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Er(r)rgo...

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Kalaga W.

ER(R)GO: Teoria – Literatura – Kultura

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2000

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issue 1

PL

Er(r)go, the inevitability of the inaugurating word which, of necessity, anticipates the future, but also binds us with the past. The space of “ergo” has always been there (given the complexities of the world, it may have been the first word uttered by the demiurge). Unlike “and,” “also,” “as well,” “between,” - “ergo” constitutes a complex space, full of folds and niches, where thought is forced into meandering, and from which it emerges transformed, so that it no longer recognizes itself. As Andrzej Chojecki writes (and we are already anticipating the next issue in which his paper will appear), in the space of “ergo” “the most amazing parallels, identifications and differentiations occur. It is here that the most dramatic ruptures take place. The obvious may appear in the realm of “ergo”, but it may also be doomed to non-existence and non-obviousness.” The space of “Er(r)go” emerged about twenty years ago, when the interdisciplinary seminar of the same name began its activities, which it continued for almost fifteen years. Many people, numerous voices, and numerous texts filled that space. “Er(r)go: Theory – Literature – Culture” reopens that space again, even though without the former innocence of origins. Essays by Tadeusz Rachwał and Tadeusz Sławek nostalgically bridge the now with the past. They join the voices coming from diverse realms of the humanities – that of the Nestor of scholarship, Stefan Morawski, as well as of Agata Bielik-Robson, Ewa Domańska, Ewa Rewers, Krystyna Wilkoszewska. They mix – frequently in polemics and debates – with the voices made accessible by translation or citation: those of Blake, Barthes, Bauman, Derrida, Heidegger, Levinas, Rorty, to mention only some of them. The space of “Er(r)go” absorbs “ergo”, but enriches it with the consciousness of Theory: of theoretical reflexivity and self-reflexivity, of the incessant need to question even the most obvious categories, presuppositions, axioms and criteria. In its methodological principle, it is an interdisciplinary space; it is thus hospitable, but at the same time demanding, because it requires the annihilation of the blind borders separating disciplines and calls for a dialogue of discourses and paradigms – for the listening to the voice of the Other. It is only when these requirements are fulfilled that one may grasp the relations and phenomena invisible to monodisciplinary thinking: to the non-reflexive binarity of self-conceited certainty of the obvious and the stable. Wojciech Kalaga

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Er(r)rgo...

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Kalaga W.

ER(R)GO: Teoria – Literatura – Kultura

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2001

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issue 3

PL

Er(r)go, wie es ist eigentlich gewesen? History: facts, chronology, objectivism, truth, meaning, ideology, profanum, narration, construct, metaphor, representation, interpretation, memory, reflection, manipulation, myth, fiction, magister vitae. Or rather, and maybe in spite of the above, history is a privilege, which makes it possible to remember who one is (Michel de Certeau), since it saturates us with the continuity of the same and the other, and situates the outside within the space of subjectivity. Only paradoxically history seems to be an eschatological domain: it is death after all, that is the condition of historical discourse; and yet, according to the French thinker, "the dead souls resurge, within the work whose postulate was their disappearance and the possibility of analyzing them as an object of investigation." The dis/em/bodied dead - their ashes - elude their dead objectuality and speak to us through (sub)liminal traces of presence (cf. Ewa Domańska). All the more, then - if the multiplying questions fall into chasms between value and fact, politics and morality, objectivity and selfconscious subjectivism, if attempts at historical epistemology remind us of the work of philistines (Frank Ankersmit), if discourse as representation fails the will to truth - should we perhaps take a detour through the path (road?) that gives priority to ontology. At least, if not for other reasons, because it may lead us safe amongst the dictates of the regime of binarity. The third issue of Er(r)go is the first which is devoted to problems from one thematic area. An important "historical" incentive came from the conference organized in Poznań by the Department of History, called Time, space, and the Evidence of Experience. Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Past. Thanks to the collaboration and warm enthusiasm of its animator, Dr. Ewa Domańska, we are able to publish here there papers (by Frank Ankersmit, Georg G. Iggers, Fernando Sánchez-Marcos) delivered at the conference in March 2000. Wojciech Kalaga

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Er(r)go...

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Kalaga W.

ER(R)GO: Teoria – Literatura – Kultura

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2016

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issue 32

EN

The editor-in-chief’s preface devoted to the key ideas for the contemporary literary and cultural theory, which introduces the debates foregrounded in this issue.

PL

Wstęp autorstwa redaktora naczelnego wprowadzający kluczowe zagadnienia dla współczesnej teorii literatury i kultury, a także komentujący zagadnienia, którym poświęcony jest niniejszy numer.

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Er(r)go...

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Kalaga W.

ER(R)GO: Teoria – Literatura – Kultura

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2019

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issue 39

5-8

EN

Er(r)go… ,…what a theatre! Help yourselves: intercultural theatre, transcultural theatre, ultracultural theatre, metacultural theatre, multicultural theatre, postdramatic theatre, folk theatre, ritualized theatre and theatrilized rituals, amateur theatre, professional theatre, country theatre, ethnotheatre, anthropological theatre, contaminated by ethnology, theatre of art, avant-garde theatre, Theatre of Sources, polyphonic theatre, multigeneration theatre, indigenous theatre, independent theatre, theatre which-is-not, and on top of that anti-opera, ethno-performance, multiperformance, solo-performance, dreadful pantomime and the Country Housewives Association. It’s clear now – “[t]heatre is not a newspaper!” Among those theatres and non-theatres a variety of cultural ebbs and flows, cultural transfers, transcultural practices, implied transgressions and thematized transgressions, cultural penetrations, liquidity of cultural identities and mutual glances, cultural revivalisms, dramaturgic recyclings, artistic patchworks, progressive over-writings, borrowed stories, intellectual jugglery, tradaptations, chaotic wordplays, rescuing destructions, hybridizations, interpenetrations, renarrations, revocations, reinterpretations, remixes, recontextualizations – in any case, cultural motion is on the rise.A lot is happening, too. Subjects intro-duce and redefine themselves in front of one another, Afro-French citizens are outraged at the treatment of black actors’ bodies, out of darkness emerges Hottentot Venus, and the victims keep staring at us in silence. Meanwhile, an individual is entangled in the dialectical process of historical development, clusters of pedestrians walk down the streets with hyenas on chains, a contemporary Hindu woman flounders between local and global discourses, Europe is growing, getting fat, puffing itself up and gathering steam and then rides and tames the bull, the self-conscious, self-feeling and self-responsible body dances the Odissi dance, dramatic texts pour out unpredictably from pre-defined forms, twenty female extras of different ages declaim a choral poem on fucking, the I asks who is I, Welfare Management Organisation privatizes refugees, gender dynamics leaves a sensual and feminine mark, but unfortunately the spectacle is disrupted by right-wing extremists, and access to the theatre is blocked by the Rosary Crusade. Spectator’s cowardice. Jelinek runs life off the theatre, and in all that stage chaos circulate dramatis personae. A whip would come in handy.There’s more: strange, wild and perverse things happen in the forest. (“What the fuck do you think an English forest is for?” asks Butterworth rhetorically). Brecht puts it in even simpler terms: “To hell with reason!” And so a wealthy and hardworking ant offers food and shelter to a grasshopper, demanding sexual disposal for herself and others, a man shrunk to the size of a dwarf finds himself in a cognac bottle, Jason and Medea’s sons are poisoned by mistake, Tiresias blinds the elite, multiplied Cassandra hosts a popular TV show, Orestes starts up a dance school with his partner, Phaedra sings a hymn to William Blake’s lyrics, some general regularly eats up a historical map of Europe but while biting off the pieces still respects its old borders, and the mythical tradition radiates both in the foreground and the background as it remains unaware of its own downgrading. And in addition, feasting on Shakespeare, brain spiced up with masala in Molière, roasted quails, saffron, sorbet, Ganges water, leishmaniasis and dum-dum fever. Essentially, the spectator is redundant.So what shall we do? Nothing but stimulate, irritate, excite and infuriate.Wojciech Kalagahttps://orcid.org/0000-0003-4874-9734P.S.: The present issue is guest-edited by Professor Eugenia Sojka of the University of Silesia.We also wish to remind our Readers and Authors that – beginning with issue No. 40 (1/2020) – Er(r)go will become bilingual: we will be publishing articles in both Polish and English. The cover of this issue heralds these forthcoming changes.

PL

Er(r)go… ,… co za teatr! Do wyboru: teatr interkulturowy, teatr transkulturowy, teatr ultrakulturowy, teatr metakulturowy, teatr multikulturowy, teatr międzykulturowy, teatr postdramatyczny, teatr ludowy, teatr obrzędowy i steatralizowane obrzędy, teatr amatorski, teatr zawodowy, teatr wiejski, etnoteatr, teatr antropologiczny, zarażony etnologią, teatr artystyczny, teatr awangardowy, Teatr Źródeł, teatr polifonii głosów, teatr wielopokoleniowy, teatr indygenny, teatr niezależny, teatr, który zawsze jest na niby, a na dodatek antyopera, etnoperformans, multiperformans, solo-performans, przerażająca pantomima i Stowarzyszenie Kół Gospodyń Wiejskich. Widać wreszcie – „[t]eatr to nie gazeta”! Pośród tych teatrów i nie-teatrów różne kulturowe wpływy i przepływy, transfery kulturowe, transkulturowe praktyki, transgresje implikowane i transgresje tematyzowane, penetracje kultur, płynność kulturowych tożsamości i wzajemnych spojrzeń, rewiwalizmy kultury, dramaturgiczne recyklingi, artystyczne patchworki, progresywne nadpisania, zapożyczone historie, żonglerka intelektualna, tradaptacje, chaotyczne sploty słów, ocalające destrukcje, hybrydyzacje, interpenetracje, renarracje, rewokacje, reinterpretacje, re-mixowania, rekontekstualizacje – jakby nie było, ruch w kulturze przyspiesza.Sporo się też dzieje. Podmioty wzajemnie się sobie przed-stawiają i redefiniują, afrofrancuscy obywatele oburzają się sposobem potraktowania ciał czarnoskórych aktorów, z ciemności wyłania się półnaga Hotentocka Wenus, a ofiary patrzą na nas uporczywie w milczeniu. Tymczasem jednostka wikła się w dialektyczny proces rozwoju dziejów, grupki ludzi przechadzają się po ulicy z hienami na łańcuchu, współczesna Hinduska plącze się pomiędzy dyskursem globalnym i lokalnym, Europa rozrasta się, tyje, puchnie i rośnie w siłę, a potem ujeżdża i ujarzmia byka, samo-świadome, samo-czujące, samo-ruszające i samo-odpowiedzialne ciało tańczy taniec odissi, teksty dramatyczne wylewają się w sposób nieprzewidywalny z ustalonych wcześniej form, dwadzieścia statystek w różnym wieku wygłasza chóralny poemat o rżnięciu, ja pyta kim jest ja, Organizacja Zarządzania Dobrem prywatyzuje uchodźców, dynamika płciowa pozostawia kobiecy i zmysłowy akcent, ale niestety przebieg spektaklu zakłócają prawicowi ekstremiści, a dostępu do teatru broni Krucjata Różańcowa. Tchórzostwo widza. Jelinek wypędza życie z teatru, a w całym tym scenicznym bałaganie krążą główne postacie dramatu. Lepiej jest wziąć ze sobą pejcz.Mało tego: w lesie dzieją się rzeczy dziwne, dzikie i przewrotne („Do czego innego, kurwa, potrzebny jest las w Anglii?”, pyta retorycznie Butterworth). Brecht wykłada to klarownie: „Niech diabeł weźmie rozsądek!”. A zatem zamożna i pracowita mrówka daje konikowi polnemu dach nad głową i wyżywienie, żądając w zamian seksualnej dyspozycji dla siebie i innych, mężczyzna zmniejszony do rozmiarów krasnala odnajduje się w butelce po koniaku, przez niedopatrzenie otruci zostają synowie Jazona i Medei, Tejrezjasz oślepia elitę, zmultiplikowana Kasandra prowadzi popularny program rozrywkowy, Orestes zakłada ze swoim partnerem szkołę tańca, Fedra śpiewa hymn do słów Williama Blake’a, jakiś generał regularnie zjada mapę historyczną Europy, jednak przy podziale na kęsy respektuje jej dawne granice, a tradycja mityczna promieniuje sobie w planie bliskim, jak również dalekim, bo nie wie, że mit został zdegradowany. I jeszcze biesiadne spożywanie Szekspira, a u Moliera móżdżek przyprawiony masalą, przepiórki z pieca, szafran, sorbet, woda z Gangesu, leiszmanioza i gorączka dum-dum. Zasadniczo widz nie jest konieczny.I co tu robić? Pozostaje tylko stymulować, irytować, ekscytować i rozwścieczać.Wojciech Kalagahttps://orcid.org/0000-0003-4874-9734PS Numer ten ukazuje się pod gościnną redakcją dr hab. Eugenii Sojki z Uniwersytetu Śląskiego w Katowicach.Pragniemy także przypomnieć naszym Czytelnikom i Autorom, iż począwszy od numeru 40 (1/2020), „Er(r)go” stanie się pismem dwujęzycznym: będziemy publikować materiały w języku polskim i angielskim.

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Er(r)go...

100%

Kalaga W.

ER(R)GO: Teoria – Literatura – Kultura

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2020

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issue 40

5-8

EN

Er(r)go...… we are reaching into the depths of memory and of the archive, here and there brushing against ideology. What a variety: there is collective memory and, of course, individual memory, transactive memory and interactive memory, deep memory, narrative memory, live memory, cultural memory, declarative memory, memory enchanted in the body and intellectual memory, communicative memory, common memory, memory beyond-the-self, generational memory, cultural memory, mythical memory, somatic memory and semantic memory, prosthetic memory, shared memory, observable memory, family memory, community memory, diffuse memory and total memory, tactile memory and mediated memory, involuntary memory and voluntary memory, and on top of these post-memory, anti-memory, meta-memory, as well as a selection of recollections, memory recyclings, generational nostalgias, nostalgic affirmations, mnemonic structures of pain and trauma, memory crystallisation points, practices of commemorating, artistic anamneses, anchors of memory, but also desacralisation and instrumentalization of memory, history without shame, memory loss, non-memory, amnesia, creative forgetfulness – and all that among the crumbs of the past, accidental trivialities, reminiscences and afterimages. Interesting things also happen in arts, film and the media: poles of good and evil are reversed, suburban ideologies are exposed, femininity is trimmed to match the expectations of an age which in turn loses its innocence, savages are being tamed and Taiwanese aborigines united, heads are chopped off with machetes, bodies stabbed with knives and bayonets. Fearless warrior Buta undergoes a magical transformation and becomes a rainbow, lone cowards enter the world of the dead, during a massacre one woman sings of life and death while the other – already domesticated – suffers from a problem with no name. A director creates an opera with the use of virtual media – a person can passively watch the piece while petting the dog or eating a sandwich (wow!) – and the opera-singer declares: I am the voice of the vampire. Picasso tries to climb up on the throne and argues with Matisse, creating Arcadia in a brothel, Saturn castrates his father and throws into the sea his mutilated genitals (Venus! Venus!), and female genitals are the ones that return our look even though we do not accept painting as exorcism. Fans apply cultural acupuncture and their ideology reaches far beyond a mouse click. This is the great power of poiēsis! It is through poiēsis that they are able to locate meaning in their being-there, and Hermione Granger transforms from a fictional character to an apt vehicle capable of igniting social change. Game designers face a tough one: enter the player who forgot they have amnesia, immersing in the game world, taking decisions in Dark Knight’s shoes, and the sight of their own bowels, wrapped around their wrist like some ghastly bracelet, makes them sick. Paranoid Incarnation creates a diary, locked up in a dodecahedron, as a trap for other incarnations, Marta the Seamstress collects teeth and other parts of corpses. The Walking Dead turns out to be one big swindle. And Camille Lemonnier rightly notes that nothing is less nude than a woman emerging from a pair of drawers. Near Smoleńsk time moves backwards and loops itself, and the Polish national hero follows the path of passion and ends up in Eden. That’s how it works: if you don’t know yourself, you are lost. But the narrative will sell anyway. Literature does not fall behind either: grotesque and repulsive descriptions of the mother here, attempts to re-create oneself a-new without ancestral burden there, then the past locked up in a castle cellar and life tainted with trauma, and on top of these, lecherous songs, circumcision as inscription, a ghost full of venom, redness of a lipstick which allows for a kiss, creation as a gloriously cancerous proliferation and then trauma again, but this time a hauntological one. A lot is happening here, too. Nailcruncher speaks highly of Gamaliel while the latter warns his son against the deceitful charm of feminine beauty, the past haunts the protagonist like a boomerang, and scars on a female protagonist’s back shape up as a cherry tree, the subject hauntologically encounters its own spectres and stops being identical with itself, Britain sinks in the fog breathed out by the she-dragon Querig, and yet Sir Gawain and the monks keep her alive. And then an invisible force ferociously hurls a dog against the wall, naked and smiling Beloved is exiled, women take pictures of pictures, cream fudge candies “carambar” and “makagiga” metaphorically connect Górzański and Perec, who remembers hating the taste of sour cabbage, and the third generation remembers the things they never lived through. And so the archive becomes the experience of the future. Various personae are watching all this: Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Aristotle, Plato, Parmenides, Anaximander, Heraclitus, Husserl, Freud, Bergson, Ricoeur, Derrida, Lacan, Horkheimer, Adorno, Halbwachs, Sacks, Taylor, Barthes, and even Athena and Theseus. Someone makes a constatation: in many countries, those who are heard (and in charge) are those who conquer memory and nurture hatred. So let us rejoice: after all, it is not truth that is in question.Wojciech Kalagahttps://orcid.org/0000-0003-4874-9734

PL

Er(r)go... … sięgamy do pamięci i do archiwum, ocierając się tu i ówdzie o ideologię. Jakichż to pamięci tu nie napotkamy: jest pamięć zbiorowa i oczywiście pamięć indywidualna, pamięć transaktywna i pamięć interaktywna, pamięć głęboka, pamięć narracyjna, pamięć żywa, pamięć kulturowa, pamięć deklaratywna, pamięć zaklęta w ciele i pamięć intelektualna, pamięć komunikatywna, pamięć kolektywna, pamięć ponadjednostkowa, pamięć pokoleniowa, pamięć kulturowa, pamięć mityczna, pamięć somatyczna i pamięć semantyczna, pamięć w formie protetycznej, pamięć wspólna, pamięć widoczna, pamięć rodzinna, pamięć społecznościowa, pamięć rozproszona i pamięć totalna, pamięć namacalna i pamięć zmediatyzowana, pamięć mimowolna i pamięć dobrowolna, a jeszcze post-pamięć, przeciw-pamięć i meta-pamięć oraz różne rekolekcje, recyklingi wspomnień, pokoleniowe nostalgie, nostalgiczne afirmacje, mnemoniczne struktury cierpienia i traumy, punkty krystalizacji pamięci, praktyki upamiętniania, artystyczne anamnezy, kotwice pamięci, ale też desakralizacja i instrumentalizacja pamięci, historia bez winy, pamięć utracona, niepamięć, amnezja, twórcze zapomnienie – wszystko to pośród drobin przeszłości, akcydentalnych błahostek, reminiscencji i powidoków. W sztuce malarskiej, filmowej i medialnej dzieją się interesujące rzeczy: odwraca się bieguny dobra i zła, demaskuje ideologię świata przedmieść, przycina kobiecość do szablonu epoki, a epoce odbiera niewinność, cywilizuje się dzikusów i jednoczy tajwańskich aborygenów, maczetami ucina się głowy, przebija nożami i bagnetami. Nieustraszony wojownik Buta dzięki magicznej przemianie staje się tęczą, tchórzliwi samotnie wchodzą do świata zmarłych, w czasie masakry kobieta śpiewa o życiu i śmierci, inna kobieta – udomowiona – cierpi na problem bez nazwy. Reżyser tworzy operę przez media wirtualne – oglądając, można sobie głaskać psa lub jeść kanapkę (wow!) – a śpiewaczka mówi: „To ja jestem głosem wampirzycy”. Picasso próbuje wspiąć się na tron i spiera się z Matisse’em, tworząc Arkadię w burdelu, Saturn kastruje swego ojca i wrzuca jego okaleczone genitalia do morza (Wenus! Wenus!), kobiece zaś genitalia odwzajemniają nasze spojrzenie, choć my nie zgadzamy się z malarstwem jako egzorcyzmem. Fani stosują kulturową akupunkturę, a ich ideologia wykracza daleko poza kliknięcie myszką. Oto wielka siła poiēsis! To dzięki niej fani potrafią odnaleźć znaczenie w byciu-tu-oto, a Hermione Granger przeistacza się z fikcyjnej postaci w zapalnik społecznych przemian. Twórcy gier stają przed trudnym zadaniem; pojawia się gracz: gracz nie pamięta faktu, że ma amnezję, zanurza się w świecie gry, podejmuje decyzje w butach Mrocznego Rycerza, a widok własnych wnętrzności, owiniętych wokół przegubu niby upiorna bransoleta, przyprawia go o mdłości. Wcielenie Paranoiczne konstruuje zamknięty w dwunastościanie pamiętnik jako pułapkę na inne inkarnacje, szwaczka Marta trudni się pozyskiwaniem zębów i innych materiałów ze zwłok. The Walking Dead okazuje się jednym wielkim szwindlem. A Camille Lemonnier słusznie zauważa, iż nie ma nic mniej nagiego niż kobieta wynurzająca się z pary swoich reform. Czas pod Smoleńskiem cofa się i zapętla, a polski bohater narodowy podąża ścieżką pasyjną i ląduje w Edenie. Tak to jest: kiedy ktoś nie zna siebie, jest zgubiony. A narracja i tak się sprzedaje. Literatura też nie pozostaje w tyle: a to groteskowe i odstręczające opisy matki, a to próby stworzenia siebie na nowo, bez udziału przodków, a to znów zamknięta w piwnicach zamku przeszłość i życie naznaczone traumą, a jeszcze zbereźne przyśpiewki, obrzezanie jako inskrypcja, duch pełen jadu, czerwień, która pozwala całować, proces twórczy jako chwalebnie rakotwórcza proliferacja i znów trauma, tym razem widmontologiczna. Tu też wiele się dzieje. Gwoździojad wyraża się z szacunkiem o Gamalielu, podczas gdy ten przestrzega syna przed zwodniczym wpływem kobiecego piękna, przeszłość wraca do protagonisty niczym bumerang, a na plecach protagonistki blizny układają się w kształt drzewa wiśni, podmiot widmontologicznie konfrontuje się ze swoimi widmami i przestaje być identyczny ze sobą samym, Brytania tonie we mgle wywołanej przez oddech smoczycy Querig, a jednak Sir Gawain i mnisi utrzymują smoczycę przy życiu. Na dodatek niewidzialna siła z wściekłością ciska psem o ścianę, naga i uśmiechnięta Umiłowana zostaje wygnana, kobiety wykonują zdjęcia zdjęciom, ciągutki „carambar” i „makagiga” metafizycznie łączą Górzańskiego i Pereca, który pamięta, że nie lubił kiszonej kapusty, zaś trzecie pokolenie pamięta to, czego nie przeżyło. I tak to archiwum staje się doświadczeniem przyszłości. Rozmaite postaci przyglądają się temu wszystkiemu: Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Arystoteles, Platon, Parmenides, Anaksymander, Heraklit, Husserl, Freud, Bergson, Ricoeur, Derrida, Lacan, Horkheimer, Adorno, Halbwachs, Sacks, Taylor, Barthes, a nawet Atena i Tezeusz. Ktoś konstatuje: w wielu krajach do głosu (i do władzy) dochodzą grupy zawłaszczające pamięć i pielęgnujące nienawiść. Radujmy się: wszak nie o klasycznie rozumianą prawdę tu chodzi. Wojciech Kalagahttps://orcid.org/0000-0003-4874-9734

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Er(r)go...

100%

Kalaga W.

ER(R)GO: Teoria – Literatura – Kultura

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2020

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issue 41

5-8

EN

Er(r)go... … a boundless proliferation of images, a gargantuan escalation of photographic narratives, overproduction, excessiveness and inflation of visuality, contamination by portalosis, gaze as the imperative. Images obscure reality; it’s about time we opened our eyes. How much truth is there to photography? Are the things we see true, since acontextual, non-situational and uninterpreted truth does not exist? How many truths then? The charming demon of interpretation lends a helping hand here: truth is constituted in and through interpretation, we cannot suspend our interpretative activity, nor can we elevate ourselves above interpretation without interpreting. That way or another, we’d better avoid the fear, dismay and anger of the audience. Someone says: the opposite of truth is falsity; hmm, who would have thought? How about trustworthiness instead of truth? We shall see. In the meantime, intriguing things are happening. Ophelia is holding a bottle of wine in one hand and a glass in another, and has nothing to hide – in the end, she learns how to swim and is swimming in an inflatable pool; the element of water merges with the element of femininity, why not? Faltejsek returns to the pre-natal stage, impersonates Ophelia and floats on water, and Faukner is searching for connections. Church bells delineate a comfort zone, simpletons do not know Latin but edify themselves and reinforce their faith, and the church establishes the relationship between man and world. Man conquers the world and re-enacts the act of creation while the corrupt society, like Narcissus, admires its own image engraved in metal (it’s Baudelaire). The photographer dominates, reigns and interferes with space – he is a functionary of the apparatus, no longer an innocent object in itself – now the apparatus of power: it disciplines and parcels out the body; the world freezes with the click of the shutter, and the subject turns into eidolon. Luckily, a photograph, like tjurunga, resists absolute death and bears witness to life; it summons the past, exorcising it in the process, but it may also viralize throughout the internet and disgrace the heroes. A feminised masculine body proudly flaunts its penis whose erection, strangely enough, attracts the viewers’ attention. Suicidal heroines are placed in the midst of children’s toys, but medieval death does not go along with the new world-view. In-between the entangled orders of identity and difference the linear time of progress defeats the cyclical time, diachrony encodes itself into synchrony, synchrony into diachrony, and Burroughs keeps it short: it is the word that conceives the image, and the image is a virus. Finally, the artist, in a liminal condition, gets off the merry-go-round of life. But things don’t always look that bright. Photography touches upon the open wounds of memory: cattle wagons, railroad tracks, barbed wire, a chimney, human hair, a striped camp uniform, a suitcase, air – still permeated with ash particles of human remains – enriches fields and meadows and mingles with construction materials, Muranów built from crushed-brick concrete made of remains of people and buildings, a splinter of human bone. Women (c)rushed together, it’s their last sensation of intimacy before leaving for (non)existence, women from Mizoch – Eurydices, appearing and disappearing, suspended between life and death by Orpheus’s gaze. Vivante/morte. And elsewhere, the nuclear holocaust of Chernobyl, landslides of reality, puffs of smoke, contaminated plants, self-portraits of caesium, plutonium and uranium, pesticide burial sites, faces contorted by dread, and screaming – the banality of horror; death as radionuclides permeates the fabric of photography, but tourist traffic increases in the Exclusion Zone. We need to restore feeling to the nerveless structures of memory. And around and in-between, as per usual, various valuables of intellect and materiality: numinous cameras, ekphrases and inphrases, preposterior stories, non-phallic, non-Oedipal, but always negotiable difference-in-proximity, camera obscura, aesthetics of minimalistic metonymies, men in corsets, cultural palimpsests, self-fragilisation, genological disruption, shreds of knowledge, fascinum vs. fascinance, elements of sadomasochistic culture, classism, demythologisation of infantilising stigmatisation of folk artists (!), death locked up as a spectre in the crypt of unconsciousness, beginnings of photography in Rzeszów and Subcarpathian spacetimes (and what about the charm of Polesie?), iconic intelligence, a look which touches and feels, disembodied monuments, dispersion, shapelessness, intermingling of orders, and – naturally – indeterminacy, disappearance, suspension. Oh, and out of nowhere, there shows up a hint of common sense. Let us resume: visibility structures everything, invisibility condemns to absence and pushes everything into non-existence. But, as it often happens, the problem turns out to be more complex and complicated than it seems, even though the proponents of culturalism will be ok with that. With no pictures to show, the journey never happened. Wojciech Kalagahttps://orcid.org/0000-0003-4874-9734

PL

Er(r)go... … nieograniczona proliferacja obrazów, gargantuiczna eskalacja fotograficznych narracji, nadprodukcja, nadmiarowość i inflacja wizualności, zainfekowanie portalozą, patrzenie jako imperatyw. Obrazy przesłaniają świat, czas zatem przejrzeć na oczy. Ile prawdy w fotografii? Czy prawdziwe jest to, co widzimy, skoro nie istnieje prawda akontekstualna, niesytuacyjna, niezinterpretowana? Ile zatem prawd w fotografii? Na ratunek przychodzi uroczy potwór interpretacji: prawda konstytuuje się w interpretacji i poprzez interpretację, nie możemy zawiesić interpretacyjnej aktywności, nie możemy też wnieść się ponad poziom interpretacji, by nie interpretować. Tak czy inaczej, lepiej jednak unikać strachu, konsternacji i wściekłości odbiorców. Ktoś stwierdza: przeciwieństwem prawdy jest fałsz; hmm, coś takiego! Może zamiast prawdy – wiarygodność? Zobaczymy. Tymczasem dzieją się rzeczy ciekawe. Ofelia trzyma w jednej ręce butelkę wina, w drugiej kieliszek i nie ma nic do ukrycia – w końcu uczy się pływać i pływa sobie w dmuchanym basenie; żywioł wody łączy się z żywiołem kobiecości, a jakże. Faltejsek wraca do okresu prenatalnego, wciela się w Ofelię i unosi na wodzie, a Faukner szuka powiązań. Dzwony kościelne wyznaczają przestrzeń oswojoną, prostaczkowie nie znają łaciny, ale umoralniają się i wzrastają w wierze, a kościół ustanawia relację człowieka ze światem. Człowiek opanowuje świat i powtarza akt stworzenia, tymczasem plugawe społeczeństwo jak Narcyz podziwia swój trywialny wizerunek na metalu (to Baudelaire). Fotograf dominuje, panuje i ingeruje w przestrzeń – jest funkcjonariuszem aparatu; aparat też nie taki niewinny – jest aparatem władzy: dyscyplinuje i parceluje ciało; świat zastyga w trakcie naciśnięcia migawki, a podmiot zamienia się w eidolon. Na szczęście fotografia, jak czuringa, sprzeciwia się śmierci totalnej i daje świadectwo życia; przywołuje przeszłość, jednocześnie ją egzorcyzmując, ale może też wiralować sobie w sieci i dyskredytować bohaterów. Sfeminizowane, męskie ciało obnosi się dumnie ze swym penisem, a erekcja o dziwo przyciąga uwagę widzów. Bohaterki samobójczynie umieszcza się w otoczeniu dziecięcych zabawek, przy czym śmierć średniowieczna nie zgadza się z nowym światopoglądem. Między zapętlonymi porządkami tożsamości i różnicy liniowy czas postępu zwycięża z czasem cyklicznym, diachronia przekodowuje się w synchronię a synchronia w diachronię, zaś Burroughs stwierdza krótko: Słowo poczyna obraz, a obraz jest wirusem. Wreszcie artysta w stanie liminalnym wysiada z karuzeli życia. Ale nie zawsze jest tak pogodnie. Fotografia dotyka niezabliźnionej rany pamięci: bydlęce wagony, tory, drut kolczasty, komin, włosy, pasiak, walizka, powietrze, w którym wciąż krążą cząstki popiołów z ludzkich szczątków, użyźniają pola i łąki i mieszają się z budulcem, Muranów z gruzobetonu ze szczątków domów i ludzi, drzazga z ludzkiej kości. Kobiety w (u)ścisku, będącym ostatnim doświadczeniem bliskości przed odejściem w nie(byt), kobiety z Mizocza – pojawiające się i znikające Eurydyki, które spojrzenie Orfeusza zawiesza między życiem a śmiercią. Vivante/morte. A gdzie indziej nuklearny kataklizm Czarnobyla, osuwiska realności, obłoki dymu, skażone rośliny, autoportrety cezu, plutonu i uranu, mogilniki, wykrzywione w przerażeniu, krzyczące twarze – banał horroru, śmierć jako radionuklidy wnika w materię fotografii, wzrasta ruch turystyczny w Strefie Wykluczenia. Trzeba przywrócić czucie w zdrętwiałych strukturach pamięci. A wokół i pomiędzy jak zwykle rozmaite precjoza intelektu i materialności: aparaty numinotyczne, ekfrazy i infrazy, historie preposteryjne, nie-falliczna, nie-edypalna, zawsze negocjowalna różnica-w-bliskości, kamera obskura, estetyka minimalistycznych metonimii, faceci w gorsetach, palimpsesty kulturowe, samorozkruszenie, genologiczne rozchwianie, strzępy wiedzy, fascinum kontra fascinance, elementy kultury sadomasochistycznej, klasizm, demitologizacja infantylizującej stygmatyzacji twórców ludowych (!), śmierć zamknięta w krypcie nieświadomości jako widmo, początki fotografii w Rzeszowie i podkarpackie czasoprzestrzenie (a gdzie Polesie i jego czar?), inteligencja ikoniczna, spojrzenie, które dotyka i czuje, odcieleśnione pomniki, rozsypanie, bezkształtność i wymieszanie porządków i, jakże by inaczej, niedookreślenie, zanikanie, zawieszenie. Ach, i jeszcze nie wiadomo skąd przyplątała się domena zdrowego rozsądku. Reasumując: widzialność strukturyzuje wszystko, niewidzialność skazuje na nieobecność i spycha w nieistnienie. Jak to często bywa, problem okazuje się bardziej złożony i skomplikowany niż się wydaje, ale sympatycy kulturalizmu nie będą mieli z tym problemów. Nie ma zdjęć, nie było wyjazdu. Wojciech Kalagahttps://orcid.org/0000-0003-4874-9734

7

Antynomie Trzeciego w myśli Emmanuela Lévinasa

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Kalaga W.

Przestrzenie Teorii

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2020

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issue 33

17-40

EN

The ethics of Emmanuel Lévinas – the idea of asymmetrical, unconditional responsibility for and devotion to the Other – is founded on the dichotomy between the Same (I) and the Other. The objective of the article is to demonstrate that, in spite of this dichotomous foundation, Lévinas’s argument paradoxically eludes the binary logic of the Western logos. Employing the ‘close reading’ method with Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, the author shows how Lévinas’s way of thinking and the main concepts of his argument situate themselves beyond binary oppositions – in the realm of the excluded middle or, otherwise, in the realm of the Third, construed as transgression of dichotomies. The main argument is preceded by a discussion of the antinomies introduced into the I-Other relation by the appearance of the Third construed as the Third Party (le tiers).

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Er(r)go...

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Kalaga W.

ER(R)GO: Teoria – Literatura – Kultura

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2015

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issue 31

EN

Er(r)go… ,contemporary Russia-but only in its literary-theoretical aspect-from the inside and from the outside. Internal perspectives, but also those from Tartu, Tallinn, and the West.If a literary-theoretical Russia, then, naturally, Bakhtin, and that which follows. A scientific description of reality? Impulses against poststructuralist skepticism? Algorithms and pattern analyses of the main literary genres? Paradigms of artistic value? Narratology: actants, world pictures, points of view, singularity, fractals, variants, stages, etc., and neo-rhetoric against the postmodernist “chaotisation” of culture. But also the aesthetic object clad in silence, the aesthetics of address and the increasing importance of the Third, the discourse of responsibility, the long term, great time, great dialogue, genre memory and other Bakhtinian traces.Moreover, as usual, disputes over the nature of discourses: is philosophy the Other of literature or does the Other transform into non-Other; philosophy as a protective zone for dialectics, literature as a kingdom of ambiguity; the secret of literature as cannon fodder for readers. Philology of philosophy and the textual hunger of a philological philosopher; philology as a text about a text, philosophy as a text on thinking as a non-text. Do not texts think, however? The hypothesis of a trickster and his original image, also doctor Zhivago, Myshkin, Raskolnikov, Strelnikov, Bezukhov, Bolkonsky in various configurations. Hegel and Kant in the deep structures of Russian thought, Bakhtin and Lotman on the surface; the philosopher as an eater of spices, the artist as a torero. Intimations of poststructuralism and symptoms of academic anti-foundationalism: deconstruction, cultural and intertextual studies, feminist and gender criticism, new historicism, postcolonialism. Postcolonial methodology and the post-Soviet subaltern; the postcolonial without the colonial; people of the trans-diaspora and internal Others; and the imperative: the decolonisation of postcolonialism -de-Sovietization of the post-Soviet. The avant-garde and pragmatics, and their contextual corrida, the temporal nonsense of postmodernity, Russian postmodernism as a paralogical compromise of a dyad and a triad and as an omelette made without breaking the eggs. Deconstruction and authorial infamy, the inevitable dumbness of the reader, one’s own word experienced as another’s, the aesthetics of militant passivity, and the strength of the postmodernist found in female logic. The boundaries of the postmodernist play as a perforated tape of explosions; 9.11-the revenge of the real, of authenticity, of irreproducibility; ground zero. Signs blow up signification. Cultural explosions: transculturalism instead of multiculturalism; suicidal explosions of cultures. Explosive aporia and the paralogy of presenting the unpresentable, the life-after-death of trash, trash as a zone between memory and forgetting, the modeling of chaos and chaos put in order. The search for the heart: the paradigm of cabbage and the paradigm of onion. Life and excrements, the outhouse as home. The bankruptcy of sovietology. And, of course, motifs of martyrdom. Also Russia, yet already non-Russia. Estonian semiotics in Tartu and Tallinn still drawing on Lotman’s genius and continuing (in Tartu) its struggles in the sphere of semiotic systems. Its influence in the East and the West and its dilemmas after Lotman’s departure. The present issue is guest edited by professor Piotr Fast from the University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland.

PL

Er(r)go… ,Rosja współczesna – ale tylko teoretycznoliteracka – od środka i z zewnątrz. Perspektywy wewnętrzne, ale też tartuskie, tallińskie i zachodnie. Jeśli Rosja teoretycznoliteracka, to oczywiście Bachtin i to, co po nim. Naukowe odzwierciedlanie rzeczywistości? Impulsy przeciw sceptycyzmowi poststrukturalistów? Algorytmy i wzorcowe analizy podstawowych rodzajów literackich? Paradygmaty artyzmu? Narratologia: aktanty, obrazy świata, punkty widzenia, jednokrotność, fraktalność, wariantywność, stadialność itp., a także neoretoryka przeciw postmodernistycznej chaotyzacji kultury. Jednak też przedmiot estetyczny obleczony w milczenie, estetyka adresowania i wzrost znaczenia trzeciego, dyskurs odpowiedzialności, długie trwanie, wielki czas, wielki dialog, pamięć gatunku i inne ślady Bachtina. Poza tym jak zwykle spory o naturę dyskursów: czy filozofia jest Innym literatury czy też dochodzi do przemiany Innego w nie-Inne; filozofia jako strefa ochronna dialektyki, literatura jako królestwo dwuznaczności; tajemnica literatury jako armatniego mięsa czytelniczego. Filologiczność filozofii i tekstowy głód filozofa filologicznego; filologia jako tekst o tekście, filozofia jako tekst o myśleniu jako nie-tekście. Czy jednakowoż teksty nie myślą? Hipoteza trickstera i jego obraz pierwotny, a także doktor Żywago, Myszkin, Raskolnikow, Strelnikow, Bezuchow i Bołkoński w różnych konfiguracjach. Hegel i Kant w głębokich strukturach rosyjskiego myślenia, Bachtin i Lotman na powierzchni; filozof jako zjadacz przypraw, twórca jako torreador. Prześwity poststrukturalizmu i przejawy naukowego antyfundamentalizmu: dekonstruktywizm, badania kulturowe i intertekstualne, krytyka feministyczna i genderowa, nowy historyzm, postkolonializm. Metodologia postkolonialna a post-sowiecki subaltern; postkolonialność bez kolonizacji; ludzie transdiasporalni i wewnętrzni Inni; i imperatyw: dekolonizacja postkolonializmu – desowietyzacja postsowietyzmu. Awangarda i pragmatyka oraz ich kontekstowa korrida, temporalny nonsens postmodernizmu, rosyjski postmodernizm jako paralogiczny kompromis diady i triady i jako omlet zrobiony bez rozbijania jajek. Dekonstruktywizm i hańba autora, nieuchronna niepojętność czytelnika, swoje słowo przeżywane jako cudze, estetyka walczącej bierności i siła postmodernisty w kobiecej logice. Granice postmodernistycznej gry jako perforowana taśma wybuchów; 11 września – zemsta realności, autentyczności, niepowtarzalności; stan zerowy. Znaki wysadzają w powietrze znakowość. Kulturowe eksplozje: transkulturowość zamiast wielokulturowości; samobójcze eksplozje kultur. Wybuchowa aporia i paralogia nieprzedstawialnego w przedstawieniu, życie śmieci po śmierci, śmieci jako strefa między pamięcią i zapomnieniem, modelowanie chaosu i chaos uporządkowany. Poszukiwanie głąba: paradygmat kapusty i paradygmat cebuli. Życie i ekskrementy, szalet jako dom. Bankructwo sowietologii. I oczywiście wątki ofiarnicze.A także Rosja, a już nie-Rosja. Estońska semiotyka w Tartu i Tallinnie nadal czerpiąca z Łotmanowskiego geniuszu i kontynuująca (w Tartu) swoje Trudy w sferze semiotycznych systemów. Jej wpływy na Wschodzie i Zachodzie i dylematy po odejściu Łotmana. Numer ten ukazuje się pod gościnną redakcją profesora Piotra Fasta z Uniwersytetu Śląskiego w Katowicach.

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Er(r)go...

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Kalaga W.

ER(R)GO: Teoria – Literatura – Kultura

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2017

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issue 35

EN

Er(r)go… ,wars for the canon: timeless wisdom or a legitimization of social order? Canon warrants and symbolically represents the imagined unity of a nation and its universal humanist values – such is the military potential of culture. Spivak: „Canons secure institutions to the same degree as institutions secure canons.” Hermeneutics of suspicion and a selective tradition of canon, with a pinch of social justice. Indians reject rationalism and linearity, redefinitions and paradigm changes are thus necessary. Perhaps canon as an intercultural dialogue: a white American, slave narratives and Indians’ ecosystemic, non-anthropocentric vision of the world, and also gender, other races, mixed breeds, diversity, and Jhumpa Lahiri. What about aesthetics? Ethics? Best to replace canon with canon without smoothing out the rough grain of politics and history. Synchronic and diachronic multiplication of canon.Further on, Różewicz’s exits: beyond collectivism, beyond singularity, beyond avant-garde, out of himself into nothing. Autotelic, indeterminate, elusive Różewicz. Repeated and inconclusive disappearance. Różewicz’s recycling and outrageously young poets. Różewicz as a letter of the poetic alphabet, and a paradoxical rigorist, and a realist, and a moralist, and the destroyer of canons, a wanderer through the spaces of canons reversed. And, at the end of the day, “there is no exit.” There is “poetry of trash dumps.” And is poetry actually edible, or not? Fairy tale registers and the glocalization of fairy tales. Do fairy tales have their canon? Fairy tale narratives and re-narratives. Hansel and Gretel, Little Red Riding Hood, and Snow White frolic in the canon. Little Red Riding Hood dies and defeats two wolves. Mother-in-law devours the children of the Sleeping Beauty, father forces Cinderella to marry him, little pigeons peck out her stepsisters’ eyes (only one each), Gretel stabs Baba Yaga with a knife and Hansel persuades the giant to cut the throats of his own children, and can become an SS-Mann at last. And ultimately, one can make money on fairy tales.What is the odour of being? Better not to smell. Cibulka with a bandaged penis – unrestrained creativity. Primal excess, danse macabre, self-aggression, obscenity, iconoclasm, scatology, killing animals. A kick in the butt of perverted dwarves and knödel fight in Vienna. A ban on monogamy. Murder is art: someone butchers a pig in bed. We are looking at a cheap landschaft of a mythical land of happiness with brown past. Orgy as a sacrament of existence. Visual grammar – body as intention, event, result. What of the soul? Do frogs have souls? Does a soul have gender? Aesthetization of a woman, who does not know metaphysics. Women’s sharp minds – ignorance does not lead to salvation. To have time or to live it? The spacing of time and the timing of space. The culture of a nanosecond – network as a detemporalized successor of the clock; eternal present; time as a frozen river. And in the knot of the tale, the protagonist can meet himself. How to record a tape for one’s younger self and how to warn it? Rigorous logic in an impossible plot, and the subject – a shuffled pile of photographs. Cliffordian ethics of belief, evidentialism, epistemic audacity, beliefs, meta-beliefs, sub-beliefs, ei incumbit probatio qui dicit, non qui negat, a mountaineer’s leap over the chasm and the salvation of people on Earth. The canon of computer games; good games need no saving, as they save themselves, poor games should not be saved. Curious: when it becomes part of the canon, a work dies and ceases to exist; a work which does not belong to the canon dies and ceases to exist. Illusions of choice.Wojciech Kalaga

PL

Er(r)go… ,wojny o kanon: ponadczasowa mądrość czy legitymizacja społecznego porządku? Kanon gwarantuje i symbolicznie przedstawia wyobrażoną wspólnotę narodu oraz jej uniwersalne humanistyczne wartości – oto potencjał bojowy kultury. Spivak: „Kanony zabezpieczają instytucje w takim samym stopniu, w jakim instytucje zabezpieczają kanony”. Hermeneutyka podejrzliwości i selektywna tradycja kanonu, a trzeba jeszcze domieszać trochę sprawiedliwości społecznej. Indianie odrzucają racjonalizm i linearność, potrzebne zatem redefinicje i zmiany paradygmatu. Może kanon jako dialog międzykulturowy: biały Amerykanin, narracje niewolników i ekosystemiczna, nieantropocentryczna wizja świata Indian, a jeszcze płeć, inne rasy, mieszanki, różnorodność, mniejszości i Jhumpa Lahiri. A co z estetyką? Etyką? Najlepiej zastąpić kanon kanonem, ale nie wygładzać szorstkiego ziarna historii i polityki. Synchroniczne i diachroniczne pomnażanie kanonu.A dalej wyjścia Różewicza: poza zbiorowość, poza pojedynczość, poza awangardę, z siebie w nic. I powroty. Różewicz autoteliczny, nieokreślony, nieuchwytny. Znikanie ponawiane i nieostateczne. Różewiczowski recykling i wstrząsająco młodzi poeci. Różewicz jako litera poetyckiego alfabetu i paradoksalny rygorysta, i jeszcze realista, i moralista, i rozwalacz kanonów, wędrowiec po przestrzeniach kanonów odwróconych. A w końcu i tak „wyjścia nie ma”. Jest poezja śmietników. A poezja w ogóle jadalna czy nie? Baśniowe rejestry i glokalizacja baśni. Czy baśnie mają swój kanon? Kanon baśniowy czy wzorzec baśniowy? Baśniowe narracje i renarracje. Jaś i Małgosia, Czerwony Kapturek i Królewna Śnieżka hasają w kanonie. Czerwony Kapturek ginie i pokonuje dwa wilki. Teściowa pożera potomstwo Śpiącej Królewny, ojciec zmusza Kopciuszka, by go poślubiła, gołąbki wydziobują po jednym (tylko) oku jej siostrom, Małgosia dźga babę nożem, a Jaś nakłania olbrzyma, by poderżnął gardła swoim dzieciom i w końcu może zostać SS-manem. A ostatecznie na baśniach można zarobić.Czym czuć byt? Lepiej chyba nie wąchać. Cibulka z zabandażowanym członkiem – twórczość nieokiełznana. Pierwotny eksces, danse macabre, autoagresja, obscenia, ikonoklazm, skatologia, zabijanie zwierząt. Kop w dupę zboczonych krasnali i bitwa na knedle w Wiedniu. Zakaz monogamii. Morderstwo jest sztuką; ktoś zarzyna w łóżku świnię. Oglądamy sobie landszaft mitycznej krainy szczęśliwości z brunatną przeszłością. Orgia jako sakrament egzystencji. Wizualna gramatyka – ciało jako zamiar, zdarzenie, skutek. A dusza? Czy żaby posiadają duszę? Czy dusza ma płeć? Estetyzacja kobiety, która nie zna metafizyki. Bystre umysły kobiet – ignorancja nie prowadzi do zbawienia. Mieć czas czy go przeżywać? Uprzestrzennienie czasu i uczasowienie przestrzeni. Kultura nanosekundy – sieć jako odczasowiona następczyni zegara; wieczna teraźniejszość; czas jako zamrożona rzeka. A w węźle opowieści bohater może spotkać samego siebie. Jak nagrać taśmę dla swego młodszego ja i to młodsze ja ostrzegać? Rygorystyczna logika w niemożliwej fabule, a podmiot – przetasowana sterta zdjęć. Cliffordowska etyka przekonań, ewidencjalizm, epistemiczna śmiałość, przekonania, nadprzekonania, podprzekonania, ei incumbit probatio qui dicit, non qui negat, skok alpinisty nad przepaścią i zbawienie ludzkości na Ziemi. Kanon gier komputerowych; gier dobrych nie trzeba ratować, bo uratują się same, gier słabych ratować nie należy. Dziwne: utwór, stając się kanonem, umiera i przestaje istnieć; utwór nie należący do kanonu umiera i przestaje istnieć. Iluzje wyboru.Wojciech Kalaga.

10

Genologia nomadyczna: gatunek jako metatekst

100%

Kalaga W.

Pamiętnik Literacki

|

2012

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vol. 103

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issue 4

175-188

EN

Traditional “literary genetics” or generic studies endeavour to categorize and classify works of literature into taxonomies which are always already too narrow to accommodate works escaping clear-cut criteria. Such studies generally rely on the principle of literary evolution and progress, and exclude or are unable to account for phenomena which escape that principle. In opposition to approaches which posit genre as an imposed classificatory category, this paper first poses the ontological question concerning the mode of existence of the literary genre, and then proposes to consider genre as an open metatext emerging as a result of the performative, metatextual activity of literary texts. The ontological principle of genre is thus becoming, stipulated by the performative activity of texts, the activity itself relying on the interplay of repetition and difference. Such an approach opens ground for nomadic genre studies which, instead of aiming at taxonomic classifications, would search for cultural, ideological, philosophical, anthropological and literary factors of the emergence of genres, and treat them as hybrid “densities of sense” rather than a priori categories.

11

Er(r)go...

100%

Kalaga W.

ER(R)GO: Teoria – Literatura – Kultura

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2018

|

issue 36

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

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

12

Obowiązek Innego. Trzeci

100%

Kalaga W.

ER(R)GO: Teoria – Literatura – Kultura

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2003

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issue 6

EN

"The Obligation of the Other. The Third" Any identity (an individual, a community, a nation) exists with an inherent debt towards the Other, since as an identity - it constructs itself to a large extent through the difference from and of the Other. This ontological predicament inevitably involves an ethical question - the question of reciprocity: one's obligation is to repay the debt. That ethical question is frequently annulled through an essentialist construal of the concept of identity. if we reject or want to avoid essentialism, however, we have to recognize the obligation and find ways of fulfilling it: through obliterating clear-cut boundaries and construing identities as nebular densities rather than as reified objectivities and, consequently, through internalizing the difference and through accommodating the Other into the space of one's own identity. Yet, since reciprocity is of itself a symmetrical concept and must work both ways, the question of obligation must also be reversed: what are the obligations of the Other? Can the obligation to reciprocate be waived from the Other in certain circumstances? Or will it rather be an incapacitation of the Other through deprivation of responsibility? The problem becomes particularly acute in the circumstances of displacement: exile, emigration, or even hospitality. All these circumstances involve a misbalance of power, an interpenetration and a conflict of values, legitimisation of individual and communal expectations. In such a context, while keeping in mind the ethical aspect of obligation, one must also be aware of its political and axiological implications, especially when the problem of reciprocity is approached in terms of racial, ethnic and cultural difference. The objective of the essay is to explore those multifaceted aspects of the obligation of reciprocity and to place them in the context of post-Cartesian notions of subjectivity on the one hand, and of multiculturalism, on the other hand.

PL

"The Obligation of the Other. The Third" Any identity (an individual, a community, a nation) exists with an inherent debt towards the Other, since as an identity - it constructs itself to a large extent through the difference from and of the Other. This ontological predicament inevitably involves an ethical question - the question of reciprocity: one's obligation is to repay the debt. That ethical question is frequently annulled through an essentialist construal of the concept of identity. if we reject or want to avoid essentialism, however, we have to recognize the obligation and find ways of fulfilling it: through obliterating clear-cut boundaries and construing identities as nebular densities rather than as reified objectivities and, consequently, through internalizing the difference and through accommodating the Other into the space of one's own identity. Yet, since reciprocity is of itself a symmetrical concept and must work both ways, the question of obligation must also be reversed: what are the obligations of the Other? Can the obligation to reciprocate be waived from the Other in certain circumstances? Or will it rather be an incapacitation of the Other through deprivation of responsibility? The problem becomes particularly acute in the circumstances of displacement: exile, emigration, or even hospitality. All these circumstances involve a misbalance of power, an interpenetration and a conflict of values, legitimisation of individual and communal expectations. In such a context, while keeping in mind the ethical aspect of obligation, one must also be aware of its political and axiological implications, especially when the problem of reciprocity is approached in terms of racial, ethnic and cultural difference. The objective of the essay is to explore those multifaceted aspects of the obligation of reciprocity and to place them in the context of post-Cartesian notions of subjectivity on the one hand, and of multiculturalism, on the other hand.

13

Er(r)rgo...

100%

Kalaga W.

ER(R)GO: Teoria – Literatura – Kultura

|

2001

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issue 2

PL

Er(r)go, what is the other side of discourse? Is it the evident awaiting to be discovered, or is it a double non-evidentness of the metaphorical and the enthymematic? The world as a stable, though always distant target of cognition, or the world as a hypothetical project of an uncertain an nomadic thought? History as macro-narration or as a conglomerate of mini-stories, epistemology or rhetoric, the obvious or the relative truth? (The paper by Andrzej Dziamski already anticipates the theme of the third issue of "Er(r)go"). Panrationalism or adogmatism? The contemporary methodological debates, the divisions into traditionalists and postmodernists, the doubting and the certain, the metaphorists and the scientificalists, the constructivists and the essentialists, are contained in the attitude to the evident. For some, the evident is evident, even though one has to persevere in order to know; for others. the evident is not-evident, although it imposes itself on knowledge. But here also the desacralization of the foundations of cognition becomes a pagan sacrum, forcing us eventually into a series of dualisms. A grand narrative about the annihilation of grand narratives. Anti-anti-anti-... -realism. With tender suspicion, we embrace our own discourse and the discourse of the other. With magnanimous violence we mark out the limits of the parentheses of the non-evident. We seek to explore the unstable and opalescent space between le dit and le dire. We continue our effort as translators of dualisms into pluralism, and not infrequently do we return to the point of departure, now paradoxical. Yet each duality contains/opens a fissure, only apparently void. Seemingly condemned to dualisms, we sometimes forget to let the Third speak. Wojciech Kalaga

14

Face/Façade: The Visual and the Ethical

100%

Kalaga W.

Town Planning and Architecture

|

2010

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vol. 34

|

issue 3

120-127

EN

Face and façade share not only the same etymological derivation, but also the appeal to the visual perceptual apparatus. Their operation as visual signs/texts, however, reaches far beyond the merely iconic; in the context of the Western culture, face and façade perform the role of the exterior as symbolically representing the interior. In spite of what they have in common, the two concepts connote different ethical values. Face, especially in the Levinasian sense, implies absolute sincerity and truthfulness; façade, as a "face of the building," is in fact a simulacrum of the interior; it implies excess and uses performative-rhetorical devices of deception. Yet the metonimical representation of the inside by the façade naturalizes - through semiotic conventions and games - its fraudulently excessive character; it is only when façade - in its derivative sense as mask - returns to the face and becomes its metaphorical substitute, that its negative ethical value comes to the fore. The paper explores and theorizes - with intercultural references - the semiotic operation of face and façade, as well as provide analyses of visual examples.

LT

Pasitelkiant tarpkultūrinius pavyzdžius ir semantinės analizės metodą straipsnyje tiriami Veido ir Fasado vaizdinių/sąvokų reikšminis ir etinis aspektai. Ieškoma panašumo tarp abiejų vaizdinių/sąvokų etimologijos ir vizualinio suvokimo struktūrų. Gilinamasi i Veidą ir Fasadą kaip i eksterjero ženklus, simboliniame lygmenyje reprezentuojančius interjerą. Straipsnyje išryškinama, kad tiriamos sąvokos konotuoja skirtingas etines vertes nepaisant dalinio jų tarpusavio panašumo. Veidui priskiriama nuoširdumo ir tikrumo reikšmė. Fasadas (pastato veidas) interpretuojamas kaip interjero simuliakras, todėl siejamas su netikrumu, apgaulingumu.

15

Er(r)go...

100%

Kalaga W.

ER(R)GO: Teoria – Literatura – Kultura

|

2017

|

issue 34

EN

Er(r)go… , difficult, difficult times for the humanities, “frail and divided within,” difficult for literary studies, bound by “an ontological corset.” And then, the theoretical impasse: the question about the epistemological potential of the poststructuralist paradigm. Farewell to Derrida? The French theory – an American construct. How to think: ahead or backwards? And Nietzsche is best treated with Nietzsche. Is “prosopopeia of another’s tongue” leading us towards or away from the humanities?Turns, paradigm changes, turns, returns – with corrections – and best of all, a turn away from all turns and a return to philology. The appetite for philology and close-reading is growing. Read, one must read and observe texts in the world. Here arises a dispute over the reading distance – which kind of reading is superior? Close, long, or perhaps middle-distance? And how to distinguish literature from the description of soil erosion in Nebraska? Ask Eagleton. And what if interpretation is an expression of naivety and exaltation? Get to work, literary studies! To work as a text-process, not merely a text-result, to writing, not merely to reading. Here lies the pleasure of pre-texts, consorting with the draft, surrounded by fore-texts, draft projections, draft pre-incarnations of the text, draft close-reading, studying the draft, draft history of the text, meta-draft research and Polish draft studies. The genetics of text and genetics of prints; the flowing and ebbing of meaning, hermeneutics of invention, uncertain determinations. The responsibility of “the I-who-reads” towards the “I-who-is-read.” In the meantime, the death of a professional critic, because who needs literary criticism today? Social redundancy? Where are the critics who understand their task as metaphysical – as serving the word of the Other? In their place, weak professionalism. Atrophy of literary communication, a deluge of quasi-literary works, pauperization of the readers’ competence. So, the idiom of slack (for masses), or a voice of reflection? “A vigorous corpse” in the gray zone between the market and the university. Liberation? But, at the end of the day, the return to centralism.Birth of the author, when was that? And now, after his own death, the author finally returns (the assassin resting in his grave for years). It is now possible to peep on the writer in a closed room, as if in a psycho-anthropological laboratory, and search for the universal laws of human creativity. But one must be careful: after death, the archive is not a workshop; a workshop is always dynamic. Herbert’s vertical notes and the “spreading of the great parable,” five loose pages, Nepenthes Family and Linnaeus, and earlier, a notebook. “Revisionary expanse” of Virginia Woolf’s archive. McLuhan, Gutenberg and a typographical man. Packaged doses of philosophy, the book as a very problematic device and a fatal medium. McLuhan talks to Playboy reporter and Pascal lies down on the Gutenbergian Procrustean bed to torture his own spirit. A fractioned man, dismembered by the alphabet, sliced into pieces by print. Streams of knowledge, like grape must, flowing from under the press (printing one, naturally).And here and there, semiotic absolutism, theoretical dogmatism, the hope of saving one’s own name, cultural recontextualisations, a young wife and ridiculous interpretative errors, cultural studies over copyright, doxa as the voice of the people, medialised and mediatised mind of don Quixote, the art of textual analysis like folk dancing, becoming similarly extinct, a sovereign reader, a pink pirate and the praise of the unproductive. And the subject is travelling from Silesia to Warsaw through Ustrzyki Dolne.The present issue is guest-edited by Professor Adrian Gleń from the University of Opole, Poland.Wojciech Kalaga

16

Er(r)go...

100%

Kalaga W.

ER(R)GO: Teoria – Literatura – Kultura

|

2016

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issue 33

EN

Wojciech KalagaInstitute of English Cultures and LiteraturesFaculty of PhilologyUniversity of Silesia in KatowicePoland Er(r)go... failure of speech – please be silent, because silence is the treasure hold of sounds, their saturation, the accumulation of tones. And further: active silence, the energy of silence, poetic language as the music of silence, the landscape of sound, silence of the plants, performativity of silence. Penetrating the silence, we reach the world of sound and of whatever is not silence: intonarumori – rumorarmonio, ululatori, rombator, scoppiatori, sibilatori. Murmurs, humming, noises, knocking, grinding, howling, groans, laughs, human and animal sounds, drones, clatter, din, boom, crash, creaking, scraping, rubbing, wheeze, hiss, gasp, ping, pop, machine music, tonal cords of words, the harmony of murmurs, vibrations and resonances, unwanted sounds. Reversing presence and absence – internal physiology, mute dramatization of the heart and the breath: noises, moaning, breathing in and breathing out, periodic cadence. Moans, grunts, billing, whizzing, blowing, quiet strikes of the upper and lower lips of the diva, quiet rubbing of the body of the instrument. Silence turns to thunder. Industrial noise: machines whizz, howl, boom, crash, groan, hiss, whistle, toll, hammer, clatter, grate, grind, beat, whir, hiss. Music as the effect of silence – it is the silence that gives the sounds their strength, makes the darkness less still, when the tiniest noise becomes a wraith. A silent piano – the art of noise and 4’33”. And several figures: Gerard Manley Hopkins, Salvatore Sciarrino, John Cage, Jacques Lacan, Arnold Schoenberg, Wassily Kandinsky, Maria Pappenheim, Anna O., Georges Bataille, Maurice Blanchot, Michel Leris, Colette Peignot, Francesca Woodman, Bracha L. Ettinger, Tres, Dan Geva, Noit Geva, Gillian Wearing. Muzak. The audiosphere of communism: the singing, mystical body of the collective, the trumpet in the hands of a young ZMP zealot, the buzzing of flies, the jabber of the enemy. In addition, the voice as an incestual object. The transcendence of the sounds of the surrounding, the ringing in the ears, tinnitus, the musical rollercoaster, the funeral march at the burial of the deaf, a second so full that it does not fit into half an hour, cord as discord, the soundness of our bodies, the hum of a gesture, the noise of an object, electronic clatter and clamor, musical loops, drumming of fingers, recital of re-playing, The Banquets of Changing Moods, and, finally, embalming with sound. Friendship as silence; silence that speaks in order to hide better, a muted, ashen sweater, nonverbal torrent of words, reading with the ear, listening to the difference, hearing oneself. One must go beyond the staff. Muteness and dissemblance. Silence as power and a form of shaping bodies, the muting of buildings, the sucking out of sounds. Tacet. Silence does not exist. “In absolute silence, everyone will eventually hear something.” What do I hear? Wojciech Kalaga

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ER(R)GO: Teoria – Literatura – Kultura

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2010

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issue 20/21

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Er(r)go, (paste the English text) Wojciech Kalaga

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ER(R)GO: Teoria – Literatura – Kultura

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2006

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issue 12

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Er(r)go, (paste the English text) Wojciech Kalaga

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ER(R)GO: Teoria – Literatura – Kultura

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2005

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issue 11

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ER(R)GO: Teoria – Literatura – Kultura

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2002

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issue 5

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Er(r)go, (paste the English text) Wojciech Kalaga

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