Er(r)go...

• Authors: Wojciech Kalaga

Title variants

EN

Er(r)go...

• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

PL

Wojciech KalagaInstytut Kultur i Literatur AnglojęzycznychWydział FilologicznyUniwersytet Śląski w Katowicach Er(r)go… ,ou-topos, a non-place, or perhaps, eu-topos, a good place? In any case, utopia, or contra-utopia, anti-utopia, dystopia, techno-utopia, uchronia, metatopia, allotopia, and finally, computopia. And also ecotopia, a world only potentially good, but this is not the end yet, as there is also multimedia simulation as utopia-humanity’s closed mental circuit, locked into utopothesia, non-places, non-time, vacuum,infinity and limitlessness, in other words, computerized narcotization. Such is our everyday technoreality: ontological shifts, traverse osmosis of virtuality and reality, a lack of desire to exit creation, deterritorialization of utopia. And earlier, utopian futuro-spasms of the futurists: sempre in avanti, the beauty of speed, a roaring car racing along the ammunition belt of a machine gun, insatiable train stations, broad-breasted locomotives and the gliding flight of aeroplanes. And then anthropologically uncertain Baudrillard asking: “am I a human or a machine?” Fundamentalist, usurping, toxic utopism (do not, please, mistake it for utopianism) and its two Insufferables. The institutionalization of morality, tracking of enemies and closing of ranks. And what of the utopist? A ludicrous tailor who cuts the client, not the fabric. Scientific thinking hits culture, and Lem takes advantage of this: an amplifier of intelligence, a gnostic machine, a phantomatic generator and the maker of worlds, teleactor, allplanetarysuperphantomaton, cyberdictatorship, but not of the proletariat, phantomatic debauchery: centrifugal onanism and the technology of facilitated pleasure, and, in consequence, a phantomatized society-stroking one’s ego, eradication of enemies, the abuse of subordinates, bloody dictatorship and the self-destruction of an avatar or relocating into another body, correcting, retouching, falsifications of brain, cerebromatic homicides, and, amongst all of this, Mr. Smith. Corporative utopias-what jerks! Corpomen, Purebloods, Consumers, Fabricants, Adams and Eves, prolerats, Gardeners. Evilpresent World, castes and strata, Prolepolis and Complexes, waterless deluge, corpocide, recycling of clones, and the female Fabricants consuming Amnesiad and Stimulin. A dangerous matter-HE (human enhancement)-someone wants to improve us! Ontological tinkering: what could we improve in ourselves, what could we correct? It is those transhumanists who tell us to wind our springs, to screw in ourselves. A registered human-cyborg hears colours, and where is the posthuman dignity? Great visions or pragmatism? Theory of salvation, extra-temporal world, a non-place which exists, the pedagogy of virtuous life, eschatological sanction, eternal life, escapist mentality, autosalvation. Or perhaps particle engineering let us create an active, critical, curious citizen, capable of resisting authority and environmental pressure and let us estimate our impotence. We are hungry. What of liberty? “Liberty! You cannot eat that!” We are entering Silesia, and the re a mythologized cultural symbol-tenement barracks of familoks-but also Arcadia: human, hygienic utopia of Giszowiec, a utopia made real, everyday proletarian happiness (although lonely men get pushed out into a bachelor house), nature, reason, order, harmony and convenience. But even Arcadia must be cleaned, craphouse, dunghill and all. And the (re)constructing of Silesia: the biography of Horst Bienek as distillate. Bienek amongst metaphysical landscapes and protocols from Auschwitz, Bienek’s poetological workshop, modernist textual universe and textualizing strategies, polyphonically open textures, illusions of referential authenticity, poetic realism, the telling of untellable Shoa, kapo, the wheezing of a dying man and the smell of jasmine. Heimatliteratur and professional exiles. Bienek (sur)faces in self-writing and homoerotic titillation escapes into the third person. Aut(h)o(r)biographical (de)scriptions and a narrative game of errors. In America, already deceased Fuller, the architect of things in motion, duplicates the soul of the universe, dymaxion houses and their cosmic consciousness, dymaxion map and the sacred triad: sacred geometry, sacred technology and the sacred secularity of the world. And also, here and the re: counterfinality of reason, blessed truth, blindness of technical utopia, personality without body, homo fantomaticus, homo hierarchicus, Human-us. And today’s fashion for ethics: the utopianism of the ethics of value, ethics of virtue, utopian ethical heroism, axiological totalism, hedonistic imperative, the power of values, autonomous conscience, twenty-five visions of a perfect society, liberated captivity, the yoke of slowness, architecture of oppression, the shadow of a ghost city, cognitive capitalism, virtual habitats, obscene surplus of visibility. The insufferable utopianism of utopism. Wojciech Kalaga

EN

Wojciech KalagaInstitute of English Cultures and LiteraturesFaculty of PhilologyUniversity of Silesia in KatowicePoland Er(r)go…,ou-topos, a non-place, or perhaps, eu-topos, a good place? In any case, utopia, or contra-utopia, anti-utopia, dystopia, techno-utopia, uchronia, metatopia, allotopia, and finally, computopia. And also ecotopia, a world only potentially good, but this is not the end yet, as there is also multimedia simulation as utopia-humanity’s closed mental circuit, locked into utopothesia, non-places, non-time, vacuum,infinity and limitlessness, in other words, computerized narcotization. Such is our everyday technoreality: ontological shifts, traverse osmosis of virtuality and reality, a lack of desire to exit creation, deterritorialization of utopia. And earlier, utopian futuro-spasms of the futurists: sempre in avanti, the beauty of speed, a roaring car racing along the ammunition belt of a machine gun, insatiable train stations, broad-breasted locomotives and the gliding flight of aeroplanes. And then anthropologically uncertain Baudrillard asking: “am I a human or a machine?” Fundamentalist, usurping, toxic utopism (do not, please, mistake it for utopianism) and its two Insufferables. The institutionalization of morality, tracking of enemies and closing of ranks. And what of the utopist? A ludicrous tailor who cuts the client, not the fabric. Scientific thinking hits culture, and Lem takes advantage of this: an amplifier of intelligence, a gnostic machine, a phantomatic generator and the maker of worlds, teleactor, allplanetarysuperphantomaton, cyberdictatorship, but not of the proletariat, phantomatic debauchery: centrifugal onanism and the technology of facilitated pleasure, and, in consequence, a phantomatized society-stroking one’s ego, eradication of enemies, the abuse of subordinates, bloody dictatorship and the self-destruction of an avatar or relocating into another body, correcting, retouching, falsifications of brain, cerebromatic homicides, and, amongst all of this, Mr. Smith. Corporative utopias-what jerks! Corpomen, Purebloods, Consumers, Fabricants, Adams and Eves, prolerats, Gardeners. Evilpresent World, castes and strata, Prolepolis and Complexes, waterless deluge, corpocide, recycling of clones, and the female Fabricants consuming Amnesiad and Stimulin. A dangerous matter-HE (human enhancement)-someone wants to improve us! Ontological tinkering: what could we improve in ourselves, what could we correct? It is those transhumanists who tell us to wind our springs, to screw in ourselves. A registered human-cyborg hears colours, and where is the posthuman dignity? Great visions or pragmatism? Theory of salvation, extra-temporal world, a non-place which exists, the pedagogy of virtuous life, eschatological sanction, eternal life, escapist mentality, autosalvation. Or perhaps particle engineering let us create an active, critical, curious citizen, capable of resisting authority and environmental pressure and let us estimate our impotence. We are hungry. What of liberty? “Liberty! You cannot eat that!” We are entering Silesia, and the re a mythologized cultural symbol-tenement barracks of familoks-but also Arcadia: human, hygienic utopia of Giszowiec, a utopia made real, everyday proletarian happiness (although lonely men get pushed out into a bachelor house), nature, reason, order, harmony and convenience. But even Arcadia must be cleaned, craphouse, dunghill and all. And the (re)constructing of Silesia: the biography of Horst Bienek as distillate. Bienek amongst metaphysical landscapes and protocols from Auschwitz, Bienek’s poetological workshop, modernist textual universe and textualizing strategies, polyphonically open textures, illusions of referential authenticity, poetic realism, the telling of untellable Shoa, kapo, the wheezing of a dying man and the smell of jasmine. Heimatliteratur and professional exiles. Bienek (sur)faces in self-writing and homoerotic titillation escapes into the third person. Aut(h)o(r)biographical (de)scriptions and a narrative game of errors. In America, already deceased Fuller, the architect of things in motion, duplicates the soul of the universe, dymaxion houses and their cosmic consciousness, dymaxion map and the sacred triad: sacred geometry, sacred technology and the sacred secularity of the world. And also, here and the re: counterfinality of reason, blessed truth, blindness of technical utopia, personality without body, homo fantomaticus, homo hierarchicus, Human-us. And today’s fashion for ethics: the utopianism of the ethics of value, ethics of virtue, utopian ethical heroism, axiological totalism, hedonistic imperative, the power of values, autonomous conscience, twenty-five visions of a perfect society, liberated captivity, the yoke of slowness, architecture of oppression, the shadow of a ghost city, cognitive capitalism, virtual habitats, obscene surplus of visibility. The insufferable utopianism of utopism. Wojciech Kalaga

Keywords

PL

utopia; iluzja; teoria literatury; filozofia; teoria kultury

EN

introductory essay; methodology of literary and cultural studies; central problems of the present issue

• Publisher: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego w Katowicach / Śląsk Sp. z o.o. Wydawnictwo Naukowe
• Journal: ER(R)GO: Teoria – Literatura – Kultura
• Year: 2018
• Issue: 36

Dates

published

2018-06-30

Contributors

author

Wojciech Kalaga