Cultural Studies is a young discipline. It appeared in academic structures in the 70s of the last century, that is when the study of culture has long been divided between older and more distinguished disciplines. Cultural studies had to somehow define in relation to existing cultural sciences. Cultural studies deconstructed opposition canonical and non-canonical art practice. Se Dealing with art outside the canon had and still has political dimension, as it draws attention to subcultures in which it sees the cultural expression of marginalized groups. We have no longer translated the English name “cultural studies” as “science of culture” or “knowledge of culture”. We do not examine culture in its numerous manifestations, high or low, but the cultural nature of various phenomena, for example gender. Three generations of researchers can be indicated in the not too long, nearly half century of Polish cultural studies. Cultural studies already has a certain academic tradition and it is still difficult for us to decide whether it is more of a new scientific discipline or new area of research?
Learning languages is connected with emotions and learning languages also includes regional and cultural studies. Regional studies can put emphasis on various issues. One option of the cultural regional studies is the implementation of memory spaces. Thus, the present paper deals with the aims of such implementation as well as with the question if and how is it presented in textbooks of German as a foreign language.
The aim of the study is to outline the role of language as the most effective tool of communication accessible to human beings in the context of international communication. Intercultural communication allows to indicate the diversity of intentions with which we enter into communicative relationships. It also highlights the need to take into account cultural difference in order to achieve understanding: the greater the extent to which diversity is taken into account and the greater the accompanying effort to reconstruct cultural beliefs, the higher the efficiency of communication.
Currently, when the world is no longer divided into two political-military blocks, local conflicts have ceased to be a surrogate training ground of rivalry between two superpowers. In most cases, they do not therefore constitute a direct threat to the world peace. Although, after the collapse of the Eastern bloc, local conflicts have lost their strategic dimension, we still have to deal with increasing number of new trends among the conflicts in the world. They cause political instability in various regions and bring substantial suffering to the people, and death, famine and epidemics. Their development brings new challenges, and thus the new visions of the future of the world around us.
The aim of the study is to present the concept of resettlement multiculturality. The multiculturality of displaced persons, the kind characterising resettlement in Western Poland, was not brought about spontaneously and is governed by entirely different principles. At this point one should contemplate the methods that assisted in the management of a city that is multicultural in character due to residents having been resettled, a city whose identity has not fully formed. Such a measure could also bring empirical confirmation uprooting occurred in the fourth generation. Presenting the concept of resettlement multiculturality the author is making use of – among other things – memory studies, Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of capital and his concepts of habitus, field and game, and the research of Geert Hofstede.
The aim of the study is to demonstrate the paradoxicality determining human life. The natural aspiration of the subject is to strive to achieve order, enabling a reasonably satisfying and passably predictable life, guaranteeing the essential sense of security both on an individual and on a social dimension. The ancient writers and thinkers saw the origins of differentiation, and thereby of the impossibility of achieving coherence and order, in the external reality. Views of thinkers of the 19th and 20th centuries show not only a demand for diversity to be taken into consideration, but also reveal their picture of culture as something highly heterogeneous that cannot be reduced to just a single, preferred vision. Multitude of models and values creates the potential for dialogue, which is irregular and spontaneous.
The study aims at the concept of culture in the context of cultural patterns which, in the process of the formation of culture, determine the ways of thinking, behavior and activities of each member of a culture. In the author’s opinion, these patterns may lead to the formation of various cultural patterns which frequently contradict one another, and finally to the strangeness which results from the different ideological assumptions within each culture. Such a concept of cultural patterns provides a new approach for studying culture, the creations and manifestations of culture and, last but not least, the functioning of the members of a culture. Contemporary concepts of the citizen usually focus on the liberal model of a civil society and to a lesser degree on communitarianism, while the other concepts are lean towards the cosmopolitan vision of the citizen of the world.
The aim of the article is to show the way in which the technologically mediated culture of consumption determines what we call lifestyle in the perspective of the critical cultural studies paradigm. Contemporary consumption, based as it is on the counter-cultural ideas which appeal to difference, creativity and lifestyle, solves the central problem of consumerism – supplying a constant stream of novelty in a situation where things are losing just this quality. Lifestyle has become a life strategy, the framework for interpreting consumer choice suggests that freely made decisions concerning symbolic and aesthetic pleasures provide a sense of fulfilment in a successful and varied lifestyle. Culture is increasingly perceived through the prism of who we should be, and what we should have, in order to achieve by means of these an illusory goal, namely that of identity.
World War One in East Prussia, which means Russian invasion between August 1914 and February 1915, drew the attention of the German public to this theatre of war. On the example of many texts which were regarded “authentic” one can demonstrate how strong the influence of the language was in the context of the war hysteria and propaganda. In this way next to the existing reality an alternative, invented reality was created which could not be ignored. Eyewitness accounts, false stories about the atrocities of war and propaganda lies existed in the gray area of the communication sphere in which authenticity and fiction were indistinguishable.
In the field on mass/popular culture theory one can distinguish two different aproaches – according to the first of them, culture is a tool of social control and the source of profit (this two functions can complement each other); according to the second, popular culture is a semiotic battlefield, where one can produce also opposite and subversive meanings. In this article I’m setting myself two goals. In the first part of the text I’ll compare two foregoing traditions. In the further parts I’ll confront the following question: can this two theories help us to understand the possibilities of emancipatory subjects in contemporary world? Because the emancipatory and opposite functions of popular culture are emphasized mainly by members of the second tradition, I’ll concentrate here primarily on their views.
The aim of the study is to evaluate the xenogamous nature of cultural studies. The author is of the opinion that the word xenogamy that belongs to the biological sciences is worth applying in the form of another metaphor, one relating to the concept of culture as such, culture as an abstract category. The history of this word’s usage, and the resultant connotations and denotations of the concept of culture, show that its meaning is not only constantly evolving, expanding or narrowing, but is in addition constantly being ‘pollinated’ by various areas of social practice. Proving the proposed thesis the author presents the selected works on the concept of culture.
The author is of the opinion that contemporary times could be described by the concept of a paradox forcing a redefinition of the fundamental concepts sanctioning the functioning of what until now would have seemed permanent states of focus of culture. On the one hand the satiated and ostensibly safe Western Civilisation is dealing with ever more problems it has produced for itself, whether in the form of post-colonial legacy that it is having to contend with, or the effects of hazy and inefficient multiculturalism projects, while on the other hand for over a decade, symbolically since the turn of the 21st century, the world has been undergoing fragmentation, and the tribal sentiments of diverse groups, who previously had no say of their own or were denied the right to have one, are being heard.
Contemporary humanities are confronted with a search for new forms of legitimization. Processes that enforce such a necessity stem from the technicization of contemporary culture. The methodologies of the humanities, and even their status as a group of academic disciplines, are questionable. The aim of the article is to argue that these external and internal problems in the humanities are interlinked with the state of being after the end of theory. This assumption is grounded on the thesis that the humanities need to find a solution to the impasse which could be described as the questions of what theory means and why society should be concerned about it.
The article by Artur Duda is a review of the Polish edition of Castorf. Provokation als Prinzip (translated by Małgorzata Sugiera and Mateusz Borowski) by Robin Detje, the first book in Poland devoted to the artistic director of the Volksbühne in Berlin. The author of the review critically examines the book, praising the colourful portrayal of the director’s life set against the background of his family relations, numerous love partners, and with a look into very interesting private and family documents as well as school archives and files of the Stasi, East German secret police. Of particular interest is the part titled East, which concerns Castorf’s artistic activity in the GDR. The author of the review draws attention to the director’s attitude toward the Communist state, his struggles with the regime, and his balanced views on vetting informants and unofficial collaborators of the Stasi (a digression about the case of Michael Schindhelm). In Andrzej Duda’s opinion, due to the lack of historical distance, the second part of the book, entitled West, does not make as much of an impression as the first one. The reviewer emphasises the book’s merits (behind-the-scenes details of how Castorf first met the actors that he worked with in Berlin; the heroic beginnings of the Volksbühne; the significance of rock music in his life and directing, especially as far as his contestation of the bourgeois theatre and culture is concerned) but points out that the reflexion on Castorf’s theatre aesthetics is somewhat fragmentary: in what sense is he a continuator of Stanislavski and Brecht? Is he really inspired by commedia dell’arte? What are the distinguishing features of acting in Castorf’s theatre? All the objections, however, do not change the fact that R. Detje’s book about a rebel director makes for fascinating reading. Finally, the reviewer highlights some Poland-related strands in Frank Castorf’s biography.
The book Wobec nihilizmu by Mateusz Werner presents the problem of nihilism and its manifestations in two perspectives: a chronological and a historiosophical one: “these two languages of description, to a greater extent complementary than antagonistic, delineate the horizon for reflexion ‘diachronising’ the problem of nihilism”. Owing to such methodology, the author’s account of the history of the concept leads to a brilliant interpretation based on the assumption that nihilism is a concept identical to “modernity” (as the term is understood by Zygmunt Bauman). One of the questions that Werner poses is to what extent nihilism determines the phenomenon of “modernity” and to what extent that of “postmodernity”, given that the concepts of nihilism and modernity are bound with each other so inextricably that they “illuminate one another’s meanings as to create a circular knot of references”. The assumption of the book is that “the concept of nihilism in all of its historical modifications constitutes a product of the self-consciousness of an intellectual formation which, after Zygmunt Bauman, we would like to call modern, and within the bounds of the aforesaid self-consciousness it is a collective name for such attitudes, conceptions and ideas which, resting on the same foundations as modernity, constitute at the same time a threat to modernity’s established values, aims, and meanings”. Thus understood, the concept of nihilism serves as a starting point for analysis of intellectual positions towards modernity taken by Witold Gombrowicz and Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz. Both writers were equally well aware of the nature of the contemporary world, its rejection of old axiological bases, and threats that implementation of the modernity paradigm brought. At the same time, the attitudes that each of them assumed based virtually on the same diagnosis were quite different. According to Werner, Gombrowicz decided to turn the situation to his advantage. The adequate identification of the modern world’s nature enabled Gombrowicz to deploy this knowledge in his struggle for himself, for his legend, to show his worth and superiority as being the one who knew better and was right about the nature of the world all along. Witkacy, on the other hand, assumed the position of a warrior sounding the alarm, and when his warnings failed, he simply left. This difference between the outstanding creative individuals that Werner examines point by point in relation to modernity seems to be absolutely crucial when comes to conscious individuals, intellectuals, and their attitudes towards values. Does the social status of the intellectual come with an obligation to take action and fight for one’s values, or does it permit one to stand back and build one’s individual position of the one who knows what is going on but, as “Romantic irony” dictates, refrains from doing anything about it? In other words, what attitude should an intellectual, scientist, but also theatre artist, assume? Especially when it comes to the theatre which is now often based on the thought of the two outstanding Polish individualities who responded to nihilism so differently?
The article presents a grim vision of the world in which teaching is no longer conducted. This serves as a basis for a critical evaluation of the abolishment of didactic process in favor of publications. The main idea is that the basis for the teaching process in the humanities is the only way in which humanities can develop understanding that will reach culture through the mediation of students which are the beneficiaries of humanistic ideals of teaching. There are also presented ideas concerning possible practices that counter negative tendencies. One of them is focused on creating publications about the humanistic didactic process that would include students not only as forces to gain knowledge withing the university but also as an active participants of culture that can develop themselves through the humanistic ideals. Special role of cultural studies in this process is also emphasized.
The article presents the results of research conducted in the master degree thesis, prepared at the Institute of Theory of Literature, Theatre and Audiovisual Arts, University of Lodz, under the supervision of prof. Assoc. Jarosław Płuciennik. First I present a theoretical and methodological frame of analysis of the text (especially taken form cognitive psychology of concepts: category, categorization, prototype and similarity), the second I present interpretation of terminology in relation to the concept genre and based on it doing a cognitive analysis such categories as: epic poem, heroic poetry or monk heroic poetry, based on Trans-Atlantyk by Witold Gombrowicz. The summary is an attempt to reference the conclusions derived from the analysis to the debate on the nature of the two aestethic categories – ‘style’ and ‘stylization’. These concepts are not – I suppose – immanent properties of the text, but mental constructs, first existing on mind of cognizing person. The cognitive methodology allows this aspect capture and describe.
This paper assesses the works of Professor Alexandr Stich (1934–2003) devoted to the literature of the Early Modern era (especially the Baroque). This influential literary historian, linguist and textual critic turned his attention to Baroque literature mainly after 1989, and it remained at the centre of his interest until his death. The article delineates the various areas of Stich’s research into 16th–18th century literature (evaluative surveys, synthetic studies, interpretations of individual works, studies of motifs manifesting themselves in various eras of literary history). The author analyzes Stich’s ‘linguistic-literary’ method which combines literary history with linguistic methodology, placing it in the context of traditional philological research and studies of literary stylistics. Stich’s focus on the interpretation of texts and his analysis of key motifs of Baroque literature is assessed alongside his application of newer trends incorporating the external contexts of literary works (cultural studies, New Historicism).
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