I reconstruct types of identities formed in the analysed material. The papers concludes with reference to Edward Said's demand for a constant critical reading o f culture.
The aim of this work is to interpret – by means of the postcolonial strategy of reading – a short story titled Mimesis, published in Paweł Huelle’s collection: Opowieści chłodnego morza. This kind of interpretation reveals a choice of new perspectives, aiming at the healing of trauma by explaining the symptoms and revealing hidden facts. In Mimesis by Huelle, this happens due to the character’s narration. The author of the article presents a process of the characters identity creation during their encounters with different cultures (Huelle exemplifies a multicultural mosaic in his short story). All the way through the imagery of the charac-ters, the author of the article enhances the main axiological features and describes the pro-cess of identity creation, thus an act of liberating oneself from restrictions of one’s own culture.
Niniejszy artykuł stanowi próbę zastosowania teorii postkolonialnej do badania dyskursu medialnego, z uwzględnieniem kontrowersyjności samej teorii przenoszonej na grunt polski, a także pamiętając, że w pierwotnym założeniu stosowana jest ona do badań literaturoznawczych. Prezentowane analizy opierają się na przyjęciu postkolonializmu z jego zasadniczym przesłaniem emancypacyjnym, a także potraktowaniu gatunków publicystycznych jako form zbliżonych do literatury.
EN
The article is an attempt to apply the postcolonial theory to the media discourse study, including the controversy of the theory itself transferred to the Polish ground, and keeping in mind that primarily this theory is applied for literature research. The presented analysis is based on the adoption of post-colonialism with its fundamental message, emancipation, and the treatment of journalistic genres as forms similar to the literature.
Farewell to Empire is not a one-off act but an extremely complex process that has lasted many years. The decolonisation and de-Sovietisation of Ukrainian society is possible only by overcoming the mental effects of colonialism. Existence from revolution to revolution, and in consequence from revolution to war, was an experience shared by at least three generations of Ukrainian writers. However, each generation has either had different experiences with the previous political system, or none at all. Yet their lives are now connected with it through the experiences of previous generations. In the case of the contemporary analysis of Ukrainian women’s prose, the postcolonial perspective, combined with gender studies and a feminist critique, provides an extensive theoretical background for distinguishing the consequences of colonial/totalitarian practices and resistance strategies. In these narratives, women are the subjects and they speak in their own names. By analysing the literary representations of female figures who have contributed to the literary development of the independent state since the 1990s, the women can recreate their roles in creating modern Ukrainian statehood, shaping an independent society, or, on a micro scale, recreating their path to (re)constructing their own identity.
Alina Mitek-Dziemba Faculty of PhilologyUniversity of Silesia in KatowicePoland Postsecularism as a Way of Reanimating Postcolonial Reading Practices. On the Limits and Paradoxes of Secular Criticism Abstract: Even though it is difficult to imagine a phenomenon more closely intertwined with the processes of colonization and decolonization than secularism, there are scant references to it in the postcolonial writing and accompanying critical theory. The critics’ reticence seems hardly justifiable considering the fact that secularization processes have been in the centre of the hottest political and ideological debate for more than a decade now, while their critical 170 examination and evaluation appears inevitable due to the ongoing process of undermining the historical view of the religious vs secular divide by alternative ways of ordering the public space in non-Western societies, especially as the latter have also become, on the immigrants’ arrival and vocal presence, a powerful factor in the political game played out within Western countries. As the violent course of events after 9/11 has prompted most of the postcolonial critics to perceive Western democracy and secularism in the black-and-white mode by inscribing it in the Eurocentric and colonial framework, the secular-religious opposition has become one of the postcolonial studies’ fundamental dichotomies that it seeks to transgress and overcome, even though the attempt may well be in vain. Consequently, the term “postsecular,” despite all the subtlety with which it was introduced into the fields of philosophy, theology, sociology and literature, has come to indicate a posture of critical aversion to the secularist order as quintessential for the Western modernity and Enlightenment project and opting for the radical division between the public reason and the need for faith. The aim of the article is thus to examine the meanings ascribed to the terms such as “postsecularism” and “postsecular spirituality” in postcolonial theory, as well as to evaluate the attempts at their application to the field of literary studies. Keywords: postcolonialism, postsecularism
PL
For an abstract in English, scroll downAlina Mitek-DziembaWydział FilologicznyUniwersytet Śląski w KatowicachPostsekularyzm jako sposób reanimacji lektury postkolonialnej? O granicach i paradoksach secular criticismAbstrakt: Mimo iż trudno wyobrazić sobie zjawisko, które byłoby mocniej splecione z procesami kolonizacji i dekolonizacji niż sekularyzm, liczba odniesień do niego w postkolonialnym pisarstwie i wypracowanej przezeń teorii krytycznej jest raczej szczupła. Ta krytyczna małomówność wydaje się być trudna do uzasadnienia, jeśli zważy się na fakt, że procesy sekularyzacyjne od ponad dekady sytuują się w ogniu najgorętszych polityczno-ideologicznych debat, zaś ich krytyczny ogląd i przewartościowanie jawią się jako nieuchronne w obliczu zakwestionowania historycznego paradygmatu rozdziału religii i tego, co świeckie przez alternatywne sposoby porządkowania przestrzeni publicznej w niezachodnich społeczeństwach, zwłaszcza gdy te ostatnie stają się, wraz z obecnością imigrantów, istotnym czynnikiem kulturowej gry także w krajach Zachodu. Wraz z gwałtownym rozwojem wydarzeń po 9/11, który większości postkolonialnych krytyków narzucił czarno-białą optykę wpisywania demokracji i sekularyzmu w eurocentryczne (a więc kolonialne) ramy, opozycja sekularne-religijne stała się jedną z fundujących postcolonial studies dychotomii, które usiłują one przekroczyć, zdając sobie sprawę z niemożności tego przedsięwzięcia. Określenie „postsekularny” natomiast, mimo wszystkich subtelności, jakie towarzyszyły wprowadzaniu tego terminu w obszarze filozofii, teologii, socjologii i literatury, dla wielu rzeczników postkolonializmu zaczęło po prostu sygnalizować postawę krytycznej niechęci wobec sekularystycznego porządku, uznanego za kwintesencję zachodniej nowoczesności i programu Oświecenia, a opowiadającego się za dokonaniem gwałtownego cięcia pomiędzy publicznym rozumem i potrzebą wiary. Celem artykułu jest zatem zbadanie znaczeń przypisywanych postsekularyzmowi i duchowości postsekularnej w myśli postkolonialnej, oraz ocena prób literaturoznawczego zastosowania tych kategorii.Słowa kluczowe: postsekularyzm, postkolonializm Postsecularism as a Way of Reanimating Postcolonial Reading Practices. On the Limits and Paradoxes of Secular Criticism Abstract: Even though it is difficult to imagine a phenomenon more closely intertwined with the processes of colonization and decolonization than secularism, there are scant references to it in the postcolonial writing and accompanying critical theory. The critics’ reticence seems hardly justifiable considering the fact that secularization processes have been in the centre of the hottest political and ideological debate for more than a decade now, while their critical examination and evaluation appears inevitable due to the ongoing process of undermining the historical view of the religious – secular divide by alternative ways of ordering the public space in non-Western societies, especially as the latter have also become, on the immigrants’ arrival and vocal presence, a powerful factor in the political game played out within Western countries. As the violent course of events after 9/11 has prompted most of the postcolonial critics to perceive Western democracy and secularism in the black-and-white mode by inscribing it in the Eurocentric and colonial framework, the secular-religious opposition has become one of the postcolonial studies’ fundamental dichotomies that it seeks to transgress and overcome, even though the attempt may well be in vain. Consequently, the term “postsecular,” despite all the subtlety with which it was introduced into the fields of philosophy, theology, sociology and literature, has come to indicate a posture of critical aversion to the secularist order as quintessential of the Western modernity and Enlightenment project and opting for the radical division between the public reason and the need for faith. The aim of the article is thus to examine the meanings ascribed to the terms such as “postsecularism” and “postsecular spirituality” in postcolonial theory, as well as to evaluate the attempts at their application to the field of literary studies.Keywords: postsecularism, postcolonialism
The subject of this paper is the image of Berlin and Germany that emerges from two film adaptations of the novel Berlin Alexanderplatz. The first one, a 1980 TV series by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, closely follows the letter and spirit of the original 1929 novel; we see a faithful recreation of the material world and the mindset of German society in the final years of the Weimar Republic. In the second one, a 2021 cinema production by Burhan Qurbani, the plot is modernised. The main context of the film is the plight of refugees and economic migrants in contemporary Germany and the problems portrayed are linked to issues of race and post-colonialism.
Representations of postcolonial African cities in contemporary literature, analysed from the perspective of postcolonial studies, allow the researcher to observe a number of phenomena: a polarization of attitudes towards the areas inhabited by literary characters, a dichotomous stratification of space, an awareness of the colonial past or deliberate actions suppressing reminiscences of colonialism, as well as the labile characteristics of the cities, with their transformations, degenerations and performativity (e.g. in the context of street names, or in the case of conceptualizing the boundaries of African countries during the Berlin Conference). These themes have been interpreted as part of a review of urban literary forms. The aim of the analysis was also to indicate the possibilities of further research on cities within postcolonial theory, which has hitherto focused rather on the issues of nativity and images of the village.
In this paper, I intended to analyse Polish feature films devoted to three central categories: orientalism, postcolonialism and the clash of cultures (civilizations). This article presents the Polish cinema in the following three areas and types. First of all, there are works which show an exotic, oriental space. Secondly, there are films with a hero who is a stranger and an enemy. Finally, in the newest films the protagonist – a new comer from the East – becomes accepted and understood.
PL
Artykuł analizuje obecność wątków orientalnych (blisko- i dalekowschodnich) w polskim filmach fabularnych zrealizowanych po II wojnie światowej w perspektywie takich pojęć jak: orientalizm, postkolonializm i zderzenie kultur. Wynika z tych obserwacji, że obecność tych wątków w naszym kinie jest wciąż skromna, choć po przełomie politycznym z 1989 roku jest ich nieco więcej. Grupuje omawiane filmy w trzy typy: pokazujące egzotykę przestrzeni rodem ze Wschodu, przedstawiające bohatera który jest obcym i wrogiem oraz te, w których przybysz ze Wschodu zaczyna być rozumiany i akceptowany, co ma miejsce w utworach najnowszych.
This article takes a closer look at the processes of re-appropriation of the aesthetic field within which the phenomenon known as ‘contemporary African dance’ was shaped in the second half of the 20th century, mainly for the use of Western audiences. In the context of the generally outlined political and economic conditions of production, and using examples of performances that illuminate the basic concepts of postcolonial theories (e.g. H.K. Bhabha, E.W. Said and R. Bharucha), the main historical and aesthetic lines of the formation of the term ‘contemporary African dance’ and its possible designations are presented, and the artistic attitudes and formal procedures that artists of different generations employ in the process of reclaiming and transforming the aesthetic field that this term defines are evoked.
Developments that have been observed in the last decades (globalisation, postmodernism, postcolonialism) have influenced changes in European critical discourse and brought cultural phenomena to the fore. One of the consequences of this new postcolonial consciousness is the challenging of the 19th century concept of Weltliteratur, which is based on Western European tradition. The author of the article refers to the postcolonial writings of E. Said, G.Ch. Spivak and H.K. Bhabhy as well as the concept of cultural dialogue by H. Gadamer, E. Levinas, P. Ricoeur and regards Polish contemporary literature from the perspective of Western research where the traditional, Platonian model of European culture as being a universal culture, is replaced by a dynamic, intercultural interaction. Confronting “homeliness” with “foreigness” produces less narrow assessments. Hierarchies and conditions disappear here and common cultural experience seems to be most important.
The focus of the literary post-colonial discourse in this article is Claudius Crönert’s novel on Herkus Monte “Die Herren der Schwerter”, published in 2011, which distances itself from the old Prussian topoi and, instead, creates a new post-colonial reality. The article deals with the problem of postcolonialism and its absence in the context of Prussian research. As a theory, postcolonialism is still shaped by Eurocentric notions of a foreign discourse that mostly focuses on former colonies in far-flung parts of the world, which is illustrated here by a text by Walter Benjamin. The multi-coded past of Prussia is discussed in my contribution on the basis of the change from colonial discourse to post-colonial discourse. The reception of the pre-colonial times of the Baltic tribes is presented in the journal Adrastea on the basis of Herder’s latest work, specifically his reflections on the ‘ancestors’ of Prussia.
The article is devoted to the diaries of Jan Czekanowski, an outstanding Polish anthropologist, who travelled to Africa in the years 1907–1909. Special attention is given here to the narrator’s attitudes. Czekanowski knew Africa primarily as an anthropologist and traveller. He perceived the process of colonization as a weave of economic, political and ideological motives. He was also indignant with colonial exploitation, which he observed mainly in Belgian colonies. However, Czekanowski’s portrait of Africa evokes the concept of orientalism, as defined by Edward W. Said. Its prominent aspect was perceiving the Other through the binary opposition between the East and West. Moreover, in spite of his declared affection for black Africans, the Polish scholar uses Orientalistic and colonial stereotypes which seem consistent with the nineteenth-century trends in travel literature.
The author analyses Tuwim’s Bambo, the Black Boy and tries to point to a number of interpretative paradoxes that have accumulated around its multiple readings. Particular attention is paid to the racial readings of the poem. What is more, the author discusses a variety of contemporary contexts in which the famous poem functions; these are often politically incorrect readings and interpretations which make no sense of the historical context in which the work was originally written. The article offers a detailed analysis of the origins of the poem and the circumstances in which found its way to the school primer. The poem is seen as expressing the need for accepting otherness and fighting cultural stereotypes.
The author analyses Tuwim’s "Bambo, the Black Boy" and tries to point to a number of interpretative paradoxes that have accumulated around its multiple readings. Particular attention is paid to the racial readings of the poem. What is more, the author discusses a variety of contemporary contexts in which the famous poem functions; these are often politically incorrect readings and interpretations which make no sense of the historical context in which the work was originally written. The article offers a detailed analysis of the origins of the poem and the circumstances in which found its way to the school primer. The poem is seen as expressing the need for accepting otherness and fighting cultural stereotypes.
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