The missing part of (literary) historyThe article is a review of Marta Baron-Milian’s Wat plus VAT, the first monograph about connections between economy and literature in Aleksander Wat’s work. The author tries to show Baron’s book as a part of wider phenomenon, which can be observed after the great crisis in 2008, as a result of returning of different humanistic approaches to the problems of capitalist economy. By analyzing “economic consciousnessˮ and literary strategies of Aleksander Wat (in his poetry, biography, short stories and essays), Baron reveals the theological, symbolic and linguistic basis of modern economy. It allows her to describe a specific literary “experience of economy” and penetrating analyze of main themes of Wat’s work. One of the aims of the review is to rethink Baron’s proposition as a part of the new, thematically orientated history of polish modern literature. The other is to check, if Wat’s and Baron’s strictly modern and humanistic view of the economic systems can be still subversive and helpful against postmodern, mathematically reinforced capitalistic rhetoric.
The author reviews Piotr Bogalecki’s book which attempts to reinterpret Polish poetry after 1968 in the light of the postsecular turn. He discusses Bogalecki’s work within the broad philosophical context in order to place Bogalecki’s ideas among other quasi-religious and crypto-theological projects – especially those of Agata Bielik-Robson. The author underlines novelty of Bogalecki’s interpretations, his erudition and fundamental faithfulness toward literature and poetry which leads to depoliticization of postsecular thought making it innocuous mean of intervention.
The author analyses the concept of allegory, a classical poetic figure, as a kind of a “travelling concept,” a notion that informs contemporary literary criticism. He argues that the growing interest in allegorical styles of reading in the modern humanities stems from two important sources: the works of Walter Benjamin, who reclaimed the Baroque allegory for contemporary poetics, and Paul de Man, who redefined it as an inherent quality of literature and the universal mode of textual interpretation. The author then examines different ways of employing this modern understanding of allegory (as a topic, style or stylization, and as a way of reading) by three contemporary writers and critics Grzegorz Jankowicz, Alina Świeściak and Rafał Wawrzyńczyk.
PL
Autor analizuje pojęcie alegorii, klasycznej figury poetyckiej, jako swoistego „pojęcia wędrującego”, przydatnego i modnego w dzisiejszej krytyce literackiej. Rosnące zainteresowanie alegorycznymi stylami lektury we współczesnej humanistyce wywodzi z dwóch ważnych źródeł: prac Waltera Benjamina, który odzyskał barokową alegorię dla współczesnej estetyki, oraz Paula de Mana, który zdefiniował ją na nowo jako nieodłączną cechę literatury i uniwersalny sposób interpretacji tekstu. Następnie autor analizuje różne sposoby wykorzystania tego nowoczesnego rozumienia alegorii (jako tematu, stylu lub maniery oraz sposobu czytania) w trzech projektach krytycznych, które powstały po 2000 roku: Grzegorza Jankowicza, Aliny Świeściak i Rafała Wawrzyńczyka.
The paper deals with the topic of ecologically oriented poetry of Krystyna Miłobędzka as a vital tradition for 21st-century Polish ecopoets. The author tries to trace the changes in the poetic canon after 1990 and shows the increasing interest in Miłobędzka’s poetry among modern poets. By analyzing mainly meta-poetic texts, the paper contrasts Miłobędzka’s posthumanistic, “event-driven” way of writing with the humanistic lyrical subject of Wisława Szymborska’s poetry. The author presents the former as more influential and more productive for modern, ecopoetic styles, including elements such as: waking the awareness, organic perspective of language, an egalitarian way of life and thinking about relations in categories of space and adhesion rather than domination.
This essay undertakes an attempt to complete the “micrological” perspective of the Silesian school led by Aleksander Nawarecki with political impulses absent from its sources, guided by the intellectual constellations of two thinkers hitherto neglected as micrologists: Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze. Voicing opposition to the discipline and scientism of the close reading method, the essay proposes to consider the scholar in the categories of the micronaut, and the process of reading as immersion in the text, following minor tensions and flows of meanings. It simultaneously attempts a philosophical reading of the long poem Nie by Konrad Góra as a study in the methodology of seeing, (un)committed blindness and political multiplicity.
PL
Szkic podejmuje próbę uzupełnienia „mikrologicznej” perspektywy śląskiej szkoły Aleksandra Nawareckiego o nieobecne w niej źródłowo impulsy polityczne i patronat dwóch pominiętych dotąd „mikrologów”: Michela Foucaulta i Gilles’a Deleuze’a. Opowiadając się przeciwko zdyscyplinowaniu i scjentyzmowi metody close reading, proponuje rozpatrywać badacza w kategoriach mikronauty, sam proces lektury zaś jako zanurzanie się w tekście, śledzenie drobnych napięć i przepływów znaczeń. Jest równocześnie próbą filozoficznego przeczytania poematu Nie Konrada Góry jako rozprawy o metodyce widzenia, (nie)zawinionej ślepocie i politycznej wielości.
The paper is an attempt to outline a few problems connected with economic modes of reading the historic avant-garde, mainly its poetry. The author recapitulates a short history of its studies based on symbolic economies in order to consider possible semantic differences, resulting in the various uses of economic analogy in the discourse of the first avant-garde. The article focuses on Futurist and Constructivists movements, trying to sketch conflicts between political commitment and artistic autonomy, possible economies of sign and some sources of the “economic imagination”.
PL
The paper is an attempt to outline a few problems connected with economic modes of reading the historic avant-garde, mainly its poetry. The author recapitulates a short history of its studies based on symbolic economies in order to consider possible semantic differences, resulting in the various uses of economic analogy in the discourse of the first avant-garde. The article focuses on Futurist and Constructivists movements, trying to sketch conflicts between political commitment and artistic autonomy, possible economies of sign and some sources of the “economic imagination”.
The paper attempts to briefly sketch the problem of life in Tymoteusz Karpowicz’s poetic creativity with special consideration given to his earlier collections of poems, alongside of the focus on the figure of the seed/grain and the idea of germinating potential connected with them. Unorthodoxically referring to Agambenian idea of form of life, the author of the paper tries to introduce into the problem of life in the context of the Neo-Avant-Garde and to demonstrate how thinking about opening of the shell/the seed germination (becoming the other) pairs up with a reflection about community and communication.
The article is focused on the poetic work of Joanna Mueller. The author is interested in how the issue of the form-of-life is functionalized in her poetry and how her critical project, focused precisely on the modern category of life, translates into strictly literary activities. He begins with a polemic against the accusations of the conservativeness of Mueller’s poetics and her apparent experimentalism, referring to romantic gestures of defending subjectivity rather than its neo-avant-garde transgression, and tries to show how this stance actually is coupled with the feminist, new-materialist struggle for the form-of-life and the unveiling of immaterial labour. The stakes of Mueller’s poetic game, then, are not a poem that articulates social anger or acts as a dialectical negation of the capitalist system but an affirmative lagging that accommodates and secures a precarious life.
PL
Artykuł poświęcony jest poetyckiej twórczości Joanny Mueller, zwłaszcza temu, jak traktuje ona zagadnienie form życia oraz w jaki sposób projekt krytyczny pisarki, skupiony właśnie wokół modernistycznej kategorii życia, przekłada się na działania stricte literackie Mueller. Autor zaczyna od polemiki z zarzutami dotyczącymi zachowawczości poetyki Mueller oraz jej pozorowanego eksperymentatorstwa, nawiązującego raczej do romantycznych gestów obrony podmiotowości niż do jej neoawangardowego przekroczenia. Stara się pokazać, w jaki sposób ta rzekomo antynowoczesna postawa sprzęga się dziś z feministyczną, nowomaterialistyczną walką o formę życia i odsłonięcie pracy niematerialnej. Stawką poetyckiej gry Mueller nie jest bowiem wiersz artykułujący społeczny gniew ani też działający jako dialektyczna negacja systemu, lecz afirmacyjna otulina, która na chwilę ugości w sobie i zabezpieczy prekarne życie.
The book Płeć awangardy [Gender of the Avant-Garde] is the first attempt of this kind at a comprehensive, gender-oriented presentation of the avant-garde tradition in Polish literary studies. The review of the volume starts with an outline of its place in the worldwide humanities, especially in the face of the increasingly dynamic development of women’s studies on the avant-garde. Individual texts are slightly different from the editorial introduction and its assumptions: a materialistic attempt to reclaim and reestablish feminism in the heart of the avant-garde. Thus, they are presented as a result of a meeting of several methodological schools with clear patronages at the University of Silesia: art historians, literary historians, literary critics, representatives of men’s studies, women’s studies, feminism and gender studies. Despite the political background of many of them, connected with avant-garde ideas of social and aesthetic emancipation, it is easy to see how far their dictionaries have diverged from each other and how difficult it is now to meet and establish a common understanding of basic concepts such as avant-garde, sex/gender or even political engagement.
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