The text monitors the reception of Edward Said's 'Orientalism' paying special attention to interpretative shifts which, according to the author, falsify the initial sense and obscure the original context of the work's creation. On the basis of other texts of Said, especially 'The World, the Text and the Critic', the author calls into question the relation of Orientalism with postcolonial studies and, in a wider context, with poststructuralism. He perceives the popularity of Western European poststructural thought at American universities in the late 80s and early 90s as a symptom of a rebirth of an oppressive theoretical empire of the American academic thought. The ideas of postcolonialism combined with superficial American pluralism hackneys the issue of discrimination and intolerance by means of racial and phenomenological confluence of the Other. Said, as a politically engaged researcher, has criticized poststructuralists on a number of occasions, especially Foucault, for diverging from a real interest in imperial discourse to an analysis of the speaking I. The origins of Orientalism are rooted in Vico and Auerbach's thought who, like Said, create models of philological humanism. Its topic is not the discourse but the institution which gathers information. This institution is a university in the service of the empire which plays its role both in the colonial times as well as in the second half of the 20th century.
The present text owes its genesis to an extremely inspiring Pawel Pieniazek's book entitled 'Suwerennosc a nowoczesnosc. Z dziejów poststrukturalistcznej recepcji mysli Nietzschego' (Sovereignty and Modernity. The History of Post-structuralist Reception of Nietzsche). However, the article is neither a classical review nor a polemic with this remarkable work. It is rather an introduction to the main thesis conveyed in the book, according to which Nietzsche's 'failure' to philosophically ground a new 'elite culture' was a condition for French post-structuralist formation to emerge. By deliberately focusing on 'anti-metaphysical' aspects of Nietzsche's thought, post-structuralists 'misread' Nietzsche in that they effaced the properly 'metaphysical' themes alternating his oeuvre. The aim of this article is to target 'moments' or points in which the poststructuralist reading of Nietzsche can be proven to depart from his thought. Several points of this departure are enumerated: total critique/skepticism, individualism, pluralism/relativism, and transgression/extreme experiences. The author follows Pieniazek's critical remarks on poststructuralism in arguing that the French philosophers did not attempt to positively 'overcome' the aporias related with these concepts. They actually endorsed them as if oblivious of their nihilistic and decadent aspects to which Nietzsche was so sensitive. Ultimately, the author echoes Pieniazek's contention that Nietzsche can be seen as a critic 'avant la lettre' of the French post-structuralist formation. Contrary to Pieniazek, however, he is more careful to announce 'superiority' of Nietzsche's insights over post-structuralism. Instead, he asks: did French philosophers betray Nietzsche by abandoning his idea of a new, better culture? Or did they 'overcome' him, perhaps in a strive to rescue Nietzsche from metaphysics? Yet another question comes to mind: which of the two parties does Pieniazek actually sympathize with? Is it Nietzsche, who does not avoid charges of moral-metaphysical reasoning, or is it post-structuralism whose transgressive drive and quest for 'the Other' and 'the Inhuman' has always fascinated Pieniazek? What is Pawel Pieniazek's attitude to metaphysics in the first place?
In this paper, the author responds to Michal Kruszelnicki's polemic with his book 'Nietzsche a nowoczesnosc. He develops the points invoked by Kruszelnicki. They focus mostly on the difference between Nietzsche's philosophy and post-structuralism, that was criticized 'avant la lettre' by Nietzsche in his criticism of decadence and its transgressive structure. He stresses the radicalization of the Dionysian dimension in Nietzsche's thought by post-structuralism and dissociating Nietzsche from the most important thing to him: the culture-creative project in his thought.
The subject of the paper is the concurrence of problems between Norwid's comedy 'Second Thousandth Night' and the theoretical controversies contemporarily discussed by literary scholars. Norwid's work, written in romantic period, submits into discussion such kind of examination of literature that dominates in the contemporary studies, when poststructuralism has crystallized. The paper answers the question how it happens that 'Second Thousandth Night' is still actual, clear, and extensive as far as the phenomenon of literature is concerned. The events of 'Second Thousandth Night' assume that special attention is paid on the text in question, which is the core of the discussion in this paper. Norwid gave his comedy an autothematic construction: two protagonists - Roger and Lady - expressively reciting the poem 'Over the houses of the Capullets and the Montagues...' effect this kind of artistic activity that made the poetic activity come into existence. Directions of artistic activity taken by Roger, Lady, and Norwid are the same. As a result, 'Second Thousandth Night' shows the phenomenon of literature simultaneously on two levels - fictional level and the level of Norwid's authentic poetic activity. Such characteristics of Norwid's work shed light on the literary-theoretical controversies arisen by scholars since the text in question causes them by its existence.
The article tries to answer the question: Why the publication of The Order of Things aroused the polemics about M. Foucault’s being a structuralist? Unlike structuralism, Foucault’s archaeology introduces semantic structures into history: he examines the dramatic rearrangement of words and things in history to unveil the historical background of the production of the period-related, transitory, discontinued, relative knowledge. In the author’s view, this method is contradictory in itself as it does not consider its own politics of meaning. While describing the three ways of the epistemic generating of representations Foucault nevertheless ascribes the arbitrary representation of things by words to the only episteme, namely the „classical“ one. It is the later Foucault who reflects on the ethics of meaning, which unveils the production of representation in every politics of meaning, even in its own one, creating thus the meta-representations.
The paper deals with the concept of text, showing its transformations in semiotic studies. First, the text is excluded from semiotics in favour of the system and its paradigmatic perspective, as shown in the works of L. Hjemslev. Then the meaning of the text is reconsidered as in later works of Barthes and mainly in the text theory of J. Kristeva. Both of them mark the transition to the further, poststructuralist stage of semiotics. This transformation made the text close to the image of a network. The paper goes even further. Following B. Latour it tries to justify the acceptation of hybrids and impurities. Moreover, it requires not only a reconsideration of the philosophical method, but also an acceptation together with impurities the effects of balkanization.
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