Critical Theory and Critical Genres: Contemporary Perspectives from Poland (Literary and Cultural Theory) 9783631647936, 9783653036220, 363164793X

Table of contents :
Cover
Contents
Editors’ Introduction
On Criticism
A Critique Of Criticism: Ewa Kraskowska
Kant’s Redefinition of Reason: Critique, Freedom, and Enlightenment: Paweł Łuków
Distance — a Figure of Modernity: Elżbieta Winiecka
Literary Theory as Critical Epistemology and Deontology: Notes on the Concerns in Fiction in Relation to the Images of the Holocaust in Mass Media: Marek Kaźmierczak
Comparative Literature: Metacriticism and its Paradoxes: Olga Płaszczewska
Case Studies
The Protocol and the Magazine. Two Styles of Literary Criticism in the So-called Russian Formalism: Danuta Ulicka
The Subversive Potential of an Apocryphon: Danuta Szajnert
Could We Save Ourselves From the Past? Alternate Histories and Uchronias as Literary Apories of Politics and Historical Knowledge: Natalia Lemann
The Escape From Castle Tower — Feminist Re-Writing Of Fairy Tales In Polish Prose Since 1989: Magdalena Bednarek
The Ecological Novel as Critical Genre: Izabella Adamczewska
The Evolutionary Potential of Metacriticality in Reference to Watchmen — the Graphic Novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons: Michał Wróblewski
Logo-visual Genres. From Criticism of Language to Social Critique: Agnieszka Karpowicz

Citation preview

This book is the result of a shared conviction of the necessity to advance the international discourse on criticism. What originated in ancient curiosity and developing self-reflexion became the critical thought of the modern era and then developed into a program of constant intellectual contestation and struggle allied with various ideologies to subsequently become an integral part of post-structuralist culture theory and recently the New Humanities, also known as post-theory. The book positions itself within contemporary considerations of the theory and practice of criticism and presents texts by established and rising scholars and provides greater insights into various aspects of Polish intellectual culture during the past decades. The publication constitutes an important voice in the discussion on criticism by demonstrating the specific theoretical and pragmatic perspective of the debate in Poland in relation to Europe and the rest of the (post)modern world.

Charles Russell is Professor Emeritus of English and American Studies at Rutgers University, Newark, New Jersey (USA), where he was Director of American Studies and Associate Director of the Institute on Ethnicity, Culture, and the Modern Experience. Arne Melberg gained his Ph.D. in Literature at the University of Stockholm (Sweden) and is now Professor in Comparative Literature at the University of Oslo (Norway). Jaroslaw Pluciennik is Professor Ordinarius of the Humanities at the Chair of Theory of Literature at the Institute of Contemporary Culture, University of Lódz´ (Poland) with specialization in literary culture, cognitive semiotics, and new media of reading. Michal Wróblewski is a Ph.D. student at the Institute of Contemporary Culture at the University of Lódz´ (Poland). He has published on pop culture, cognitive cultural studies and critical theory.

C. Russell / A. Melberg / J. Pluciennik / M. Wróblewski (eds.) · Critical Theory and Critical Genres

41

Literar y and Cultural Theor y

Charles Russell Arne Melberg Jaroslaw Pluciennik Michal Wróblewski (eds.)

Critical Theory and Critical Genres Contemporary Perspectives from Poland

ISBN 978-3-631-64793-6

LCT 41_264793_Russel_AM _HCA5 PLE.indd 1

29.04.14 16:36

This book is the result of a shared conviction of the necessity to advance the international discourse on criticism. What originated in ancient curiosity and developing self-reflexion became the critical thought of the modern era and then developed into a program of constant intellectual contestation and struggle allied with various ideologies to subsequently become an integral part of post-structuralist culture theory and recently the New Humanities, also known as post-theory. The book positions itself within contemporary considerations of the theory and practice of criticism and presents texts by established and rising scholars and provides greater insights into various aspects of Polish intellectual culture during the past decades. The publication constitutes an important voice in the discussion on criticism by demonstrating the specific theoretical and pragmatic perspective of the debate in Poland in relation to Europe and the rest of the (post)modern world.

Charles Russell is Professor Emeritus of English and American Studies at Rutgers University, Newark, New Jersey (USA), where he was Director of American Studies and Associate Director of the Institute on Ethnicity, Culture, and the Modern Experience. Arne Melberg gained his Ph.D. in Literature at the University of Stockholm (Sweden) and is now Professor in Comparative Literature at the University of Oslo (Norway). Jaroslaw Pluciennik is Professor Ordinarius of the Humanities at the Chair of Theory of Literature at the Institute of Contemporary Culture, University of Lódz´ (Poland) with specialization in literary culture, cognitive semiotics, and new media of reading. Michal Wróblewski is a Ph.D. student at the Institute of Contemporary Culture at the University of Lódz´ (Poland). He has published on pop culture, cognitive cultural studies and critical theory.

LCT 41_264793_Russel_AM _HCA5 PLE.indd 1

C. Russell / A. Melberg / J. Pluciennik / M. Wróblewski (eds.) · Critical Theory and Critical Genres

41

Literar y and Cultural Theor y

Charles Russell Arne Melberg Jaroslaw Pluciennik Michal Wróblewski (eds.)

Critical Theory and Critical Genres Contemporary Perspectives from Poland

29.04.14 16:36

Critical Theory and Critical Genres

LITERARY AND CULTURAL THEORY General Editor: Wojciech H. Kalaga

VOLUME 41

Charles Russell / Arne Melberg / Jarosław Płuciennik / Michał Wróblewski (eds.)  

 

   

Critical Theory and Critical Genres Contemporary Perspectives from Poland

       

Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Critical theory and critical genres : contemporary perspectives from Poland / Charles Russell, Arne Melberg, Jarosław Płuciennik, Michał Wróblewski (eds.). – Peter Lang Edition. pages cm. – (Literary and cultural theory ; volume 41) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-3-631-64793-6 (Print) – ISBN 978-3-653-03622-0 (E-Book) 1. Criticism–Poland–History–21st century. 2. Polish literature–History and criticism–Theory, etc. 3. Polish literature–European influences. 4. Postmodernism (Literature)–Poland. 5. Poststructuralism. I. Russell, Charles, 1944editor of compilation. II. Melberg, Arne, 1942- editor of compilation. III. Płuciennik, Jarosław, editor of compilation. IV. Wróblewski, Michał, editor of compilation. PN99.P62C75 2014 801'.9509438–dc23 2014012454 This publication was financially supported by the University of Łódź. ISSN 1434-0313 ISBN 978-3-631-64793-6 (Print) E-ISBN 978-3-653-03622-0 (E-Book) DOI 10.3726/978-3-653-03622-0 © Peter Lang GmbH Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften Frankfurt am Main 2014 All rights reserved. Peter Lang Edition is an Imprint of Peter Lang GmbH. Peter Lang – Frankfurt am Main · Bern · Bruxelles · New York · Oxford · Warszawa · Wien All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems. This publication has been peer reviewed. www.peterlang.com

Contents Editors’ Introduction............................................................................................. 7 On Criticism Ewa Kraskowska: A Critique Of Criticism......................................................... 17 Paweł Łuków: Kant’s Redefinition of Reason: Criticism, Freedom, Enlightenment..................................................................................... 31 Elżbieta Winiecka: Distance — the Figure of Modernity................................... 43 Marek Kaźmierczak: Literary Theory as Critical Epistemology and Deontology: Notes on the Concerns in Fiction in Relation to the Images of the Holocaust in Mass Media....................................................... 67 Olga Płaszczewska: Comparative Literature: Metacriticism and its Paradoxes................................................................................................. 85 Case Studies Danuta Ulicka: The Protocol and the Magazine. Two Styles of Literary Crticism in the So-called Russian Formalism....................................... 99 Danuta Szajnert: The Subversive Potential of an Apocryphon........................ 115 Natalia Lemann: Could We Conserve Ourselves From the Past? Alternates Histories and Uchronias as Literary Apories of Politics and Historical Knowledge........................................................................................................ 129 Magdalena Bednarek: Leaving the Tower. Feminist Rewriting of Fairy Tales in the Contemporary Polish Prose since 1989........................... 151 Izabella Adamczewska: The Ecological Novel as a Critical Genre.................. 169 Michał Wróblewski: The Evolutionary Potential of Metacriticality in Reference to “Watchmen” — the Graphic Novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons......................................................... 185 Agnieszka Karpowicz: Logo-visual Genres. From Criticism of Language to Social Critique......................................................................... 197

Editors’ Introduction This book results from a shared conviction of the need to advance the international discourse on criticism. Criticality has long been a significant value within the Western intellectual tradition. What originated in ancient curiosity and developing self-reflexion, became the critical thought of the modern era and then — after passing through a period of theoretical and methodological doubt characteristic, some would hold, of twentieth-century existential despair — developed into a program of constant intellectual contestation and struggle allied with various ideologies to subsequently become an integral part of post-structuralist culture theory and recently the New Humanities — also known as post-theory. Critical Theory and Critical Genres: Contemporary Perspectives from Poland positions itself within contemporary considerations of the theory and practice of criticism. The book presents texts by established and rising scholars in Poland and both reflects their contributions to an international discussion and provides greater insights into various aspects of Polish intellectual and creative culture of the past several decades. Critical Theory and Critical Genres: Contemporary Perspectives from Poland does not purport to be a presentation of a Polish critical school because such a thing does not exist in a pure, autonomous way. Certainly, the methodologies used by Polish scholars participate in the international dialogue within the research paradigms of Western Europe and the U.S. However, this publication seeks to be an important voice in the discussion — both socio-political and academic — on criticism which is a dominant part of contemporary reflection by demonstrating these issues from the specific theoretical and pragmatic perspective of the debate in Poland in relation to Europe and the rest of the (post)modern world. These essays endorse the adoption of an internal theoretical meta-perspective in the humanities which seems especially crucial after the linguistic and then narrative turns which radically changed the way we practice theory and understand its relationship with praxis. The entanglement in language and narrative is, after all, shared by societies across the transnational dimension, even as we point to the specificities of particular discourses at the local level. However, we believe it is important to emphasize clearly the editors’ perspective and the role of Critical Theory and Critical Genres: Contemporary Perspectives from Poland. Despite the specific historical, cultural, and political challenges that have contributed to contemporary Polish critical theory and practice, no particular political position or option of critical theory is advanced here. Rather, we seek to act more as the impartial and traditional observer who in the Western culture has been a carrier of liberal modernity and enlightenment — a figure perhaps more committed to rationality in the sense of Richard Rorty’s and Wayne Booth’s theses than grounded in rationalism understood as instrumental reason.

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Editors’ Introduction

Nevertheless, we intend to introduce the reader to Polish work and research interests that seem to exemplify significant trends in the contemporary Academy; that is, we want to emphasize the specificity of critical phenomena in the context of current Polish socio-cultural reality. Evidence of keen interest in this subject — in addition to the daily activity of a number of world-class intellectuals and academic communities whose motto is criticism — is the wide response from all of the major research centers in Poland to the call of the international journal “The Problems of Literary Genres” for contributions to the 2010 issue on criticism and criticality. As a result, the periodical (which has been guided by the demand to be critical and analytical ever since its birth more than fifty years ago) received an impressive number of important articles and consequently organized a multidisciplinary conference on “Kinds and Styles of Criticism” in May 2011. Selected texts which represent the most interesting and varied realizations of the conference theme are now presented here in English. They constitute an overview of critical thinking and thinking on criticism in Polish humanities scholarship. These papers show that criticism has many faces. The contributors recognize, for example, that criticality may appear to renounce its critical potential through ubiquity or superficiality, and as a result of appropriation or even balkanization (Harold Bloom’s term) by radical factions of critical schools like gender and feminist studies. On the other hand, it is impossible to deny the importance of critical research that seeks to expose and overcome the symbolic oppression and violence within culture and to weaken the growing tendency of mythologizing the public space and discourse. Such mythologizing was especially apparent in 2010 in Poland. The devastating floods, the plane crash in Smolensk that killed the President and national figures, and the resulting early presidential elections all led to an increase of ritual, ceremonial, and mythological practice in place of essential debate. However, it must be remembered that a thin line divides critical defiance from the violence of its application — even if only a rhetorical one. The concepts of critique and criticism, including that within the Polish tradition, have undergone significant transformations over the centuries. For instance, representations of such a process are evident in the dramatically changing definitions published in Polish language dictionaries and thesauri from the mid-nineteenth century until today. Thus, while in 1902 criticism was still close to the philosophical doctrine of Kant, subsequent explanations blurred both the origin of the term, as well as its affinity with German philosophic thought. Currently, the most popular synonyms for the word “criticism”, found in the thesauri are “negative assessment”, “reproof”, and “claim”, while the “critic” is seen as a “mocker”, “scoffer”, or “adversary”. Such a reception appears to indicate the direction in which the concept of criticism phenomena is moving.

Editors’ Introduction

9

From a larger perspective, historical changes within European culture cause one to reflect on the status of criticism and criticality — and not just in literary studies, even though the term “Judge of Literature” appeared in the fourth century BC and is one of the first signs of the presence of critics in literature. What was identified by the ancient writers, increasingly expanded into many other areas of theory and science, and in the 1600s it encompassed the whole of literary theory and what could be called (after Renė Wellek), applied criticism. Related to crisis etymologically, because “criticism” and “crisis” have common origin, criticism came to be associated with the crisis of faith, of ideals, and of reason, as well as with overwhelming skepticism. On the continent in the 1700s it slowly lost its significance, ultimately descending to the realm of journalism with which it is generally associated today. However the term “criticism” spreads after the renaissance of Kantian philosophy and it is still relevant for theory in accordance with its narrow, philosophical meaning. In recent years, in addition to the critical work on modernism edited by Ryszard Nycz (e.g. Odkrywanie modernizmu, 1998; Nowoczesność jako doświadczenie, 2006) and Michal Pawel Markowski (Polska literatura nowoczesna, 2007) — as well as by other researchers associated with the so-called Cracow school of culture theory — a substantial number of articles and books related to criticism have been produced by scholars from all major universities in Poland. Further examples are provided by the publications of the Polish Academy of Sciences including journal “Teksty Drugie” and “Pamiętnik Literacki”, and “Przestrzenie Teorii”, from Poznan, as well as the already mentioned “The Problems of Literary Genres”, — affiliated with the University of Lodz. An overview of Polish literary criticism and more broadly, critical discourse, has recently been presented by Dorora Kozicka in her book Krytyczne (nie)porządki (2012). She named Stanislaw Brzozowski (1878-1911) not only patron of the book, but also the patron saint of Polish literary criticism, considering him the Foucauldian “founder of the discourse” (as was already implicit in Ryszard Nycz’s thesis). Modernist critical reflection is a highly complex multidisciplinary and cross-disciplinary venture. The texts themselves are often situated between literature, journalism, and science. It is difficult to construct a single cohesive history, so it is reasonable to focus on the subjective nature of the critical comments. Such polyphony and the variety of critical statements after 1956 are also very problematic because of the politics and heterogeneous positions of Polish intellectuals under communism. From our current perspective what seems to be most important are the multifaceted problems faced by Polish criticism after the democratic transformation in 1989. Critics then divided into two groups, generally conceived as the “young” and the “old”, which often held opposing views and completely different styles of critical practice (especially the younger generation, which has adopted

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Editors’ Introduction

the strong position of rejection of any authority). Their attitude — strongly affirmative (the “old”) and aggressively critical (the “young”) — to Czeslaw Milosz, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1980, perfectly illustrates this division. Suspicion of all things given, which is a legacy of the years of dependence on others, shapes critical reflection of the 90s. The Academy itself was subjected to this critique. Discredited in the time of the People’s Republic of Poland, it needed several years to regain trust and justify its claim to be an apolitical space — although whether it really can be apolitical is in question since all scholars must ask whether today’s science and theory are ideology-free (if indeed they ever were). However, the turn against the university after 1989 did not last long. The initial critical spirit of rejection of oppression turned critics towards other dangerous enemies — the market and the media. Searching for freedom again challenged the academy. But even there it is difficult to escape from the pressures of the media and the fact that any public stance is inherently political, especially now that the academic world — not only in Poland but across the EU and the United States — is increasingly regulated by the market, and the management of universities every year manifests ever-expanding corporate practices. During a time of growing involvement in political attitudes, the need to accept a (meta)critical view is crucial. Critical discourse becomes a space of desacralization of mythical areas and concepts. In this spirit recent methodologies such as feminism, gender, and queer theory, postcolonialism or ecocriticism are strongly influential. Yet because they themselves are associated with political commitment they are often marginalized and are criticized (however rightly) for their use. Such desacralization in Poland is especially evident — for example, in the attempts to deconstruct the traditional model of the family, the image of “Polish mother” or “Pole-Catholic” with the help of gender and women studies. (In this context Krytyka Polityczna is important to mention — the new Polish intellectual left which in recent years has grown into a major political civil force movement of young Poles, identifying with the left-wing liberalism.) Similarly, studies in oral history have provided new perspectives on familiar and general facts. Postcolonial and queer critiques challenge Polish claims to be colonized and to dispute its images of national martyrdom. They analyze Polish history, investigate the basic concepts of the Polish language, and review the established literary canon to challenge its great narratives. Such attempts to redefine rigid notions and values necessarily raise the issue of the nature and degree of transgression. Criticism inherently involves the challenging of certain boundaries but does so in the name of freedom and independence of mind — an understanding that reaffirms a Kantian definition of “criticism”. Given that hate speech (as well as a speech of meanness) is considered by some these days as a kind of criticism, it is necessary to address the criticality of criticism

Editors’ Introduction

11

itself and re-evaluate the problem. Certainly, such a re-evaluation and boundary crossing are figures basic to modernity and lead to the criticism of sources and ultimately to self-criticism. Still, the question of the limits of criticality remains a major problem. Significant in this regard is meta-reflection, concerning not only the kinds, but also the different styles of criticism. The change is especially noticeable in rhetoric, whose methods of expressing criticality in the discourses of speech, literature and culture seem to change, to a large extent due to an increasing meta-critical and self-awareness of genres. Critical Theory and Critical Genres: Contemporary Perspectives from Poland presents such a theoretical reflection on the field of criticism, as well as selected examples of critical interpretation, all of which reflect aspects of Polish humanist thought in recent years. In particular, the main object of reflection and discussion in this publication is criticism of the praxis and tradition which are inscribed in literary genres and styles. We have tried to encourage many research perspectives in connection to varied meanings of the concept of “criticism”. Our goal has been to emphasize the (post)modern forms of critical experience, even while considering the long and fruitful history of ”critique” and ”criticism” from Ancient Greece to the present. Many theorists of literature and culture have linked the critical approach of certain literary genres and styles to the tradition and status quo of social discourses. Some view the origins of such criticism in the rebellion of the author. Nevertheless, since Immanuel Kant, modernity can be defined as critique of the myths and symbols of tradition. In this context appear such concepts as criticism (Michel Foucault), analyticity (Stanley Fish), rationality (Richard Rorty), secularisation (Charles Taylor) and disenchantment (Weber). We are primarily interested in criticism and scepticism, not necessarily that which leads to violent revolution; what is more, we often find the ideas of criticism and critical attitudes to be metaphorical mirrors of our contemporary existence. Together with all the authors, we would like to consider the styles, genres, and discourses, which clearly consist of criticism, doubt, and, also, autoscepticism. Among them we often mention novels or essays– but these are only some of the most typical examples in this untypical issue. Discussing literary genres and styles in comparison to other cultural discourses, the articles argue that all of us are surrounded by many different aspects and applications of what we may perceive as critical. We decided to present the papers in two groups. The first presents texts which approach criticism as a cultural and literary phenomenon and explore its contemporary status. In the second section, we present articles which offer different case studies of critical approaches to literature as well as literary theory’s perspectives on criticism and its role in the literary discourse.

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Editors’ Introduction

The first section opens with Ewa Szczęsna’s critical thoughts on “critical thinking” and criticism as such. Her paper, Criticism of Criticism, observes that in recent decades the very term has become so widely applied in various fields of intellectual and cultural activity that it is now hard to establish its basic meaning. The author distinguishes among three main areas in which competing notions of criticism and critical thinking are used with particular frequency: education, academic discourse, and art and culture. In his Kant’s Redefinition of Reason: Critique, Freedom, Enlightenment, Paweł Łuków argues the need to revisit Kant’s understanding of the relationship of criticism and reason, arguing that all too often scholars have failed to note how Kant’s conception of reason is greatly different from that of Descartes and have, therefore, developed inaccurate criticisms of Kant’s philosophy and of the “Enlightenment project”. In Elżbieta Winiecka’s paper, Distance — the Figure of Modernity, the concept of distance is presented as one of the cultural universals in the modern reflection on subjectivity and representation. Winiecka argues that distance is traditionally connected with an analytical approach to the subject, based on the cognitive position of an observer, not a participant. But, alternatively, this seemingly ubiquitous word also relates to alienation, separation, and otherness, which make the term polysemous and imprecise, however much it is one of the key issues for contemporary culture. Marek Kaźmierczak’s article presents the relations among theory of literature, deontology, and epistemology. His main hypothesis in Literary Theory as Critical Epistemology and Deontology: Notes on the Concerns in Fiction in Relation to the Images of the Holocaust in Mass Media is that the theory of literature becomes a source of the multi-discursive tools of description and explanation of social problems, which are perceived under the influence of mass media. He supports this hypothesis by discussing the representations of the Holocaust in the contemporary culture. Olga Płaszczewska’s article, Comparative Literature: Metacriticism and its Paradoxes, focuses on the problem of the self-critical discourse of a discipline which constantly expresses the necessity of development and progress. The “Case Studies” section of this book begins with Danuta Ulicka’s paper on Russian formalism. In The Protocol and the Magazine. Two Styles of Literary Criticism in the So-called Russian Formalism she discusses two different and competing styles of criticism: academic and market-based. They emerged at the same time in two schools of Russian formalism — the Moscow Linguistic Circle and OPOJAZ from St. Petersburg. The differences between the two schools—one primarily formalist and purely scientific, the other grounded in a socio-political context—are manifested not only in the styles and genres of their members’ critical statements but also in their biographies. The aim of Danuta Szajnert’s article, The Subversive Potential of an Apocryphon, is to show that the main characteristics of the construction of any apocryphal text which include intertextual media-

Editors’ Introduction

13

tisation rely on the explicit communication of a world view from the perspective of some other canonical text as well as the confrontation of their mediums and manners. Thus, every apocryphon possesses a critical and subversive potential. Natalia Lemann in Could We Conserve Ourselves From the Past? discusses the genres of alternate history and uchronias and their subversive potential as a literary aporia of politics and of the historical knowledge which forces us to become more critical about the past as well as the present. Magdalena Bednarek, in Leaving the Tower. Feminist Rewriting of Fairy Tales in the Contemporary Polish Prose since 1989, shows the crucial role of re-writing as a way of both criticising the old and building a new feminist order. Bednarek argues that as a literary technique it is one of the most significant and distinguishable elements of feminist poetics and not only in Polish literature. The Ecological Novel as a Critical Genre by Izabella Adamczewska analyses the environmental novel as a ”critical genre”. Another ”genre-focused” paper is Michał Wróblewski’s The Evolutionary Potential of Metacriticality in Reference to “Watchmen” — the Graphic Novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons in which he discusses the impact of self-awareness and metacritical tendencies within the texts of popular culture on the development of genres in the politypical chain. The topic of ”graphic” cultural phenomena finds its continuation in Logo-visual Genres: From Criticism of Language to Social Critique, the paper by Agnieszka Karpowicz who writes about logo-visual genres. She claims that critical reflection on language and systems of representation — when one medium is reflected by the other one in a single work — makes the spectator’s reception of the work critical and non-automatic. Charles Russell, Rutgers University, Newark Arne Melberg, University of Oslo Jaroslaw Pluciennik, University of Lodz Michal Wroblewski, University of Lodz

On Criticism

A Critique Of Criticism Ewa Kraskowska* Abstract This article presents some critical thoughts on “critical thinking” and criticism as such. According to the author, in recent decades the very term has become so widely applied in various fields of intellectual and cultural activity that its basic meaning is now hard to establish. In general, it supports the “culture of argument” (D.Tannen) which is oriented towards confrontation and polemic, and not towards achieving consensus. Three areas in which the notions of criticism and critical thinking are being used with particular frequency are discussed: education, academic discourse and art & culture. In education, “critical thinking” is nothing more than a contemporary equivalent of traditional logical and rational argumentation, and therefore represents Western logocentrism. In academic discourse, on the other hand, it tends to be treated as a manifestation of an antilogocentric attitude (vide: discourse analysis and criticism, cultural criticism). Finally, such phenomena as “art as Critical Practice” or “museum as Critical Practice” are deeply rooted in the counter-culture movements of the 1960s and 1970s, and their political bias seriously weakens their creative potential. * Institute of Polish Philology, Adam Mickiewicz Univeristy, Fredry 10, 61-701 Poznań e-mail: [email protected]

1. The Culture of Critique Criticism, critical practice, critical thinking, and critical discourse analysis are all concepts and formulae whose frequency in contemporary Polish (as in other languages) is very high. These concepts can be found in various fields of life such as politics, education, academia and the fine arts. Slowly but surely, however, they are ceasing to mean anything at all for they can mean just about everything, for as Michał Paweł Markowski put it: “Critical can refer to everything if defined as critical” (2007) — to be precise, it can be added, if it defines itself as critical. Such concepts are usually ideologically marked. Thus in today’s discourse practice it is mainly the representatives and main speakers of minority groups, the radical New Left, artistic avant-garde and postmodern theorists that bestow unto one another the licence for so-called critical thinking. This matter is complicated by the fact that the lexeme ‘criticism’ and its derivatives often have strong adversarial, confrontational and negative connotations. It is not always the case, of course; phrases like ”literary criticism”, ”film criticism” etc. are used in terms of reviews as a genre, not only as a commentary that criticises a given work. Literary criticism in English, to take a general point, stands for studies of literature and not a search for weak aspects of literary work. Today’s ”critical thinking”, however, is mostly seen as a polemic, confrontation and a gesture of revealing hidden faults — as Deborah Tannen maintains:

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Ewa Krasowska In the argument culture, criticism, attack, or opposition are the predominant if not the only ways of responding to people or ideas. I use the phrase “culture of critique” to capture this aspect. “Critique” in this sense is not a general term for analysis or interpretation but rather a synonym for criticism.

Further on, Tannen explains: In this spirit, critical thinking is synonymous with criticising. In many classrrooms, students are encouraged to read someone’s life work, then rip it to shreds. [...] There are many ways that unrelenting criticism is destructive in itself. (1999: 7, 19)

Tannen, in her work devoted to the argument culture, discusses, among other subjects, the origins of this phenomena. Her view is that it is a product of western culture based on classical Greek philosophy, one of the cults devoted to formal logic as the one and only correct means of determining truth. For the purposes of my study, three fields shall be examined in terms of how criticism functions: education, scholarly discourse, as well as culture and the fine arts.

2. Critical Thinking in Education The concept of critical thinking plays a particularly significant role in the area of education and associated studies, especially in the American context. With respect to the latter, it has gained enormous currency in the 1980s thanks to John Dewey who used it at the beginning of the 20th c. (Fisher 2001: 3). Broadly speaking, this term stands for a collection of research enquiry procedures that facilitate a rational, objective assessment of information — concordant with research standards — previously collected that draw subsequent research conclusions. In the American education system, the skill of critical thinking is placed as the priority, one that needs to be gained at various levels from secondary education through to doctoral studies as a means of ensuring intellectual independence and accuracy in judgements made using the process of enquiry (reasoning). The teaching of critical thinking (CT) is one that is embraced by countless vade mecums, textbooks and guides such as CT Step by Step, Practical Guide to CT, CT in a Nutshell that a Google book search finds in great numbers,1 as well as similar numbers of titles found in recommended bibliographies. In essence, today’s educational approach to CT is a continuation of teachings from past millennia in the field of classical logic and rhetoric that is given a face-lift — one that makes it easily comprehensible for the contemporary pupil, student, politician, 1

The most peculiar one the author has come across is the work addressed to kindergarten children, D. Tiersch-Allen Critical Thinking: ZIM’s World of Reading, EDCON Publishing Group 2007 and the one earmarked for intelligence employees, D.T. Moore Critical Thinking and Intelligence Analysis, National Defense Intelligence College (Washington, 2nd ed. 2010).

Criticism of Criticism

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interpretation of such formulations, as Tannen has concluded (2002: 1651-1669), discussion centres on this ubiquitous, culture of dispute, argument, ritualised adversativeness, compulsive polemic and controversy, at best a culture of a hermeneutics of suspicion. In academia, this issue has a particularly strong resonance.

3. Academia: criticism, critical practice and criticism as a sport In the workings of academia the issue of critical practice and criticism has two fundamental dimensions. The first relates to the issuing of opinions and scholarly assessment of given researchers, research teams, research institutes and, finally, universities themselves. The second, on the other hand, is exemplified in scholarly discourse, especially in theory and methodology, taking the form either of discourse analysis or various forms of a hermeneutics of suspicion. In relation to the first, it is useful to recall the discussions that took place in 1998 and were organised by the Foundation for the Polish Sciences, where criticism and critical evaluation were the subjects of debate of leading representatives of academic and intellectual circles, among others Jerzy Pelc, Janusz Sławiński, Jerzy Szacki, Marcin Kula, Magdalena Bajer, Ryszard Legutko. Discussion was centred mainly around review practices such as peer to peer that, after all, play a key role in the course of professional academic careers and the decision-making process in grant applications. In the latter, there dominated a feeling of regret in regard to the lack of criticism, the prevalence of the so-called ”brotherly reviews” and the ensuing lowering of scholarly standards in Poland. Jerzy Pelc was the only participant in this debate who attempted to establish a system of terminology and methodology in matters associated with the concepts of criticism. The definitions that Pelc worked out are worth citing in their entirety: The critical approach and critical thinking in scholarly pursuits is based on the fact that without due justification it does not recognise as true or right, nor does it argue what common sense would urge or prompt. Instead, it argues ex hypothesi against a current view being ”true” regardless of whether it is sufficiently based on argument. The critical approach and critical enquiry in the humanities and sciences affect both scholarly activities as well as by-products of these, such as scholarly texts, which are manifested equally as criticism that is negative and positive [emphasis mine], immanent and transcendental, and, finally, criticism of the self as well as criticism of the other. (1998: 17)

Criticism understood in this way, applies to a) research problems, b) research methodology, c) the problem solving research process, d) research results, e) scholarly by-products and f) the language of research texts. It is the antithesis, maintains Pelc, of “wishful thinking”, which is powered mainly by emotions. By definition, it would also seem that it is opposed to the so-called everyday thinking, which is determined through cognitive schemata and stereotypes inclining towards judge-

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entrepreneur or lecturer. CT thus understood is therefore totally entrenched in the tradition of western logocentrism in that it is based on the inductive model of argumentation and, in principle, should now — at least in the context of the human and social sciences — be subject to a thorough (critical) review. In the meantime, however, it is flourishing in academic papers and official directives that emerge in Europe in respect to education, one example being the work associated with the Bologna Process and the implementation of European and Polish Qualifications Framework, whose task is to outline the respective education system levels with the aid of the so-called Learning Outcomes. In regard to higher education, these outlines are created over several levels of general descriptors — from the highest, where knowledge, skills and social competencies for the B.A., M.A. and Ph.D are defined, through to areas that are academic disciplines divided according to their specific subject and methodology, and finally to specific study fields known as benchmarks. The reference point for these is the so-called Dublin Descriptors — general teaching outlines for higher education. These refer to the attainment of personal and social skills in the process, in particular the education of social competences: “... democracy is dependent in the final analysis on the active participation of educated citizens. [...] Apart from universal skills, the active participation of a citizen demands [...] educating attitudes and democratic values, as well as critical thinking skills” (Chmielecka 2010: 143). The Qualifications Framework has already reached Poland and is now being clarified. The Ministry of Science and Higher Education has made the Learning Outcomes Descriptors available for all academic areas, where the adjective ‘critical’ (in various contexts) appears as many as 47 times. For example, in relation to B.A. or M.A. graduates in the humanities it is possible to read that they: • are able to research, analyse, assess, select and integrate information from various sources and consequently formulate critical judgements • are able to conduct a critical analysis and interpretation of various text genres and works of material culture, • possess the skill of formulating critical opinion on cultural works on the basis of academic knowledge and experience. We learn, among other things, that upon graduation a student of the humanities “can independently and critically complement their knowledge and skills”, whilst a student of the sciences, however, can “critically assess their own experiment results”. A student of the life sciences in a similar vein “demonstrates the skill of a critical discussion of a given issue”. Graduates of the fine arts and related fields are also expected to demonstrate critical approach, for example in the context of “formulating critical argumentation” or the skill of “critical assessment”. This would not be so worrying overall if it were not for the easily observable fact that in the

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ments of an obvious and dogmatic nature. Moreover, Pelc points out highly reprehensible instances of critical evaluation, where scholarly practice has resorted to leniency — especially self-leniency, harassment as well as ”charity”. He concludes, among others, with a note of sadness that “a lack of civic courage and sheer opportunism on the part of reviewers, especially to whom doctoral and habilitation work is submitted [...] often opens up the way for mediocrity and ignorance” (1998: 24). He also proposes that such review procedures should take place as far away as possible from those circles where the scholar to be reviewed is active. The question can be asked whether the issues raised by Pelc and other participants in the aforementioned debate on the problems associated with the academic system of review and assessment are characteristic of Poland, or indeed whether they are widespread across the globe. The majority would appear to maintain that it is, however, a Polish trait and, further, perhaps one of a post-communist nature, well illustrated by Ryszard Legutko: For a long period of time there was no clear association in Poland between professional status and the value of scholarly achievement, and the presentation of its concepts. It was possible to play an important role in the academic community without any achievements of value. A conviction was formed therefore that substantial critical evaluation was not only unnecessary but often harmful; (1998: 59)

“A lack of intellectual schools” was an additional factor in this context, “a result of conflicts between various factions being stymied as well as the long-standing influence of ideology” and, as a consequence, “there became widespread the conviction that criticism represents an instrument of political warfare, rather than serving internal academic discourse aims.” Legutko not only sees in these negative phenomena an inheritance of the previous political system but also a consequence of the functions he labels as ”tribal tendencies” in the Western humanities, which he identifies as postmodern ”anti-scholarly” humanities, where “critical enquiry in the classical sense” is not par for the course. In this context Legutko has in mind, as he puts it, various types of “unmaskers of the truth” — scholars conducting a hermeneutic discourse as well as “goldminers of esoterica” found in works of art and intellectual enquiry. Does contemporary scholarly discourse in the humanities in fact suffer from an inadequacy of critical enquiry (CT)? Here Legutko is mistaken — the case is quite the opposite. Criticism — understood as the demonstration and analysis of hidden presuppositions, uncovering of such in a given idea or text and not expressed explicitly or even camouflaged implications of views, the unmasking of language manipulation mechanisms, asking questions that are ”inconvenient” for the text and placing of the text universe in a permanent state of mistrust — is the distinctive trademark of many methodological orientations in the humanities and social sciences, from psychoanalysis and Marxism to deconstruction and femi-

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nism. With respect to scholarly discourse, mistrust has become, in fact, an addiction of our times and although it is clear that it is possible to recognise the research value of such a position, nonetheless at times one does long for the age of trust and authority, for a culture of affirmation, especially since criticism understood from this perspective rarely goes hand in hand with auto-criticism, with a reasonably honest analysis of implications that determine one’s own position of critical reviewer with an insightful definition of place — according to Kinga Dunin — from which one ”reads” (Dunin 2004: 53-55). Further, without taking this step, the whole manner of the so-called critical thinking directed at other viewpoints and commentary loses its rationale. The crisis in critical enquiry in the age of post-humanism, new media and hegemony of mass culture was also debated by the periodical ”Critical Enquiry” during a symposium organised in April 2003. Distinguished representatives of various theoretical factions were part of the editorial board — Homi Bhabha, Teresa de Lauretis, Wayne Booth or Fredric Jameson. A characteristic leitmotif of comments from the respective participants was a direct reference to the political context: the attack on the WTC and its consequences in the form of the Iraqi war and increasing atmosphere of protest against it in the USA. This is of importance, for the politicisation of discourse has become a trademark in critical enquiry in the form it takes in our times. Two comments shall be discussed. –. The first, unusually passionate in its rhetoric, comes from Bruno Latour: : Wars. So many wars. Wars outside and wars inside. Cultural wars, science wars, and wars against terrorism. Wars against poverty and wars against the poor. Wars against ignorance and wars out of ignorance. My question is simple: Should we be at war, too, we, the scholars, the intellectuals? Is it really our duty to add fresh ruins to fields of ruins? Is it really the task of the humanities to add deconstruction to destruction? More iconoclasm to iconoclasm? What has become of the critical spirit? Has it run out of steam? (2004: 225)

Latour is concerned about the similarity of contemporary theories based on a critical analysis of discourse, discovery of hidden presuppositions in seemingly objective statements of facts, anti-essentialism and constructivism for global conspiracy theories. His concern is all the more convincing that, as he himself claims, he recognises his contribution to these theories. He asks rather pointedly what is the difference between proponents of conspiracy theories and the popularised (among others in academic teaching) perusal of Pierre Bourdieu’s work inspired by critical sociology? In both cases the principle of mistrust is applied to all arguments since, as it is widely known, those who propose them are completely unaware of the true motives that are inspiring them.

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What needs to be explained precisely is what in truth is hidden, what the true facts are and, again, in both cases speculation is introduced in respect to hidden perpetrators, agents and the group ”pulling all the strings”. Latour adds: Of course, we in the academy like to use more elevated causes—society, discourse, knowledge-slash-power, fields of forces, empires, capitalism—while conspiracists like to portray a miserable bunch of greedy people with dark intents, but I find something troublingly similar in the structure of the explanation, in the first movement of disbelief and, then, in the wheeling of causal explanations coming out of the deep dark below. (2004: 229) 2

Teresa de Lauretis admits, on the other hand, that for about ten years (writing in 2003) she has been becoming increasingly distant, turning away from: “militant” theories she herself had helped take form — feminist, gender and queer. From the beginning she sensed all the more an undefined disappointment with these directions that theories were taking. In this context she uses picturesque metaphors of streams that carry various branches and leaves. When they encounter a barrier such as a tree or trunk they accrue there, creating a dam, which means that the stream turns in another direction. Examples of such barriers or turns in theoretical discourse after the 1960s were debates on nature versus culture, theory versus practice, essentialism versus constructivism and similar binary oppositions that — as de Lauretis claims — blurred the initial source and impulse of these theoretical projects. One of the causes of a devaluation of constructive criticism is the hegemony of global media that trivialise every independent thought and, at the same time, the dissemination of contextual schemata based on adversity. As de Lauretis writes: The enigma of the world now, for me, consists in something that I can only think of as the paradox of a negativity that is also, at the same time, a positivity: a stubborn, silent resistance to discursification, articulation, rationalization, or negotiation that coexists with the technologies of instant communication through global media; a destructive violence that erupts spontaneously like volcanic lava throughout the geopolitical space, in individuals as often as in collectivities, in the most well-to-do, civil, managed, social environments as in the most impoverished, oppressive [...] The enigma of the now is such because our theories, discourses, and knowledges are incompatible with its forms and means of expression. (2004: 366-367)

The doctrine of critical thinking best thrives in social and cultural studies where it accompanies approaches such as orthodox political correctness, unmasking and 2

Latour cites the example of denial in respect to the phenomenon of global climate warming and its interpretation as a cover for various self-interest groups; a more drastic illustration of the same mechanism is the phenomenon of the so-called Auschwitz Lies or theories on the subject of ”the Smoleńsk Crime” constructed after the tragic plane crash in April 2010 that killed the Polish president and other notables.

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condemning discriminatory practices and, finally, anti-logocentricism. The last, after all, represents the largest trap for critical enquiry, for every theory, including CT, depends on the construction of a coherent system of judgements and claims, which in itself has a logocentric character. There is no escape from logocentrism except into another logocentrism. This irreversible paradox of ant-logocentric critical enquiry, which reminds a snake eating its own tail, was splendidly recognised by David Damrosch, an American Comparative Literature and Anthropology scholar, in his book Meetings of the Mind, a type of university novel on recollections of participation in academic conferences. One of the protagonists in the novel is a humanities scholar from Tel Aviv with the title of D.C.A., which becomes a point of interest to his colleagues. Here a longer and compelling quotation is essential, which shall be used as a means of closing the issue of critical enquiry (CT) in academic discourse: “[...] We don’t have a ‘D.C.A.’ in this country; what’s it stand for?” [asks one of the characters — EK] “Doctorate in Critical Alterity,” Dov replied. “Tel Aviv’s pride and joy. The most rigorous theoretical program in the Levant, maybe in the world.” “What makes it so special, pray tell?” Vic asked. “It no longer exists, actually — it self-destructed a few years ago. This was probably inevitable in a program that had the goal to carry to a new level the progressive alienation inherent in graduate school life, but too rarely embodied systematically and made intellectually valuable instead of merely emotionally destructive.” “So how did it work?” “I will give as an example the way a student would complete the degree. We did not defend our dissertations in Critical Alterity: we attacked them. There would be a two-hour meeting with the sponsors in which the candidate himself — not too many women entered this program, for some reason — the candidate himself, I say, would begin by exposing every major weakness in his own argument, his methods, his evidence, placing particular stress on problems he could lay directly at his sponsors’ feet. The sponsors would then defend themselves, first by counter-attacking the candidate’s own intelligence and competence, then by shifting the blame onto their own teachers in turn. The most succesful sessions would usually end with both parties agreeing to blame either the Likud or the Labor party, whichever was in power at the time.” “The whole thing sounds pretty harrowing,” I remarked. “Still, I suppose the survivors came out with an exeptionally acute critical intelligence.” “Actually, only those who failed really benefitted from the program,” Dov replied. “This is why it has been closed down: it is hard to support a program solely by pointing to your drop-outs. Several of them went on to important positions in politics, investigative journalism, military intelligence. The few who actually got through the program were mostly good for nothing, except maybe two or three of us, all of whom left the country as soon as we could. Still, I do not regret the experience. I can even say that my reaction against the program has been the basis of my later work.”

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I couldn’t help feeling that Dov was exaggerating the distinctiveness of his program — it sounded a great deal like my own years at Yale... [the narrator concludes — EK] (Damrosch 2000: 83-84)

4. Art as Critical Practice, the Museum as Critical Practice The greatest, though controversial, career (also media) made by CT at present, however, is in culture and the fine arts. Many contemporary artistic phenomena, not only in Poland, define themselves with the aid of Critical Practice. These are seen as products of postmodernism, though their roots ought to be looked for in the movements of counter-culture of the 1960s and 1970s. Their typical traits are a turn to various forms of anti-aestheticism (ugliness, mass culture, breaking cultural taboos, aggression), disclosure of approaches to cultural (especially customary) stereotypes, political engagement, happenings, provocation and demonstrative negation of the mainstream — though often bearing a hidden desire to be part of it. Flag-bearing representatives of art as Critical Practice in Poland are Dorota Nieznalska, Katarzyna Kozyra, Artur Żmijewski and Zbigniew Libera. The first came to fame with the work Passion, composed from a film showing a man working out at the gym, and a cross with male genitals nailed to it. From July 2003 to March 2011 the case found itself in court, the artist accused of offending religious feelings. It ended with the court finding the artist innocent. The titles of several of Nieznalska’s exhibitions are worth noting, for they reflect the essence of her projects: Obedience (2006, Stary Browar, Poznan), Perversion Implant (2004, Le Madame, Warsaw), Domination (2003, Teatr Polski, Bydgoszcz), Dangerous Liaisons (2002, Arsenał, Poznan). Nieznalska’s subjects are centred around issues tied to sexual minorities and gender identity, violence, domination and subjection (therefore motifs such as human/man and animal/bitch relations reappear). The renowned graduate work of Katarzyna Kozyra Pyramid of Animals (1990) belongs to the canon and classics of Polish art as Critical Practice. Similarly to Nieznalska’s Passion, it has become subject to attacks, this time from animal rights’ defenders, for it is said, the artist had a horse and rooster killed and then stuffed for this installation. Other projects by Kozyra focus on subjects such as taboo existential phenomena like death, nakedness, disease, etc. She often uses her own body as part of the work, transforming these themes (as in Bathhouse,1997). Artur Żmijewski (New Left artistic editor of the Krytyka Polityczna monthly), like Kozyra and Nieznalska, has been working in art as Critical Practice since the 1990s and has become known for works (films, installations, happenings) dealing with Polish-Jewish issues and the Holocaust (Berek 1999, 80064 2004 and Pole in the Closet 2006). Zbigniew Libera deals with similar themes. His most renowned work is the 1996 installation LEGO — Concentration Camp.

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Although Critical Practice artists engage in polemics with the mainstream culture, the context of their exhibitions — renowned state and private galleries — ensures a relatively mainstream audience and related public. Their work becomes subsequently the subject of numerous comments, including academic discourse. The concept of a museum as Critical Practice is growing in new museum studies, developing from the 1980s into academic studies exploring political, ideological and aesthetic dimensions of museum management and, at the same time, proposing new forms and principles of action. As such, this trend is a part of the critical analysis of discourse, especially where the discourse legitimises institutional power and is a tool of indoctrination. The museum as Critical Practice therefore is to remain in opposition to the museum as an institution representing the prevailing discourse and is to subvert and deconstruct it, revealing hidden implications of accepted viewpoints. Thus it is to propose the alternative forms of discourse — such as those that exist on the margins of the mainstream or completely beyond it. In contrast to ”traditional” museums, the function of a museum as Critical Practice is to be based on reduction and the elimination of institutionalism in favour of a decentralised, non-hierarchical structure and spatial organisation, thereby maximising the interaction of the viewer, who from a passive voyeur of artefacts changes into an active co-contributor to the exhibition event. The new museums are to target a defined community, at best a local one, who thanks to active participation becomes educated, broadens the awareness of its identity and enriches or in fact reclaims its collective memory. This collaborative function should take on an economic and organisational dimension, for the local community should participate in decision making in respect to the subject matter and funding per se. Traditional museum studies specialisations under this concept are re-organised and replaced by an interdisciplinary approach to subject matter, and the formula of ”permanent exhibition” passes to the scrapheap for good. This — in brief — is the theory. And what about the practice? It sometimes succeeds, sometimes fails. The New Museum is an idea that can turn into a very bold concept and in fact into projects that activate the local community — though it too is prone to deformation. One of the well-thought-out examples of such projects would be the remodelling of the Dresden Museum of Military History in line with Daniel Libeskind’s design. In the facade of the former Prussian Arsenal, the architect ‘wedged’ a glass arrow that penetrates the building from end to end, re-organising the structure of its interior. This spatial metaphor carries a clear message — one of confronting authoritarianism with freedom, and as far as the historical dimension is concerned, one construing a new narration on warfare, especially the latter — to be seen from the point of view of participants and victims.

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Locating this project in Dresden, a place that became a symbol of total war destruction, has a deep justification in its annals of history and culture. The architectural material destroyed during the war was replaced with perfect reconstructions, as e.g. the Baroque Frauenkirche reconstructed from scratch. The splendid palaces and gardens of the Saxon Knights rub shoulders with the remains of the housing estates from the East German period. It becomes somewhat a post-epilogue of a narrative created in the Museum. In Poland the doctrine of a museum as Critical Practice is mainly identified with the Poznan art historian Piotr Piotrowski, who attempted to introduce this as the director of the National Museum in Warsaw and resigned after a 15 month tenure (2009-2010), a result of the Museum Governing Board rejecting his strategy of modernising this institution. Thanks to the publicity that arose during his resignation (or as his opponents prefer to say ‘dismissal’), the concept of a museum as Critical Practice reached the media and became a part of the wider public awareness. In this particular case the mechanism of critique culture was at work, one of gaining publicity through confrontation, militancy and the creation of an atmosphere of scandal. Since then Piotrowski has not ceased to popularise his vision in his work and has used his experience as the director of the National Museum in the work Muzeum krytyczne (Museum as Critical Practice).3 The focus of Piotrowski’s project was to present a new model of museum practice in opposition to two traditional contemporary models of museums as institutions, which he described as the Museum — Tomb (mausoleum) and Museum — Big Mac (commercial). Piotrowski commented on his plans of modernisation of the National Museum: The concept of a National Museum refers to the nation as such but it had a different dimension in the 19th c. to that of our times, in the 21st. The Museum as Critical Practice relates to a contemporary nation and therefore not understood as a mono-ethnic construct but a conglomeration of various social and ethnic groups with various public and political interests. [...] Such a construct should be anti-market driven. [...] In Poland, which suffers from chronic conservatism, the cultivation of the museum-temple is de facto a support of conservatism — one that is extreme in Poland. [...] We have openly said which political option we favour but proponents of conservative and commercial museums do not, hiding their political engagement. This in fact is what new approach to the museum’s function is — an attempt to de-neutralise museum discourse. (2010: 90-91)

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“Was the former National Museum director’s battle for Critical Practice justified? Did it have to be destined as another Waterloo? Professor Piotrowski attempts to answer these questions in his book...” — writes the Gazeta Wyborcza daily in its review (Dorota Jarecka, 23.03.2011, http://wyborcza.pl/1,75475,10156065,Piotr_Piotrowski___Muzeum_ krytyczne_.html, published 19.09.2011)

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Piotrowski goes on to elaborate on this: The mission of the museum as Critical Practice can be looked at from three general standpoints: the activity of institutions in the public domain, its auto-criticism and changes in the so-called geography of interests. [...] We have emphasised the active role of the museum, which is based on awakening an understanding of the contemporary world’s complexity, recognition of the importance of memory and the past in the building of a civic society, a society that goes beyond national borders, one that is internally complex. (2011: 72)

The only ”criticism as practice exhibition” that Piotrowski managed to organise during this short and stormy directorship was Ars Homo Erotica under the curatorship of Dr Paweł Leszkowicz from the Institute of Art History, UAM, Piotrowski’s alma mater. According to the latter, it was to be “the largest exhibition in Polish history of the male nude from the ancient world to modern times”, complemented by work demonstrating various dimensions of love between men. Its aim, however, was defined as ‘reversing the dominant norm where heterosexual attitudes are the rule as well as placing in the very centre what up to now was on the margin (Leszkowicz 2010). There were few works represented on the subject — at times only as an excuse — of lesbians. Post factum Piotrowski explained: Homosexual imagination, symbolism and artistic sensibilities represent [...] part of the European cultural heritage, which visitors to museums and at the same time citizens of a democratic state, have the right to become acquainted with. The museum in turn has the responsibility to present this knowledge to them (2011: 84).

The exhibition was meant to be a ”military outpost” of Piotrowski and his associates’ programme of critical practice. The exhibition was a huge success in terms of visitors, which, I suppose, nonetheless ought to be recognised as the culture-going public’s interest in erotica rather than acceptance for the exhibition’s “critical potential”. It would appear in fact that the choice of subject matter in this case was most inopportune, for as far as media reception was concerned, critical practice terms were inevitably identified with sexual minorities and thus the entire project of National Museum renewal began to be perceived, even if this was not articulated publically, as an agenda for gays, lesbians and the radical New Left. Had Piotrowski decided to realise in the context of a ‘military outpost’ another exhibition that was planned, for example, Democracy, Democracy (Piotrowski 2011: 75-81), he would have no doubt achieved a coherency between the declared programme and specific functions. The Ars HomoErotica exhibition in fact put this out of the question. Critical practice today is a deeply devalued currency. It is treated instrumentally and has lost much of its founder potential in line with Kant, who began his line of thought with a critical and ungiving self-analysis of his own limitations and

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cognitive possibilities. Being focused on confrontation, it lapsed into a programmatic militancy and a permanent state of adversity. Further, tangled in conflicts of mores, it ceased to be seen as neutral — a condition which enables to see the world from various points of view and not holding to one, even the broadest, perspective. Translated by Ryszard Reisner

Bibliography: Chmielecka Ewa (ed.) (2010), Autonomia programowa wyższych uczelni. Ramy kwalifikacji dla szkolnictwa wyższego, Ministerstwo Nauki i Szkolnictwa Wyższego, Warszawa. Damrosch David (2000), Meetings of the Mind, Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford.Fisher Alec (2001), Critical Thinking. An Introduction, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Latour Bruno (2004), Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern, “Critical Inquiry” 2004 nr 2 (vol. 30). Lauretis Theresa de, Statement Due, “Critical Inquiry” 2004 nr 2 (vol. 30). Legutko Ryszard (1998), Krytyka i krytycyzm w humanistyce, In Krytyka i krytycyzm w nauce, „Fundacji dyskusje o nauce”, 1998 nr 2. Leszkiewicz Paweł (2004), Na trzy miesiące polubić męskie ciało. Z Pawłem Leszkiewiczem rozmawia Dorota Jarecka, „Gazeta Wyborcza” 2004-01-04 http://wyborcza. pl/1,75475,7415314,Na_trzy_miesiace_polubic_meskie_cialo.html. Markowski Michał Paweł (2007), Sztuka, krytyka, kryzys, „Obieg” http://www.obieg.pl/ teksty/1863. Pelc Jerzy (1998), Krytyka i krytycyzm w nauce, In Krytyka i krytycyzm w nauce, „Fundacji dyskusje o nauce”, 1998 nr 2. Tannen Deborah (2002), Agonism in academic discourse, “Journal of Pragmatics” 34 (2002). Tannen Deborah (1999), The Argument Culture. Stopping America’s War of Words, Ballantine Books, New York.

Dunin Kinga (2004), Czytając Polskę. Literatura polska po roku 1989 wobec dylematów nowoczesności, W.A.B, Warszawa. Piotrowski Piotr (2010), Chcieliśmy otworzyć muzeum. Z Piotrem Piotrowskim rozmawia Magdalena Radomska, „Czas Kultury” 2010 nr 5. Piotrowski Piotr (2011), Muzeum krytyczne, Rebis, Poznań.

Kant’s Redefinition of Reason: Critique, Freedom, and Enlightenment Paweł Łuków* Abstract Redefinition of a concept which is well-established in a culture is a risky enterprise. One needs to say something new and revealing and to connect it to the old understanding of the concept at the same time. It is easy therefore that the novelty remains unappreciated. This is the fate of Kant’s concepts of reason and critique. They are a part of the modern intellectual culture but they are usually understood in the old Cartesian meaning and in this way they provide a basis for criticisms of Kant’s philosophy and the “Enlightenment project”. It is argued in the paper that Kant talked about reason and critique as constituents of a public practice in which finite beings question and correct established views and social institutions. This practice relies on freedom of speech which establishes a very close link between reason and critique. In Kant’s view, reason and critique are inseparable in that they are a public practice of free debate among a plurality of finite beings. This account of reason and critique are parts of Kant’s more comprehensive view in which enlightenment is seen as a project of liberation and modernisation of society and state. * Institute of Philosophy, University of Warsaw, Krakowskie Przedmieście 3, 00–927 Warszawa e-mail: [email protected]

Redefinition of a concept, which is a well-established in a tradition or in common use, is a risky venture. One needs to say something new and revealing, which may make the concept unrecognisable, and to connect it to the old understanding of the concept at the same time. Redefinition has its own dialectics which goes on between the recognisable, understandable, and familiar and the unrecognised, hardly accessible, and foreign. Its success remains problematic, whether the new understanding of the concept was rejected or actually adopted. It is not uncommon that the only consequence of an attempt at redefinition is an independent life of the concept, which has little in common with its predecessor or its redefined relative. A typical response to an attempt at redefinition is lack of understanding. We usually do not notice the new meaning of the concept, however clearly its innovator may have presented it. When we find a well-known concept in its new use, we are more likely to assume that the moderniser made a slip of the tongue or expressed him or herself insufficiently clearly rather than recognise the new version. This is what happened to Meno. When Socrates asked him to explain what virtue is, he described the virtues (in the plural) of slaves, women and free citizens.1 When asked “What is virtue?” he answered the question “What virtues or its kinds are there?” because he did not believe with Plato’s Socrates that all virtues belonged 1

Plato’s Meno, transl. by G. Anastaplo and L. Berns, Focus Publishing 2004, p. 2-3 (71e/72a).

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to one and the same kind. So he assumed that what Socrates had had in mind was what everyone else usually had: not the nature or essence of virtue, allegedly common to all virtues, but the virtues different for different kinds of humans. Thinking about the virtues as sharing a common nature took root, replacing the thinking about them as united by family resemblance. Plato’s redefinition seems to have been a success. A more complicated situation arose after I. Kant redefined reason and critique. They became parts of modern culture but usually they live their own lives. “Reason” seems to have little in common with its Kantian understanding, whereas “critique” tends to function in the way intended by Kant. Reason is typically identified with a Cartesian-style power of individuals to arrive at beliefs or decisions according to unchangeable rules; Critique — as rational assessment of beliefs or practices. In Kant’s proposal, reason and critique are inseparable in that critique is part of the practice of reason; however, in their subsequent philosophical uses they are often set against one another. The denunciations of the “Enlightenment project” or modernity tend to ignore Kant’s rejection of the Cartesian understanding of reason and the links he saw between reason and critique. They are criticisms of the belief in the salutary power of reason in the process of arriving at claims about the world and principles of action. However, these criticisms presuppose a view of reason which seemed attractive only to some of the thinkers of the Enlightenment. It is a Cartesian idea of reason,2 which isolates rational activities from their natural context and grows out of metaphysically rooted standards of thought and action. In this criticism, reason is essentially dubious, and appeals to reason encourage distrust for it. The conception of reason seems here to be a proof of, at best, a naïve belief in the possibility of arriving at ultimate standards of thinking and acting or, at worst, a tool of manipulation and oppression with which its worshippers attempt to impose on others their own beliefs about the required order of the natural and social worlds. The reason, which figures in these critiques, is therefore a weapon of enslavement of thought and action, rather than a tool of individual or collective emancipation, as the Enlightenment thinkers claimed. It is therefore natural to criticise reason. Reason and critique define separate worlds. A praise for reason is evidence of a more or less conscious striving for domination or proof of actual enslavement; critique heralds liberation of thought and action. Such an opposition between associating reason with enslavement and critique with freedom can be seen not only in philosophical writings but also in everyday practice of significant segments of contemporary political and social culture. Lib2

M. Horkheimer, T. W. Adorno, Dialektik der Aufklärung: Philosophische Fragmente, Frankfurt am Main, Fischer 1998; especially: „Exkurs II. Juliette oder Aufklärung und Moral”.

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eralism and toleration are often associated with value agnosticism, according to which no one has monopoly on moral truth, and so everyone should be free to act on and distribute beliefs which they cannot rationally justify. Similarly, many educational programmes seem to be based on a mistrust for reason associated with enslavement. Typical educational programs claim (at least officially) that they only present normative options, leaving the choice of any of the options to students. Education understood as a transfer of knowledge too often replaces upbringing or character formation. Reliance on the Cartesian view of reason prevents critics of the Enlightenment from seeing that among the enlightened there were not only such superrationalists as G. Leibniz but also sceptics about reason like D. Hume. It also obstructs appreciation of those Enlightenment accounts of reason which are much more congenial to the critics of the “Enlightenment project” than, for example, the Cartesian reason of the French encyclopaedists, for whom reason and critique often seem enemies. The Enlightenment was a very diverse epoch. It had not only worshippers of reason and sceptics about it but also Kant, who both believed in the possibility of rational arrangement of knowledge and action and was aware of the hazards which such an enterprise brought. It is exactly for these reasons that he offered his redefinition of reason and critique. Although apparently forgotten by the critics of “the Enlightenment project”, this practical and social context of references to reason, together with critique as its constitutive element, can be found in Kant. Once this context is recognised, it becomes clear that criticism and freedom of thought and action are the centre of references to reason rather than their opposite. For the philosopher from Koenigsberg, the natural and unavoidable context of reason was the free exchange of ideas. The relationship between reason and critique is for Kant much more intimate than most of the denouncers of “the Enlightenment project” seem to think when they blame it for all the miseries of modernity. Speaking about reason or critique separately is for Kant impossible without renouncement of thinking. If one notes this connection, one will see that free critique is a constitutive part of the collective practice called reason rather than a proof of disappointment with reason. Whatever the difference between the Enlightenment thinkers, they certainly shared the belief that it is possible to organise social life according to the principles which are legitimised by something more than custom, habit, tradition or individual will of a ruler. Most of them thought that this “more” had something to do with reason which should be the source of moral instruction. This was the view of the French encyclopaedists. Others, like D. Hume, looked for the source of such instruction in human nature. There were also individualists like J.J. Rousseau. For Kant, none of these proposals of organisation of social life was acceptable because he was aware of the threats associated with each of them. Despite his

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fascination with the work of Rousseau, Kant understood that emotions do not suffice as foundation for the norms of social life. Kant was fascinated by Rousseau’s belief in freedom, not by his proposal for its regulation.3 Equally unreliable as the source of moral instruction was for Kant human nature. The instructions that some philosophers find in human nature are too much dependent on the norms of social life that these philosophers have already accepted. What we describe as natural tends to be identical with what we have earlier recognised as good. Hume’s social and political quietism, in association with his scepticism about reason as the source of moral instruction, convinced Kant that the norms of action should be looked for beyond the contingency of the established forms of social life. However, Hume’s scepticism about reason showed also that if reason was to be the source of any kind of instruction it had to undergo critical assessment. Lack of such an assessment and dogmatic faith in the power of reason (so characteristic of the intellectual fathers of the French Revolution) can result in chaos and misery. The achievements of the eighteenth century European intellectuals convinced Kant and many of his contemporaries in Prussia that reason — no matter how good as a universal tool — must not be just another deity which must be worshipped and never critiqued. The Prussian Enlightenment thinkers understood that a change of the norms of social life requires criticism of the rules accepted so far, and such a criticism requires its own rules. Critique, even if rational, is an uncertain journey. Uncritical and unregulated faith in reason may produce anomy and violence. Rejection of the established forms of social life may end with lack of all norms whatsoever and lead to chaos. Unregulated — one is tempted to say “postmodern” — critique could generate a breakdown of not only the established but also any forms of intellectual and social life, which could result in annihilation of the borders that separate statement from mumble, argument from violence, dispute from war. Since they knew the uncertainties of the enterprise of social change which is founded on critique and references to reason, many Prussian intellectuals of the late 18th century asked — unlike other Enlightenment thinkers — what Enlightenment was. If it is the process of rationalisation of social and political life which replaces the historically contingent forms of life, what norms should govern such a process? Attempts to answer this question sometimes took surprising shapes but they expressed the key hopes and fears associated with critique and reason. In the August 1783 issue of the Berlinische Monatschrift, the royal librarian in Berlin and the founder of the journal, Johann Erich Biester,4 published anon3 4

E. Cassirer, “Kant and Rousseau” in his: Rousseau, Kant, Goethe. Two Essays, J. Gutmann, P. O. Kristeller, J. H. Randall, JR., Princeton 1948. J. Schmidt, „The Question of Enlightenment: Kant, Mendelssohn and the Mittwochsgesellschaft”, Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 50, No 2 (1989): 269-291; cf.

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ymously an article in which he claimed that enlightened members of the society should not participate in religious ceremonies of marriage. In response to this view, Johann Friedrich Zöllner, a priest in Berlin, wrote in the December issue of the journal that religious ceremonies helped prevent corruption of morals. He argued that even if a particular religious doctrine contained errors, it should be supported by the ruler of a country in order to prevent moral corruption. In this way he questioned Biester’s tacit claim that the progress of knowledge and development of human intellectual powers can improve morals without support from other sources, in particular from the state. Unintentionally, Zöllner defined the topic for further discussions. In its new interpretation the question of legitimacy of religious ceremony concerned the role of the state in the moral formation of citizens and it took its shape in the question Zöllner put in a footnote: “What is enlightenment? This question is equally important as: What is truth? … However, I have never found an answer to it.”5 For the 18th century Prussian intellectuals, the question of enlightenment concerned the scope of social change, which was understood as a question about the limits of freedom of thought. Moses Mendelssohn proposed that there should be a limit to freedom of thought and for this purpose he applied the idea of human vocation (Bestimmung des Menschen).6 Organisation of social life, critique and change will not be hazardous if they are undertaken with the realisation of this vocation in view. In a complex analysis Mendelssohn claims that human vocation is individual perfection according to a telos of man, and he distinguishes between essential (wessentliche) and inessential (außerwessentliche) human vocation. He argues that achievement of the essential vocation may require some curtailment of the pursuit of the inessential vocation, which means that some less substantial limitations of freedom of exchange of ideas may be acceptable in the course of achievement of the essential human vocation. Being oriented at and regulated by the essential goals of human vocation, pursuit of enlightenment does not generate the threat of anomy or chaos. In the article An Answer to the Question: ‘What is Enlightenment?’ Kant, like Mendelssohn (although without having read Mendelssohn’s article), appeals to the idea of human vocation. But unlike many of his contemporaries, he does not defend enlightenment by limitations of freedom of speech and reason. On the contrary, enlightenment should rely on a completely free debate. However, such a debate does not question or reject the established forms of social life before conclusions about their legitimacy have been reached, but only after they have been 5 6

M. Kuehn, Kant: A Biography, Cambridge 2001, p. 290. E. Bahr (ed.), Was ist Aufklärung? Thesen und Definitionen. Von Kant, Erhard, Hamann, Herder, Lessing, Mendelssohn, Riem, Schiller, Wieland, Stuttgart 1974, s. 3. M. Mendelssohn, „Über die Frage: Was heißt Aufklären?” in: Was ist Aufklärung? op. cit..

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drawn and can be accepted by all. For Kant, there is no fundamental opposition between reason and critique and between enlightenment and social order. In order to formulate his view, Kant draws a distinction between public and private uses of reason. However, this distinction did not put limitations but recognised contexts of criticisms and their standards. The private use of reason is made by individuals who hold a post or office, like priests who preach according to the orthodoxy of their church, army officers who unquestioningly observe the military rules, or members of the state administration who obey orders of their king. Their use of reason is private in the sense of being limited by the requirements of the post or office. It is marked by privation, that is by not utilising some of the known resources of reason. The public use of reason, by contrast, is not limited by the rules, doctrines or the will of a ruler of the time because the participants of a free debate have access to all known resources of reason, that is to reasons which support the participating theoretical and normative views. It does not mean that in the public use of reason there is a supply of reasons which are determined in advance. Reasons may become available in the process of exchange of ideas. The public use of reason is not defined by a reservoir of reasons and arguments. A person who makes public use of reason addresses, as Kant writes, “the entire reading public”,7 i.e., he “enjoys unlimited freedom to use his own reason and to speak in his own person.”8 His claims do not depend on the authority of any particular person or doctrine. The value and importance of what those who engage in the public use of reason claim does not depend on any institutional or doctrinal authority, i.e., on the private, and so limited and impoverished, use of reason. The worth of the public use of reason resides in the fact that it brings individuals and societies closer to enlightenment, which Kant defines as “man’s emergence from his self-incurred immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s own understanding without the guidance of another.”9 For Kant, enlightenment is not therefore a state of an individual or society but an activity which consists in the growing independence of thought. Enlightenment does not involve commitment to certain beliefs, having some particular knowledge or achievement of a personal excellence. The enlightened people are free in their thought and action from guidance of custom, habit,

7

8 9

„An Answer to the Question: ‘What Is Enlightenment?’” in: Kant: Political Writings, Second Ed., H. Reiss (ed.) Cambridge 1991, p. 55 (8: 37). The references in brackets are to the volume and page numbers in Kants gesammelte Schriften: herausgegeben von der Deutschen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin 1902Ibid, p. 57 (8: 38). Ibid, p. 54 (8: 35).

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stereotype, prejudice or coercion, that is they are emancipated individuals who form an emancipated society.10 Since the public use of reason takes place outside the institutions or offices, it does not contain a threat to social anomy or chaos. The freedom to use one’s own reason and to speak in one’s own person is, as Kant writes, “the most innocuous form of all”11 freedom because it does not intrude into the functioning of institutions, and so it does not reject the established forms of social life unless they have been evaluated in an exchange of ideas. Views and norms which have been developed in the course of the public use of reason can therefore provide foundation for a change of the principles of social life and its institutions; they can help to modify the norms that govern private uses of reason. Such norms can undergo change without ruining social life: A public can only achieve enlightenment slowly. A revolution may well put an end to autocratic despotism and to rapacious or power-seeking oppression, but it will never produce a true reform in ways of thinking. Instead, new prejudices, like the ones they replaced, will serve as a leach to control the great unthinking mass.12

The understanding of reason as a practice was not a discovery that Kant made during the debate over the enlightenment. Key elements of this view of reason can be found in the Critique of Pure Reason, which is the result of the “silent decade” during which Kant rethought philosophy. In the Critique his point of departure is the philosophical doctrines he knew, and he presents them as results of a conception of reason which is completely inadequate to the human powers of thinking and acting. Unfortunately, many of Kant’s contemporaries and later thinkers did not notice the redefinition of reason and the relation in which it stands to critique, which occurred together with his redefinition of philosophy.13 Critique of Pure Reason, first published in 1781, has two parts: “Transcendental doctrine of elements” and “Transcendental doctrine of method”. The first part dominated the attention of its readers and commentators. The “Transcendental doctrine of method”, which is equal to just one sixth of the whole book, did not attract readers despite the fact that it is a kind of teacher’s book which might be used by anyone who decided to use the Critique as the textbook in a university course on theory of knowledge and metaphysics. It is this doctrine of method, however,

10 More on this topic in W. Schneiders, „Emanzipazion und Kritik“ in: Materialien zu Kants Rechtsphilosophie, Z. Batscha (ed.), Frankfurt/Main 1974. 11 „What Is Enlightenment?”, ibid. p. 55 (8: 36). 12 Ibid. 13 The following interpretation of Kant’s account of reason and its links to critique and enlightenment comes from O. O’Neill’s “The Public Use of Reason” in her Constructions of Reason. Explorations of Kant’s Practical Philosophy, Cambridge University Press 1989.

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that contains some critical explanations of Kant’s new understanding of reason, complemented by the account from the 1783 enlightenment article. In the “Transcendental doctrine of method” Kant contrasts his views with the philosophical accounts of reason he found in the tradition. For him, they rest on the assumption that there is a kind-identity between human reason and the supposed divine reason. Using the images of divine rationality known from the Western philosophical tradition, Kant argues that the difference between human, i.e. imperfect, reason and the perfect or divine reason is not just a matter of degree, which rationalists like Leibniz supposed, but that of kind. Human reason is not just the power of intuiting things less clearly and distinctly than is done by a perfect reason. The difference between the two kinds of reason is that perfect reason creates things in the act of intuiting whereas imperfect reason discovers them in sensible intuition and thinking: [Our intuition] is derived (intuitus derivativus), not original (intuitus originarius), thus not intellectual intuition, which … seems to pertain to the original being, never to one that is dependent as regards both its existence and its intuition (which determines its existence in relation to given objects)…14

In original intuition the objects are brought into existence by the very act of intuiting, which — as the tradition says — takes place in the creative act of God. This mode of cognition does not require a cognitive process, gathering data, comparing them or inference, because everything is being given through it. By contrast, human mode of cognition stems, as Kant writes, from two mutually irreducible roots: sensibility and understanding.15 In sensible intuition things outside us stimulate us whereas the understanding arranges the data received in this way in order to achieve a possibly coherent picture of things. Since, unlike perfect reason, in this mode of cognition a passage from stimulation of the senses to representation of things takes place, human cognition is necessarily exposed to the danger of error or illusion. The formation of the human picture of things and of the world is not a onetime event. And it is not a solitary venture, either. In “Transcendental doctrine of method” Kant writes a history of pure reason which is a sequence of metaphysical attempts to create comprehensive and unified accounts of the totality of existence and of debates between supporters of the views developed in this process. Central roles are played here by philosophical ideas and theories. Kant presents their development as stemming from a certain view of reason and as shaping reflexively this view. The conceptions which are developed on the basis of this view of human 14 Critique of Pure Reason, transl. by P. Guyer and A. W. Wood, Cambridge 1999, p. 193 (B 72; cf. also A 277/278, B 333/334). References in brackets are to the original A and B editions of the Critique. 15 Ibid, p. 135 (A15, B 29); cf. 193 (A50, B 74).

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reason which sees it as different from perfect reason only in degree of clarity and distinctness of intuitions, incline one to see human comprehension of things as potentially full and adequate. In Kant’s terminology such conceptions are dogmatisms, which generate some form of transcendental realism, according to which our view of things accords with how they really are. Kant holds that disputes between such views lead to scepticism or loss of faith in the possibility of arriving at any reliable knowledge of the world. The alternative to both dogmatisms and scepticism is, according to Kant, criticism, which relies on the view of human reason as imperfect and constituted by both intuition and thinking. Such reason is qualitatively different from the perfect one. Its knowledge consists of collection of data, their organisation, comparisons, inferring from them etc. It does not have a full and adequate picture of things but needs to form an incomplete view of them. Its proper epistemological standpoint can be only a form of transcendental idealism, which is the view according to which a human picture of the world does not have to be an adequate reflection of the world because the human cognitive abilities contribute to the content and the structure of this picture. Analgous to the cognition of things, the most comprehensive and unified accounts of the totality of existence which imperfect human beings can have, are developed rather than simply given. Creation of both scientific knowledge and philosophical conceptions does not occur simply in the individual mind but is essentially public. In the first Critique, reason is not just a power or ability of an individual, as presented by Cartesian accounts favoured by most of Kant’s successors and critics. Reason is also, or perhaps predominantly, an extended in time and public practice of development of conceptions of the world and of disputes which attempt to identify the best of those conceptions. Such metaphysical attempts reflexively shape the views of human rationality created by their proponents. In “Transcendental doctrine of method” Kant many times claims that reason is public. This claim is often expressed in his references to — surprising in a work on metaphysics — political and legal metaphors. The public character of human reason is displayed not in some solitary cogitations but in polemics in which reason has to do not with a “censure of a judge, but with the claims of its fellow citizens.”16 The constitutive element of this practice is the freedom to exhibit the thoughts and doubts which one cannot resolve oneself for public judgment without thereupon being decried as a malcontent and a dangerous citizen. This lies already in the original right of human reason, which recognizes no other judge than universal human reason itself, in which everyone has a voice; and

16 Ibid, p. 643 (A 739, B 767).

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Paweł Łuków since all improvement of which our condition is capable must come from this, such a right is holy, and must not be curtailed.17

For Kant, reason is a social enterprise of criticism, whose results are philosophical conceptions and arguments of their supporters. The bearer of reason is not an individual but a plurality of participants who strive for shareable beliefs. Imperfect reason “permits no touchstone other than its own attempt to bring internal unification to its assertions, and this requires a free and unhindered contest of these assertions among themselves.”18 From the point of view of the participant of the practice of reason, developing beliefs that can be reconciled with the beliefs of other participants of the debate, takes the shape of the “maxim of self-preservation of reason”, which is clearly akin to the Categorical Imperative. It demands that one ask oneself, “whether one finds it possible to transform the reason for accepting it, or the rule which follows from what is accepted, into a universal principle governing the use of one’s reason.”19 Reason is public also when reflexion or inquiry is conducted by individuals. For Kant polemics is cathartic. It removes errors, stereotypes, prejudices, simplifications and omissions. The main tool of this practice is critique, which is “the true court of justice for all controversies of pure reason”.20 Critique of pure reason is the most difficult of all [reason’s] tasks, namely, that of self-knowledge, and to institute a court of justice, by which reason may secure its rightful claims while dismissing all its groundless pretensions, and this not by mere decrees but according to its own eternal and unchangeable laws.21

Kant’s view of reason is different from the typical ways of understanding it and from the standard interpretation of the critical philosophy. For Kant, thinking, knowing, and deciding are not thought of as governed by eternal or reason-independent norms of correctness. Norms of thinking and acting are developed in the process of a practice of reasoning, whose key element is the public assessment of the “possessions” of reason, i.e., critique. It does not proceed according to ultimate and objective standards of correctness. Rather, it is a process of examination of different views and of rejection of those which do not survive critique. Critique provides only a negative instruction about what cannot be a correct scientific, metaphysical or moral belief. And it works in the reverse direction, too: it helps to elaborate and 17 Ibid. p. 650 (A 752, B 780) see also p. 469 (A 425, B 453). 18 Ibid. p. 469 (A 425, B 453). 19 I. Kant, “What is Orientation in Thinking” in: Kant’s Political Writings, op. cit., p. 249 (8: 146/147). 20 Critique of Pure Reason, op. cit., p. 749 (A 751, B 779). 21 Ibid. p. 101 (A XI/XII).

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perfect a conception of what reason is. For Kant, reason is inseparably associated with critique which is the basic tool of the public practice which constitutes it. Reason must subject itself to critique in all its undertakings, and cannot resist the freedom of critique through any prohibition without damaging itself and drawing upon itself a disadvantageous suspicion. Now there is nothing so important because of its utility, nothing so holy, that it may be exempted from its searching review and inspection, which knows no respect for persons. The very existence of reason depends on this freedom…22

The link which connects reason and critique with enlightenment is freedom of thought, which is about what the critics of the Enlightenment and Kant cared most. Freedom is also the connecting part of Kant’s understanding of the human vocation. Arguing against religious orthodoxies — and his reasons apply equally well to the orthodoxies of law, custom, habit, prejudice, stereotype or the will of a ruler — Kant writes that they all deprive subsequent generations of their chance “to make any progress whatsoever in enlightenment”. An imposition of any orthodoxy is “a crime against human nature, whose original vocation lies precisely in such progress”,23 i.e., in independence of thinking. Deprivation of human beings of the chances of making progress in enlightenment “means violating and trampling underfoot the sacred rights of mankind.”24 The human vocation is to progress in independence of thinking, that is, in the use of reason in a free public debate, whose goal is to arrive at beliefs which are not limited by an arbitrary authority of prejudice, doctrine, person, institution or office. The inseparable part of these beliefs is critique which uses all known reasons and arguments in order to eliminate those views which cannot survive public examination, i.e. which cannot be shared by all. Human vocation is freedom of thought in a public criticism. It is this idea that led Kant to call: Our age is the genuine age of criticism, to which everything must submit. Religion through its holiness, legislation through its majesty commonly seek to exempt themselves from it. But is this way they excite a just suspicion against themselves, and cannot lay claim to that unfeigned respect that reason grants only to that which has been able to withstand its free and public examination.25

Kant’s linking of reason and critique with enlightenment makes it possible to appreciate the uniqueness of his new understanding of reason as a practice and to see the error of opposing criticism and reason. This redefinition is not limited to a change of perspective in understanding science and metaphysics but it applies also to beliefs, on which the norms of social and political organisation rely. For 22 23 24 25

Ibid., p. 643 (A 738, B 766). „What is Enlightenment?”, op. cit., p. 57 (8: 39). Ibid., p. 58 (8: 39). Critique of Pure Reason, op. cit., p. 100-101 (A XI).

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Kant, reason is not an unchangeable and ultimate source of instruction concerning the true, the right or the good, but a practice of arriving at beliefs about truth, rightness and goodness through a public dispute. The practice of reason does not generate final judgments but only makes room for progress in maturation to independence of thinking. This maturation, or emancipation of individuals and societies, is possible thanks to criticism which is inseparable from imperfect rationality, not to a discovery or authority. Like every maturation, enlightenment generates risks, among which one can find scepticism about standards of thought and action, or rejection of all standards. Another threat is belief in common pictures of philosophical views and in stereotypes concerning times and epochs. An enlightenment may end in a failure: remaining in the state of dependence on one’s own prejudices, unexamined authorities or unexamined norms of action. Criticism and freedom of thinking do not guarantee that a form of social life arrived at in the debate will be best. The use of one’s own reason in a free public debate is a constant challenge for minds and wills rather than a source of certainty and comfort. Kant’s redefinition of reason makes it possible to appreciate the worth of criticism and the nature of the challenge present in rationality. Reason and criticism are a continuing, one process, in which everything can be revised: beliefs, decisions, social arrangements, and even reason and criticism themselves. Kant’s redefinition of reason, which connects rationality with criticism and freedom, also helps to understand the change which the Enlightenment effected in culture and in the social life. Although Kant’s redefinition of reason was not always noticed, it was actually espoused by many of his successors and critics. Bibliography: Adorno W. Theodor, Horkheimer Max, T (1998), Dialektik der Aufklärung: Philosophische Fragmente, Fischer Frankfurt am Main. Bahr Ehrhard (1974), Was ist Aufklärung? Thesen und Definitionen. Von Kant, Erhard, Hamann, Herder, Lessing, Mendelssohn, Riem, Schiller, Wieland, P. Reclam jun. Stuttgart. Kant: Political Writings (1991), H. Reiss (ed.), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Kuehn Manfred (2001), Kant: A Biography, Cambridge University Press Cambridge. O’Neill Onora (1989), Constructions of Reason. Explorations of Kant’s Practical Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Plato’s Meno (2004), transl. by G. Anastaplo and L. Berns, Focus Publishing, Newburyport, MA. Rousseau, Kant, Goethe. Two Essays (1948), eds. J. Gutmann, P. O. Kristeller, J. H. Randall, JR., Princeton 1948. Schmidt James (1989), The Question of Enlightenment: Kant, Mendelssohn and the Mittwochsgesellschaft, “Journal of the History of Ideas”, vol. 50, No 2. Schneiders Werner (1974), Emanzipazion und Kritik in: Materialien zu Kants Rechtsphilosophie, Z. Batscha (ed.), Suhr-kamp, Frankfurt/Main. Critique of Pure Reason (1999), transl. by P. Guyer and A. W. Wood, Cambridge  University Press, Cambridge.

Distance — a Figure of Modernity Elżbieta Winiecka* Abstract Distance is the category which appears to be one of the cultural universals in the modern reflection on subjectivity and representation. Its position is connected with an analytical approach to the subject, with cognition and being an observer, not a participant. These are determinants of the critical philosophy and self-consciousness. But, on the other hand, this very catch-all word relates to alienation, separation, otherness, isolation, non-identity, strangeness, withdrawal, which make the definition of distance difficult and non-evident. In the present article the proposal of defining distance requires us to put it in the context of philosophical, esthetical and theoretical problems of modernity and postmodernity. In effect, we show that distance is a polysemous and non-obvious term and this is what makes it one of key issues for contemporary culture. * Institute of Polish Philology, Adam Mickiewicz Univeristy, Fredry 10, 61-701 Poznań e-mail: [email protected]

1. Attempts at Constructing a Definition Distance is one of those concepts which have gained the significance of ‘an anthropological universal’1 in modern culture. On the one hand, it demonstrates the exceptional popularity of the category which, present over the years in the languages of the humanities, has served a vast area of philosophy, anthropology and literary theory. On the other hand — because of its non-concreteness and ambiguity — the category loses its usefulness as a tool for description. The twentieth century has been known as ‘the century of the eye’ (Cieślak 2001: 71), while Western culture — the eye-centric culture. Sight is a tool of reason: it analyses, hierarchises, orders, distances and objectifies, disciplines and subjugates (Foucault 1979). It rationalises what it can see (the visible). Therefore, distance is now treated reluctantly as a descriptive category. It is much more often replaced by contradictory concepts such as: experience, physicality, involvement and empathy, that are flooding the gap in philosophy between a cognising subject and a cognised object. Postmodernity brings a demand for a shift between two epistemological paradigms, which Erazm Kuźma describes as follows: The first one — Greek, Western, having its source in Plato — puts an eye, vision, image, progress, cognition in the first place. The second one — Judean, oriental, originating

1

The term is borrowed from Anna Łebkowska who has used it to show the phenomenon of universalisation of many cultural categories such as: empathy, narrative, identity, selffulfilment. Cf.: Łebkowska 2008: 189.

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Elżbieta Winiecka n the Bible — puts language, text, speaking, ethics in the first place. Today, the latter prevails. (1999: 15)

We cannot, however, forget that distance is also a basis for one of the most popular figures today: irony, which undermines the category of the subject in its traditional sense of identity and self-presence. Not without reason, in the literary discourses of modernity, the concept of the ironic distance — next to sublimity, nostalgia and melancholy (categories which also refer to the aesthetic and cognitive distance, specific to the experience of the modernist absence, loss and alienation) — is among the most repeated phrases that characterise the modern and especially postmodern subjectivity.2 Distance is usually associated with such features as: analyticity, reflectivity, being situated in the position of an observer rather than participant. All these features point to criticism as the main distinguishing characteristic of a self-conscious subject. Not without reason, in his introduction to Roland Barthes’s Mythology, Krzysztof Kłosiński refers to the category of sarcasm as a figure of a myth hunter who always ‘dwells badly’ and who, hunting for myths prevalent in society, is always beyond it: outside the community whose mythic silence he exposes and demonstrates.3 Years later, Barthes further radicalises the formula of “the bad dwelling”. He appeals to the formulation Plato used in relation to Socrates. The philosopher refers to Socrates as atopos — which can be translated as: the one who cannot find his own place. Here atopy, however, is not a synonym for irony as an intellectual attitude: atopy combines irony (or, as Kłosiński prefers, its deeper variation, sarcasm) with the consequences of this attitude i.e., placelessness, alienation, detachment and, above all, criticism. What is more — Barthes treats atopy as a figure of a subject.4 Despite its popularity, distance still remains an abstract and ambiguous category, and its meaning is highlighted in combination with an antinomic term. Thus, 2

3 4

Let us just recall that distance of the ironist — like in Rorty, today it is not only the Socratic ability of doubting and self-questioning, but a proof of a deep crisis of traditional Western values ​​of truth, reason and sense (Cf.: Rorty 1989). This irony is in turn a feature of language as a rhetorical machinery producing figures, which itself has become one of the most characteristic figures, or as Paul de Man defines it, “the trope of tropes” (Paul de Man, The Concept of Irony, in: Warminski 1996: 165. Michał Rusinek writes about the contemporary status of rhetoric and its postmodern form — rhetoricity in his book Rusinek 2003). Krzysztof Kłosiński, Sarkazmy, in: Barthes (2008). Adam Dziadek writes about atopy as a figure of a subject’s postmodern condition. (Dziadek 2008: 237-243). The researcher links atopy with alienation, calls it a non-place associated with Derrida’s différance, the inability of location, of representation. In the ethical sense, atopy is an ostentatious protest against the restrictive influence of pervasive mass culture from which the intellectual distances himself, choosing placelessness.

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it may be the opposite of intimacy, identity, being at home, harmony, empathy, directness, contemplation, epiphany as well as sincerity, spontaneity and involvement. This characterisation suggests, however, only the negative connotations of the category, as if it combined the meanings of terms such as: alienation, estrangement, remoteness, isolation, eradication, strangeness, otherness, non-identity. Firstly, however, these terms refer to very different phenomena, they make us recall various philosophical contexts, and they settle the problem of a subject among the problems of the twentieth-century philosophical, aesthetic and theoretical reflection in a different manner. Secondly, they suggest that distance is an element of a binary opposition which orders and hierarchises cognitive structures. Hence, I would like to show that distance is a much more complex and unobvious concept, and that its significance as one of the key categories of culture also today cannot be questioned. Distance can be considered on two principal planes which, however, are not inseparable: they rather overlap and intermingle. The first one is the existential level — where modern man feels an essential non-identity, the incommensurability of the orders of one’s own existence and consciousness; the second is the level of communication where we deal with the phenomenon of the asymmetric orders of experience and expression. It is here that the problem of representation, or the relation between a sign and its reference, occurs — i.e. the issues of medium and aesthetics. The first aspect is therefore philosophical in nature. It accompanies the birth of modern reflective subjectivity and its deepening crisis that has led to the death of the subject as a rational cognitive instance; the second aspect involves our realising the disjointedness of the orders of words and things, which, as shown by Michel Foucault (2002), and confirmed by philosophers and literary scholars, happened in the second half of the eighteenth century (George Steiner 1975). Modern reflection on a subject goes under the sign of the alienating role of language as a medium which creates new qualities, shaping the existence of both things and people, rather than expresses what exists. First of all, distance is therefore a problem of cultural anthropology (even for Descartes it was a problem of philosophical anthropology) — it refers to the place of man in the world (as being) and what constitutes the specificity of the way he interacts with the world: i.e. mediation through communication media and the body which is the most primitive medium.5 The problem of communication is also a problem of a subject’s construction; on the one hand, man is a social being 5

In Richard Shusterman’s pragmatic terms, the body consciousness is among fundamental dimensions of experiencing oneself and the world. The body is the centre of creative selfcreation as well as the centre of somaaesthetic evaluation. The body consciousness makes it possible to better understand its role as a condition and component of intellectual activities. In this way, Shusterman challenges the dualism of the means (the body as a tool) and the

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and his existence in a culture is relational in nature; on the other hand, he is a reflective being who constantly puts his own way of existence through continual checks and tests. Asking about a subject is asking about culture and vice versa: it is impossible to characterise culture without indicating the place and significance of a subject in it. Etymologically, distance reminds us of the dissociation repeatedly described by philosophers — discord inside an identity which takes the form of chiasma. The prefix di- (de-) indicates extension, tear and duality. This is an internal relationship, a relationship based on a disagreement, negation, self-questioning; dis(dys-) stands for a denial indicative of reversal, alienation in the heart of identity, as in disharmony, dysgraphia, dyslexia, dysfunction. Tracing the etymology of the word, it is also worth noting that Latin distinctio stands for distinction, difference, while disto means to stand in a distance, be away, be different. The latter recalls the primary, proxemic dimension of distance; that distance defines the primary way of our organising space: of our being in the world which always has the nature of a relationship, non-identity, difference. The I-world and I-exteriority relationship is examined in terms of the unknowable and unattainable otherness. This inaccessibility, elusiveness and of what is other, often becomes one of the characteristic determinants of poetic consciousness. Our existence in the world is entering into a dialogue, often assuming the form of modern aporia: an internal contradiction, non-agreeability of positions, alienation and maladjustment, although advocates of the dialogic-hermeneutic approach are inclined to talk about epiphanic identification, related to empathy as a cognitive attitude that protects the strangeness of the other. Jacques Derrida used this internal inconsistency while coining the neologism différance. The word points to the inevitability of what differentiates, delays and defers presence; it denotes that the différance has always already existed as an indelible gap in the construction of meanings, disrupting the clear and unambiguous structure of self-presence.

2. The Subject Distances Itself The idea of thinking as an attitude contrary to ordinary life is not new. Hannah Arendt says explicitly that thinking hinders daily activities, just as the latter disturbs our thinking. She reminds us that Aristotle, aware of this disjointedness of the two orders, introduced a definition of bios theoreticos as bios xenikos, i.e., a life of a foreigner, alienated from the area of ​​practical and social ties. Aristotle fully realised that the natural state of thinking was homelessness, because, as Arendt says, “the thinking ego, moving among universals, among invisible essences, is, goal, noting that the body is an essential part of intellectual experience (2000). Shusterman discusses the issues of ‘thinking through the body’ (2008).

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strictly speaking, nowhere” (1981: 199). Distance defined in such a way is the condition and product of awareness. It is therefore not an invention of modernity: its origins are associated with the birth of Greek philosophy, delineated by Socrates and Plato. Aristotle regarded the homelessness typical of philosophers as their greatest privilege: being in this “nowhere” of thinking gives them independence, associated with things not given to senses, but with universals which have no connection with everyday practical activities and being in the world of things. Descartes continues this thinking, as he doubts the reality of the world and believes in the possibility of perfect cognition which takes place within the illusion-free Cogito. Therefore, the ability of self-questioning has always been (or at least since Socrates, as can be concluded from Plato’s statements) a constitutive feature of European culture. This distinguishes it from other cultures. However, scepticism, characterising Mediterranean culture, takes a much more radical shape today: it is in fact the self-questioning of the foundations of one’s own identity, a kind of action that eludes the logic of metacriticism — it is subversive, transgressive and rhetorical. It takes place beyond the rational, conceivable and articulable in the language of philosophy. Firstly, therefore — it is the distance of culture to its own foundations: primarily to the subject of its sense-making centre. Schelling, Schopenhauer and Bergson, who referred to the category of experience and extrarational categories of emotions and intuition, were the first who went beyond the traditional substantial and subjective vision of being within the objective-scientific cognition. Furthermore, Feuerbach, Kierkegaard, Marx, Nietzsche and Freud sequentially weakened the position of the reflective model of consciousness, showing that man is not a rational, self-conscious and self-transparent being. Secondly — we discover this indelible distance of the subject in ourselves: it is the experience of initial absence and loss. Psychoanalysis suggests one way to describe this absence. Distinguishing between symbolic reality and the real, what eludes symbolisation, it tries to show that what resists being expressed in the order of signs (deep trauma or unattainable bliss) becomes the impossibility of recording, absence, vacuum, emptiness, the inexpressible. By definition, it does not have its positive quality in the symbolic order, nor can it be represented by a simple negation. Therefore, the repressed (experience awakening fear and terror, or desire for pleasure) can appear in a symbolic order only as a distorted materialisation, as what Freud calls the uncanny [Das Unheimliche] and Lacan — object >a < (a sublime object of desire). An individual existence thus eludes consciousness: it is what is heterogeneous against it. Self-reflection turns out to be fiction, and its condition is a reference to impulsive or pre-reflective human aspirations. Freud shows that what for Des-

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cartes is ”the solid ground of certainty” is a game of illusions behind which a wish hides. Psychoanalysis is thus a kind of anti-phenomenology: it begins its explanations from the reduction of consciousness (rather than, as is the case of phenomenology, to consciousness). Consciousness is always separated from its own sense by an obstacle which it does not know, and which exerts a powerful influence on it. What Descartes considered the starting point, consciousness, was a task and purpose for Freud. Instead of a stable construction of the self, Freud talked about the process of realising, exposing the illusory nature of the original act: I think-I am. Cogito establishes itself as broken and mutilated — no longer belonging to itself and understanding its primary truth as inadequacy, delusion and hypocrisy of “direct consciousness”. Showing obstacles on the path of consciousness, Freud indicates that the Cartesian Cogito is an abstract and empty act; that the subjective existence is rooted in unconscious desires and impulses which turn the I think-I am relationship, showing the derivate character of the act of reflection and will in relation to the act of existence embedded in desire. Therefore, a significant displacement of the problem of distance takes place in psychoanalysis — from the cognitive relationship between a subject and the world, into the sphere of the subject itself whose archaeology consists in the laborious revealing of the unseen, which, however, will never lead to the establishment of a self-transparent subject. At the same time, at the beginning of the twentieth century, Ferdinand de Saussure formulated linguistic theses about language as a system that crown a sense of its arbitrariness — coming to the fore at least since the eighteenth century; the non-adhesion of words to the world of things, or — especially — to the experience of consciousness which feels increasingly alienated under the pressure of alienating social, impulsive forces, and rules of language that does not know any individual self-experience. Exposing the autonomy of language as a system of signs, structuralism has made the subject’s sense of isolation reach the apogee. The structuralists’ theory considered it a product of internal relationships of language, external to its meanings. As Ferdinand de Saussure puts it in his Course in General Linguistics” “The language itself is not a function of the speaker. It is the product passively registered by the individual”’ (1983: 14). This philosophical and cultural crisis of foundations results in two types of reaction in the twentieth century philosophy.6 On the one hand, a broad and diverse stream of humanistic and anthropological reflection appears, including phenomenology, and Marxist-derived existentialist, and historicist philosophy which treats man as the base and principle of reality, and the humanistic subject is defended as the highest value of our culture. 6

In this and the next paragraph I use the findings of Paweł Pieniążek (2006).

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On the other hand, on the ground of the critique of a subject, initiated by Friedrich Nietzsche, an equally diverse stream occurs which gives rise to a broad and very diverse phenomenon of anti-reflection philosophy, i.e., criticising the traditional subject and categories based on metaphysical assumptions and structuring Western thought. This trend, called by Paweł Pieniążek the philosophy of intimacy, and often referred to as the philosophy of otherness, combines four currents of thought. The first one is religious and existential in nature and is represented primarily by Jaspers and Kierkegaard. The adventitiousness of human existence here is opposed to the inconceivable absolute, in the experience of faith and pre-reflective existential choices that give meaning to existence. Another attitude, demanding a return to the pre-rational relation of man with nature, involves Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s critique of the Enlightenment reason. Heidegger is a patron of the third type of anti-reflection attitude as he points to the problem of forgetting about being that becomes present and reveals itself, yet hides itself and withdraws in the individual existence of Dasein, remaining elusive truth, lost in the process of centuries-old representational thinking. And finally, the fourth, large and internally very diverse current, called the philosophy of transgression, treats being as the Impossible, Unrepresentable and Unreachable Other, given only in the endless movement of a subject’s self-transgression, driven by the desire for freedom and unity with being. Among philosophers of transgression are Bataille, Blanchot, Klossowski, and poststructuralists: Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, and Lévinas as the author of the concept il y a. The latter is, moreover, considered a philosopher who “humanised” poststructuralism. Taking into account all the individual’s entanglements in multiple relationships identified here, it is hard to disagree with the statement that we always see the world from the perspective of a participant, rather than uninvolved observer. Not being today a simple doubt of a reflective self, but a kind of experience accompanying conscious life, distance remains an important component of the late modern experience. The modern subject “is aware” that it can neither simply distance itself from the world whose part it constitutes, nor can it fully — directly and authentically — engage in experiencing the world. Therefore, modernity brings a new kind of experience which consists of distance whose meaning is far from the epistemological subject-object opposition. It is a transgressed, transformed and stratified experience which results from complex, multifaceted and contradictory changes, taking place both in the perception of reality as not only unknowable, but also often unavailable, and — above all — in understanding oneself as a being that is strange and obscure to oneself, entangled in multiple internal and external relationships, preventing self-understanding. The modern subject knows or senses that the world is not given to it directly, but available only through mediation (body, language, writing, visual media, but also

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concepts, cognitive and cultural stereotypes, moral and social norms, given to it on the pre-understanding stage). It is condemned to tiring and/or creative suspension in the mediatised space between the unreachable outside world and the equally unreachable state of self-knowledge, because the very same category of the self and identity is entangled in media: it is their product which still will never be accepted by us. Therefore, it treats its own identity as a challenge, a project that is inherently poetic: i.e., the one that must be the subject of (self-)interpretation.

3. The Primordiality of Mediation Giorgio Colli succinctly summarises modern disputes over Descartes’s and Husserl’s tradition: “immediacy ends where consciousness begins” (2005: 104). Distance is therefore not only an opposite of involvement as an emotional, social and ethical attitude, but also an antithesis of immediacy, i.e., mediation. Subsequent media produce a distance between man and the world, and then they fill it, giving the impression of immediacy. As soon as new media appear, old media become transparent. The example is the dispute over printing, which has not only given rise to the Western episteme: changed the way we communicate, constituted a detached critical subject, but it has also made speech be seen as representation.7 The issue of distance is thus associated with mediation problems — as ever present mediation which constitutes the way man exists in the world — and representation — as something that is to replace and represent the absent. A sign can represent the reality, it can also make it absent by hiding it, it can substitute it by creating its own world alternative to things.8 Both the Cartesian tradition and phenomenology, which continued the former’s assumptions, placed an object of cognition on the side of self-presence as “originally given” (Husserl) and self-evident. A belief in the possibility of reaching an ideal beginning, on which Husserl based his concept of phenomenological reduction, was finally challenged by hermeneutics and semiotics which opposed the idea of interpretation, that is mediation, to the Cartesian tradition. Both in the hermeneutic and semiotic epistemologies no object is given directly; it is always mediated by a sign, and the process of understanding is based on preliminary assumptions. Thinking is a constant continuation which, according to Charles Peirce, is linear, and according to Heidegger, circular.9 The figure of circle, popular in modern times as a structure of understanding that Heidegger drew from Schleiermacher, perfectly captures the temporal (historical) nature of interpreta7 8 9

For the culture-creating and distancing role of writing see: Walter Jackson Ong (2002); Eric Alfred Havelock (1986); Michael de Certeau (1984); Tomasz Szkudlarek (2009). Michał Paweł Markowski (1999) writes about these two models of literary representation. For the two types of understanding as interpreted by Heidegger and Peirce see: Hanna Buczyńska-Garewicz (2007)

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tion. It is a “dialectical unity of going back and forth, and, adequately, the basis for the future is what-has-already-been, while the past is dependent on projecting” (Buczyńska-Garewicz 2007: 279). In this sense, interpretation is the way we exist in the world: we always interpret within the frameworks of our unconscious assumptions and worldview on the basis of which we stand. The radical cognitive scepticism derived from the Nietzschean critique of truth is an extreme pole of distance manifestation. It is accompanied by an inner sense of non-identity which tears any statement within one’s own beliefs. It is a feeling of alienation within a language, its rhetoricity that throws a shade on any formulation, and, as an experience specific to poststructuralism, makes it impossible to go beyond itself (Rusinek 2003: 263); it is what Wittgenstein first, and then, much more forcefully, Derrida, Foucault and de Man make the central experience of the twentieth century. Every description, every statement produces a gap in the language in which it occurs. As Derrida puts it, différance is at the heart of identity. Language can produce effects of reality, but never a touch, meaning or presence. Writing from the inside of distance, we are forced to treat it both as an object of description and a tool we use to be able to articulate it at all. This is what postmodern irony, which has become the most famous figure of distance today, involves. But we must keep in mind that doubting and distance coined by Husserl, and then by the whole of phenomenology, are something fundamentally different: they belong to the order of thinking, they have an analytical and insightful value, while doubting and distance that underlie irony are discursive: they belong to the way of speaking. The former raise metaphysical questions, the latter are rhetorical. When viewed from the perspective of Western philosophy based on identity and presence of meaning, “ironic thinking” thus becomes a contradictory statement, because irony as a rhetorical figure makes any category that belongs to metaphysics ambiguous, being a way of shattering philosophical structures.10 Reaching for the well-known distinction, one might say that thinking is a domain of homo seriosus — representing a philosophical, academic, cognitive, but also fundamentalist discourse, as based on the strong assumption of the possibility of making clear distinctions and definitions. Meanwhile, conceived as a figure of rhetoricity, de Man’s “trope of tropes” and being a figure of conscious

10 For this reason, Rorty opposed his ironist to a metaphysician (Rorty 1989). Referring to the definition of a theorist of rhetoric, Richard Lanham, another popular anti-fundamentalist and neo-pragmatist, Stanley Fish proposed his own definition of homo rhetoricus and homo seriosus. These concepts correspond roughly to Rorty’s typology (Fish 1989). The rhetoric-philosophy opposition has its roots in Plato’s Gorgias. For a detailed description see: Michał Rusinek 2003: 211-258.

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bias11, irony is a feature of critical consciousness that continuously undermines its own assertions, realising the inevitable performativity of language.

4. Writing as (Self)distancing Distance is a prerequisite for both critical thinking and literature which has grown out of the gesture, specific to the power of Cogito, of identifying a subject of description and separating from it with a space of a blank page. It is impossible to determine one’s own position and close it in a sign or gesture to express compliance with oneself; it is impossible to invent a way of expression — linguistic or any other — which would allow an individuality closed in one’s own immanence to express oneself. And writing sustains the impossibility. Therefore, in our culture shaped by the scriptural economy, the blank page has become a place where a subject distances itself to reality, while the act of writing has become the “Cartesian move”– as Michel de Certeau shows — Of making a distinction that initiates, along with a place of writing, the mastery (and isolation) of a subject confronted by an object. In front of his blank page, every child is already put in the position of the industrialist, the urban planner, or the Cartesian philosopher — the position of having to manage a space that is his own and distinct from all others and in which he can exercise his own will. (2011: 134)

At the same time, the dominating, rational and powerful Cogito is accompanied by — already signalled in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Confessions — such categories as: obstacles, desires, absence and longing for something undefined, suggesting the initial state of loss, situating the modern subject beyond the order of experience, in the perspective of reflection. This moment of internal split eventually occurred in the Romantic period. Then the reflective distance was created that expanded the gap12 between man and nature, additionally reinforced by a growing sense of language’s alienation. However, only the changes at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries gave rise to a completely different spiritual and linguistic 11 While the modern researcher essentialist was a serious man, homo seriosus who did not notice the rhetorical dimension of the language of his description, the postmodern researcher — on the contrary. As homo rhetoricus, rhetorical man, he is constantly aware of the interpretative, contingent nature of his actions. However, as Michał Rusinek rightly pointed out, “the moment of rhetorical consciousness must inevitably lead to the undermining of a theory, [...] because rhetoricity makes it impossible to go beyond itself” (2003: 263). Therefore, to be able to say anything about a subject, one must forget about the rhetoricity of expression. At the same time, rhetoricity continually undermines the speech of reason, philosophy and science, and therefore once realising this fact, the discourse continually oscillates between this consciousness and forgetting about it. 12 Michał Warchala notes, “It is in Romanticism that the transition from the pre-modern world, in which a mask was indistinguishable from a face, to the world of reflection takes place. This is modernity that introduces ‘reflective distance’”’ (Warchala 2006: 261).

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formation of contemporaneity. Its extreme, anti-subject pole, related to the activity of poststructuralists such as Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida, is based on seemingly the same, but differently interpreted, gesture of writing. Previously regarded as an elementary expression of the cognitive power of a subject, now it becomes a testimony of the overwhelming power of language which disables the subjective will, and whose action is conceived as an act of going beyond the metaphysical horizon of presence: The simple experience of picking up a pen and writing, continued as long as it remains within words, produces (i.e.: excites, stimulates, releases words and disciplines words) a distance which belongs neither to the world, nor to unconsciousness, neither to a look nor to the interior — a distance which has no beginning, which in its pure form shows a checkerboard of ink lines and a maze of streets, a city emerging and existing for a long time. (Foucault 1999: 90)

The history of the modern subject stretches between the rational Cogito’s gesture of writing which distances itself from the object of its description, and transgressive writing as écriture, producing its own infinite distance. Referring to a travesty quote of Heidegger’s Welt ist nie, sonder welted (The world does not exist, but is formed), wandering through texts of poets and scholars: Przyboś, Karpowicz, Trznadel, or Cortez, Erazm Kuźma notes, “in each use, it means something else, it reverses its meaning”. In this way, the general principle of the origin’s absence is confirmed in practice. The author concludes his brief argument, exposing the mechanism of self-deconstruction that makes distance a figure of contemporary metatheoretical consciousness of a creator/scholar who is atopos, placeless: Let us say it right away: this is the general law and my writing is also subject to it — all citations I have quoted make the origin absent, they are tropes rather than presence, they are the writing rather than voice. It is always like that when one wants to write and writes. However, not everyone knows about it, and even if they know, they do not want to remember about it. Here I offer my distancing consciousness and I will not protest when someone wants to change the title and meaning of my writing (…). (1999: 122)

In this way, the scholar demonstrates the constructivist nature of his literary endeavours: that both a writer and reader create their own universes of meanings, and that every statement can be challenged by showing its situational and contextual nature. This is why the irony of Rorty’s neopragmatist ironist, the sarcasm of Barthes’s mythologist, or even Fleischer’s third-order observation, seem to be attitudes so characteristic of contemporary critical consciousness. It is much easier today to adopt the attitude of atopy: to manifest one’s own discord, absence and alienation, rather than the difficult art of affirmation of what never is, but always

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emerges on the horizon as the unreachable, although giving meaning to desires, searching and writing as projecting. Distance is an indelible yoke of an intellectual: philosopher, poet, artist, who, aware of the lost immediacy and spontaneity, is doomed to ascertain the loss. The problem of distance, therefore, bears the mark of nostalgia for something lost, absent, elusive. The cause of the sense of absence is vague: there is room for the memory of childhood, and spontaneity, sincerity and the mythical directness of experience. There is also a swing in the future — toward what could only come, quench the thirst, fill the void. A common feature of all these experiences is their inaccessibility. Ryszard Nycz refers to the category of a trope which in modern poetry is a symptom of transience and fragility, but also the impossibility of representing what took place in the ephemeral and unique “here and now”. Therefore, every trope of being, referring to a particular “radical” and so elusive present that occurs in a poem, is accompanied by the prospect of “the irreducible, internal distance which makes it possible to extract and experience the authenticity and uniqueness of its occurrence, but, on the other hand, it reminds of the inability to represent it” (Nycz 2001:133-134). The antagonising of intellect and intuition, inspired by Hugo Friedrich (1974), reflected in Polish poetry in the formula of Peiper’s rationalism and its opposite — Leśmian’s emotionality, constituted a way of thinking about contemporary Polish poetry for several decades. On the side of the rational project of modernity are: reason, distanced perspective, reflection, writing, and on the level of poetics: constructivism, anti-imagery, intellectualism, conceptuality, alienation, estrangement. Its counterbalance consists of a feeling, sensualism, emotionality, living speech, imagery, empathy, directness, authenticity. Thus, two poles of fiction are formed: the mythical and the subjective. According to the former, a subject is the Cartesian Cogito which reigns over the world, according to the latter, it is the embodied consciousness that recovers the lost contact with the world. On the one hand, we find the intellectualism originating in Descartes and Kant; on the other hand, the phenomenological approach whose modernised version was proposed by Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1962). Naturally, such a clear-cut opposition is only a model. The categories of experience and corporeality, emotionality and sensuality balance the already dominant metaphysical and linguistic poles of Polish poetry, and scholars eagerly complete the one-sided portraits of poets, showing their diversity and internal contradictions of their works. This re-evaluation is undoubtedly the merit of new ways of reading poetry. No distance means no subject. Therefore, although the repeatedly deconstructed rational subject, being a product of the modern power of reason, and seeking to organise, hierarchise and conquest the world, is not a reliable representation

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of contemporary attitudes, distance — as the elementary foundation of the relationship, or difference on which reflection is built –- remains a topical category. However, the pole balances the awareness of the special role of literature which overcomes simple oppositions.

5. A Distanced Scholar? Two models of research can be distinguished in twentieth-century literary science: the first is the structuralist paradigm, professing scientific methods of literary description; the hermeneutic model is the second. Literature science, based on formal and structuralist assumptions, considered distance a manifestation and condition of an investigative, egocentric attitude. In accordance with the principle of isolating an object of research, a literary work was subjected to an in-depth analysis based on fairness and objectivity, ensured by precisely established procedures and language of description. Today, the assumptions of the structuralist reading sound anachronistic: the cognitive paradigm developed along the lines of natural science has proved to be quite inadequate to describe the area of humanities. ​​ Hermeneutics, since Schleiermacher expressed the belief that any understanding requires preunderstanding, shows that the paradigm of science developed within the framework of the formal-structural-phenomenological formation, forms an abstract construction, meant to give the illusion of having access to scientific truth. The approach to the subject-object relationship is now widespread and extremely expansive not in terms of opposition, but mediating interpretation, bridging the epistemological gap for the sake of the ontological, existential distance13. A real shift in perceiving hermeneutics as an exegesis of ancient written texts occurred owing to Nietzsche, who linked interpretation with the world’s creation, and Heidegger, who considered understanding not as an element of a subject’s cognitive attitude, but as a way of its being in the world. Thanks to him, hermeneutics has become an existential philosophy which defines existence in the world as interpretation. In this sense, all methods derived from it are consequences of the semiotic shift.

13 Michał Januszkiewicz, who examines the matter and reliably reconstructs the state of the hermeneutic, post-Heideggerian consciousness, precedes his thesis with an ironic introduction in which he parodies the post-structuralists’ position. In their characteristics, they built a stereotype of hermeneutics which Januszkiewicz reconstructs, grasping it aptly and ironically distancing himself from it, while claiming reliability of the cognition (Kantian and Cartesian) which underlies this methodology: “a hermeneut is a playboyesthete, amateur among the ‘epistemological entities’, atheist in the church of Science” (2007: 13).

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Hermeneutics critically refers to the Cartesian and Kantian epistemological tradition and the theory of representation from Descartes to Husserl, and thus it shows that everything is a product of discourse. Gadamer, Ricoeur, Merleau-Ponty, Derrida, Rorty and Foucault all abandon the theory of knowledge (epistemology). They all believe that man does not achieve his identity as a language-independent entity, but he exists on the basis of self-creation, self-narration. The hermeneutic subject (in a broad sense) is aware of its conditions and mediations that it uses in the processes of interpretation. In this sense, any theory applied by a researcher, is a construction — and he himself is, at most, a second-order observer. Even as an observer of cognitive mechanisms that he describes and is subject to, he does not take a neutral position (like the epistemological subject), but he bases all his judgements on his own beliefs whose existence he only vaguely realises.14 Hence, distance as a type of self-awareness becomes an indispensable characteristic component of the condition of an intellectual-philosopher-poet. In this sense, Heidegger, Gadamer, Derrida and Barthes all belong to one epistemé, to the same intellectual formation that puts language in the centre and identifies it with thinking. Thus, the attitude of a reflective subject, distanced from the object of its own research, must be constantly unmasked and transgressed, not in order to invalidate the problem of distance, but to shift it from the level of epistemological reflection onto the level of the ontology and hermeneutics of existence. A researcher is not an external witness to an object — but a part of the examined system which significantly affects the course and results of his research. In the language of constructivists and Niclas Luhmann, he is a second-order observer, i.e., a distanced participant and commentator, but also a constructor of the reality he comments on. The new constructivist distance is thus a historically determined form of experience — both the way in which the reflective (but not Cartesian) subject perceives itself today, perceives the world and its mediatised “presence at a distance”, and the figure of experience: it becomes a self-commentary to the situation it creates. Speaking the language of Luhmann’s autopoietic systems — distance is a self-creating system: it produces and reproduces itself of its own elements, it reproduces itself through self-reconstruction. Autopoiesis as the ability of self-creation and self-recreation requires distance. Human knowledge does not apply to the world, but to constructs of the mind (or, as Luhmann would like, constructs of the system). Constructivism in its dispersed form appears in a variety of non-fundamentalist ways of talking about literariness which points to its culturally conditioned,

14 As in the neo-pragmatist proposal of Stanley Fish (2007).

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interpretive nature.15 Both the category of narrativism as a literary method of organising knowledge about oneself and the world,16as well as the category of fiction (and panfictionism), often invoked when describing the nature of human subjectivity and reality, and finally a metaphor (or more generally figurativity of language) — are the structures of the mind (or a language system), allowing one not only to understand and explore the world, but to see the mechanisms (psychological, rhetorical, political, etc.) which construct the models of our cognition (knowledge about ourselves, art, literature) better. Rooted in Nietzsche’s philosophy, the contemporary second-order observation is a kind of conscious distance both to an object of cognition (reality, literary text) and to the way we learn the object. Questioning the legitimacy of the concepts such as meaning, origin, presence as well as truth and knowledge exposed both the need to think about cognised objects in terms of strangeness and otherness, obliging one to protect against destructive and usurping claims of a cognising subject. As a result, distance has become a concept that goes beyond epistemological and ontological categorisation, increasingly referring today to ethical justifications. Researchers talk about the irreducible distance between the reader and the Other, figured by a text, through this category trying to find the explanation of accompanying cognitive limitations, e.g. an empathic reading. The fact that the empathic reading exposes distance as its foundation, which determines the protection of otherness, particularly strongly emphasises its important role as a criterion for exploratory and reading honesty. Distance thus determines a reading approach to a text, which is either participation, similar to identification (this attitude is most expressively adopted by the aesthetics of reception, feminist criticism and, somehow related to it, empathic criticism), or a kind of distanced attitude that reveals the creative dimension of reading, which is always a misreading (here primarily a reading derived from deconstruction). From the structuralist methods of reading — understood as an analysis, description and interpretation, always applied from a theoretical, scientific (based on the belief about one’s own objectivity), distance of a researcher who places himself over his work—we come to the practice of ethically engaged reading: local, subjective, not usurping the comprehension of the entire meaning, set

15 In this — broad — sense, all poststructuralist research proposals, exposing the long-range, situational nature of their findings, should be considered constructivist. 16 Erazm Kuźma presents the characteristics of constructivist thinking in the Anglo-Saxon narrativism which involves constructing a narrative on reality as a form of its human cognition. Polish narrativists formulate similar opinions, “a narrative replaces the real facts (...) it creates their communicative representation, it leads to a distance, to an ironic attitude, to a question of the legitimacy of the discursive truth” (Owczarek, Mitosek, Grajewski 2001: 9). Cf.: Skrendo (2004).

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to explore otherness, uniqueness, elusiveness and fragmentarity in a work which can be neither assimilated, nor understood. Since the poststructuralist turn, along with the problems of the body, the issue of empathy as a kind of experience built on the awareness of emotions, physicality and non-identifiability with others has returned. This subject builds an ethical relationship between a reader (researcher) and text. It also discovers the neglected dimension of poetry which is characterised by sensuality, also known as “searching for touch” in the most sensual, personalistic dimension, as if against words or despite them. It is also faith that revives poetic language as a more authentic way of speaking, or rather as a way of representing the inexpressible: pain, suffering, the need for direct contact with another person. However, it is difficult to talk here about a simple reversal of the empathic-distanced opposition. Today’s philosophical anthropology and poststructuralist ways of accounting for reflection about a subject and literature show that distance — relocated and redefined — is still a desirable and necessary condition for reading and writing. On the one hand, empathic dialogicity is based on respect for difference — and, therefore, the conscious and accepted distance that separates us from the other. On the other hand, all reading practices seem aware of their own locality and location. Efforts to minimise the distance between an author and a reader constitute today’s dynamically developing personalistic current of research, based on the affirmation of understanding and identification. This happens in some branches of feminist criticism, empathic criticism and Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, exposing the corporeal dimension of the act of speech. Assuming that the personalistic, dialogic approach is the way to man, empathic, emotive criticism which supports dialogical hermeneutics at the cost of the twentieth-century textual hermeneutics, but is also critical of the structuralist interpretation of a work independent of its author, is against the “textual aestheticisation” which exposes the linguistic, figurative existence of a subject and its feelings. The way of reading, selection of tools, research perspectives, cultural and philosophical contexts depend also on a researcher’s personal predispositions. Where one can see a word-gesture (Merleau-Ponty) oriented towards the other and seeking a poetic dialogue beyond rhetoricity, another one can see a sophisticated figure of language which plays honesty and emotions, a rhetorical strategy of enacting sincerity and intimacy. Empathy whose return is noted by literary scholars (Łebkowska 2008; Płuciennik 2002) is the only unsatisfiable desire, founded on a deeply internalised experience of disharmony, dissonance, a sense of alienation, eradication, and last but not least, realisation of the expropriating and mediatising role of a literary

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form. The researcher points to the relocation of the problems of empathy from the sphere of epistemology into the realm of ethics, and associates it with issues of mediatisation, characteristic of cultural discourse and anthropology. Mentioned as conscious threats to the empathic attitude — self-awareness, a sense of failure, indelible alienation, illusion of dialogicity and hidden authoritarianism, which accompany today’s empathic research — in my opinion become components of the distance category, while the characteristics of empathy presented by Łebkowska fit it perfectly: Today (...) they expose cultural orders, constructs imposed on a subject, its mentality, physicality, gender, cultural narrative patterns; culturally inalienable patterns, or rather the already given and indelible mediatisations — which do not promise to reveal the hidden, invariable, cognisable etc. (Łebkowska 2008: 19)

Therefore, empathy is not an antonym for thus understood distance. Distance is more primordial; moreover, it is a condition of its existence.17 Only those can feel empathy, who first realise their own otherness, for whom it is a factor which constitutes their separateness and individuality. Martha Nussbaum, who examines the problem, also notes that distance is the foundation of empathy, understood as a sense of one’s own identity18 because all the gestures — empathy, intimacy and openness — are built on a much earlier realised gap, as an inevitable human condition. Literature of consciousness is literature of distance. And since today it is hard to imagine poetry written naively, without the knowledge of how complex and ambiguous this act is — it is primarily the distance, difference, rupture and mediation that become the primary experience in the modern act of reading and writing. Distance is not only — as it might result from the above conclusions — a determinant of an attitude, or even a major philosophical, psychological, existential, anthropological or aesthetic problem. Moving on to the plane of the gap analysis as a kind of discourse (as defined by Foucault), it is easy to see that today it is primarily a category produced by language of philosophers, literary scholars and poets. It may therefore be subject to scholarly description. In this sense, the use of the category of distance involves responsibility for words, the causative force of which intervenes in what is extralinguistic. We can therefore indicate languages ​​that produce distance, treating it as a condition of their experience discursivisation (from Socrates and Plato, through Descartes and all varieties of reflective philosophy) as well as those aimed at reducing the distance (here, above all, phenomenology, philosophy of identification, 17 Agnieszka Kluba writes in a similar manner about distance as a concept which gains its sharpness only in relation to another concept (2007). 18 Dorota Krawczyńska refers to the views of the American scholar (2004: 248-259).

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Bachelard, Iser, Gadamer, Ricoeur, feminist criticism and empathic criticism), and finally the hermeneutics of suspicion abolishing the dualism of facts and interpretation, and recognising the ontological distance of ungroundedness as the proper dimension of human existence (Nietzsche, Heidegger). Thus, the category of distance, although semantically heterogeneous and referring to a variety of topics: philosophical, aesthetical, anthropological, cultural, builds its significance and culture-creating power precisely on this multi-threading and diversity. Since, even in everyday situations, the distance is required from us, in the humanistic reflection, conscious of the detached approach, the distance becomes a phenomenon all the more desirable and interpretatively attractive.

6. Poetic Experience as an Experience of Distance Unshakable relationships with the world do not give rise to poetic or philosophical attitudes. Only the observed non-obviousness of being in the world, complications that occur between man and the world, a sense of the mystery of existence, raise doubts and questions, producing a distance to experience. In this sense, the distance is any reflection, because it is related to a critical attitude. As Jakub Momro aptly notes, twentieth-century literature is in fact located in the gap between the reality of reality and the reality of language. In this way, the language of a modern work of art “is circulating between the extreme poles of transcendentalism and empiricism, remaining unattributable to either party” (2010: 28) The nature of this language is relational, but the negative moment is equally important, for then the individuality of the work reveals itself as something that cannot be fully represented and tamed by giving it a permanent meaning. The work itself is thus absence, distance and difference. A question of distance is primarily a question of form, if this be defined as anything that is associated with the linguistic dimension of a work. The mere explication of an inexpressible experience makes it non-identical with the experience. In poetry we deal with a number mediations whose strange status is that, on the one hand, they allow the disclosure of what prevents any discourse, on the other hand, they veil the original experience with additional layers of stylistic and formal linguistic figures which not only move away and distort what was meant to be said, but also produce what would never become present. Among the numerous distancing techniques, from language, tradition, the already existing ways of speaking and perception as well as other works and the overall context of culture, part of which is poetry, we must indicate irony, humour, self-reflectivity, citations and self-quotations (those popular especially among postmodern poets: Sosnowski, Pióro, Tkaczyszyn-Dycki, but also Karpowicz and Różewicz) and different varieties of repetitions; as well as various stylisations and

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other intertextual strategies which reveal a distance from hypotextual forms.19 These and other literary techniques are sometimes used to emphasise the strangeness of the world, its perversion, incomprehensibility and inhumanity. Numerous variations of grotesque, hyperbolisation and caricaturisation are particularly frequently used for this purpose. A form may exhibit strangeness of the world, and according to others, it may also give shelter from the severe encounter with reality. Sometimes an aesthetic form can become an expression of self-interest and indifference. Here a deep relation between the aesthetic role of form and the ethical perspective is revealed. It is also related to the issues of empathy which pose a particularly important problem, especially in the case of topics and experiences that go beyond cultural taboos and shame. The problem of form (the figurativity of language) is vividly present in the ethical aspect of the debate on the representation of the Holocaust. It must be noted, moreover, that any use of language is distancing, as rhetoricity is not an addition to a transparent, referential language, but the only proper way of its functioning. It is what both co-creates an experience and provides its indelible and co-constituting dimension. Therefore, the modern distance of form is not a “wrapper” which protects a subject, but a strategy of poetic existence, and so it does not ensure the restoration of immediacy. An aesthetic form builds a distance, but it may be a way to convey a substitute of the inexpressible. Therefore, once it is treated as an essential element enabling disclosure of the depth and complexity of subjective experience, while at other times it is what builds the emotional distance, amplifying the artificiality and inadequacy of words. It may then become a synonym for negatively evaluated aesthetisation. Thence, a literary form often reveals its dual function; on the one hand, it allows expression of the directly inexpressible, but on the other hand it can also be synonymous with art which is “distanced, cool, perfectly harmonious, but cold and lacking the gift of empathy” (Pietrych 2009: 112) Its ambivalent nature thus reveals itself. Being conventional, repetitive, a form is what distances us from human emotions. At the same time, however, it is what generally allows their disclosure through art. In order to express our feelings, we must shape or form them. Mediation is any way of disclosing what is more primordial than expression. Due to a specific modality of a text, the means of artistic expression become a sign of

19 Stanisław Balbus (1996) writes about the functions of stylising distance and the polemical and alienating intertextual strategies. The author points to the effect of intertextuality which distances us from the forms of tradition, allows the polemics with the worldview of form represented in a hypertext, and shows the polemics as substantial for constructing the worldview of a work.

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what eludes expression. The truth of experience, just as all events and people embedded in reality, is never given directly. The issue of distance in poetry is not only a matter of respect for tradition, and so for language. Distance is also, as I tried to show, an existential category and as such it is murderous and perverse — not only does it prevent a detached person from involvement, but also throws him outside a social life, and forces him to constantly analyse reflectively what he observes and what he himself does, not experiencing it “directly”, but as if through a veil of distance. Nevertheless, distance has also a positive dimension. The awareness of the original mediation allows creative transformation of this knowledge, its weaving into one’s own poetic idiom and thus, at least, its partial neutralisation. The belief in the mystical contiguity of words and things contained in the model of emotive, metaphysical poetry etc., does not really invalidate the problem, but passes over it in silence. Thence, poets like Miłosz, Rymkiewicz or Herbert become much more vulnerable to the criticism of sceptics who consider the conviction about the possibility of a subject’s domestication in the world, blurring the strangeness of a language system, and making it the vehicle of profound truth about man and the world, a sign of naivety. The primal absence makes man a melancholic wanderer who talks about his loss, or an ironist who ascertains his non-identity and strangeness with no regret. The land of distance with all modern poets stretches between these two poles. They exist there together with mythologists, sarcasts, ironists and third-order observers20 who have turned their atopies into positive assertions and foundations of their fragile and uncertain identities. Poets show us a different perspective and other ways of being in the world. Today, poetry often becomes a practice of critical thinking about the world, subject and language. It is also a kind of experience, different from life and thought. Poetry is a reflection of one’s own existence which disturbs peace and order in which we commune with the world, with which we are usually reconciled. In this sense, poetry and philosophy grow out of one trunk. Poetry, like philosophy, pulls us out of the mainstream of life, it takes us out of it forever. As the commentator of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s writings explains: Questions that man is bothered with disturb the order of his contact with reality in which his life passes by. While experiencing a question, an asker is suspended between the immanence of knowledge beyond which he goes, and the transcendence of reality which he does not reach, and he informs about the suspension, while express20 As explained by Michael Fleischer, the author of the concepts of “reasonable constructivism” and the third-order observer, “Language is used by the first-order observer, a philosopher examines the products of language as the second-order observer, a reasonable constructivist observes all this as the third-order observer” (Fleischer 2005: 118).

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ing the question, with his voice, gesture, face and look. The question thrown is like the Eleatic arrow which, shot at a target, freezes in the first moment of the flight, just to henceforth show the way to it.21

It should be emphasised that all of the above-mentioned phenomena connected with the problems of distance are interesting for a literary scholar as long as they are expressed in texts. Namely, only specific literary records certify the accuracy and significance of the issue of distance and its participation in the creation of works. Distance is what Michel Foucault calls “between” — a narrow gap between a thing and a word (and also a person and a word), in which writing is often settled today. Poetry most clearly demonstrates the gap between words and things. Among the authors who allude to the space of distance are Mallarmé, Beckett, Borges, Kafka and Bataille, whereas in Poland Wat, Karpowicz, Wirpsza or Miłobędzka, among others. Their works can be referred to with the term “literature of consciousness”, coined by Jakub Momro when describing Beckett’s works (2010). Simply speaking, in modern poetry, treated as a plane for textual reproduction of the problems of distance, we deal with two divergent attitudes: the first is represented by Mallarmé, constructivists and linguists who emphasise the gap between a sign and its reference. The second pole, of realists, also referred to as metaphysicians, exposes the natural relations of words and meanings, and their ability to express and represent. Leaving aside the complex problems of metaphysical poetry, whose characteristic is beyond the scope of these considerations, I assume, after Anna Kałuża (2008), that both poles are within the horizon of the modern conception of language as an order separate from the order of reality. They differ in the way they react to the realisation of poetry’s linguistic nature. On the one hand, the line of the so-called linguists uses the creative potential of a word, this conjugal disparity between the orders of representation and the world, as an opportunity to produce a new type of experience. On the other hand, the line of the so-called realists tries to maintain the representational power of words, treating them in a vehicular manner — as a way to express the extralinguistic. Focusing on one line, the other should be considered an indispensable point of reference. If, on the one hand, there are the languages of poetry that define the order of representation semiotically as intransitive, while on the other hand mimetic languages ​​of poetry that believe in the power of references and the ability (sometimes treated as a mission) to speak about the world and existence, there is linguistic existentialism or existentialist linguism at their intersection — an attitude which combines self-knowledge about one’s own situation in the world, subjecting knowledge to critical reflection with a deep sense of crisis which has touched the language that henceforth cannot be 21 S. Cichowicz, Poezja świata, introduction in: Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1976: 5).

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a simple means of expressing an existential situation of a subject, but is an object of observation and critical reflection. Language becomes a medium that produces rather than ascertains facts which are not only linguistic entities. Poetic experience always touches upon a concrete existence (of a writer and reader). It emerges from it and changes it. Modern Polish literature lacks — perhaps except the maximalist work by Tymoteusz Karpowicz — radically completed projects of the modernist myth of writing as “a never-ending work of consciousness” (Kałuża 2008: 18), yet we can find many suggestive images of a subject trying to determine its own self-awareness through the act of writing about it. Without suggesting any simple and risky analogies between philosophy and poetry, I would like to point out that modern Polish poetry is firmly seated on the ground of post-Descartesian reflective philosophy, even when it seems to abandon the traditional, metaphysical categories of truth, significance and meaning for the sake of language and its figures. Bibliography: Arendt Hannah (1981), The Life of the Mind, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, United States. Balbus Stanisław (1996), Między stylami, 2nd ed., Kraków. Barthes Roland (2008), Mitologie, trans. A. Dziadek, ed. K. Kłosiński, Aletheia, Warszawa. Bolecki Włodzimierz, Nawrocka Ewa (eds.) (2007), Literackie reprezentacje doświadczenia, Wydawnictwo IBL PAN, Warszawa. Bolecki Włodzimierz, Nycz Ryszard (eds.) (2004), Narracja i tożsamość (II). Antropologiczne problemy literatury, Wydawnictwo IBL PAN, Warszawa. Buczyńska-Garewicz Hanna (2007), Rozum szukający i błądzący. Eseje o filozofii i filozofach, Wydawnictwo Adam Marszałek, Toruń. Certeau Michael de (1984), The Practice of Everyday Life, Steven Rendall (trans.), University of California Press, Berkeley. Certeau Michael de (2011), The Scriptural Economy in: The Practice of Everyday Life, Steven Rendall (trans.), University of California Press, Berkeley. Cieślak Robert (2001), Gry wzrokowe. O wyobrażeniach ciała w poezji polskiej XX wieku, in: Wiśniewska Lidia Lidia (ed.) (2001), Między słowem a ciałem, Wydawnictwo Akademii Bydgoskiej, Bydgoszcz. Colli Giorgio (2005), Filozofia ekspresji, trans. H. Buczyńska-Garewicz (trans.), Universitas, Kraków. Dziadek Adam (2008), Atopia — stadność i jednostkowość ‘Teksty Drugie’, No 1-2. Fish Stanley (1989), Doing What Comes Naturally: Change, Rhetoric and the Practice of Theory In Literary and Legal Studies, Durham: NC: Duke UP. Fish Stanley (2007), Interpretacja, retoryka, polityka. Eseje wybrane, ed. A. Szahaj, The Introduction to the Polish Edition of the Essays: R. Rorty, preface: A. Szahaj, K. Abriszewski et. al. (trans.), Universitas, Kraków. Foucault Michel (1979), Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Vintage Books, New York.

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Foucault Michel (1999), Powiedziane, napisane. Szaleństwo i literatura, trans. B. Banasiak, Wydawnictwo Fundacja ‘Aletheia’, Warszawa. Foucault Michel (2002), The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, Routledge, London. Friedrich Hugo (1974), The Structure of Modern Poetry, Joachim Neugroschel (trans.), Northwestern University Press, Evanston. Havelock Eric Alfred (1986), The Muse Learns to Write: Reflections on Orality and Literacy from Antiquity to the Present, Yale University Press, New Haven. Januszkiewicz Michał (2007), W-koło hermeneutyki literackiej, PWN SA, Warszawa. Kałuża Anna (2008), Wola odróżnienia. O modernistycznej poezji Jarosława Marka Rymkiewicza, Julii Hartwig, Witolda Wirpszy i Krystyny Miłobędzkiej, Universitas, Kraków. Kluba Agnieszka (2007), Litość bez trwogi — zagadnienia empatii i dystansu w literaturze, in: Literackie reprezentacje doświadczenia, Włodzimierz Bolecki i Ewa Nawrocka (eds.), Wydawnictwo IBL PAN, Warszawa. Krawczyńska Dorota (2004), Empatia? Substytucja? Identyfikacja? Jak czytać teksty o Zagładzie?, in: Narracja i tożsamość. Antropologiczne problemy wiedzy o literaturze, W. Bolecki, R. Nycz (eds.), Warszawa. Kuźma Erazm (1999), Język — stwórca rzeczy, in: Seweryna Wysłouch, Bogumiła Kaniewska (eds.) (1999), Człowiek i rzecz. O problemach reifikacji w literaturze, filozofii i sztuce, Poznańskie Studia Polonistyczne. Seria Literacka, Poznań. Łebkowska Anna (2008), Empatia. O literackich narracjach przełomu XX i XXI wieku, Universitas, Kraków. Markowski Michał Paweł (1999), Pragnienie obecności. Filozofie reprezentacji od Platona do Kartezjusza, słowo/ obraz terytoria, Gdańsk. Merleau-Ponty Maurice (1962), Phenomenology of Perception, Colin Smith (trans.), Humanities Press, New York. Merleau-Ponty Maurice (1976), Proza świata. Eseje o mowie , Czytelnik, Warszawa. Momro Jakub (2010), Literatura świadomości. Samuel Beckett — podmiot — negatywność, Universitas, Kraków. Nycz Ryszard (2001), Literatura jako trop rzeczywistości. Poetyka epifanii w nowoczesnej literaturze polskiej, Universitas, Kraków. Ong Walter Jackson (2002), Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word, 2nd ed., Routledge, New York. Owczarek Bogdan, Mitosek Zofia, Grajewski Wincenty (eds.) (2001), Poetyki opowiadania, Universitas, Kraków 2001. Pieniążek Paweł (2006), Suwerenność a nowoczesność. Z dziejów poststrukturalistycznej recepcji myśli Nietzschego, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, Łódź. Płuciennik Jarosław (2002), Literackie identyfikacje i oddźwięki. Poetyka i empatia, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, Łódź. Rorty Richard (1989), Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Rusinek Michał (2003), Między retoryką a retorycznością, Universitas, Kraków. Sausurre Ferdinand de (1983), Course in General Linguistics, Albert Riedlinger (trans.), Open — Court Publishing, La Salle.

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Shusterman Richard (2008), Body Consciousness: A Philosophy of Mindfulness and Somaesthetics, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Skrendo Andrzej (2004), Tożsamość w perspektywie konstruktywizmu, w: Narracja i tożsamość (II). Antropologiczne problemy literatury, Włodzimierz Bolecki, Ryszard Nycz (eds.), Wydawnictwo IBL PAN, Warszawa. Szkudlarek Tomasz (1999, 2nd ed.2009), Media: szkice z filozofii i pedagogiki dystansu, Oficyna Wydawnicza ‘Impuls’, Kraków. Warminski Andrzej (ed.) (1996), Aesthetic Ideology, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. Warchala Michał (2006), Autentyczność i nowoczesność. Idea autentyczności od Rousseau do Freuda, Universitas, Kraków. Winiecka Elżbieta (2012), Z wnętrza dystansu. Leśmian — Karpowicz — Białoszewski — Milobędzka, Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, Poznań. Wiśniewska Lidia (ed.) (2001), Między słowem a ciałem, Wydawnictwo Akademii Bydgoskiej, Bydgoszcz. Wysłouch Seweryna, Kaniewska Bogumiła (eds.) (1999), Człowiek i rzecz. O problemach reifikacji w literaturze, filozofii i sztuce, Poznańskie Studia Polonistyczne. Seria Literacka, Poznań.

Literary Theory as Critical Epistemology and Deontology: Notes on the Concerns in Fiction in Relation to the Images of the Holocaust in Mass Media Marek Kaźmierczak* Abstract This paper presents how literary theory is tied with deontology and epistemology. The main hypothesis is that the theory of literature becomes a source of the multi-discursive tools of description and explanation of social problems which are modelled through the influence of mass media. The main thesis is illustrated through media representations of the Holocaust in contemporary culture. The article consists of three parts. The first, titled “Five Clarifications”, concerns the conditions of mutual relations between literary theory and deontology and epistemology. The second part of the article, titled “Literary Theory and the Social Frame of Knowledge”, shows examples of the utility of knowledge about theory of literature in the social sciences. The last part of the article, titled “Two Deontological Principles”, refers to the norms which describe the ethical dimensions of literary theory in the context of the perception of the Holocaust in contemporary culture. * Marek Kaźmierczak, Institute of European Culture, UAM, Kostrzewskiego 5-7, 62-200 Gniezno e-mail: [email protected]

Introduction Literary theory, which is treated as critical epistemology and deontology, becomes a multi-discursive field of research that describes and recognises the practical and potential differences between fiction and reality observed in a wide diversity of texts and messages functioning in the media. In this context, the knowledge taken from literary theories is important not only in the reading of literature, but also in many other semiotic systems. The mutual relation and interdependence between literary theory on the one hand and deontology and epistemology on the other will be interpreted in this paper. The main hypothesis is that literary theory becomes a source of multi-discursive tools of description and explanation of social problems which are formed due to the influence of mass media. Illustrations which confirm this hypothesis will be representations of the Holocaust taken from contemporary culture. Literary theory can be a source of inspiration in the search for new, alternative forms of understanding of the world and humanity in the systems of signs. The article consists of three parts: the first, titled “Five clarifications”, concerns the main conditions of the formation of the relations of literary theory with deontology and epistemology; the second part, titled “Literary theory and the so-

68 cial frames of knowledge”, refers to the utility of literary study in social research; the third part of the article, titled “The two deontological rules”, concerns the two deontological norms which were created as the result of the influence and importance of literary theory in describing and interpreting the world as modelled by the media. Images of the Holocaust will be the main forms of the study as well as the main source of its illustrations. In this paper, literary theory, like deontology and epistemology, is understood in general, without any specific differentiations among concrete methodologies which constitute this kind of research. The influence of numerous concepts, which have grown in the horizon of literary theory, on the reception of the Holocaust can be seen in other studies.

Five Clarifications The treatment of literary theory as a critical theory of cognition and as deontology demands a few clarifications. First, I assume that literary theories (the term “literary theory” which is used in the title of this article signifies in general the main theoretical models and conceptions which are related to literature) are useful because of their categories, models and terms which are used as the cognitive tools in understanding the texts created not only by literature, but also by other forms signifying reality. If literature is treated as a form of discourse with history, society, values and humanity, it means that the theories related to literature can be used not only in the context of aesthetical frames, but also in the perspective of social phenomena modelled by the mass media. This idea is not original and has been put forward before, although in the context of the influence of the mass media or in the context of the pantextualisation of cyberspace it is evidently important (Szczęsna 2007: 32-57; Hopfinger 2010: 48-62). The images of the world created due to the use of semiotic systems typical of the wide diversity of forms of communication result in a situation where the contemporary participant of the culture — more or less intentionally — takes in parenthesis the differences between fiction and reality (the sense of the last sentence is implicite aporetical because of this epistemological epoché). A second clarification is my assumption that the theoretical tools and models which are developed by the poetics of the literary texts — because of the influence of media on it — serve in determining (describing) the epistemological differences between the image (representation) and its source and in the context of the signifying interaction between these two orders of relation which is fixed as

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the active semiotic message. Literary theories1 provide the tools for analysis and interpretation; shape the fields of reflection; sketch the variants of discourse; and register the typical (genealogical) generic and functional changes of the messages, mainly in the context of their interactions with other texts (understood as the forms of the approximations of their diverse, semiotic transparency, cohesion and [intertextual] interactivity) (Kuźma 2002: 171-212). Thirdly, the concept of literary theory as a critical theory of learning and deontology does not mean that, in the sphere of literary research, a re-evaluation of values is being conducted; rather, it is an “appreciation” of these values, which is a result of media researchers’ lack of theoretical knowledge of the poetics of messages or of text functions, thereby resulting in ontological errors, including the fundamental mistake of not taking into account the influence of frameworks shaping the message in the differences between the internal and external texts. Literary theory as a form of deontology formulates questions on the values in the world presented in the content of the messages whose status is not only autotelic (that is, aesthetic), but also cognitive (that is, organising and shaping knowledge). Consequently, the matter of truth, goodness and humanity must be addressed. We must confront those messages whose content deforms fact, and oppose the media’s willing affiliation with these distorted and misleading narratives. It is a consistent and comprehensive attempt at remodeling history through manipulated contents and images (Belting 2007:37). A clear ethical standard has to be formed which would clearly distinguish between historical fact and historical fiction. Given the concept of literary theory as possible deontology, and taking into consideration the presentation of such facts as the Holocaust, it is necessary to keep on tearing apart the material of the text in order to discover the truth at its core. The memory of events such as the attempt to exterminate European Jews cannot become merely a compilation of images and myths for sale (as put forward by Tim Cole 2000: 4). The Holocaust in the horizon of panfictionalisation is a forgotten fact, a lost fact of instrumentalised humanity. Thus, all formulas and commands which say “it cannot be”, “it should not be”, “it is not right or proper” become the defense of people and of facts against the mechanisms of reducing actual history for the cultural industry, which is why questions about the truth, formed on the basis of varied literary methodologies, acquire such specific character. In this context, one can speak of two types of deontology: direct deontology and mediative deontology. Direct deontology confronts the content of presentations of the Holocaust with ethical standards, critically processing each form of 1

Ryszard Nycz writes that contemporary theoretical discourse is diversed, spread and unstable. Compare with: R. Nycz, Tekstowy świat. Poststrukturalizm a wiedza o literaturze, Kraków 2000, p. 29.

70 instrumentalisation, reduction or appropriation of history. Mediative deontology refers to the question of the values of ethical messages which, due to the poetics and semiotics forming them, do not have to directly relate to the commemoration of the extermination of European Jews, as not all fiction is a reduction and not all presentation is instrumentalisation. Mediative deontology raises the question of the values taken into consideration in the the use of signs in the construction of messages. A film about the Holocaust will use its own language and style, replicating the image as close as possible to its source, whether actual or artistic, which as yet does not lessen the status of fiction in the process of reception of the Holocaust. Of considerable importance is the question of the basic ethical and cognitive values which become an axiological as well as epistemological frame for the experience undergone by the receiver. The fourth clarification is the assumption that literary theory as critical theory of recognition touches on the fundamental borders which have their ontological basis in the differences between fiction and reality. As a consequence, the lack of distinction on this level leads to numerous errors in the reception of historical facts, for instance. The inadequacy of this knowledge makes the hero become “human”, and the created world becomes a substitute of reality. We go through the fate of the film or literary hero, feeling a sense of relief that the hero has managed to “survive” all forms of danger — we fall under the impression that it is we, through our viewing (and in a wider sense our reception), who “saves” his “life” simply by “participating” in his experiences. Fiction fulfills cognitive and axiological functions, and among them it is worth stressing that it serves to protect a man’s fears against himself. For example, the viewing of a film is a communicative activity mediated in the message. Without being conscious of this “mediation” we can succumb to the need to “sugarcoat” the facts (Cole 2000: XVIIII), deluding ourselves that we are able to tame the resentment which is a result of our fear of our own ambivalent nature and a consequence of the fear of the history which took place (even if the film is merely its artistic image). Research in the field of poetics of literary texts demands an accurate linguistic description and a system of interpretation, and it is usually on the linguistic level that cognitive errors are made in the reception of media messages: this touches the producer as well as the receiver of the messages, the alter and the ego of communication in the perspective of ethics. The fifth and final clarification deals with literary theory as discourse of deontology (or rather, deontologies), when it distinguishes fiction from reality, influencing our undersanding of facts, the social status of their reception, or the understanding of humanity in the horizon of liminal (existential) experiences. This does not mean, however, that older versions of literary theories were neutral or free from ethical values. Literary theories seem to be virtual “military training grounds” — of confrontation among different ideologies, ethical norms

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or policies which are, on the surface, objective in a positivist understanding but, in a wider scope, reflecting the epoch in which they have developed, such as the influence of neo-Marxist ideas on certain types of knowledge or their pluralism and propagation in the postmodern period (Dąbrowski 2000: 29). At this point I am referring to the tools which are at the disposal of this form of humanistic reflection, giving rise to questions (or at least making these questions possible) about truth, goodness, dignity, about the sense of humanity. The messages hidden in panfictional reality are brought out by the media imperatives to “recognise, distinguish, differentiate”. They uncover not only the new horizon of understanding literary theory and its social function but also the deontological aspect which is complementary to current reception. In the order of relation, the subject of knowledge and the object of knowledge are seen in this context in reference not only to the situation mediating the relations but also to their effects in the perspective of ethical values.

Literary Theory and the Social Frame of Knowledge Literary theory understood as a critical theory of recognition and deontology is a proposition which serves as a definition of the framework of reception of messages, its influence and its use in this field of humanistic knowledge in social research, in other words, a conciliatory proposition. In current times, the increasing relativism of ethical standards and widely-accepted tendency to panfictionalise reality as a result of the social and multi-dimensional effects of the messages propagated by the media necessarily become the defined borders between fiction and reality. This is a challenge both cognitive and ethical. This concept in a wide context of social communication will be a return to reflection which will leave a lasting mark on the humanistic School of Frankfurt2. Deontology is not, in the perspective of the present context, a question of how to present. Such questions, in the proper context, were formed by thinkers such as Adorno; deontology in this sense is a definition of how to understand3 that which is presented by the media and thus includes how

2 3

T. W. Adorno, M. Horheimer, Dialektyka oświecenia, tłum. M. Łukasiewicz, trans. M. J. Siemek, Warszawa 1994; D. Strinati, Wprowadzenie do kultury popularnej, trans. W. J. Burszta, Poznań 1998. Prof. Jarosław Płuciennik suggested in the course of discussion on the theses of the present text (in the International Interdisciplinary Academic Conference on “Kinds and Styles of Criticism” in Łódź, 18.05.2011 r.), that we should speak not so much of literary theory but to use the term hermeneutic pedagogy, due to the pressure on the category of perception. This suggestion would seem fundamental from the ethical perspective; however, due to the ontological and cognitive differentiation between the fictional nature of media images and reality the author in this paper will use the term “literary theory”.

72 to critically perceive and process on the road to clarifying and comprehending the differences between meaning and event (Ricoeur 1989: 160). Images of the Holocaust as represented by the media clearly illustrate the ideas of Berel Lang which he put forward in his literature and plays. He claimed that at the present time, a moral justification is needed for literature and plays as such, and not merely for the figurative writing of singular themes, even one as morally charged as Nazi genocide (Lang 2006:160). This was extrapolated by Lang in numerous textual references, with the assumption that that which is moral becomes dependent on that which is presented. The ethical and cognitive challenge built on the dialectics of the distinction between meaning and event no longer applies solely to the figurative representation of Nazi genocide, but to all representations of the Holocaust in the media. The receiver of audio-visual messages from TV, film or the internet tries to understand reality, and even comprehend its different versions, on the basis of the images shaped through the frame of presentation which is triggered by the dialectics of imposition, combination, and distinction of fact and fiction. The memory of reality, with Nazi genocide providing a specific illustration, is threatened by a semiotic activity of its representation and the effects on how the event is imagined and understood. Paradoxically, one can say that the ways of representing the Holocaust are the borders of recognising the difference between fiction and reality. The need to maintain the difference is the objective of deontology. There are concepts of literary theory which have become dominant in research on the mass media. The variety and capacity — both descriptive and explanatory — of literary concepts point to elements in the public sphere which need to be named, defined and specified. This lack or vacuum of terminology can be filled by literary theory. Literary theory has filled the need to crystallise the meta-language of media research. Literary theory is interdisciplinary and becomes transdisciplinary with regards to its use in various forms of social communication and in research aiming to systematize the relation and distinction between reality — its linguistic, audio-visual and textual varieties — and fiction. This is necessary as fiction can acquire certain traits similar to reality which become visible on the level of the possible and real substitution of facts and their presentation. This seems particularly important in the case of the whole system of reception of the Holocaust in popular culture or in the culture of popular culture4. The Holocaust — which for some researchers might be an event written in a moving and unending story of genocide and for others an event so special and unique that its sense, dimension and status define the civilisational, axiological and cognitive borders of modern 4

Compare with: M. Krajewski, Kultury kultury popularnej, Poznań 2005.

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man — is above all a reality which actually took place despite the fact that the memory of it is mostly an idea created by the media. It is apparent that one cannot doubt the truth about the Holocaust. This certainty stops being undoubtable not only for those who negate the event (Shermer, Grobman 2000: 27), but also for those whose knowledge of it comes from fragmented and fictional images which in a variety of ways erase the truth about the Holocaust’s victims and its perpetrators. It is necessary to clearly stress that negationists (as well as so-called revisionists) deny the truth about the Holocaust or its scale but the receivers and creators of the images “neutralising” the memory of the event, even if in the process of unintentionally putting the reality of the event in parentheses as a sidenote, they eventually result in the neutralisation (anaesthetisation, instrumentalisation, simplification or even appropriation) of its reality. There are many forms of “obliterating” but one common effect — amnesia and aversion (socially manifested in different ways — from a sense of abomination to the subject, indifference towards the murdered and towards this “weird” — in a philosophical sense- sympathy for the perpetrators, to hatred towards living Jews). This “obliteration” takes on many forms which are meant for various discourses. Obliterating is seen in the neglect of the victims as well as the justification of the perpetrators, in the instrumental treatment of the borders, in the aesthetic attempts at exceeding them (Ubertowska 2010: 30)5. Schindler’s List shows heroes who represent those who managed to survived, those who were saved, but in actuality the Holocaust is a truth about the millions of people who were murdered. Multiple discourses, which are in the frames of their continuing poetics and the social form of their reception, encompasses various presentations of Nazi genocide: in literature, in film, on the Internet sites, in short amateur films accessible in social network services (in discourse which can be called current discourse), in political discourse (and their wider Internet versions — whether in the form of folders showing the analogy between the experiences of the ghetto and the Palestines in the Gaza Strip, or in the project The Holocaust on your Plate which imposes a comparison between the treatment of animals and the treatment of people in the death camps). The concept of things such as genre, style, hero, literary character, the fictional setting are needed in public discussions so as to critically differentiate that which is portrayed from that to which it refers. Literary theory becomes a subtle sphere of knowledge in the social sciences. The influence of the media can lead to the mistaken assumption that viewing is also helping the viewer, thus de facto acting on the reality outside of fiction. This apparent tautology is the result of the disappearance of the borders between fiction and reality. The viewed (read in a literary text or used in Second Life) is a charac5

Aleksandra Ubertowska writes that the effect of literary kitsch is, in an unclear way, connected with the telling of the Holocaust from the point of the view of the perpetrator.

74 ter, a hero, a symbol which is a compromise in the field of presentation between meanings and events. The viewer’s experience of the narration (from profound empathy to ironic expression of memory) comes from the repeated encounters of images presented by the media. However, what remains in the memory is that which was “experienced” while participating in the narration and it is on the basis of these images that viewers build their knowledge of events that happened in the past. The borders of presenting the Holocaust are the borders situating understanding in the horizon of dialectic tension between fiction and reality. In abstracting the academic discussion of this event (an interesting review of discussions can be found in the books of Anna Ziębińska-Witek, Alan Mintz, Peter Novick and in the articles of such authors as Samantha Power or Mark J. Webber)6, a vital element is the fact that Nazi genocide acts as a basic test for memory, the level of knowledge and the use of axiology in Western civilisation. The truth about the Holocaust reveals the dependence of ethics on imagination and the contiguity of imagination on the practices of presentation involved in the social mechanisms in the construction of a message. The events which make up the elements of Nazi genocide showed and show in numerous images and testimonies or in memorials that it is indisputable, that it actually happened. The meanings which are attached to the event and often become in semiotic interactions their substitutes, “attempt” the past by changing it into something that can be rendered real and that, paradoxically, can be forgotten. In discussions and researches about the Holocaust many scholars have lost faith in the belief that the next generation could learn something from the “lesson” that is found in the truth about the Holocaust. Samantha Power writes that the following instances of genocide that occurred in Cambodia, Rwanda or in the Balkans show that the only thing which can be learned from the Holocaust lesson is not how to avert genocide but, in witnessing genocide, what to do so as not to be indifferent to it (Power 1999: 35). Based on psychological theories on the complexities of human nature, one must ask for an explanation on the causes of such a state. One explanation — certainly not the only one nor the most important one — is the influence of the media and how it presents the event. Literary theory as a critical form of cognition leads to knowledge and sensitivity so as to (through the viewing of historical photographs where one can see a murdered or emaciated human form in the death camps, for instance) remember that one is viewing not fiction but reality, and the image presented in the photograph is not a “character” but a human being. The impact of the visual media is that the mere act of viewing leads to the substitution of meaning in the place of the event and to the interaction 6

Compare with: A. Ziębińska-Witek, Holocaust. Problemy przedstawiania, Lublin 2005; A. Mintz, Popular Culture and the Shaping of Holocaust Memory in America, Seattle and London 2001; P. Novick, The Holocaust in American Life, Boston 2000.

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between varied meanings, while the event remains silent (like structurally-organised poetics which does not require reference to anything external; one can even theoretically assume, which sounds paradoxical in the perspective of current research on visual culture, that this is a consequence of the overview of provisional structural perception of the semantic whole) or presented as an aside in parentheses. In the conflict between fiction and reality — in the context of ideas concerning events such as the Holocaust — it is extremely vital to know how to distinguish the semiotic function of an image from what and who is found in the contents of its presentation (Sontag 2009: 28). It is not always the case that we remember what we see in a photograph but we ought to remember the face of the person, his body and not the face of an illustrated “character”. In films that are purely fictional this standard has to be inverted and one has to conclude that what is illustrated is a character, not a human being. The character is a sign, a symbol, a metonymy of a real person or nation, but it is neither a person, nor a nation. In reading Jonathan Littell’s Les Bienveillantes one must remember that the seduction of the main character is based on the seduction of that which is factual by that which is fictional. The possibility of substituting one framework with another is the obliteration of traces of the factual past and the paving of the road to modernity which reconstructs the past in current representations and the ideologies justifying them (for example, the executioner is the victim). Deontology in this context appears in the use of words declaring that something ought to be done or that there are some things that should not be done. Literary theory provides the tools which come in handy in critical reflection, indicating the importance of language, as it is on this level that the borders are obliterated — the borders between fiction and reality, between meaning and event. One can, however, propose still another type of “lesson” — a lesson of baby steps. In this perception one can say that that which is being studied under a certain research framework can be transferred to grounds other than those which refer to the presentation of the Holocaust (some researchers think that the Holocaust falls under a different system of values), in the context of humanity in extreme conditions where the cultural industry objectifies and negates the individual dimension of human suffering and death. At the beginning, it is worth considering the first seven baby steps: first — get interested; second — read (observe, get to know, use, create, go and see) with comprehension each individual text or its fragment; third — try to remember what you have seen, be it a concrete text, fact or image; fourth — try to change or enrich your previous ideas; fifth — do not construct generalisations in situations where you can distort the message or how it will be perceived (not all X are like Y); sixth — before you start saving the world, save the contents of your memory and the source of your imagination; seventh — distinguish be-

76 tween fiction and reality. These seven baby steps refer to direct deontology and to mediative deontology and require, apart from a thirst for knowledge and the consciousness of its limitations, a need for change. Speaking of literary theory (or rather of literary theories) as a possible source of deontology in reference to such events as the Holocaust is valid, particularly as the border between the presentation of the fact and the fact itself should not be movable, “erasable” or negated in any way. That border has to be certain: It might be true that ”naked” historical facts do not exist, that is, appearing without the means for representation; it might be also true that each type of writing (figurative and historical) could lead to the emergence of that which we call a figurative sphere. However, this does not contradict the possibility of representing the remainder in a direct relation with its object which, in practice if not in assumption, remains direct and unchanged. It is this possibility which is the key point of distinction between historical and figurative discourse. Evidence of this might come from several sources but for the purpose of this discussion we need only one: the fact of Nazi genocide (Lang 2006: 166). Awareness of this border is the beginning of a critical acquaintance with the content of the message. In this context, criticism is based on the ability to distinguish the signs, symbols, narrative and stylistic forms, poetics, frames defining the profile of the receivers who, even when they dismiss the reality of the event, are still recognisable. This means that recognising the dismissal of factual events reveals the conventions which serve them, thus, de facto, revealing a possible map of differences between fiction and reality. This is illustrated in Inglourious Basterds (directed by Q. Tarantino) or in the audio-visual materials available in social network services on the Internet. Critical knowledge lowers the consequences of the messages as well as the semiotic activity of its elements and at the same time results in the receiver understanding that the knowledge which is built on the basis of such a message will have a status of aesthetic loftiness or judgement (and only judgement that is prone to the dangers of ignorance, stereotypes and analogies) or of the supplementation of true knowledge. The assumption of the existence of true knowledge is tied to the order of cognition and the order of deontology. Who should decide if knowledge is real? True knowledge means knowledge whose main goal is to define the road leading to the fact itself — the indisputable fact of Nazi genocide. Berel Lang pointed to certain, in the words of Aleksandra Ubertowska, „”privileged categories” in Holocaust literature: “’authenticity’, ‘restrained tone’, ‘fidelity/conformity to the facts’, avoiding excessively complex academic resolutions which are more or less consciously written in the traditions of ‘providing testimony’, understood as quasi-documentary describing historical events in an individual dimension” (Ubertowska 2010: 34). The aforementioned categories can be partially extrapolated in other orders of discourse which does not mean, however,

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that their status will drain the level of acceptance of literary theory as deontology. They refer to the style of presentation and in media images the artistic style will fulfill the communicative function of the common style. The aforementioned categories are connected by aesthetics and ethics, while in the deontological context their number should be enriched with another category whose status and level of influence work on multiple levels (this touches on poetics, social frameworks of textual reception and methodology). One can learn, therefore, not only about respect for life and death but also — where possible, in reference to the function of particular theories and assumptions — for the critical perception of the messages in which man becomes an object and the world of values represented by him becomes a pawn in a game of conventions, style and tradition while the receiver becomes a mere passive medium of instrumental reason. The aforementioned categories are cognitively interesting. They are tools used in descriptions of how texts function in a stylistic space. However, if we were to include them in the sphere of literary theory and attempt to use them in diverse media offerings (not only in literature), one can agree that it is not so much the presence of particular categories, but the need to define them is a cognitive act heading towards deontology. Historical events like the Holocaust force a constant presence of ethos and logos dialectics; this is true with literature as with theoretical inquiries on it. Finally, it is also true with other discourses in whose frames the Holocaust is presented. The understanding, perception and experience of these messages, their expansiveness and proliferation become possible likewise as a result of their cognition through the use of literary models of research.

Two Deontological Principles In the public sphere, the word “Holocaust” has become a matrix invoked directly or indirectly in various fields of social life in which its use is a mental or cognitive shortcut or an implied problem of constantly reconstructed (due to changing historical, political and cultural contexts) ethical reflection. One can assume that the idea “Holocaust”, with its direct tie to the planned mass murder of predominantly Jewish people in the 20th century, initiates a definite form of ethical valuation in different systems of social discourse; this is “(self-)seeking” deontology which aims, at least in part, to determine the limits of humanity as the final instance in the experience of good and evil. The future of the memory of Nazi genocide will determine the changes in axiology. The Holocaust is not a matter solely of knowledge, family histories or political discourses; it is also a principle of ethics which will seek a horizon of lasting values which will not be completely dispersed or relativised. It would seem that the paradox of modern life is this: that an event so destructive and tragic as the Holocaust — due to its remembrance and commem-

78 oration — becomes a justification for the reinforcement of basic deontological systems. The Holocaust as a synecdoche of genocide (Mark J. Webber said that Auschwitz as synecdoche is to the Holocaust as the Holocaust is to genocide: Webber 2011: 27) appears in political discourse (among numerous examples mentioned in many academic papers: Power 1999: 37). One, accessible on the Internet, is a slide presentation made up of illustrations comparing the situation of Palestinians in Israel with the that of the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto. One of the slides show Jewish children climbing over the ghetto walls, risking their lives in the process. The slide contains the following heading: “Young Jewish boys in Warsaw sneak over the ghetto’s wall to bring back food. A young Palestinian smuggles a sheep into Gaza through an underground tunnel.”7 The Holocaust as a synecdoche of genocide appears as well as in bioethics discussions (an example could be a social campaign entitled The Holocaust on your Plate where the fates of the victims of death camps are equated with the treatment of animals butchered for meat; the campaign includes data justifying the “similarity” between people murdered in the Holocaust and animals killed for consumption as well as images of emaciated figures from the camps which are then paired with pictures of thin, starving animals, all of which are illustrations of the “similarities” and supplemented with comments like: “During the seven years between 1938 and 1945, 12 million people perished in the Holocaust. The same number of animals is killed every 4 hours for food in the U.S. alone”; the number 12 million is doubly abusive — towards historical facts and also towards the deaths of about 6 million Jewish victims).8 The reduction of the Holocaust to its use as a “stylistic figure” has become an image, something of an intellectual shortcut which forces a certain mode of interpretation and valuation and is used simply because in popular culture a particular mindset has taken hold and any reference to it in varied contexts condenses the intention of the speaker at the cost of instrumentalising the analogy and simplifying the frame of perception and memory. The presentation of the Holocaust shown in a new, alternative context leads to the formulation of a new sense which, even if it means something and illustrates a basic level of association, is on the level of facts directed at their actual schematic analogy. This phenomenon could be referred to as re-contextualisation and thus the addition (or widening) of senses to the presentation which remains in an alternative order of reading or interpretation. Re-contextualisation in this case often becomes pantextualisation, suspending the need for continuity between image as a medium of the event and the event as fact. 7 8

http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/83/gaza.html (downloaded 12.04.2011). http://www.animalliberationfront.com/AR_Orgs/SANE/Videos/Holocaust/holocaust.htm (downloaded 15.04.2011).

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We can see different media images which, as Hans Belting wrote, are often media of meaning, of other images, of knowledge and of their substitutes. And we ask ourselves a basic question: what do I need to know to be able to read the messages contained in these images? This is basically a question about deontology, a cognitive question, a critical question, as it concerns the truth as well as the need for understanding the relationship between fiction and reality. Metaphor, synecdoche, narration, style, function, hyperbole, intertextuality, euphemism, meaning, criticism, framework model, text, its interior and exterior, difference, story, presentation (the world presented), criticism, hero/person — these concepts from varied fields of knowledge, which include poetics, can be found in the varieties of its conception, points of reference, definitions and use. Without their presence and without their use it would be practically impossible to speak of the differences between fiction and reality or of their mutual constitution/ construction. It is not necessarily so that fiction is something in opposition to reality. They are mutually complementary; the ontological order mutually constitutes each of them, but their distinction is necessary — and this is the first principle of deontology, resulting from a personal treatment of literary theory — so that the Holocaust will never be reduced to a collection of fictional images. If it happened, it would lead to the process meant for relation: memory — fiction — forgetting (in an understanding closer to the concept of Marc Augé); it would lead to the forgetting of the event. In an ethical framework relativism turns out to be similar to that which in a cognitive framework is the simulation of reality. “The main factor leading to the individual and collective life in ‘fiction’ is forgetting” (Augé 2009: 40). Paraphrasing the hypothesis of Marc Augé in the present consideration, one can say that the intensification of fictionalisation in Holocaust images mirrors the mechanisms and forms of its forgetting. Media images referring to the Holocaust function most often in reference to well-tread, schematic forms of reception and perception of the event. It is also the case with the associations made by politicians who use the idea of the Holocaust to speak of, paradoxically, the Israeli campaigns against the Palestinians (the paradox is based on the fact that the comparison is to be used to negate or neutralise the assumed, possible uniqueness of the truth of the Holocaust as the murder committed on the Jewish nation).9 Speaking of “media images”, one has also to consider how the cultural industry reduces the truth about the Holocaust to simple schemes and naive associations, the instrumental treatment of the truth of the event, using a mortal character and destructive dimension to the conventions of a story with a happy ending. Saul 9

Ahmadinejad: Holocaust ‘big lie’ used to justify establishment of Israel, http://www.haaretz. com/news/middle-east/ahmadinejad-holocaust-big-lie-used-to-justify-establishment-ofisrael-1.380905 (downloaded 26.08.2011)

80 Friedländer calls this the “exorcism” of the Holocaust, putting the Holocaust in the context of a “normal historical event, in ‘the cognitive system of conformism and unification’” (Friedländer 2007: 109 qtd. in Ubertowska 2010: 27). Dominick LaCapra stresses it, as noted by Aleksandra Ubertowska, as „a salvation narrative”, the model for stories containing a moral, formulating a message, neutralising the uniqueness of genocide (Ubertowska 2010: 29). Tim Cole, writing about films about the Holocaust, points out that they simplify the real threat of this event and replace it with something more “pleasant”. Consequently, numerous film images functioning in popular culture, e.g., Jakob the Liar (1999), Schindler’s List (1993) and Life is Beautiful (1997), propose a simplified celebration — mainly of those who survived the Holocaust — and the commodification of memory and death as well as their relativisation. Particular attention needs to be paid to the influence of kitsch on the perception of the Holocaust — kitsch. as Abraham Moles suggests, understood twofold: as aesthetic kitsch and social kitsch. In relating to the latter, Aleksandra Ubertowska writes: “kitsch is a specific, borderline case of reification, its own prefiguration of bourgeois conformism and desire for acquisition” (2010: 24). Kitsch is not only the poetics of representation but also of forms, how it is received and in this way focuses both on the object of cognition (the order of cognition and aesthetics) and the order of reception through the subject (the order of ethics). Fiction can complement reality if it becomes solely a reference to it, secondary to the form of understanding, emotion and presentation built over it. Fiction may also turn out to be a negation of reality, particularly when it starts to function as its substitute. Fiction has its own internal law and the negation of fiction would be the negation of literature. However, in relation to destruction, suffering and death, if they are based on actual events like Nazi genocide, the fiction should be subordinate to the borders which define a human being as a value, and fact as an element of that which cannot be fictionalised. In the context of the present considerations, literary theory turns out a type of knowledge and reflection which seems to be complementary to aesthetics, as we assume that literature can be an alternative not only for beauty but for truth as well. The second principle of deontology assumes that what falls under the system of fiction, finds its own actual references to the fact which occurred in a specified space and at a concrete time. Thus, even if texts — literary or film — appear (and they do) which are fictionalised reality, they do not become their substitutes. In the case of researches on the Holocaust, studies appearing at the end of the 1980s focus on the principles of defining style in which it becomes possible to present what some have assumed to be nonpresentable.

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Knowledge of literary theory may seem helpful in strict perception of the differences between the work and the text, and between text and fact. The second principle of deontology can be defined thus: in relation to the Holocaust one must assume the occurrence only of literature that does not have any substitutes; each misuse on this level would be an oscillation bordering on kitsch in the aesthetic sphere, fallacy in the cognitive sphere, injury in the aesthetic sphere. The second principle of deontology relates to what could be referred to as “condition of reference”. The reception of the Holocaust cannot be identified with the pantextual order which, in the public’s imagination, could be an overall and fundamental source of the Holocaust. Thinking about deontology is possible because the Holocaust was an event over and above the text — this assumption implies a relation between cognitive order and ethical order. Fiction created for the sake of fiction which does not contain a point of reference to an event as Nazi genocide is an entirely different matter, both in the ethical and cognitive sense, from fiction modelled through neglect which grow like “moss on gravestones” (Kornhauser 2007: 65, trans. by M.Kaźmierczakl)10, the way apathy and the “cultural industry” cover the truth of the places where Holocaust victims had been murdered. Fiction which acts as a substitute to and relates to the Holocaust can have the marks of the process of reduction on, and even a negation of, the event as the presentation of the Holocaust is an act which demands a constant reference to what actually happened. Any opposition to the last statement could be a result of the cognitive noise surrounding the discourse due to the acquired habit that thinking of cognitive truth is an attempt to impose the order of discourse. However, it would be appropriate to think of the words of James E. Young who wrote about the reception of literary texts relating to the Holocaust. The author of Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust claims that the main objective of literary criticism relating to the Holocaust ought to be the uncovering of all those myths shaping the representation of Nazi genocide, which are more persuasive than the representation of the actual facts (Young 1988: 68). Both principles of deontology used in relation to the Holocaust refer not only to the recognition of the fact as a cognitive an ethical azimuth in research on literature and social communication; they also refer to the defense of the receivers of the media images who, in order to avoid reducing it to only one dimension of existence, should learn how to distinguish reality from fiction to know that the

10 J. Kornhauser, Cmentarz i galeria In J. Kornhauser, Origami, Kraków 2007, s. 65. “In front of the old Jewish cemetery / swaggers a large building of / hypermarket. / Moss-grown matzevas / look with disbelief at the colourful shopping gallery. / Among them grew a new iron / fence. / It is also colourful” (trans. by M.Kaźmierczak).

82 image that was presented — to paraphrase James Young in his text about Thomas Wolfe — was real but it was not the only version of reality (Young 1988: 63).

Conclusion Literary theory can be a theory of cognition and deontology in the case of research and description of Holocaust literature and in the case of research on various media productions representing the Holocaust. It could also be tied to the question on truth and goodness in relation to other representations in which one can speak of the borders of our understanding of humanity. Literary theory provides a possibility of critical perception of these images surrounding us in this media-infused environment, which has socially and symbolically suspended the borders between fiction and reality. It is worth considering in the context of the present study to undertake an attempt to treat literary theory as social studies. It is also possible that scholars of literary studies could be the last ones asking about the sense of reality — not out of a concern for reality but precisely out of their concern for literature — that it could continue to thrive in the rich and inexhaustible regions of fiction. Translated by Jo-Ann Budzyńska and M. Kaźmierczak Bibliography: Adorno Theodor W, Horheimer Max (1994), Dialektyka oświecenia, tłum. M. Łukasiewicz, tłum. przejrzał i posł. opatrzył M. J. Siemek, IFiS PAN, Warszawa. Ahmadinejad: Holocaust ‘big lie’ used to justify establishment of Israel, http://www.haaretz. com/news/middle-east/ahmadinejad-holocaust-big-lie-used-to-justify-establishment-ofisrael-1.380905 (downloaded 26.08.2011) Augé Marc (2009), Formy zapomnienia, tłum. A. Turczyn, Universitas, Kraków. Belting Hans (2007), Antropologia obrazu. Szkice do nauki o obrazie, tłum. M. Bryl, Universitas, Kraków. Cole Tim (2000), Selling the Holocaust. From Auschwitz to Schindler. How History is Bought, Packaged, and Sold, Routledge, New York. Dąbrowski Mieczysław (2000), Postmodernizm: myśl i tekst, Universitas, Kraków. Friedländer Saul (2007), Kitsch und Tod. Der Widerschein des Nazismus, tłum. z ang. M. Grendacher, G. Seib, Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verl., Frankfurt am Main. Hopfinger Maryla (2010), Literatura i media. Po 1989 roku, Wydawnictwo Oficyna Naukowa, Warszawa. Kornhauser Julian (2007), Origami, Wydawnictwo Literackie, Kraków. Krajewski Marek (2005), Kultury kultury popularnej, UAM, Poznań. Krzemińska Kinga, (2010), Kicz w kinie holokaustowym, „Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały. Pismo Centrum Badań nad Zagładą Żydów IFiS PAN”, nr 6. Kuźma Erazm (2002), Modele komunikacji literackiej we współczesnych doktrynach literaturoznawczych, In Sporne i bezsporne problemy współczesnej wiedzy o literaturze, ed. W. Bolecki, R. Nycz, Instytut Badań Literackich PAN, Warszawa.

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Lang Berel (2006), Nazistowskie ludobójstwo. Akt i idea, tłum. A. Ziębińska-Witek, Uniwersytet Marii Curie-Skłodowskiej, Lublin. Mintz Alan (2001), Popular Culture and the Shaping of Holocaust Memory in America, University of Washington Press, Seattle and London. Novick Peter, The Holocaust in American Life, Houghton Mifflin, Boston. Nycz Ryszard (2000), Tekstowy świat. Poststrukturalizm a wiedza o literaturze, Universitas, Kraków. Power Samantha, (1999), To ‘Suffer’ by Comparison?, „Daedalus”, vol. 128, nr 2. Ricoeur Paul (1989), Język, tekst, interpretacja. Wybór pism, wybór i wstęp J. Rosner, tłum. P. Graff, K. Rosner, PIW, Warszawa. Saltzman Lisa, (2004), Awangarda i kicz raz jeszcze. O etyce reprezentacji, tłum. K. Bojarska, „Literatura na Świecie”, nr 1/2. Shermer Michael, Grobman Alex (2000), Denying history. Who says the Holocaust never happened and why do they say it?, University of California Press 2000. Sontag Susan (2009), O fotografii, tłum. S. Magala, Karakter, Kraków. Strinati Dominick (1998), Wprowadzenie do kultury popularnej, tłum. W. J. Burszta, Zysk i S-ka, Poznań. Szczęsna Ewa (2007), Poetyka mediów. Polisemiotyczność, digitalizacja, reklama, Wydawnictwo Wydziału Polonistyki UW, Warszawa. Ubertowska Aleksandra, (2010), Krzepiąca moc kiczu. Literatura Holokaustu na (estetycznych) manowcach, „Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały. Pismo Centrum Badań nad Zagładą Żydów IFiS PAN”, nr 6. Webber Mark J., (2011), Metaphorizing the Holocaust: The Ethics of Comparison, „Images. The International Journal of European Film, Performing Arts and Audiovisual Communication”, vol. VIII, nr 15-16. Young James E. (1988), Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust. Narrative and the Consequences of Interpretation, Indiana University Press. Ziębińska-Witek Anna, (2010), Kicz i Holokaust, czyli pedagogiczny wymiar ekspozycji muzealnych, „Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały”, nr 6. Ziębińska-Witek Anna (2005), Holocaust. Problemy przedstawiania, Uniwersytet Marii CurieSkłodowskiej, Lublin. http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/83/gaza.html (downloaded 12.04.2011). http://www.animalliberationfront.com/AR_Orgs/SANE/Videos/Holocaust/holocaust.htm (downloaded 15.04.2011).

Comparative Literature: Metacriticism and its Paradoxes Olga Płaszczewska* Abstract The essay concentrates on the problem of the self-critical discourse of the discipline. First of all, the word crisis, introduced by R. Wellek in 1958 to describe the situation of comparative literature in the USA, is redefined to explain the immediate success of this term all over the world. Moreover, the research embraces other situations in which comparative literature is described through negative metaphors. Their presence is discussed as a paradox of the successful discipline which has reigned in humanistic research for more than two centuries. Resulting from the research, the purpose of negative figures in the self-critical discourse of comparative literature is chiefly rhetorical, but the figures express the necessity of development and progress, according to the ancient concept of crisis meaning “capacity of judgement”, criticism. * Faculty of Polish Studies, Jagiellonian University, Gołębia 24, 31-007 Kraków e-mail: [email protected]

Currently, comparative literature is frequently defined as ”a practical method of research on literature” (Płaszczewska 2010: 299), an “interpretative practice connected with literature” (Hejmej 2010: 79) or a strategy of conscientious reading1 which consists in understanding the universe of texts in their relations and interactions with other texts in a particular context of culture (Płaszczewska 2010: 299). It is also subject to the tendency of theorisation of its discourse, which is typical of the present humanities. In the post-war period the self-critical discourse in comparative literature has become imbued with negative metaphors, especially where the discipline tended to be precisely described. To all appearances, constructing its self-definition with negative metaphors seems a characteristic of the theoretical discourse of the 1950s and 1960s, when comparative literature abandoned its strategies based on tracing ”influences” and the new paradigm of literary comparatism arose. Self-scepticism, expressed in ”negative figures” permeating many self-defining statements in comparative literature, is a feature constantly present in reflection on the essence, the range and the matter of comparative investigation, starting from the famous pronouncement by René Wellek, until today. In 1958, during the International Comparative Literature Association (AILC/ ICLA) congress in Chapel Hill, Wellek announced that the discipline entered its crisis. The passing away of the founding fathers of European comparative literature such as Paul Van Tieghem, Arturo Farinelli, Karl Vossler, Ernst Robert Curtius, Erich Auerbach, Jean-Michel Carré, Fernand Baldensperger and Leo Spitzer (Wellek 2009: 162), whose research is rarely supplemented with their theorical 1

Or, as Susan Bassnett declares, a method ”of approaching literature” and a “way of reading” (Bassnett 2006:6).

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comments, was indicated as one of the reasons of the decline of the discipline, reducing its activity to a sterile chase after influences among literatures (Wellek 2009: 162-172). As a matter of fact, the declaration by Wellek, repeatedly quoted by the adversaries of the comparative methodology, is not a crushing critique of the discipline. His title notwithstanding, Wellek’s observations contain several elements of constructive reflection on its inevitable limitations and on incontestable possibilities of its development. In Wellek’s polemic, with propositions formulated by Paul Van Tieghem almost thirty years earlier, crisis inspires unavoidable revision of strategies and objectives of comparative literature,2 but it cannot be identified with devaluation of its achievements. In fact, comparative literature makes the interpretation of literary texts in an international context possible. Such a reading distinguishes itself as historical and evaluative at the same time (Guillén 2008: 104-105). It overcomes the limits of a research concentrated on ”real” (factual) contacts among literatures (Wellek 2009: 162-163) and it treats literature holistically, as art that creates and sustains universal values.3 The metaphor The Crisis of Comparative Literature, used as the title of the essay that soon gained the position of ideological declaration of the ”American School” of comparative literature (Damrosch, Melas, Buthelezi 2009: 161, see also Płaszczewska 2010: 32-35; 6163), has proven to be extremely convincing. Moreover, it has also set the paradigm of the metacritical discourse of comparative literature, in which the assumption that the discipline is living its decisive turn or the situation of transgression (Kopaliński 1989: 285) opens new horizons for self-definition of the branch and its further evolution. For instance, the term crise de la littérature comparée, quoted not without certain irony, has become the starting point for reflection on perspectives of future for the comparative literature, held by René Etiemble at the beginning of 1960s.4 His attitude, following American example, is quite particular, because the ”crisis” is discussed here in reference to the medical meaning of the word. Etiemble suggests to treat comparative literature as a patient who necessitates a medicine or even a prescription for remedies that may stop the progress of the disease (1963: 2 3 4

”A re-examination of our aims and methods is needed” (Wellek 2009: 162). ”Literary scholarship becomes an act of the imagination, like art itself, and thus a preserver and creator of the highest values of mankind” (Wellek 2009: 171). ”’Krise der Komparatistik’, ’The Crisis of Comparative Literature’, ’Crise de la littérature comparée’, cela doit aussi se dire en serbe et en japonais... Encore que le mot ’crise’ soit à la mode, et que, pour raccrocher le lecteur, les auteurs d’articles ou d’ouvrages sur n’importe quoi l’accrochent n’importe où, lanterne rouge de maison close, la littérature comparée subit en effet, depuis deux décennies au moins, ce qu’il ne messied pas d’appeler une crise. Je me propose d’en faire ici le diagnostic, en vue, qui sait, de prescrire ou du moins de suggerér quelques remèdes” (Etiemble 1963: 9).

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9). Similar stylistics may be observed in Henry H. H. Remak’s writings, where the situation of comparative literature is described with clear references to the language of medicine. H. H. H. Remak makes the diagnosis, indicates an appropriate therapy and forms the prognosis for ”the patient’s’ future” (1960: 1-28). It must be underlined that hospital metaphors appear mainly in the title of Remak’s essay, acting as attractive slogan that captivates readers’ attention. Due to polemical tone of the text, in which the relation between French and American model of comparative literature is presented as conflicting (Remak 1960: 2-12), Remak’s pronouncement is also rich in metaphors of political fight. Gradually, such terms as controversies, attack, defence, demission (1960: 3) or even apartheid (which describes the ”closeness” of the interest for a chosen field of comparative literature5), are substituted with traditional phraseology, using such expressions as ”to define the status quo”, ”preliminaries”, ”fundamentals”, ”tendencies”, ”perspectives” and “to find solutions of the problem”, the way which should increase the interest towards historical and aesthetical evaluation of literary works (Remak 1960: 20). It is worth mentioning that in the same reflection on comparatism, Remak introduces images referring to ancient theory presenting life (and cognitive processes) as a road. The figure of ”comparative literature at the crossroads” becomes one of topoi of comparative metacriticism in the 20th and 21st centuries. Remak himself reuses the term (1999); David Damrosch places comparative literature ”at a double crossroads” (2003). In Poland Michał Kuziak avails himself of the metaphor (2007) and Ryszard Nycz describes comparatism in terms of nostos (the wandering that finally leads to the starting point, the ”homecoming”), as the title From Comparative Literature to Polish Studies (and Back) suggests (1992). The metaphor of crisis in relation to comparative literature has become rooted in the humanities. With its positive and negative associations, it is employed by both, specialists in comparative literature and their antagonists, in the United States and all over the world. Worth quoting seems the opinion that puts stress on the auspicious aspects of crisis as a situation whose results may be positive. It was formulated in the early 1970s by Haskell M. Block who underlines that crisis is not necessarily identifiable with chaos, confusion and incoherence, but it may express dramatic process of revaluation of attitudes and principles in the field of humanities.6 In a similar way crisis has been recently perceived by Richard Rorty. 5 6

Similar is the attitude of Polish scholar, Edward Kasperski, who uses the same kind of metaphors, e.g., ”comparative literature ghetto” in his Kategorie komparatystyki, Warszawa 2010. ”La présence de la crise n’implique pas nécessariement la confusion et l’incohérence. Au contraire, elle donne plutôt un sens dramatique à la confrontation dynamique des attitudes et des valeurs, source indispensable d’énergie et de puissance dans les tentaives humaines” (Block 1970: 15).

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In his conception, crisis is associated with inevitably forthcoming changes which do not mean the decline of comparative literature, but a new stage of its evolution, ”because no healthy humanistic discipline ever looks the same for more than a generation or two” (Rorty 2006: 67). Undoubtedly, the figure of crisis introduced by Wellek has outlined the pattern for critical thinking about comparative literature. In this standard showing (real or imaginative). weakness of the discipline or pointing out its controversies and inconsistencies has always remained the starting point for every consideration on comparative literature. Among the humanities, as Tomasz Bilczewski observes, comparative literature is still presented as a “paradiscipline” in ”a state of permanent crisis” (2010 a: 8-9). Such a perspective is, for instance, that of Claudio Guillén who in mid-1980s formulates a series of considerations on comparative literature that still remain actual for scholars tending to define their discipline. In 1985 Guillén describes comparative literature in the context of general crisis of identity, touching in paragonable measure on Europe and United States. Guillén perceives it as an overwhelming sense of loss in a situation in which traditional systems of individual and collective values (political, social, national and ethnic) vanish and change their normative character (2008: 7-24). Even the figure of the tower of Babel (in different contexts employed by George Steiner and Jacques Derrida), operated by Brazilian scholar, Tania Franco Carvalhal, in her considerations on complexity of modern comparative literature, on its thematic immensity and on its methodological eclecticism (1986: 5-6) (that is a benefit and the main disadvantage of the discipline at the same time), may be seen as a variant of the metaphor of crisis. Although the way of understanding comparative literature has been systematically changing and its definitions have been subjected to continuous transformations, as the years go by, the conviction of crisis of the discipline does not diminish. In the USA it returns in the context of increasing interest for the institutional status of comparative literature. According to announcements made by its luminaries, the discipline seems to lose its scientific identity as a consequence of having abandoned the model of comparatism, whose aim is interpreting literature in relation to other fields of human expression,7 for metacriticism and cultural studies, whose subject and range is not clearly defined or precise. Analysing threats that comparative literature has to face, Charles Bernheimer in his report for 1993 substitutes the term ”crisis” with a periphrasis. In order to sum up his considerations on the status quo of comparative literature at American universities, Bernheimer announces that the discipline ”is at a critical juncture in its history” (1995:

7

”Literary phenomena are no longer the exclusive focus of our discipline” (Bernheimer 1995: 42).

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47).8 Afterwards, Jonathan Culler tries to explain in what the crisis of comparative literature of the 1990s consists, coming to the conclusion that it is connected with difficulties in defining the nature of the new comparability on which the discipline is based (1995: 268-271). The idea of crisis appears also in Europe, for example in the reflection on the tasks of comparative literature in the postcolonial context (The Crisis of Comparativism in a Post-Colonial World), when new boundaries of comparative research are being discussed. The strength of ”negative figures” describing the situation of the discipline intensifies. Susan Bassnett in her Comparative Literature. A Critical Introduction launches the proposition that the traditional model of comparatism, based on confrontation of binary oppositions and on trust in ”the Literature-as-universal-civilising-force” has been worn off (1993: 47). Commenting on this model of comparative literature, Bassnett concludes: ”today, comparative literature in one sense is dead” (1993: 47), at the same time pointing to new directions of strictly comparative research, as flourishing postcolonial studies and regenerating translation studies. The notion of ”a death of a discipline”9 that appears in Bassnett’s consideration will mainly inspire the scholars who participate in the discussion about comparative literature at the beginning of the 21st century (like Terry Eagleton or Gayatri Ch. Spivak), while the reflection on the branch contemporary to the publication of Bassnett’s book employs slightly milder images. For example, during an international symposium on comparative literature held in Italy in 1994, Michael Holquist describes the problematics of the research in comparative literature in terms of ”penal colony” (1997: 23-38). At the same time in the United States the attitude towards comparative literature resembles Bassnett’s position. Tobin Siebers in his commentary to The Bernheimer Report declares that “comparative literature as a discipline is dying”, ”wrecked by its own success” (1995: 196). Siebers’s intuition on potential directions of development of metacritic reflection on comparative literature has proven to be faultless. As a 8

9

Mentioning this statement, it seems reasonable to refer to the opinion of Armando Gnisci, who says that the reflection on The Bernheimer Report, as far as on Haun Saussy’s one, does not constitute a discussion about the paradigm of comparative literature that is in force all over the world: ”Assolutamente caratteristico (...) mi sembra il caso del famosissimo rapporto Bernheimer (1993) di cui tutti ’dobbiamo’ discutere, mediterranei e asiatici, caraibici e centro-africani, così come se esso affrontasse ’i nostri’ (di tutti noi) problemi. Il libro curato da Bernheimer, invece, riguarda esplicitamente la situazione della letteratura comparata nelle università statunitensi e solleva le questioni derivanti dalle difficoltà che la disciplina oggi ’lì’ incontra, soprattutto nei confronti della avanzata di cultural studies” (2004: 217-218). Similar metaphors are present in some American pronouncements (e.g., by Frank W. Chandler, Samuel Putnam, Henry Smith) made even before Second World War (Bilczewski 2010 b: 201).

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matter of fact, he foresaw that the discipline would concentrate on the search for the answer to the question about the sense and forms of its future existence (Siebers 1995: 196). In Poland, considerations on the crisis of the discipline become the starting point for vital, from national perspective, discussion of what comparative literature is. During the conference held in Radziejowice in 1997, Teresa Kostkiewiczowa examined practical achievements of the discipline in Europe and in the world, demonstrating that, paradoxically, they contradicted the conviction of the decline of comparative literature (Kostkiewiczowa 1998: 11-16). Even ten years later, Michał Kuziak, resuming the reflection on the meaning and on the place of comparative literature in Polish humanities, resorts to the point of view of American comparatists and describes the discipline in terms of ”institutional decline” (Loriggio 2004: 49-79), arguing that Polish comparatism is in ”a state of permanent crisis that has noticeably intensified in the recent years” (Kuziak 2007: 11). In 2010 Kostkiewiczowa, continuing with her research on the range and the aims of comparative literature, calls readers’ attention to the fact that the discipline has been labelled ”in permanent crisis” because ”it has not yet worked out its own subject nor tools” (2010: 153). Somewhat milder metaphors are chosen by scholars who, like Adam Kola following Guillén’s example, use the term ”incertitude” instead of the ”crisis”, because uncertainty, whose concept returns in many studies on postmodernism, characterises comparative literature as far as all the humanities (2010: 83-84). Tomasz Bilczewski’s approach to the problem is quite different. He perceives the actual state of comparative literature as turning point of the discipline which has been transformed into a ”territory of crisis” or the area of upheavals, the place where extremely surprising unions and combinations become possible in order to secure its renewal and purification in the future (2010 c: XVII). One of the characteristics of Bilczewski’s reflection on comparative literature is the introduction of several metaphors related to the language of commerce, economics and marketing. Such a manner constitutes a new, but not universally accepted quality of metacritical discourse that reflects the ”business code” of depicting the world, typical for the 21st century. In the self-referential thought on comparative literature, the theory of its death as independent discipline among humanities, formulated by Susan Bassnett, has played a role similar to Wellek’s idea of the crisis of comparatism (Bassnett 1993: 161). The term ”death of a discipline” has gained striking success as the title of a study by Gayatri Ch. Spivak (2003).10 In this text, published in 2003, Spivak, 10 An entire number of Comparative Literature is dedicated to discussion of this monograph (Responding to the Death of a Discipline: An ACLA Forum, 2005). In Poland, the problem was discussed, for instance, by T. Bilczewski (2006) and O. Płaszczewska (2010: 77-78, 208-209).

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known as Derrida’s translator and a specialist in feminist and postcolonial theory, draws up a proposal for another revision of comparative literature. As Andrzej Hejmej remarks, ”Spivak’s proposal” simulates ”total criticism” being, as a matter of fact, ”only a moderate one” (2010: 70). In Spivak’s conception, the ”death of a discipline” means simply the repudiation of comparative literature that bases on the study of ”national European literatures” and proclaims superiority of Western literature over writings of other nations (Spivak suggests that literary texts from Asia, Africa, Latin America, from former Soviet Union, from territories where Islam dominates as far as writings of the cultural minorities become the main subject or research in comparative literature; 2003: 84-85). It also signifies that interpretation of such literatures should become a source of knowledge about multicultural world (Spivak 2003: 4-23). Moreover, Spivak urges that, in contrast to traditional comparative literature, the new one should be apolitical (2003: 71-72). That seems surprising, especially in the context of her former Marxist interests and related theories, for example, on the relation between the coloniser and the colonised, or her proposal of developing so-called ”subaltern studies” (Spivak 1988: 271-313), which appear to be ideologically motivated. Another Spivak’s suggestion for comparative literature is to concentrate on the figure of the ”Other” and on the study of ”otherness” testified in literary works (2003: 73-74, 102). In Spivak’s theory the reader does not meet with a ”death of a discipline”, but he or she discovers some traces of transformation that comparative literature is living in correspondence to the tendencies of (post)modern humanities, endeavouring to ”cross boundaries”. The substitution of the vision of crisis with the stronger image of death serves to underline presumed obsolescence of the traditional model of comparative literature. ”Crisis” implies a chance of regeneration while ”death” means the ”end”. In such a context, metaphors referring to an ”afterlife” do not astonish. They appear, for instance, in the commentary to Spivak’s propositions sketched by Emily Apter for ACLA use (Apter 2005: 201-206). In the ACLA report Haun Saussy draws positive image of comparative literature from similar field of metaphors. His reflection on its regenerating value and on the advantages of its interdisciplinarity, rich in such terms as ”the triumph of comparative literature” and ”the age of comparatism” describing the turn of the 20th and 21st century, is entitled Exquisite Cadavers Stitched from Fresh Nightmares. Of Memes, Hives, and Selfish Genes (Saussy 2006: 3-42). Despite its ”partial” success, comparative literature illustrated by Saussy resembles Frankenstein. Like Mary Shelley’s hero it frightens with its monstrosity, but it also proves the genius of who created it and keeps it alive. In Haun Saussy’s reflection, the initial likening comparative literature to a nightmare is a logical consequence of entering the discussion about the discipline whose death has been world widely announced and accepted.

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Even an elementary survey on major self-referential observations on comparative literature proves that negative metaphors, drawn from the semantic field of crisis and agony (understood both in political and medical sense), dominate in reflection made by international scholars following North-American models where such figures are noticeably frequent. In the majority of cases these patterns return in Europe as repercussions or references to American theories. However, in contemporary France, resulting from the report on comparative literature published in 2007, scholars’ attention concentrates mainly on the ”dynamic life of the discipline in progress”,11 so it is not possible to trace there any metaphor of crisis. Also the anthology of American self-referential texts on comparative literature, edited in 2010 by Tomasz Bilczewski (Niewspółmierność. Perspektywy nowoczesnej komparatystyki 2010),12 may be treated as the unintentional illustration of Anglo-Saxon tendency for negative imagery in self-definition. In the majority of the texts presented in the Anthology, comparative literature is understood in correspondence with Thomas Kuhn’s concept of “incommensurability” and its basic presupposition that crisis is the only feature that determines the eventual development of theories in science and in humanities (Waters 2001: 133-172). Reflection on the visions of comparative literature collected in the Anthology, so persuasive as the idea of ”indiscipline” (David Ferris) which passes from ecstasy to agony (Ulrich Weisstein) and which is oppositional by its programme (Linda Hutcheon), should not ignore the fact that they show the situation and the way in which comparative literature is perceived in the USA, but not in Europe. For that reason they should not be treated as an example to follow in European self-referential criticism. The problem of unconditional belief in North-American school of comparative literature, which concerns all Europe, has been signalled for a long time by Italian comparatist, Armando Gnisci. The scholar accentuates the fact that American comparatism has risen from European tradition of comparative literature combined with achievements of postmodern thought in Europe, so it does not constitute an original American solution.13 11 ”(...) la vie et le dinamisme d’une discipline en évolution (...)” (Tomiche 2007: 14). 12 The Anthology comprises actual texts, well known among Polish scholars thanks to accessibility of original texts and their translations, published in periodicals as „Teksty Drugie” or „Porównania”. Apart from North-American considerations, the Anthology contains 3 voices (S. Bassnett, P. de Bolla, G. Steiner) of non-American scholars. All the material is divided into 7 areas, embracing such problems as definition of the discipline, its institutional life, particular subjects (e.g., comparative literature in gender studies, in politics), translation and translatology. The Anthology became a starting point for significant discussion on the situation and future of comparative literature in Poland, held 14 January 2011 in Kraków, (O problemach współczesnej komparatystyki 2010: 7-38). 13 ”(...) la cultura umanistca nordamericana, dimenandosi tra l’antica eredità e la più recente influenza del sapere europeo (il decostruzionismo e il postmodernismo francesi o i ‘cultural

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The presence of negative metaphors in its self-referential discourse is a paradox of comparative literature, the successful discipline which has reigned in humanistic research for more than two centuries. It is probable that predilection of American and European comparative literature for parading its own crisis and the ”border situation” hides some coquetry: ”we talk about crisis because everybody knows that it does not exist, that our discipline is flourishing and the difficulties that it encounters are similar to problems all humanistic research has to face, entering the ‘centrifuge of globalization’”, as Halina Janaszek-Ivaničková says (2010: 206). There may be also a portion of magic thinking (thus proclamation of crisis guarantees that it will never happen). Use of the term ”crisis” in self-referential writings evinces the level of the self-consciousness of comparatists14 convinced that their discipline needs to be improved. Indirectly, it proves also that comparative literature is treated as a living organism, according to the nineteenth century conception of natural sciences which served as its model (Bilczewski 2010 b: 190205). It is natural that such an organism passes its stages of blossoming or regress. Profusion of negative figures may be also caused by the dictates of fashion or by the reigning ideology that, as Maria Cieśla — Korytowska points out, exercise great influence on critics’ decisions (2010: 225-226). Similar are the reasons and the sense of employing of images of death, agony or even of a scandal (as it happens in the essay on translation by Laurence Venuti (1992)) in a self-referential criticism. As it results from the research, the images of comparative literature in agony, visions of the death of the discipline or of comparatism as a nightmare, act as attractive slogans. They appear often in titles of essays, they attract readers’ attention and underline the importance of the discussed problem. Besides, they signal heterogeneousness of the discipline that, because of the plurality of its strategies of research and the amplitude of its interests, resists traditional modes of definition. Referring to Ian G. Barbour’s concepts, Joanna Ślósarska suggests that in such a context the metaphor becomes a significant instrument of interpretation, especially helpful to specify and to explain meanings and ideas both in practice and in theory of research (2010: 135-136). The negative metaphors discussed above are not based on comparison but on interaction. In consequence, the associations of images and ideas engendered by the interaction permit one to studies’ e le ’postcolonial theories’ inglesi e dell’ex impero britannico) da una parte, e l’eterna questione del multiculturalismo, dall’altra, obbliga il mondo intero — o per lo meno, quello ’che si fa obbligare’ — a discutere questi stessi problemi e secondo le vedute di New York e di Toronto” (Gnisci 2004: 217). 14 Terms ”crisis” and ”criticism” has the same origin. That was indicated on another occasion by Wiesław Juszczak, art historian , who underlined that the first, historical meaning of Κρίσις was ”judgment” or ”a result of a judgment, opinion” similar to a verdict or a sentence (2009: 119).

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create a paradoxically positive vision of the analysed phenomenon. Successively, they lead to ulterior transformations of the way of perceiving the world (Ślósarska 2010: 135). Only in separate cases negative metaphor employed in the title is explained individually. As opposed to the title, the main part of the text is usually submitted to the principles of academic or persuasive discourse. It means that the purpose of negative figures in self-critical discourse of comparative literature is chiefly rhetorical. Nevertheless, they express the necessity of development and progress, accordingly to the antique concept of crisis meaning ”capacity of judgement”, criticism. Bibliography: Apter Emily (2003), Afterlife of a Discipline, ”Comparative Literature” 57, n. 3. Bassnett Susan (1993), Comparative Literature. A Critical Introduction, Blackwell, LondonNew York. Bassnett Susan (2006), Reflections on Comparative Literature in the Twenty-first Century, “Comparative Critical Studies” 3, 1-2. Bernheimer, Charles (1995), The Bernheimer Report, 1993, In: Comparative Literature in the Age of Multiculturalism, ed. Ch. Bernheimer, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore — London. Bilczewski Tomasz (2006), ”Death of a Discipline” — recenzja, „Ruch Literacki” n. 2. Bilczewski Tomasz (2010 a), Komparatystyka i interpretacja. Nowoczesne badania porównawcze wobec translatologii, Universitas, Kraków. Bilczewski Tomasz (2010 b), ”Theatrum anatomicum”: komparatystyka i ciało, In Komparatystyka dzisiaj, vol. 1: Problemy teoretyczne, ed. E. Szczęsna, E. Kasperski, Universitas, Kraków. Bilczewski Tomasz (2010 c), Wstęp. Ekonomia i polityka komparatystyki, In Niewspółmierność. Perspektywy nowoczesnej komparatystyki. Antologia, ed. T. Bilczewski, Jagiellonian University Press, Kraków. Block Haskell M. (1970), Nouvelles tendences en littérature comparée, Editions A.-G. Nizet, Paris. Cieśla — Korytowska Maria (2010), Autor, autor! Jagiellonian University Press, Kraków. Culler Jonathan (1995), Comparability, ”Word Literature Today”, vol. 69 Issue 2. Damrosch David (2003), The 2003 ACLA Presidential Adress: The Roads of Excess: Comparative Literature at a Double Crossroads, ”Comparative Literature” 55 n. 3. Damrosch David, Melas Natalie, Buthelezi Mbongiseni (2009), René Wellek: The Crisis of Comparative Literature, In The Princeton Sourcebook in Comparative Literature, Princeton & Oxford. Etiemble René (1963), Comparaison n’est pas raison. La crise de la littérature comparée, Gallimard, Paris. Franco Carvalhal Tania (1986), Literatura comparada, Editora Ática, São Paulo. Gnisci Armando (2004), Mondialità e decolonizzazione (1997), In A. Gnisci, F. Sinopoli, Manuale storico di letteratura comparata, Meltemi, Roma. Guillén Claudio (2008), L’uno e il molteplice. Introduzione alla letteratura comparata (1985), transl. A. Gargano, C. Gaiba, Il Mulino, Bologna.

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Hejmej Andrzej (2010), Komparatystyka kulturowa: interpretacja i egzystencja, In Komparatystyka dzisiaj, vol. 1: Problemy teoretyczne, ed. E. Szczęsna, E. Kasperski, Universitas, Kraków. Holquist Michael (1997), Metropole and Penal Colony: Two Models of Comparison, In Remapping the Boundaries, Bologna Remapping the Boundaries. A New Perspective in Comparative Literature, ed. G. Franci, CLUEB, Bologna. Janaszek-Ivaničková Halina (2010), Absoluty komparatystyczne a wolna wola, [in:] Komparatystyka dzisiaj, vol. 1: Problemy teoretyczne, ed. E. Szczęsna, E. Kasperski, Universitas, Kraków. Juszczak Wiesław (2009), Sztuka a ”kryzys”, In idem, Wędrówka do źródeł, słowo/obraz/ terytoria, Gdańsk. Kasperski Edward (2010), Kategorie komparatystyki, Wydział Polonistyki UW, Warszawa. Kola Adam F. (2010), Kulturoznawstwo a instytucjonalizacja komparatystyki, In Komparatystyka dzisiaj, vol. 1: Problemy teoretyczne, ed. E. Szczęsna, E. Kasperski, Universitas, Kraków. Kopaliński Władysław (1989), Słownik wyrazów obcych i zwrotów obcojęzycznych, PIW, Warszawa. Kostkiewiczowa Teresa (1998), Orientacje badawcze i kondycja współczesnej komparatystyki. Wprowadzenie do dyskusji, In Badania porównawcze. Dyskusja o metodzie. Radziejowice 6 — 8 lutego 1997, ed. A. Nowicka-Jeżowa, Świat literacki, Izabelin. Kostkiewiczowa Teresa (2010), Komparatystyka literacka dzisiaj — preliminaria: co, jak i po co porównujemy, In Komparatystyka między Mickiewiczem a dniem dzisiejszym, ed. L. Wiśniewska, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Kazimierza Wielkiego, Bydgoszcz. Kuziak Michał (2007), Komparatystyka na rozdrożu? ”Porównania” n. 4. Loriggio Francesco (2004), Disciplinary Memory ad Cultural History: Comparative Literature, Globalization and the Categories of Criticism, ”Comparative Literature Studies”, vol. 41, No. 1. Niewspółmierność. Perspektywy nowoczesnej komparatystyki. Antologia (2010), ed. T. Bilczewski, Jagiellonian University Press, Kraków. Nycz Ryszard (1992), Od komparatystyki do polonistyki (i z powrotem) ”Teksty Drugie” n. 1/2. O problemach współczesnej komparatystyki (2010), z udziałem M. Korytowskiej, O. Płaszczewskiej, M. Skwary, B. Bakuły, T. Bilczewskiego, A. Borowskiego, A. Hejmeja i T. Sławka, ”Wielogłos” 1-2 (7-8). Płaszczewska Olga (2010), Przestrzenie komparatystyki — italianizm, Jagiellonian University Press, Kraków. Remak Henry H. H. (1960), Comparative Literature at the Crossroads. Diagnosis, Therapy, and Prognosis, ”Yearbook of Comparative Literature” 9. Remak Henry H. H. (1999), Once again: Comparative Literature at the Crossroads, ”Neohelicon” XXVI n. 2. Responding to the Death of a Discipline: An ACLA Forum (2005), ”Comparative Literature” 57, n. 3. Rorty Richard (2006), Looking Back at ”Literary Theory”, In Comparative Literature in an Age of Globalization, ed. H. Saussy, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore. Saussy Haun (2006), Exquisite Cadavers Stitched from Fresh Nightmares. Of Memes, Hives, and Selfish Genes, In Comparative Literature in an Age of Globalization, ed. H. Saussy, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore.

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Siebers Tobin (1995), Sincerely Yours, In Comparative Literature in the Age of Multiculturalism, ed. Ch. Bernheimer, Baltimore — London. Spivak Gayatri Ch. (1988), Can the Subaltern Speak? In Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, red. C. Nelson, L. Grossberg, Urbana, Chicago. Spivak Gayatri Ch. (2003), Death of a Discipline, Columbia University Press, New York. Ślósarska Joanna (2010), Pogranicze metodologiczne — koncepcja słów-reflektorów w naukach przyrodniczych i humanistycznych, In Komparatystyka między Mickiewiczem a dniem dzisiejszym, ed. L. Wiśniewska, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Kazimierza Wielkiego, Bydgoszcz. Tomiche Anne (2007), Avant-propos, In La recherche en Littérature générale et comparée en France en 2007. Bilan et perspectives, ed. A. Tomiche, K. Zieger, SFLGC, Camelia, Presses Universitaires de Valenciennes, Valenciennes. Venuti Laurence (1992), The Scandals of Translation: Towards an Ethics of Difference, Routledge, London — New York. Waters Lindsay (2001), The Age of Incommensurability, ”boundary 2”, 28.2. Wellek René (2009), The Crisis of Comparative Literature (1958), In The Princeton Sourcebook in Comparative Literature. From the European Enlightenment to the Global Present, ed. D. Damrosch, N. Melas, M. Buthelezi, Princeton UP, Princeton & Oxford.

Case Studies

The Protocol and the Magazine. Two Styles of Literary Criticism in the So-called Russian Formalism Danuta Ulicka* Abstract Along with the birth of modern literary studies in the early 1900s, two of its styles are formed permanently: academic and market. They emerged at the same time in two schools of the socalled Russian formalism — the Moscow Linguistic Circle and OPOYAZ from St. Petersburg. They were the product of the same generation of cooperating researchers using similar methodologies. What united them was the same highly critical orientation. However, they followed different values: purely scientific in the case of the MLC and socio-political in the case of OPOYAZ. This manifested itself not only in the styles and genres of their scientific statements, but also in their biographies. The legacies of the two schools of radical cognitive anti-dogmatism are different for various reasons. The market model created by OPOYAZ is settled more strongly in the literary studies; what is more, it was identified as the so-called formal school for nearly all twentieth century. Its historic success is due to the social demand for engaged humanities. But the evaluation of the achievements of researchers from both schools in terms of innovation and significance, and even their ethical conduct, is still controversial. * Institute of Polish Literature, University of Warsaw, Krakowskie Przedmieście 26/28 00-927 Warszawa e-mail: [email protected]

1. Two Poles The protocol and the magazine (in Russian zhurnal; the term “journal” in the context of this article would sound too dignified and, on the other hand, “newspaper” seems to be disrespectful) are the two forms of preservation and archiving of knowledge in modern literary theory, which support two different circuits associated with two completely different models of studying: a c a d e m i c and m a r k e t . These models differ in the functions attributed to scientific language, its expected range, power of influence and attitude towards achieved effect. It is also possible to differentiate them in terms of the attitude of the author. In the case of academic studies, it is a serious cognitively focused attitude set on the results of the research, based on correctly and logically systematized and generalized strong theories. (Sergey Trubetzkoy wrote to Roman Jakobson that he needed a few more facts to reach the magic number of hundred verifications, before forming the inalienable phonological law1). For zhurnal science, the author was distanced from the academic rituals, as a figure either sceptical, or — more likely — serio-com1 See. Vokrug „Noveyshey russkoy poezii”. Po materialam perepiski R. O. Jakobsona i N. S. Trubetzkogo, ed. M. I. Shapir, in: Mir Vielimira Khlebnikova. Stat’i, issledovania 19111998, Moscow 2000, pp. 102.

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ical, who presented his scientific achievements in the jester, circus-cabaret scandalous, or trickster mask, in accordance with the principle of the Enlightenment in order to have fun (and to amuse others) with brilliant ad hoc concepts rather than appear edifying. However, the strongest difference between the two models is the a x i o l o g i c a l a t t i t u d e : for protocol-academics it is to be focused purely on the cognitive and the neutral; in the case of ”journalists”, who responded consciously to the market demand and successfully used the market strategies, it is to be focused on ideological values — which definitely leads to the involved attitude. Both models, which outlasted the era of modern literary studies, emerged at the time of that era’s birth as it is conventionally conceived, in 1914, when Viktor Shklovsky’s brochure The Resurrection of the Word was published, or in 1915, when The Moscow Linguistic Circle was formed. Even then both models had to have been very clear, because Boris Eikhenbaum recognised them correctly without any problems. Summing up the achievements of the warlike phase of formalism, Eikhenbaum distinguished between two different modes of poetics practices. “In the first speeches of the Formalists (...) the authority and influences gradually move from academic studies to, so to speak, monthly science” (Eikhenbaum 1978: 277). This diagnosis is confirmed years later by Aleksandr Reformatsky, who was initially closely associated with OPOYAZ2 — from which he later withdrew, disgusted by this ”magazine scientific research” developed in the Petersburg Society.3 Mikhail Gasparov, a sustainer of the Moscow tradition, confirms that the distinction is still going strong today (Gasparov 1998: 114). Following Eikhenbaum and his fellow researchers — but also seeing what the author of The Theory of the “Formal Method” could not recognize from his internal perspective which was further limited by the threat under which he wrote, or perhaps what he did not want to see (since circa 1922) in his disappointment with both strategies — I would like to add: Russian researchers from both schools, who developed these two different and two still current models of modern literary studies were also engaged equally in the strong critical attitude. In Moscow Circle — in both its so-called ”wings” (”left”: connected primarily with structural linguistics, especially with the phonology studies, centered around Roman Jakobson, and ”right”: philosophically oriented, focused around Gustav Shpet) — epis temological and methodological criticisms persisted, consistent with the overarching principle dubito ergo sum which was followed in the tradition of cognitive rationalism. In OPOYAZ, however, this epistemological and methodological reflection 2 3

Society for the Study of Poetic Language. In the conversation with V. Duvakin, Reformatsky opposed ”real science” practiced in the Moscow Linguistic Circle with the ”learning game” of OPOYAZ in Petersburg. See: E. A. Ivanova, Russkiy konstruktivizm i tvorcheskoye naslede O. M. Brika, in: Poetika i fonostilistika. Brikovskij sbornik, ed. G. V. Vekshin, Moscow 2010, pp. 533.

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was connected directly with socio-ideological criticism, which dominated in the early days. The strong epistemological and methodological criticisms of the Moscow Circle became the first fundamental principle. Researchers from this Circle, studying the terms of cognitive availability of constructed, unfinished, isolated objects, worked only on relations, ruthlessly tracking the accepted or acceptable positions and considering the actual and the possible relations of the subject to the object, intentionally recreated by consciousness, but existing independently from it. In contrast to the criticism of positivist historians of literature and language in relation to the Romantics’ literary historiography and philosophy of language, and in contrast to the antipositivist humanities criticism in relation to the positivists’ illusion, the thinking of the Moscow Circle was characterised by extensive self-awareness and radical antidogmatism. Therefore, in contrast to OPOYAZ-men, they did not easily succumb to the charm of novelty. They were constantly ready to undermine not only the past, but the latest concepts, including their own, as well, and to bring them under the modality of questions whispered by Socratesian daimonion, which commands that every certainty be questioned. However they accepted the specified settlements under conditions of determining their initial and boundary factors, and, above all, under conditions of legalisating the particular point of view from which they were taken. It is just the position of cognitive motivation which was crucial for the conceptualisation of the research object activity. Ferdinand de Saussure dramatically confessed: the beginning is always a generalization, and there is nothing beyond it, and because it involves a point of view, which is used as a criterion, the first and the most irreducible entities of language, which the linguist can deal with, are already the implicit products of cognitive operations. It follows immediately that all linguistics must return [...] to the discussion about the eligible points of view, without which the object of studies does not exist. (Saussure de 2004: 40)

Similar rules for cognitive practices were formulated in the theoretical and methodological works by the OPOYAZ researchers, artists (Kazimir Malevich, Sergei Eisenstein, Vsevolod Meyerhold) and scientists which were close to OPOYAZ (Lev Vygotsky, Alexei Ukhtomsky, Vladimir Vernadsky). But while observing critically their scientific and artistic activities and critically commenting on them, attention was directed not to the text but to its context. This text-context frame of reference was crucial for them. Such a system not only marked the conditions, but above all, aimed to know the goals of cognition which determine the forms of communication considered by their primary performative function. Science in this manner corresponded to the needs of the “market” — the receipient society, not the real market. OPOYAZ members were operating according to their ideological beliefs. They wrote for an imaginary reader, the projection of which required

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they criticize the actual reader. However, the researcher-creator of knowledge, deeply involved in the desired social and political transformations, was changing into a knowledge producer. It is impossible to differentiate sharply the two types of scientific strong criticism or assign them to individual researchers. But for the purpose of a typology, it can somewhat arbitrarily be concluded that both models were born in the theory of literature at the same time and that these two Russian formalisms, one from the Moscow Linguistic Circle (in the early work of Trubetzkoy and Jakobson) and one with OPOYAZ (e.g., works of Shklovsky till 1923 and very significant Osip Brik’s articles4) represent them in a particularly prominent way. Thus, it is not true that Russian formalism was unanimously in favour of the autonomy of literature and literary studies.

2. Academic Protocol Criticism The Moscow Linguistic Circle was established and operated in an atmosphere of high academic studies. It was already determined by its origin. The Circle was affiliated in 1915 with the Moscow Dialectological Commission, the Academy of Sciences, based on the formal agreement of esteemed professors and under their tutelage (first Alexei Szakhmatov, and after his death, Dmitry Ushakov). It imitated their mode of operation: regular meetings were held where members debated, delivered lectures, presented and discussed the latest scientific publications, prepared studies, all with respect to academic savoir-vivre. These meetings (between 1918 and 1923 as many as 130 of them took place) were precisely described and archived according to decent academic protocol standards. They included the date of the meeting, a list of participants, topic and thesis of the paper, a summary of the polemicists’ statements, the signature of the clerk. Members of the Circle also wrote official annual summaries and financial statements. Regardless of the fact that at the beginning The Circle gathered in private, at Jakobson’s home5 in flat no. 10 at Lubyanka 3, literally, and ironically, opposite the ghostly building (the prison and the headquarters of CHEKA, later KGB) the work proceeded according to accepted standards of normal institutional academia. Furthermore, the themes of the discussions were consistent with the university criteria. For example: on 19 June 1919 Boris Yarkho presented Trochaic Tetrameters in Carolingian Poems, and on June 25, the following year, Maksim Kenigsberg reported his Notes on the Composition of Hoffmann’s ”Princess Brambilla” (Shapir 1994: 73-74). Howev4 5

Mayakovsky was even supposed to call Brik ”the creator of the theory of social order”. See. R. Jakobson, Posleslove [1964], in: Poetika i fonostilistika, op.cit. pp. 563. Later in the same apartment two rooms were officially assigned to the Circle. Today there is the Mayakovsky Museum there.

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er critical were the reviews of these issues — thus the new studies of the poem were forming, and dialectology gradually transformed into sociolinguistics — the critical methodological reflection was close to the spirit of the nineteenth-century philology; its strict rules were respected before anything else. The rigours of academic study did not break even under the collaboration with Futurists. Nikolai Aseyev, Sergei Bobrov, Osip Mandelstam and Boris Pasternak participated sporadically in the Circle’s meetings except for Vladimir Mayakovsky who lived two floors above Jakobson’s flat. Contrary to the established opinion, the cooperation between critics and poets was not so intense. The poets were tolerated as an audience, but their demands to arrange a special meeting about the new poetry ended only with a polite approval. In fact, members of the Moscow Circle were not interested in Kruchonykh’s and Mayakovsky’s work. Kruchonykh’s Zaumnaya kniga, written together with Jakobson, was an isolated episode (not to mention that Jakobson’s contribution to that project was minimal). The Moscow Circle was more interested in Khlebnikov’s work, whose word formations were closer to the Circle’s etymological and dialectological fascination, than the syntactic and rhythmic innovations by Mayakovsky. These aspects were posted only by Osip Brik but he represented ”Moscow OPOYAZ”6, strongly associated with the ideology of scientific Circle from Petersburg. As soon as they saw stronger ties between the world of science and the politics and ideology, scholars from the Circle (such as Grigory Vinokur), like the poets more closely associated with it (such as Pasternak and Kruchonykh) left such vulnerable forums of discussion. Kruchonykh, who even in 1917 was spreading the ideology of Futurism in Georgia, in 1922 distanced himself from the futuristic achievements, terrified by their surprising and unintended convergence with Leninist ideology. He broke with LEF, and did not join the New LEF, becoming more and more critical of the new editors, and gradually withdrew from the artistic and scientific scene. In 1923 Vinokur also distanced himself from the LEF, not accepting its betrayal of avant-garde, experimental art and purely ”scientific” poetics, and criticizing the evolution of the journal towards ”service theories”, which for him the New LEF was all about. In 1924 he even resigned from participating in the forthcoming edition of Khlebnikov’s collected works on which he had worked with Aseyev, assessing the programme of production as the set of “left aesthetics theory and practice’s party passwords” (Vinokur 1990: 305). A few attempts to go beyond the Circle of academic learning and fusion of science and politics usually ended quickly for its members and did not leave clear traces on their scientific achievements. Jakobson’s episodic accession to Eurasian movement was more inspired by excellence of Trubietzkoy’s work than his book Europe and Humanity (1920), accepted by 6

See. E. A. Ivanova, Russkiy konstruktivizm i tvorcheskoye naslede O. M. Brika, in: Poetika i fonostilistika,in: Poetika i fonostilistika, op.cit. pp. 531.

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members as the founding text of the Eurasian movement, which was extremely nationalist and fundamentalist orthodox, and ultimately politically associated with Bolsheviks, who saw its potential in supporting the imperialist ideology of ”going East”; moreover, thanks to an apparent acceptance of the movement they could control the Russian intellectual emigration in Bulgaria and France. Defending intellectual independence and academic indifference to the surrounding situation, which was inspired by Husserl’s epochè, the philosophical authority of the left and the right wing of the Moscow Circle, provoked a kind of intellectual cataracts, which overshadowed the bond of the scientific and social problems. This is especially familiar within the discussions about the language of war and revolution. The material for such studies,which integrated linguistics with sociology, was apparent at a glance. The public life revived in fact incredibly, moving to the city squares and streets. Meanwhile, members of the Moscow Linguistic Circle, dealt with the language very intensively but, like other academics, were unable to see the threatening changes taking place in their sight. The problem of the language of revolution was brought for the first time to the meeting of the Moscow Linguistic Circle on 2 May, 19197. In the same year Alexei Barannikov’s paper about the impact of war and revolution on the development of the Russian language in recent years was published8. In the early 1920s the studies were extended by Arkady Gornfield (1922), Sergei Karcevski (1921, 1922) and Grigory Vinokur (1923)9. These articles were modelled on the observations of the French Revolution linguists, especially those who moved them (as André Mazon) in the area of ​​the Russian Revolution (Mazon 1920; Cunov 1903). These studies gathered initial observations, making attempts to construct them into a typologi7 8

9

S. B. Gurvitz-Gurski, the artist and the engineer, presented a lecture O sokrashcheniakh v zavodskoj terminologii. The protocol of the discussion can be found in the archive; V. I. Neyshtadt, CGALJ, fond 1525, op. 1, jed. khr. 418. A. Barannikov, Iz nabludenii nad razvijem russkogo yazyka. Vliane voiny i revolutzi na razvitie russkogo yazyka w poslednie gody, in: „Uchonye zapiski Samarskogo Universiteta” 1919. It must have been important to the discourse because it is mentioned as one of three crucial ones by R. Jakobson and P. Bogatyrev in their issue: Slovianskaia filologia za vremia voiny i revolutzi, Berlin 1923; In addition, A. Selishchev wrote an extensive polemic (published in „Filologicheskoye obozrene”, nr 1, 1921). A. G. Gornfield, Novyie slovechka i starye slova, Petrograd 1922.; S. Karcevskii, Russkii yazyk i revolutzia, „Obshcheye dielo” 8 fevrala 1921, Paris; Idem, Yazyk, voyna i revolutzia, „Sovremennye zapiski” 1922, Paris (Berlin 1922); reprint in w: Idem, Iz lingvisticheskogo nasledia, sostavlene, vstupitelnaia stat’ia i kommentarii I. I. Fuzheron, Moscow 2000); G. O. Vinokur, Odin iz voprosov yazykovoi politiki. (O revoultzinoi frazeologii), „LEF” nr 2, 1923, s. 104-118; Idem, Yazyk “NEPA”, part 1: „Nakanune” nr 27, 1923; part. 2: „Pechat’ i revolutzia” nr 353, 1923 (reprint in: G. O. Vinokur, Kul’tura yazyka, introduction L. P. Krysin, 3 edition according 2 ed. from 1929 r., Moscow 2006).

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cal order, sometimes diagnosing the causes and consequences, and also trying to cope with socio-linguistic issues. That basically resulted in a question about linguistic aberrations and their impact on the system of language. In this case the thesis was written by the author who represented the Academy’s elite (as Karcevski’s work, also marked by the distance of emigration). It showed disbelief in the stability of political change; hence it recognised these language processes as temporary. Academic scholars of the neutral positivist methodology were debating a new vocabulary (e.g., ”dekret” — decree, ”komissar” — commissioner, ”agitator” — campaigner), neologisms, words with a revised sense (“chistka”), productivity of some suffixes which allowed the building of common nouns based on names (”kolakovshchizna”) or the local names (”Trock” instead of Gatchina) — on the one hand, the presence of scientific, philosophical and economic vocabulary, on the other hand, criminal jargon (”blat”).10 Even notorious acronyms were treated with academic indifference. Linguistic processes of their formation and construction attracted more attention than their common functions. Karcevski (apparently an emissary of The Socialist Revolutionary Party) was content with a naive explanation of their popularity, finding it in the fast pace of life. Perceived reification of personal names seemed not to worry anyone. Nobody thought about changes in syntax (simplification, the dominance of single sentences). And the repetitions, multiplied questions and exclamations were understood as the representations of traditional rhetoric. The new spelling offended nobody as well. Only very detailed specialized issues were considered. In methodologically flawless observations — such as those about the language of traditional communities in Siberia, the language of the Red Army garrison in Moscow, rural and urban newspapers’ language, the language of the city or the language of the Volga Germans — the linguists11 showed their abilities to apply the relevant foreign literature and terminology, sophisticated typologies, diagrams and graphs. Only one question was beyond them: what do these languag10 See e.g., P. J. Chernykh and V. G. Vinogradov, Russkie govory tzentralnoy chasti Pulungskogo uyezda Irkutskoy guberni, Irkutsk 1922. It is surprising that there were the attempts of explaining the sudden growth of the scientific vocabulary but no one did ask about the reasons for the escalating criminal vocabulary in colloquial language, as if not noticing that it was an evidence of the growing share of its members in the public life. 11 See G. S. Vinogradov, P. J. Chernykh, O sobiranii materiala dla slovaria russkogo starozhytnogo nasielenja Sibirii. Opyt programmy, Irkutsk 1924; I. N. Shpilreyn, D. I. Reytynbarg, G. O. Nietzkiy, Yazyk krasnoarmeytza. Opyt issledowania yazyka krasnoarmeytza moskovskogo garnizona, Moskva 1928; M. Gus, Yu. Zagorodski, M. Kaganovich, Yazyk gazety, Moskva 1926; B. A. Larin, K lingvisticheskoy kharakteristike goroda (neskol’ko predposylok), ”Izvestia LGPI im. A. I. Gerstena” nr 1, 1928, pp. 175-185; J. M. Shafir, Gazeta i derevnia, Moskva-Leningrad 1923; Idem, Voprosy gazetnoy kul’tury, Moskva-Leningrad 1927.

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es ​​reveal about social processes in the surrounding reality? It is also significant that the analysis of the languages of war and revolution ​​covered only the ”legal” ones. Not a single article was devoted to the languages ​​of the counter-revolution, “the white soldiers”, or exiles.12 Academic researchers also did not see that they unwittingly provided diagnoses which were far from their positivist attitudes. For example, describing new ”words” as ”alien”, they activated the nationalistic attitudes which found these (linguistically neutral) terms, ”national” and ”class”, equal to ”ideological extraneous”. Such determination, especially after Trotsky and Lenin’s speeches proclaiming ”war with deterioration of Russian language” (Trotsky 1923; Lenin 1924) was the incentive for hunts for ”enemies” and ”pests”. Discussions on de Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics in the Moscow Circle also ran in the academic style. For the first time, on 16 December 1917, Karcevsky (who had come from Geneva) delivered a lecture about it at the meeting of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Dialectological Commission, which was affiliated to the Circle. The reception — the audience included inter alia Jakobson, Vinokur and Bogatyrev — was not enthusiastic and concerned only the strictly scientific measures (it was argued that de Saussure’s work is secondary in comparison with John Baudouin de Courtenay, Leo Shcherba, Filip Fortunatov and Viktor Pozhezynsky’s thesis; there were doubts as well whether synchrony can be separated from diachrony, ”static” from ”dynamic”, or signification from denotation). On the other hand, it is characteristic that de Saussure’s contestation of the use of political language met with a lack of interest. In the era of the overt ”language engineering”, which had less and less to do with noble and politically legitimate ideals of linguistic emancipation of small nations, but rather with their colonisation, the linguists of the Moscow Circle opted for an intervention in the development of language. Such a position is hardly different from intellectual myopia. The Academics could not see how easy it was to use their arguments to support the ideology they did not identify with, but indeed their blindness was not to last for a long time. The ”right” wing of the Moscow Linguistic Circle, centred around Gustav Shpet, was even more academically oriented, facing phenomenology methodologically (as its leader). The members strongly socialized science, because they also practiced literary criticism and literature. But their aesthetic preferences — revealing a penchant for late symbolism (at that time very conservative), a resistence to futurism and any forms of engaged art (they even condemned Blok), a robust defense of traditional values ​​in science — increased the distance from politics and 12 Apparently, this was pointed out only by P. J Chernykh. Although it was only in terse footnote, indicating that in Siberia the word ”kadet” meant ”white army’s soldier”, while in the central Russia “kadet” was a member of The Constitutional Democratic Party. See. P. J Chernykh, Sovremennye techenia w lingvistike, Irkutsk 1929, footnote 7.

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ideology even more than in the case of the left wing. For both wings, if the fusion of modern science and modern social thought was perceived at all, these forms of activity were absolutely detached. This attitude is clearly shown in Shpet’s and Osip Brik’s biographies. Shpet — on the one hand, a sophisticated philosopher, on the other, an ideologically committed vice president of GAChN (what cost him life) — and Brik, an outstanding researcher and Chekist at the same time. There was also a lot of speculation about his spying for the KGB and even the pathological behaviour during the hearings of prostitutes (Jangfeldt 1992: 185). But it is Brik who was the scientific authority for the Muscovites, especially esteemed as the creator of phonostylistics, advertising theory, graphic poetry and the new typography. His theoretical concepts and very fortunate terminology inspired Eikhenbaum, Zhyrmunsky, Reformatsky and Jakobson. The only exception in the Moscow Circle able to combine thematic and methodological scientific linguistic work with political work (as official as being the Deputy Foreign Ministry at the time of Trotsky) could be Yevgeny Polivanov. Although he was scientifically linked to the Muscovites, he was also one of John Baudouin de Courtenay’s apprentices in St. Petersburg, — and he worked according to his master’s formulae. Strongly politically engaged, even before the Revolution, he defended the ”small” — as defined by Baudouin — ethnolects (by arranging alphabets for them, consciously created on the basis of not Cyrillic, but Latin, and translating their folk literature) and sociolects (by developing urban jargons and criminal dialects). The idea of ​​the social nature of the language was not a sophisticated academic concept for him. He was so strongly convinced with his principals that in the 1930s he dared to come into conflict with the official Nikolay Marr’s Marxist linguistics, which cost him life. It is no wonder then that he was so much respected by Viktor Shklovsky, the main representative of market criticism.

3. Academic Magazine Criticism OPOYAZ turned against the respected scientific tradition, an action indicated already with its name, which does not contain the ”circle” component for to use this term was a widespread designation in Central and Eastern Europe — especially for non-institutional forms of activity, yet affiliated with the university. Putting the term obshchestvo (the society) in the “circle’s” place — signalled a radical non-officiality. Although OPOYAZ grew from Vengerov’s seminar, famous at St. Petersburg Faculty of Arts and Sciences (“Filfak”), its beginnings were not only private and closely connected to the social life but simply reminded one of a carnival. According to the story by Lili Brik, repeated by Shklowsky, “in mid-February Jakobson went back to Petrograd. The Maslenica time — Pancake-day in Russia — was just taking place and Lili had guests, whom she regaled bliny with butter. Among them

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there were: Boris Eikhenbaum, Yevgeny Polivanov, Lev Jakubinsky and Viktor Shklovsky. Between toasts OPOYAZ was created” (Jangfeldt 2010: 93-94). The story, even if untrue (Shklovsky himself gives a few other stories) seems convincing rhetorically. Furthermore, it has a more varicoloured counterpart, which places the birth of OPOYAZ in a cabaret. There, in fact, in ”Stray Dog” on 24 December 1913 Shklovsky delivered his famous speech The Resurrection. It was not The Resurrection of ”the word” but The Resurrection  of “‘the thing”. History has considered this manifesto as the cornerstone of Russian formalism and the founding text of modern literary theory. The initiation in “Brodyacha sobaka” (Stray Dog Cellar) has its meaning. That Cabaret was the site of the night meetings of the St. Petersburg bohemian artists, and the bourgeoisie, eager to boast about friendships with them, were allowed to come in for a suitable fee. The texts presented in this particular basement quickly gained popularity. OPOYAZ-men “from the beginning considered themselves as (...) a fully-fledged part of the literary landscape, not the distant instance which coordinated its operation” (Levchenko 2001: 179). ”The basement” also embraced the strategy of scandalous behavior, which provided the public recognition. In comparison with incidents in ”Sobaka”, discussed in the tabloid press already a day after, provocative scandals in the Moscow apartment at Brik’s seem almost innocent. There were also late spectacles which mocked middle-class morality, but not art and science. Meanwhile, in ”Stray Dog” authentic artistic and scientific discussions took place. The regulars from the world of academia also attended, their presence strengthening popular cabaret shockers and encouraging their ideas. But OPOYAZ’s fame was provided not only by this ”game of science”, as Reformatsky nastily described it (Markelova 2010: 533). They published their papers and manifestos using ”catchy” genres, pleasant forms of writing, stylised literary forms, which were more accessible than academic dissertations. OPOYAZ members also published brochures, almanacs or different booklets, so that they had an advantage of easy access, constantly updated information and regular contact with readers. In general, OPOYAZ’s writing was dominated by minor genres, more analytical than synthetic, focused on a single interpretation of a literary piece. The natural course of such choices was to give up the burden of theory, methodology, and even terminology. Those were created according to the ad hoc needs (but with a great literary talent). Such terminology was easy to remember, but it did not have much to do with scientific nomenclature those days. Also, hastily formulated theoretical conclusions and generalisations, which sicken some scholars accustomed to inductive thinking, were so daring and suggestive that they still function as fundamental theories. OPOYAZ-men cared not only to be in touch with the artists whose behaviour they imitated (thus providing publicity), but also for other more formal forms of

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public presence. Unlike the Moscow Circle, which did not see a reason for dissemination of their research and reduced their scope to small academic group of people, OPOYAZ had owned a regular almanac since 1916. It was a series of works on the theory of poetic language and existed thanks to financial support of Brik. Their second forum was Mayakovsky ‘s ”LEF”, and for some of them also the ”New LEF”. They wrote about everything there — new language, new literature, theatre and circus, posters, essays, feuilletons and advertising. Researchers affiliated with OPOYAZ also participated in these probably new post-revolution, non-academic, institutional and scientific forms of activity. They delivered numerous lectures and participated in many seminars at the Institute of Living Speech, the Institute of Living Word and the House of Arts. Since the early 20s members of OPOYAZ worked full time in one of the most famous institutions newly established outside the university: the Art History Institute founded in 1912 by count Valentin Zubov. The Institute, thanks to a carnival personality of its founder (a typical decadent from the turn of the century, but also a man well-educated — by, among others, Wölfflin, the eminent art historian and expert on Italian Renaissance frescoes), fostered both OPOYAZ’s interdisciplinary research and its ludic forms — ”scientific parody”, occasional academic poetry and other kinds of scholar folklore. In contrast to the Moscow Circle, this place was opportune for educatating young people, the future ”young formalists”, who kept a carnival distance from the university and no longer cultivated market science in the dark and ruthless time of the 1930s (when the remnants of enthusiasm for revolutionary change died out). They experienced how science involves in politics, how consciously it is bound with the ideology in the name of the noblest ideals. Such a lesson was given by the famous issue of ”LEF” about the language of Lenin (1925). OPOJAZ-men participated in it as an obligation, after a militant criticism of Trotsky in the article The Formal School in Poetry and Marxism (1923). Their efforts in the name of a public debate on formalism were not successful. The articles published in the journal were more ”begging for mercy” than panegyrics in honour of the leader. The position of the authors remained far from clear. Grotesquely exaggerated praises (e.g., the comparison of Lenin’s speeches’ composition to fugue) contrasted with the preceding comic-serious analysis. In this aspect, they more resembled the parody of academic studies on the language of the revolution, like Alexei Kruchonykh’s 11 Devices of Lenin’s Speech (1925), than the obsequious paean (see Ulicka 2010: 245-273), even though that issue of ”LEF” is sometimes (to this day) treated as a confession of guilt and public adherence to the official ideology. The jobs of OPOYAZ-men in institutions administered by the Bolsheviks are evaluated similarly.13 Such opinions, arisen from a misunderstand13 Yuri Tynianov worked as a translator in the Comintern, and Boris Eikhenbaum in “Goslit” –”Gosudarstvennaya literatura” — publishing house.

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ing of the time and from measuring OPOYAZ by criteria of pure academic studies (involved only cognitively), are wrong. The OPOYAZ model was different, as is indicated even in the title of their manifesto. As mentioned above, it was originally named ”resurrection of the thing” — not ”the word”.14 And although the same lecture of Shklovsky leaves no doubt that in both versions it was meant to underline the renewal of perception of the world and things, the difference is significant. The author, whose debut, the poetic prose Lead fate, coincided with the years of the war, and who then connected with the futuristic left, the Serapion Fraternity and Oberiu, in the title of his cabaret manifesto deliberately cut himself off from the Symbolists such as Blok, Mandelstam, Gumilev and Ivanov, who resurrected the Word (the gospel word, in the Russian Silver Age explicitly associated with Christ, embodying the truth) in their essays and poems. Those, under the influence of the ideology of the Third Renaissance, happily greeted the imminent catastrophe, followed by a joyous time of the people/artists. Lead fate — dedicated to the field hospital — and Resurrection of the Thing refer to the waste land, the result of the war, the Revolution of 1905, individual terror and anarchy. They are not brimful of futuristic joy after the ”museum of history” collapsed. Both are concerned with the need to build a new world. The February Revolution, in which Shklovsky sided with the Mensheviks, and October, during which he joined as the right SR, gave him hope for the success of the project.

4. Shklovsky’s Market Theory ”Indiana Jones of St. Petersburg”15 took part in those events with each of his writing achievements in years 1914-1923. ”OPOYAZ and front existed in parallel” — he recalled (Shklovsky 1965:151). In autumn 1914, he voluntarily reported to the army. ”I was the son of a converted Jew, I had the right to promotion and I went to the automobile forces” — he explained the choice of the company (Ibidem: 141). He was at the front as a driver (before the war he had completed a course). He had a number of successes on the battlefield, in 1915 he returned to Petrograd to simultaneously work as an instructor in the school of armor and to co-create the first series of works on the theory of poetic language. It is not known to which party he belonged before the February Revolution. Most likely, it was the Mensheviks. During the February Revolution Shklovsky joined the Petrograd Military Com14 More specifically: on 23 December 1913, Shklovsky delivered in ”Stray Dog” cabaret the lecture The Place of Futurism in the History of the Language, in which he appealed for ”resurrection of the thing”. This phrase has provided the inspiration for the lecture Resurrection of the Thing, delivered on 8 February 1914 at Tenishev school and published as a booklet under a different title, Resurrection of the Word. 15 The expression from the biographical documentary film by Alexander Smirnov Skandalist ili pis’ma o lubvi from 2009, http://www.5-tv.ru/video/502672/, Access: 2011-01-18.

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mittee, the Reserve Armored Division. As its representative he also participated in the work of Petrograd Committee. While delegated to the south-west front (the area of ​​today’s Northern Iran), during the summer offensive of 3 July 1917, he was severely wounded. For his combat valour he received one of the highest honours in Russian army, the fourth grade Cross of St. George, from Kornilov himself — the commander of Russian troops in 1917 and the originator of the White Army. Then as the assistant commissioner of the Provisional Government, Shklovsky oversaw the withdrawal of Russians from Persia, to return again in early 1918 to Petrograd and become a member of Art and Historical Committee of the Winter Palace. Then, in Saratov and Kiev, Shklovsky participated in several high-profile assassinations and military-political actions (in Kiev he took part in the failed attempt to overthrow Skoropadsky). He was a supporter of the right SRs, led by Grigory Semyonov. The party was known for its acts of terrorism against the Bolsheviks. Shklovsky participated in an anti-Bolshevik coup organised by this group (under his command the armoured cars squad circled around the Admirality building in which the Petrograd district commander stationed with subordinate forces). The coup failed and Shklovsky, after the arranged right SRs processes at the beginning of 1922 (previously protected by the amnesty, which included members of the party who declared a halt to operations against the Soviet government after the split in 1919), had to flee, threatened by an impending arrest. One of his friends, Ignatij Dashevsky testified against him during the legal proceedings. He told the authorities in detail about Shklovsky’s participation in the guerrilla actions, his failed mission in Saratov, bombing in Atkarsk, Saratov district and even about the idea of ​​blowing up a train going toward Ural (Galushkin 2002: 8). As if that was not enough, in 1922, just before the lawsuit, Semyonov published in Berlin the denunciatory ”memories”, specifically informing the Socialist-Revolutionary Party about the right SRs and Shklovsky’s terrorist activity. His actions had to be commonly known if they entered into fiction — the Kiev episode of his life is captured in Bulgakov’s The White Guard, describing the “zasakharyvane” action, which was the backfilling of armoured vehicles’ carburettors with sugar. The initiator of this sabotage action was Shpolansky-Shklovsky (Bulgakov 1974: 148-151). Whether this is the truth or only a fiction, however, Shklovsky was forced to slip away. In March 1922, along the Russian immigrants’ path on the frozen Gulf of Finland, he reached the German capital and joined the intellectual life of ‘Russian Berlin’ (Fleishman 2003). However, at the end of 1922 he began to seriously consider a return to his homeland, probably due to his wife, Vasilisa Kordi, who was arrested in Bolshevik Russia as a hostage on the day of his escape (Galushkin 2002: 10). To get a safe-conduct security, Shklovsky addressed the last letter in his epistolary novel Zoo, or Letters Not About Love, written in Berlin under the

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influence of unrequited love to Elsa Triolet, to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. He got the permission to return, and in 1923 he settled in Moscow (this was the authorities’ condition) — an extraneous city which, as he mentioned in the Third Factory, was ‘bland as a condom’. These turbulent years 1914 — 1923 are also marked by uppermost activity in Shklovsky’s writing. Then, in the first (1916) and the second (1917) series of Poetika. Sborniki po teorii poeticheskogo yazyka (Poetics: Collections on the Theory of Poetic Language) his most important articles are published (until nowadays considered to be the foundation not only of the Formalism, but of the whole modern literary studies): The Resurrection of the Word, On poetry, Art as Technique. In 1919 — the studies on the art of film and theater, and the important article about fabula and syuzhet, a part of the forthcoming Theory of Prose. In 1921 — works on syuzhet’s development based on Don Quixote, Sterne’s ‘Tristram Shandy’ and the Theory of the Novel, Rozanov. During this period Shklovsky also created his most interesting artistic works, fictionalized autobiographies. Remembering in what circumstances they arose, including the author’s colorful, adventurous biography, their non-academic course and the emotionally engaged tone become obvious. Shklovsky’s parallel lives, the theoretician and the terrorist, reflected in the syntax, highly metaphorical style close to poetry, and in the composition in which unstable arguments collide with hasty generalizations. Their persuasive power, however, was much stronger than the precise, well-proven theories taught at the meetings of scientists from the Moscow Linguistic Circle (and they also gained more publicity than the balanced dissertations of Tynyanov and Eikhenbaum). From the OPOYAZ-men Shklovsky best exemplifies the involvement of science in politics and the ideology in science. He is also an emblematic figure for the market science’s engaging style. This style changed dramatically and moved back to ‘academia’, when formalists from Petersburg were forced to withdraw from the public life. Till the 60s, Shklovsky actually wrote only screenplays and fictionalized biographical and autobiographical novels. Also Tynianov tried his hand at novel writing (in relation to history of literature and philological commentary). The others resorted to editing and publishing activity. Ending with politics shifted them from the axiological, social and ideological criticism, towards more secure academic criticism.

5. History Magistra Vitae? It is difficult to compare the academic activity of both groups of Russian Formalists. Their documentary situation is not equal. OPOYAZ cared, as demonstrated, for publications, the distribution of thought, the popularity and dissemination of their ideas. The Moscow Circle did not see purpose in the market success. History treated cruelly the archive protocols of the meetings and innovative dis-

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cussions (only recently archives have been described and published16). There are many OPOYAZ achievements preserved in memory, especially of the first period of their gallant activity. These came into general circulation. Despite the spectacularly bold, daring seductive rhetoric and style, they are a collection of bright, disposable and often highly controversial interpretation of ideas, troublesome in systematic use. It is possible to give many more examples of such a dichotomy between cognitively valuable academic critique and ideological valuable market critique in the years approximately close to both Russian formalisms. The same situation can be found in the relationship between Tadeusz Zielinski and Stefan Srebrny’s Petersburg scientific circles. The first one is often compared to OPOYAZ, the second one is closer to the Moscow Circle. These similarities are also clearly visible in the relationship between the Bakhtinian neo-Kantian circle in Nevel and the one from Vitebsk, dominated by Medvedev-Voloshinov Marxism. Two distinct strategies — academic and market — are also shared in the theatrical circles in which the ideas of Adrian Piotrovski (who modernised Antiquity in the vulgar way) contrast with new but physiologically impeccable Sergei Radlov’s approach. History repeats itself as usual. In today’s literary theory academic critique clearly opposes market criticism, politically correct, committed to the ideas derived from the values recognized as legitimate. This is reflected in the so-called ethical criticism, and in most varieties of cultural criticism (they often serve explicitly and completely uncritical the social projects, which they support, considering them to be worthy preservation according to arbitrarily adopted standards of correctness). History, if we carefully look at it, leaves no illusions as to what type of criticism is preferred. The Moscow Linguistic Circle lost in archives, Bakhtin’s global career was preceded and conditioned by Voloshynov’s success. To this day Zielinski has remained ‘the guru of classics’, and Srebrny is not known even in Poland. In this context Sollers’ hope seems to be too optimistic: “Theory [scil.: critical academic science] will return, (...), and people will discover once again its problems, when the ignorance will reach so far that the boredom will be the only result (Compagnon 2010: 8). Translated by Michał Wróblewski, Tomasz Fisiak Bibliografia: Bengt Jangfeld (2010a), O Romane Jakobsone i jego otzenke O. M. Brika, in: Poetika i fonostilistika, MGUP, Moskva. Bengt Jangfeldt (2010b), Majakovsky. Stawką było życie, trans. W. Łygaś, W. A. B., Warszawa.

16 Only a few protocols are published till today. Work on the publications of the rest of the archive, however, has been suspended.

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Bulhakov Mikhail (1974), Biała Gwardia, trans. Irena Lewandowska, Witold Dąbrowski, PIW, Warszawa 1974. Chernykh Pavel Ya.(1929), Sovremennye techenia v lingvistike, Irkutsk. Chernykh Pavel Ya., Vinogradov Viktor G. (1922), Russkie govory tzentralnoy chasti Pulungskogo uyezda Irkutskoj guberni, Moskva — Irkutsk. Compagnon Antoine (2010), Demon teorii. Literatura a zdrowy rozsądek, trans T. Stróżyński, słowo/obraz terytoria, Gdańsk. Eikhenbaum Boris (1978), Teoria metody formalnej [1926], trans. R. Zimand, in: Idem, Szkice o prozie i poezji, eds L. Pszczołowska i R. Zimand, PIW, Warszawa. Galushkin Aleksandr (2002), „Prigovoriennyi smotret’”, in: V. Shklovsky, Jeshcho nichego nie konchilos’, Propaganda, Moskva. Gasparov Mikhail (1998), Vzgliad iz ugla, in: Moskovsko-tartuskaya semioticheskaya shkola. Istoria. Vospominanja. Razmyshlenia, ed. S. Y. Nekludov, RGGU, Moskva. Jakobson Roman, Bogatyrev Piotr (1923), Slovianskaya filologia za vremia voiny i rewolutzyi, Opojaz, Berlin. Jakobson — budetlianin: Sbornik marierialov (1992), ed. B. Jangfeldt, Almqvist & Wiksell, Stockholm. Lenin Vladimir I. (1924), Ob chistkie russkogo jazyka, „Pravda” nr 275. Mazon Andrè (1920), Lexique de la guerre et de la révolution en Russe (1914-1918), Libraire Anccienne Honorè Champion, Paris. Poetika i fonostilistika. Brikovskij sbornik (2010), ed. G. V. Vekshin, MGUP, Moskva. Russkii Berlin 1921-1923 (1983), Po materialam arkhiva B.I. Nikolayevskogo w Guverskom Institute, eds. L. Fleishman, R. Hughes, O. Raevskaia-Hughes, YMCA-Press, Paris. de Saussure Ferdinand (2004), Szkice z językoznawstwa ogólnego, eds. S. Bouquet i R. Engler, A. Weil, trans.M. Danielewiczowa, Wydawnictwo Akademickie DIALOG, Warszawa. Shapir Maksim (1994), M. M. Kenigsberg i iego fenomenologia stikha, „Russian Linguistic” vol. 18. Shapir Makism (1990), Kommentarii, in: G. O. Vinokur, Filologicheskie issledovania: lingvistika i poetika, AN SSSR, Moskva. Shklovsky Viktor, Ze wspomnień, trans. A. Galis, PIW, Warszawa 1965. Trotzky Lev (1923), Voprosy novogo byta, Moskva. Trubietzkoy Nikolai (1920), Evropa i chelovechestvo, Rosiisko-bolgarskoe kn-vo, Sofia. Ulicka Danuta (2010), Jedenaście myków mowy Lenina, „Przestrzenie Teorii” nr 13. Yuriy Levchenko (2001), Literaturnaia reputatzya Viktora Shlovskogo, in: Literaturovedienie XXI veka: Teksty i konteksty russkoy litieratury. Materialy tretiei mezhdunarodnoy konferetzi mołodykh uchenykh-filologov, Miunkhen 20-24 apr. 1999, ed. O. M. Goncharova, RChGI, Sankt Peterburg.

The Subversive Potential of an Apocryphon Danuta Szajnert* Abstract Fundamental to the construction of any apocryphal text is its reference to a canon, which could be, but is not always, biblical. Thus by definition, apocryphal intertextual mediatisation relies on the explicit communication of a world view from the perspective of some other canonical text as well as the confrontation of its mediums and manners. The authors of some literary apocrypha indict the canon, discrediting it or calling it into question, while others confirm the canon. Yet, in viewing the apocrypha as a complement or a supplement, as the annotation of an established point of view, as a follow-up or a pre-history of the canonical prototype, we can see our convictions about the canon’s external attractiveness and semantic productivity but also its incompleteness and insufficiency. Thus every apocryphon, at least such that evidently refers to some original text, possesses a critical and subversive potential. In this article, I present the results of the apocryphal “hermeneutics of suspicion” arising from a belief in the inevitably flawed nature of any canon, based as it is on an exclusion, a concealment or a marginalisation of somebody or something. I have in mind the relatively stable literary canon of Western culture, represented here by literary works like The Iliad, The Tragedy of Hamlet, Les Liaisons dangereuses, Robinson Crusoe, and Jane Eyre, and also its apocryphal problematisation by Margaret Atwood, John Updike, Hella S. Haasse, Michel Tournier, John Maxwell Coetzee and Jean Rhys. * Institute of Contemporary Culture, University of Lodz, ul. Franciszkańska 1/5, 91-431 Łódź e-mail: [email protected]

The following text shall deal with the literary apocryphon in the prototypical sense of the term “literary”. I shall stick to my conclusions about this quasi or supergeneric form of expression drawn a few years ago, for fear of the inflation of the term which is extremely useful when trying to comprehend the characteristics of a certain aspect of intertextual poetics (Szajnert 2000). Back then, I was trying to bring out those uses of the term that seemed convenient from my point of view. They were supposed to respect especially the theological and philological impulses generated by the nature of the apocryphon; in its most widespread usage, this term – which had been in use even as early as the Hellenic period – referred to the non-canonical biblical writings. Thus the rule of reference to the canon, which forms the foundation of the construction of an apocryphal text, goes back to antiquity. Furthermore, the biblical apocryphon possesses the feature of false attribution (once also called pseudo-epigraphy). This trait became pivotal when the term was transferred, actually without any difficulty, onto all the works of doubtful authorship or simply fakes (falsifications). An apocryphon as the synonym of a forgery forms one of the two basic meanings of that term, found in dictionaries and encyclopedias. In my conclusions, dealing with other possible uses of the word, I also tried to consider its etymological and semantic potential as well as its

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polyvalence – since we have to do with an “emphatic term”. The differentiation of axiological connotations associated with the apocryphon depends to a large extent on the interpretation of the notion of conceal ment inherent in this term. In the end, I argued that the following mutations of the biblical apocryphon may be reasonably considered to be literary apocrypha: first of all, those works which clearly, thematically, theoretically and personally (through the characters) refer to: a) the Bible (in this group this would be the primary mutation of the apocryphon per se); b) any singular literary text belonging to some kind of canon, a myth or a fable; c) all authentic, canonical non-fictional texts whose authors are real people. However, in order for the connection to be considered apocryphal, the so-called “model realities” must be left more or less intact (in spite of the sometimes ostentatious contemporaneous changes, for example in the mentality of a character or in the language, including notional language, and therefore in the ways in which a h istor ically i nter preted pre -text is categorised, in spite of the fact that the bonds with its source Sitz im Leben have been broken). If we distinguish apocrypha among the texts described by means of the capacious formula of “re-writing”, as the terms reécriture or re-writing, most often used in Western criticism, these conditions refer to a much broader class of phenomena; and equally popular terms like prequel and sequel refer to only one of the many ways of constructing an apocryphal text. And secondly: since the term “apocrypha” is also used to describe heavy, strong literary shams (the primary mutation within the second group), I decided that the term may be also used to describe both weak and quasi-shams. What all the apocryphal cases of the first group have in common is the evident and obligatory indirectness of their given worldview and of their understanding of a given world presented by other concrete texts; such apocrypha are confronted with the ways and means of the categorisation of experience, with the representation and valorisation of historical and cultural reality and with the relation to the world “discussed” by other literary works and people speaking in a particular place and at a particular time. This is what the specificity of apocryphal mediation is based on. Pre-texts used in this way are linked by the fact that they belong – let me repeat — to some kind of canon (not only the biblical one), and/or by their connection with those values which are regarded as canonical in a given culture. I have in mind here especially the relatively stable literary canon of Western culture and its universal pretensions (by the way – its “great code” is the Bible). The objects of philosophical, theoretical or thematic transpositions more often than not are works positioned in the traditional centre of this canon. Owing to its opening due to the various cultural and emancipatory revisions it now includes, for example, the writings of certain women hitherto ignored, which having gained a more privileged status became themselves an attractive object of apocryphal games.

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Therefore, in all mutations of the apocryphon, the canon should be understood in a slightly different way. We must add, however, that only a feigned forgery presumes the canon’s dematerialisation and activates the category of “the real thing” as the feature attributed to canonical books, closely associated with the Bible and valued definitely positively. In quasi-forgeries the task of representing “the real thing” (authenticity) is usually performed by emulating documentary genres. Even these sketchy remarks suffice to say that no one consistent, for example emancipatory, worldview may be attributed to the apocrypha.1 Some authors of apocrypha denounce the canon, subvert and question it, while others affirm it (which does not mean that an affirmative attitude is inferior). However, in the seemingly innocent idea of completing or supplementing something, of adding to some previously disregarded point of view a text in the guise of “a continuation” or the pre-history of events presented in the acknowledged original, one can see not only the faith in the original’s continuous appeal and its semantic productiveness, but also in its incompleteness, some kind of imperfection or inadequacy. Thus ever y apocr y phon, at least such that evidently refers to some original text, possesses a cr it ical a nd subversive potent ial – and it is a pity that writers sometimes seem unable to make use of it. An example: a few years ago an erudite sequel of Henryk Sienkiewicz’s “trilogy”, written by Andrzej Stojowski, a work, in fact, containing certain revisionist ambitions, was hailed in the Polish media and became a bestseller. It was an adventure novel entitled W ręku Boga (In the Hand of God), intentionally addressed most of all to the mass reader and published in 1997 in London. As Eliza Szybowicz appropriately observed: “during more than a hundred years of disputes over Sienkiewicz the competence of the average unmasker of this author’s illusive fiction has grown, which does not in the least diminish the charm of the object of unmasking” (2008: 44). Being aware of that fact, the author of the Sienkiewicz apocryphon could easily count on its success with the public. He also probably knew that a popular plot affixed to such a still charming textual material might have a much greater chance to reshuffle the contents of our collective imagination than philosophical theses (even if reworked, flattened), borrowed from the writings of Stanisław Brzozowski or Witold Gombrowicz. However, Szybowicz is right when in her daring analysis of the novel and its polarised critical reception she tries to prove that Stojowski, contrary to what we might be inclined to think, did everything he could in order not to deconstruct the central structures of our national myth — and not to offend the Polish canon (2008: 41-56). This does not mean, however, that the apocryphal hermeneutics of suspicion –  the belief that 1

Conceived, according to Bakhtin (see subchapter Genre and Reality in: Bakhtin, Medvedev 1985), as the ways and means of perceiving and understanding reality specific only for the given genre.

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the canon is inevitably oppressive, based on exclusion, ignoring or marginalising someone or something – always leads to interesting results; hence I shall now try to look at some contemporary literary texts from this perspective. In the ironic ending of Let Us Now Praise Stupid Women, a short story from the collection entitled Good Bones, Margaret Atwood transforms the famous phrase by Baudelaire from the introduction to his Les Fleurs du Mal: “Hipocrite lecteuse! Ma semblable! Ma seur! / Let us now praise stupid women/who have given us literature” (Atwood 1992: 37).2 The apocryphon is the ideal environment for all kinds of literary discourses on “post-dependency”. No ready-made form offers better conditions to transfer and distort the meanings traditionally attributed to the constructions erected by some inferior Others, including women, because only this form creates such an illusion that makes us believe that the distortion takes place precisely where these constructions are being crystallised — according to the rule that literary works at the same time produce and imitate various cultural clichés connected with the mechanisms of power and exclusion. In Gertrude Talks Back Atwood, speaking through the mouth of such a stupid woman, her protagonist whom she borrows from Shakespeare, retorts and talks back, and not only to Hamlet. In this story Atwood mocks the interpretations of such a female literary character, typical for different and sometimes conflicting reading canons: those in which her son’s accusations are taken at face value as well as other readings (associated with the feminist standpoint) which claim that although Gertrude is innately a little too sensual, she is also a subtle, fragile victim of her son’s and husband’s domination. Other interpreters treat her sensuality as the phantom of male imagination combined with the tendency to associate such female behaviour (seen as defiant to the cultural norms laid down by men and rendered in this way in Elizabethan drama) with abnormally inflated sexuality (see for example J. Adelman 1992: 11-37, 79, 246-249; Jardine 1983 and 1996: 148-149). Shakespeare’s Gertrude is a vague character, almost mute, because she is fashioned rather by what other characters say about her than by what she says herself. Therefore, letting her speak seems to be the natural effect of an obvious and painful lack or absence in two senses of that term: as the absence or deficiency of something, or as a flaw or weakness. The fragment re-written by Atwood is Scene 4, Act III of Hamlet — which in fact is the only scene where Shakespeare lets the queen speak a little more. However, there is no Ghost and no Polonius hiding behind the arras. What the authoress is interested in is the relationship between the mother and her son, though he was also not allowed into the text. 2

Replacing the masculine form lecteur (instead of the correct lectrice) with the word lecteuse which does not exist in French (although considering the rules of French word-formation it does sound plausible) was probably meant to confirm female ignorance, create the illusion of rhyme and finally — perhaps — suggest an association with lactose (lactose).

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Imitating Atwood’s style we might say that Hamlet has already blabbered enough in Shakespeare’s masterpiece. His voice is more than distinct; there is no way we could forget it. The paradoxical presence of the character absent in this scene is emphasised not only by hidden quotations from the prince and by the classical remarks to the reader which organise Gertrude’s speech, but also by empty places within the text — the double spaces which divide Gertrude’s remarks, resembling dialogical responses. We have no difficulty in recognising those fragments of the intertext to which they refer. Only the first utterance plays a different function: it allows for its immediate identification and reveals the key mechanisms of the revision it is going to be subjected to. The most important thing here is that in Gertrude Talks Back the queen perfectly fulfills the role she has been assigned; she rebukes her son severely and probably fills him with dismay. Although she does not behave according to Polonius’s instructions, she also does not allow Hamlet to take the initiative as in Shakespeare’s play. She does not defend herself on hearing his accusations and does not complain that they are breaking her heart; on the contrary, she ridicules them and, therefore, attacks. She knocks both Hamlets off their plinths on which tradition has placed them and takes advantage of her right to be a complete person, to be happy and to lead a normal life with an imperfect man, but one that she herself has chosen for herself; she has a right to share carnal pleasures with him, to subjectivity.3 And in the end, without remorse and clearly amused by the misunderstanding which explains why her son was so rude during dinner, she confesses that it was she – not Claudius – who killed her first husband. Also Gerutha — Gerta — Gertrude, the most important protagonist of John Updike’s novel Gertrude and Claudius, fights for her rights, although not in such a determined and uncompromising way, being bitterly conscious of the sweetness of her own “feminine” submission to the rules of the world structured and governed by men (including the historical imperatives of the dynasty and the crown’s alliances). The author borrowed different versions of the names of the characters in the three parts of his novel from different versions of the story of Hamlet4, thus suggesting that its latest modification is merely an apocryphon of an apocryphon. Each of these parts begins with the same sentence: “The king was irate”, which refers respectively to: Rorik — Roderik, i.e., to Gertrude’s father, to Horwendil — 3

4

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as the protagonists of an apocryphal Tom Stoppard drama Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966), who have been deprived by Shakespeare of their subjectiveness and identity, always appear together and are always mixed up by the main characters in Hamlet, also fecklessly try to free themselves from the power of this restricted vision of their persons on account of which they came into being in the first place. In his Foreword Updike mentions, among others, the work by Saxo Grammaticus and its modified version by Francois de Belleforest.

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Horvendil — Hamlet, her first husband, and finally to Feng — Fengon — Claudius, her second husband. In each of the three parts it is Gertrude who must face the king’s anger in spite of the fact that she had sparked it only in the first case. The triple repetition of this initial formula indexically indicates the inevitable semblance between all these rulers who are in many respects different but equally bossy and ruthless in the realisation of their own male — i.e., higher — objectives. In the novel’s wide-ranging Vorgeschichte of Shakespeare’s tragedy, reaching by retrospection to the childhood years of the characters, Claudius’s point of view is also presented more extensively than in the pre-text, and not without empathy or sympathy for him. The final sentence of the novel contains his thoughts. After the exciting celebrations of his first public audience, the new ruler of Denmark, not unburdened by “the black pang” of remorse (Updike 2000: 199), feeling the love and support of the wife he loves –  because only while looking at her and having her at his side he realised “[…] what was, simply, real, all else an idle show of theatrical seeming” (Ibidem: 200) – and believing that he finally managed to break the hateful resistance of his nephew, he becomes convinced that “He had gotten away with it. All would be well” (Ibidem: 203). It is only now – though in a different work — that another character, Hamlet, can step to the forefront of the stage, also irate, of course, like all other men close to Gertrude; Hamlet, in Updike’s novel a background character who is talked about but who is not allowed to talk himself (like in Gertrude Talks Back). The obvious irony of the ending of Gertrude and Claudius, evident when confronted with our assumed knowledge of the future fate of the characters, corresponds with the self-ironic effect of turning the source text around, because we have to do here with a perverse suggestion that Shakespeare’s universal masterpiece is his reaction to the novel published in the year 2000. Gertrude… is an unpretentious and well-wrought novel, but to tell the truth, one-dimensional, as it, for example, explains all the mysteries of betrayal and murder. Moreover, it uses conventional tools of traditional realism in its desire to restore Hamlet to Denmark and to expose everything that is historical, local or even endemically Danish in the story; and it also employs traditional narration, focused on female experience, limited, according to Updike, by both culture and nature. In the Afterword to Gertrude and Claudius the author first recalls the opinion about Hamlet’s “impenetrable self-centeredness” (Ibidem: 204), which Updike seems to agree with, and then goes on to summon up a book by a contemporary Shakespearian scholar which contains a “haunting summary of G. Wilson Knight’s reading in The Wheel of Fire […] (1930) […]: ‘Putting aside the murder being covered up, Claudius seems a capable king, Gertrude a noble queen, Ophelia a treasure of sweetness, Polonius a tedious but not evil counsellor, Laertes a generic young man. Hamlet pulls them all into death’” (Ibidem: 205). Updike

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follows this lead, though not exactly, as Corambus — Corambis — Polonius plays a completely different role in his novel than in The Tragedy of Hamlet. But full of understanding for the weaknesses of the title characters, especially for Gertrude, Updike makes her son the successor of all the worst features of the male family line of which she was a victim: the aforementioned self-centredness, vanity, cruelty, disrespect for women (or rather for “stupid females”), contempt for all people of lower social position, and, most of all, emotional frigidity. A different apocryphal pattern than the one in Gertrude and Claudius, but similar to the construction of Gertrude Talks Back, was used by Atwood in her Penelopiad. Here, too, a character who is allowed to speak was marginalised by the male narrative of the pre-text, treated like an object and additionally immobilised in the stance or position prescribed by the myth, although in this case, because of her virtues, like famous intelligence and loyalty, Penelope would not be considered a dumb female. This pattern is obviously borrowed from the apocrypha of the New Testament, full of various stories by non-canonical authors and authoresses but mentioned in the Gospels as their less or more important protagonists. The difference between the role of Gertrude and Penelope is mainly based on the fact that the latter evidently spins the yarn of her life-story from an enormous temporal distance — more than 3000 years have passed since the events she tells us about took place. However, it is not and cannot be an absolute and patriarchal (and, we might add, myth-making) epic distance, as described by Bakhtin (1981). Traces of modernity that reach the underworld of Hades from which Penelope relates her story do not interest her much. It suffices that she is aware of the fact that the world in the meantime has been disenchanted because it seems that the gods have fallen asleep –  and that is why Odysseus’s wife can overcome her fear and articulate what she would not have dared to say in the very distant past (Atwood 2005). Even the above says quite a lot about the conditions that must be fulfilled so that the apocryphal — and not only apocryphal — criticism of certain forms of this kind of existence could be performed at all. It also proves that the authoress of the novella possseses a self-critical generic (genological) consciousness — and not only that. As Paul Veyne says, following Foucault (and other similar thinkers): “locked in finiteness, in time, man cannot think anything that comes into his mind at any given time: about making the Romans abolish slavery or forcing them to consider the international balance of powers” (Veyne 1988: 326). In Hades’s underworld we also have a chorus of the twelve maids to Penelope who comment on the action in different tones, though not of sublime songs but rather something like pop-songs. Letting these characters speak — and they are the least important among the unimportant — Atwood, using modern props, gives them a modern awareness of their situation which seems more palpable than in Penelope’s case, as if the authoress wanted to remind the readers how long the ser-

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vants had had to wait for their right to enter literature as the subjects of a narrative. As far as the revision of the Odysseus myth proposed by Atwood goes, we can say that other writers of apocrypha of Homer’s intertext had been more penetrating and often funnier in the deconstruction of this myth long before the Penelopiad was written, though the subversion in this novella is not directed only against the fossils of patriarchal tradition. What is valuable in this story, not counting its rather ingenious construction, is especially yet another impulse inclining the reader to reflect on the ways we read, not even myths as such, but masterpieces of literature. And it turns out that we read in such a way that — for example — a horrible execution of a few blameless maids somehow usually escapes our attention. With an analogous thematisation of the principle of the apocryphon, though perhaps more refined in its naive obviousness, we have to do in Een gevaarlijke verhouding of Daal-en-Bergse brieven (1976; Dangerous Liaison or Letters from Daal en Berg) by a Dutch writer, Hella S. Haasse. The concept of the organisation of this epistolary and essayistic continuation of Les Liaisons dangereuses is based on the obviousness of the location from which the authoress looks at the character eternalised by Laclos. Putting herself in the role of madame de Merteuil’s correspondent, Haasse tries very hard to keep all the appearances of the marquise as a “historical” figure who does not date her letters. It is true, although we know that she writes them (not as in the pre-text) at a very definite time, since she arrives in the Hague around 1782. Trying to prolong the literary life of the protagonist of Dangerous Liaisons the authoress of this novelistic apocryphon authenticates the character and her spatial and temporal surroundings (Haasse fills certain vague spots in Laclos’s novel with topographic details and an amazing acribia), as if challenging the actually non-realistic convention of the original. In spite of the fact that, as she assures us, she does not wish to change the marquise, Haasse attempts to lead her out of the disenchanted world in which she has been skillfully imprisoned by the author. She offers her something different than the salon kind of libertinage and rouerie, ideas accessible in her times that could have been employed to employ the concept formulated in the famous Letter 81 of Laclos’s novel, namely the concept of avenging her own sex; Haasse rather encourages the character to abandon this idea and to use the combined forces of her own critical mind and “new sensitivity” in a less individualistic or egoistic emancipatory project. Madame de Merteuil, however, is deaf to these suggestions. She is unable to free herself from the accepted norms, values and prejudices of the aristocratic milieu that shaped her. Her belief that she is self-made turns out to be an illusion of self-consciousness. So does only the triumphant Laclos remain on the stage? “Haasse” writes in her last letter to the marquise de Merteuil that although intelligent, she is one-sided, and being one-sided means being a living dead (Haasse 2002: 131).

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Dangerous Liaisons is not the only piece of “authentic fiction” which inspired literary apocrypha. For example, many texts in which apocryphal rules are respected may be found on the long list of Crusoe and anti-Crusoe works. Personally I consider Michel Tournier’s first novel, Vendredi ou les limbes du Pacifique, as the most interesting polemic with Defoe’s vision.5 In Une Theorie d’Autrui — the afterword to the first edition — Gilles Deleuze observed that according to the suggestion contained in the title, Man Friday is the central character in the novel (Tournier 1967: 267). Deleuze is right to the extent that indeed, Crusoe’s point of view (not in the narrative, but in the axiological, world-view sense) has been displaced here by the perspective of Friday, a Native American (an Arancanian). However, the most important object of representation in Tournier’s novel is the unusual change which Crusoe, the true main character of the apocryphon, undergoes under the influence of “the savage”. That change is ultimately confirmed by his decision to stay on the island while master Friday, enthralled by the miracle of civilisation – the magnificent sailing-ship that arrives at the shores –  sails away on its deck in the direction of the reality rejected by his pupil. We should add here that the obtrusive sociological interpretation of his choice is not obvious at all. We also cannot lock the entire symbolic richness of the novel (which is perhaps even too abundant, ranging from the tarot pack to the four elements) within the set of simple inversions of motifs borrowed from Defoe’s work. Each slogan-like and, it would seem, completely trivialised formula (which I shall evoke at the end), demands a detailed commentary (which I shall not evoke). Thus Tournier replaces the apology of the civilisation of Western Europe, founded on the achievements of science, technology and order, with various manifestations of this civilisation’s debility and indeficiency, and opens it up onto different cultures; the mission of taming nature is replaced by its pious admiration and respect for it; superficial, puritan, rationalised (and therefore disenchanted) religion, based on economic calculations, is replaced with the idea of private epiphany and ecstatic polytheism; the paternalistic and imperial attitude towards the savages is replaced by the idea of brotherhood; puritan asexuality is replaced with the idea of (yet again) ecstatic sexuality practised in various unconventional ways; and finally, the author replaced the technical problems of survival (that Defoe confronted his Crusoe with) with problems of existential and psychological nature. Tournier’s Crusoe was most of all tormented by loneliness and struggled especially with solitude. In Tournier’s novel, unlike in Defoe’s, the diary-like fragments (tainted with philosophy and focused, in fact, around descriptions of frenetic visions and self-psychoanalysis) constitute merely a supplement of the story told from the perspective 5

The reasons why the author moved the action of the novel to the Pacific coast have been explained by M. Mrozowicki (2000: 31).

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external for Crusoe. The ironic distance of the author towards the ideology of the original on the extra-diegetic level of the narrative is especially clearly revealed. This is, for example, how Tournier re-writes the meaningful scene of the oath of faithfulness and eternal submission6 which, according to Defoe, Man Friday takes of his own free will: the French writer shows a naked black man, paralysed with fear, who beats his head against the ground and tries to put on his forehead the foot of a bearded white man, bristling with arms, dressed in goatskins and with a fur hat on his head, stuffed with the three millenia of Western civilisation (Tournier 1967: 144). Crusoe of Defoe’s novel kept writing down all his adventures on a desert island until he ran out of ink. Cruso — one of the unfathomable protagonists of J.M. Coetzee’s novel in whose title we see the name of this literary character’s real creator (who as a no less important character also gains fictional status) — did not make any notes while living on the island for many years. Not only because he did not have any paper or ink but also because he did not care to jot down the real story of the castaway. However, he believed it necessary to record an account of the experience of solitude, alienation, fear, and especially of the overwhelming monotony and dullness in the life of Susan Barton who shared the fate of Crusoe and Friday (made mute by the author of Foe) for only one year. Since she is a woman who knows nothing of the art of writing, in order to tell her story (which is, by the way, much more refined stylistically and compositionally than the narrative of Robinson Crusoe), she hires the title Foe who, in fact, is a professional, making his living by turning other people’s chaotic stories into interesting plots. Foe, however (clearly unhappy that Cruso was unable to recover from the wreck neither ink nor any other basic tools and instruments of our civilisational repository, like gunpowder and muskets, especially), at first does not want to have a female castaway on the island, and then tries to brighten his story by introducing pirates and cannibals and by adding an imaginary plot of Barton’s love affair with Cruso — while at the end he wants to make Susan (in an episode that would make the work still more original) a part of the story about a mother looking for a lost daughter and about a daughter who begins to look for her mother at the very moment when the latter stops searching for her — which would be a fortunate turning of the plot. That is how a book is made: first a loss, then a quest, then the finding; the beginning, the middle and finally the end – thus Foe explains to Susan, who demands that he merely record the truth, his writer’s plans in which she could also play a vital part as the book’s character. In Foe’s opinion, therefore, a novel needs adventurous attractions and a clearly-cut construction plan (Coetzee 1987: 116-117). The real 6

”At length he came close to me, and then he kneeled down again, kissed the ground, and laid his head upon the ground, and taking me by the foot, set my foot upon his head. This, it seems, was in token of swearing to be my slave forever” (Defoe 1965: 206-207).

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model for the fictional writer was of the same opinion when he coloured the story of Alexander Selcraig (or Selkirk), and tried, in Coetzee’s opinion, to fashion the story of his adventuresome hero to resemble the biblical model of the story of disobedience, punishment, repentance and salvation (Coetzee 2001: 19) — all that, of course, in order to make the story more interesting. Foe claims that the island as presented by Susan lacks chiaroscuro and that it is too static and invariable from beginning to end. On the other hand, Susan argues that the disturbing shadow in the book is the story of Friday’s amputated tongue and she demands that the voice of this unfortunate character, treated by Coetzee’s Cruso no better than by Crusoe, be restored or given back to him by the power of art (Coetzee 1987: 118). We do not know who mutilated Friday, but he would have remained an overwhelmingly obvious figure in his muteness if not for the curiously presented process of Susan’s maturation, leading to the rejection of her claims to speak out in his name — and if not for the fact that most of novel enthusiasts probably do not read postcolonial academic criticism. The apocryphal nature of the relationship between Foe and The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures… is not as easily certified as in the case of works mentioned earlier. Most of all because Coetzee (who deconstructs its foundation of events and ideology and takes the opportunity to problematise the question of the authorship of this canonical book) creates the impression that he presents the history of how the book came into being, which requires constant references to what we know about it and to the discourses and systems of representation that make it up — but at the same time, and partly for the same reasons, Coetzee questions the significance of such references. Another vehicle of destruction turns out to be the fact that the writer has been assigned the role of one of the protagonists of the novel, which opens it up onto the problems very remote from those that occupied both the writer and the main hero of the pre-text — like, for example, the introduction of a female character, absent in Defoe’s work and equally vague as the writer, that is true, but also convincing enough, so that the chronicle of her experience conceals the “male” values affirmed in the pre-text. Inevitable reification combined with the attempts at the representation of Otherness deprived of its own voice, the contribution of the English novel to the execution of the imperial project and a new question, hitherto absent from this discourse, namely the question of the conflict between Western feminism and postcolonial criticism — these problems have been revealed in the interpretations of the Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, a novel with a clear apocryphal message but constructed in such a way that the hints which allow us to discover the identity of its main protagonist, i.e., to recognise the model text, are disclosed rather late in the book. The protagonist is the “madwoman in the attic”, the heroine of the Gothic plot of Jane Eyre, the wife of Edward Fairfax Rochester, Bertha Mason:

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the frightening, beastly, crazy Creole.7 That is how Charlotte Brontë portrays her — as a crack, a fissure, revolting in its mysteriousness and strangeness in Jane’s orderly, coherent, chronological story which moves systematically from one event to the other, and which (although told from a distant temporal perspective) is filled with strong emotions and is extremely clear. The function of this story is the development and self-cognition of the female subject, the presentation of the process of this character’s maturing towards intellectual and (very unusual in her patriarchal world) existential independence, which she gains thanks to such virtues as intelligence, the desire of knowledge, energy, diligence, bravery and stamina.8 Rhys’s novel, however, is narrated mainly by Bertha, though also by the young Rochester9 — the narrative is discrete, full of gaps, understatements and temporal inversions, neurotic like both these characters, and it emphasises the unreliability of the medium used to organise our experiences and tame reality when this medium is employed by a weak, injured subject, uncertain of her own role in the world, of her cultural identity and purpose, and the surrounding reality changes so radically that one can only register the symptoms of its continuing disintegration. The above remark refers mainly to Bertha, unable to achieve such autonomy as Jane did, although we can see certain indications of unstable symmetry between their fates in spite of the fact that they were growing up in completely different conditions (the contrast between Caribbean “barbarity” and English social order has been strikingly exposed in Wide Sargasso Sea). When Bertha is mentioned in the interpretations of Brontë’s novel it is usually only as Jane’s shadow: as the symbol of the dark side of her nature, of tamed rebellion, subdued sexuality. Gayatri Spivak was probably the first to notice the connection between this character’s triumph (her marriage to Rochester might be considered its much desired highpoint) and the necessity to remove, silence and physically destroy the mad wife of her lover. And although she is a white descendant of European colonisers of the Caribbean, in Spivak’s opinion the state of barbarity or beastliness to which she returned because of her madness, and the fatal influence of the “still-non-human” world in which she was raised, allow us to con7

8

9

This character was recalled by S. Gilbert and S. Gubar in the title of their famous book The Madwoman in the Attic. The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth Century Literary Imagination (London 1979), and she was made the figure of rebellion of women’s literature of the times, silenced by the dominating narratives of men. The vital change in her social status, made possible by the miraculous finding of her noble family and large inheritance, would be rather an unexpected reward for Jane’s independent efforts in such an interpretation, not one of the means of completing this individualistic project. A short fragment that relates the story of Grace Pool, Bertha’s custodian at Thornfield Hall, performs the function of a prologue to Part Three of the novel and indirectly informs the reader about moving the action from the Caribbean to England.

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sider her to be the representative of all the Others inhabiting this world, characteristic for the imperial and colonial discourse of the West, assimilated by Brontë. Ergo: the women of the West, including literary characters admired by Western feminists, carried out their individualistic emancipatory projects at the cost of mute women of the “Third World”. The opportunity of letting them speak, which was not fully explored (and of rejecting the privilege of representation which tames them) was discerned by Spivak in the aforementioned novel by Jean Rhys (Spivak 1985: 244, 246-254). But the problem is that the unquestionable humanity, one’s “own” voice that could not be squeezed into the confines of postmodern political correctness, though undoubtedly human, was supposed to be Bertha’s and was regained by her, or rather Antoinette, which is her real first name, and not by any other character “excluded from discourse”. Her road to madness in Wide Sargasso Sea is the main object of representation. Of course, in her story a very important part is played by extremely difficult, complex relations with former slaves (the events recalled in the novel had taken place in Jamaica, a few years after slavery was abolished in the British colonies), relations that are full of hostility, especially on the part of the slaves, and of ambiguous feelings that Antoinette has for them. And although the portraits of the representatives of other races and cultures are jam-packed with colonial stereotypes, adopted by the narrator (like Jane’s story is full of class and caste stereotypes), they surely cannot be treated like bona fide new, postcolonial clichés, as described in Spivak’s analysis. That is because Rhys indirectly thematises a problem of which nineteenth century authoresses were not aware. Moreover: a character built of totally exploited literary clichés may be considered, for example, Christophine, Antoinette’s black nanny who adamantly stays with her “owners” no matter what happens — but one cannot forget that it is Christophine who in Rhys’s world is probably the only truly free person and that it is she who suggests to her ill-fated charge that she should take a real road to freedom from patriarchal oppression. Antoinette, however, fatally rejects this plan.

*** Reading these remarks one might get the impression that the critical project inscribed in some of the apocryphal works cited above does not stimulate any new ideas but can be merely reduced to the reworking of leading feminist slogans and postcolonial theories. Such an impression is not completely off target, although it is probably at least partly the result of the hasty style of the project’s presentation. However, the fact that certain literary texts (that use forms and means typical for them, for example those which the apocrypha offer) only illustrate given theoretical discourses and augment their critical influence on the traditional discourse, does not automatically lead to the weakening of the subversive potential of these

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texts. And that is because such potential can be found most of all in the attractiveness of the many literary ways of practising subversion and sabotage. Translated by Maciej Świerkocki Bibliography: Adelman Janet (1992), Suffocating Mothers: Fantasies of Maternal Origins in Shakespeare’s Plays, “Hamlet” to the “Tempest”, Routledge, London. Atwood Margaret (1992), Good Bones, Coach House, Toronto. Atwood Margaret (2005), The Penelopiad: The Myth of Penelope and Odysseus, O. W. Toad Ltd, Toronto. Bakhtin Mikhail Mikhailovich (1981), Epic and Novel, In The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, ed. Michael Holquist, trans. by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist, University of Texas Press, Austin. Bakhtin Mikhail, Medvedev Pavel (1985), The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship: A Critical Introduction to Sociological Poetics, trans. by A.J. Wehrle, Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA. Coetzee John Maxwell (1987), Foe, Viking, New York. Coetzee John Maxwell (2001), Daniel Defoe, “Robinson Crusoe”, In Stranger Shores. Literary Essays, 1986-1999, Viking, New York. Defoe Daniel (1965), The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Penguin Book’s, London. Gilbert Sandra, Gubar Susan (1979), The Madwoman in the Attic. The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth Century Literary Imagination, Yale University Press, New Haven. Haasse Hella S. (2002), Niebezpieczny związek albo listy z Daal en Berg, transl. by A. DehueOczko, Warsaw. Jardine Lisa (1983), Still Harping on Daughters: Women and Drama in the Age of Shakespeare, Harvester Press, Brighton. Jardine Lisa (1996), Reading Shakespeare Historically, Routledge, London and New York. Mrozowicki Michał (2000), Wersje. Inwersje. Kontrowersje. Szkice o prozie Michela Tourniera, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego, Gdańsk. Spivak Gayatri Chakravorty (1985), Three Women’s Texts and the Critique of Imperialism, “Critical Inquiry”, nr 1. Szajnert Danuta (2000), Mutacje apokryfu, In Genologia dzisiaj, W. Bolecki, I. Opacki, eds., Wydawnictwo IBL, Warsaw. Szybowicz Eliza (2008), Apokryfy w polskiej prozie współczesnej, Wydawnictwo Poznańskie, Poznań. Tournier Michel (1967), Vendredi ou les limbes du Pacifique, Gallimard, Paris. Updike John (2000), Gertrude and Claudius, Knopf, New York. Veyne Paul (1998), Ostatni Foucault i jego moralność, transl. by T. Komendant, ”Literatura na świecie”, nr 6.

Could We Save Ourselves From the Past? Alternate Histories and Uchronias as Literary Apories of Politics and Historical Knowledge Natalia Lemann* Abstract The paper discusses the genres of alternate history and uchronias, and their subversive potential as a literary aporia of politics and of the historical knowledge. The Point of Divergence as a principium of the genre is the primary way of criticising history, understood as the past that has actually happened. Authors of alternate history reject the past, choosing plausible historical worlds instead, because the actual history is unsatisfying, traumatic and painful for them. Alternate histories are highly politically involved, as the choice of the POD uncovers the authors’ dreams about the past; for instance, by making the history of their own country or nation more successful and heroic than it actually was. It is shown that the narration about the past in the alternate history genre depends on the political and generational experiences of the authors. As an example, the editorial series “Zwrotnice historii” [“The Switching Points of History”], published by Narodowe Centrum Kultury [National Cultural Centre] in Warsaw, is analysed. The series comprises among others: M. Parowski, Burza. Ucieczka z Warszawy `40 [The Storm. Escape from Warsaw`40] and M. Wolski, Wallenrod. These novels were created by writers who experienced the times of communism and censorship. As a result, nostalgia, essentialism, nationalism and the topos of “raising spirits” prevail there, the latter known in the Polish literature during the age of Partitions of Poland. On the other hand, Polish writers of the younger generation, such as Jacek Dukaj (Lód [Ice]; Xavras Wyżryn) and Szczepan Twardoch (Wieczny Grunwald [The Eternal Grunwald]), tend to disdain nationalistic myths and to criticise heroes of Polish history such as Józef Piłsudski. It is also interesting to notice that authors originating from countries who won the World War Two prefer to criticise modern society, especially by inventing alternate scenarios of losing the Second World War (P. K. Dick The Man in The High Castle; R. Harris, Fatherland), or by disavowing Christian churches and Christian religions (and sometimes other religions too) — P. Pullman, His Dark Materials; K. Amis, The Alteration; J. Inglot, Quietus. The Glory of the Empire by Jean D`Ormesson, belonging to the uchronia genre, is an example of a general critique of the past, combined with the capability of its scholarly viable and credible reinventing; D`Ormesson created a historical utopia built of archetypical, common historical plots. To conclude, it is discussed whether the alternate history could be a convoluted, paradoxical way to restore historical facts as foundations of the academic history. Whatever the answer, this genre, making us see ourselves in the false mirror of alternate histories, forces us to become more critical about the past as well as the present. * Institute of Contemporary Culture, University of Lodz, ul. Franciszkańska 1/5, 91-431 Łódź e-mail: [email protected]

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The title question seems to be paradoxical as well as perverse. How is it possible to protect ourselves from the Past, or how can History be tampered with? After all, History should be understood as a closed period of time, to which we do not have direct access. However, the question becomes significantly less paradoxical, if asked in the contexts of methodological changes in historical scholarship as well as the meaning of the historical process and the philosophy of history. All those changes led to validation of counterfactualism (Fergusson 1997; Hellekson 2001; Black 2008; Demandt 1999; Samsonowicz, Sowa, Osica 1998; Ajnenkel, Osica, Sowa 2005; Wieczorkiewicz, Urbański, Ekiert 2004) and its literary-derived form: alternate histories. This literary genre, highly politically involved and with a strong subversive potential, is used to criticise history, society and governmental or religious organisations. If we agree with the axiom (thesis?) that literature is always political, all the more shall we agree that alternate history is a politically involved genre. As it will be demonstrated below, this subversive and critical potential is one of the genre`s foundations. Alternate histories criticise the res gestae history level, understood as the past that has actually happened. Their authors reject the past, choosing plausible historical worlds instead, since for them the actual history is unsatisfying, traumatic and painful. They also disavow the rerum gestarum level of history as science, discarding the idea of historical truth preserved in historical sources or in methodological procedures. It is commonly accepted that one of the mainstays of the 20th-century humanism was the linguistic turn, which undermined a dogma of modern historiography — the status of primary historical sources as depositaries of truth and proven authenticity. In the middle of the 20th century this way of thinking changed radically. The source was no longer seen as a neutral medium, and history started to be understood as a type of narration, a literary creation and not a ”hard objective science” any more (White 1973). The historian is no longer the person who can “show what essentially happened” (wie es ist eigentlich gewesen) (Ranke 1874, qtd. in Grabski 2003:467-487]. Grzegorz Dziamski maintains that the 19th -century historical objectivism was a kind of methodological aberration, and not the ”scientific ideal” as thought before. Dziamski wrote: “(...) the devastating effects of this false method show in later periods and cause a new crisis, deeper than the first one. From the methodological point of view it seems that objectivity historicism in the end of the 19th century was the cure for the Romantic-Enlightenment crisis. It seems that fears of a new ’false method’ paralysed all attempts to overcome the 19th/20th — century crisis” (1995). Now, when philosophy of science has worked through the idiographic and narration problems, the consciousness of inviolability of the historical events seems to be the last bastion of academic history. It is founded on the faith that historical facts are constant, whereas the interpretation thereof is, or even ought to become, the subject of academic discussions. But in

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the meantime, even this “last bastion” — bastion of “King Fact” — is beleaguered not only by alternate histories writers, but even by historians themselves. Some of them find counterfactualism in history very useful, among other tactics in academic teaching, as it increases students` consciousness of the historical process and makes them think about issues such as necessity and coincidence. As a matter of fact, counterfactualism has been present in history since Antiquity. Already the Roman historian Titus Livy considered what would have happened if Alexander the Great had led his army to Rome (cf. Titus Livy http://www.gutenberg.org/ files/10907/10907-h/10907-h.htm#book9). At present, several historians claim that the picture of history is incomplete without unrealised historical scenarios, and “historiography is, on the one hand, a record of peoples` experience of the world (history experience), and, on the other hand, a cultural projection of possible historical worlds” (transl. by N. L) (Pomorski 2004). The very principium of the alternate literary history genre, the POD — point of divergence — shows/proves that history actually is a projection of historically possible worlds (Divers 2002; Lewis 1973, 1986; Goodman 1978; Martuszewska 1992, 2001; Łebkowska 1998; Szubka 1995; Jaskóła, Olejarczyk 2002). The term refers to the starting point for the extrapolation of possible and postulated outcomes of historical events. POD may be considered by historians in counterfactual scenarios; it may be also found in the literary narration of alternate histories, a genre traditionally qualified as science fiction. In my opinion, this qualification is a largely unfounded simplification; unfortunately, any further analysis of this problem is beyond the scope of this study. Therefore, I would only like to point out1 the importance of this issue for further research. The shape of possible worlds is a consequence of crucial events, i.e., POD, which are considered and extrapolated. An editorial series of Polish alternate histories, published by Narodowe Centrum Kultury [National Cultural Centre] in Warsaw, is titled “Zwrotnice historii” (‘Switching Points of History’). The latter is, in my opinion, the exact equivalent of the English term ‘point of divergence’.2 More interesting than only marking the crucial events is the “identification of the hidden springs of the historical process” (Niewiadomski, Smuszkiewicz 1990: 300), or, using the words of the alternate history author, Szczepan Twar1

2

For example, it is impossible to label as science fiction novels such as José Saramago’s The History of the Siege of Lisbon (1996), Salman Rushdie’s The Ground Beneath Her Feet (1999), Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America( 2004), or Polish novels: T. Parnicki’s Sam wyjdę bezbronny (I Shall Leave Defenseless) (1976) and Muza dalekich podróży (The Muse of Distant Journeys) (1970), Andrzej Bart’s Pociąg do podróży (TheAttraction toJjourney) (1999), Edward Redliński’s Krfotok (TheIinternal Bleeding) (1998). The first volume of this series is Burza. Ucieczka z Warszawy`40 by Maciej Parowski, Warszawa 2010.

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doch, the “coherent extrapolation of alternate timeline, based on better or worse foundations” (2006:17). The distinction between alternate history and uchronia, in the common opinion synonymic terms, relies on the fact that in the latter the time (historical as well as POD) is not precisely located. The word uchronia is a neologism derived by Charles Renouvier (Renouvier 1857; Claeys 2010: 9-12.) from the brilliant pun of Thomas Morus utopia (Greek ”the good place” eu-topos and simultaneously ”the not-land”, u-topos). Uchronies, more than alternate histories, tend to migrate towards a free play of imagination. A historian using counterfactualism in research has to stay equally or even more logical than his traditional colleague (cf. Black 2008:33-67; Demandt 1999:21; McCullagh 1998:156172), whereas authors of uchronies can be much more imaginative in their utopian creations of possible worlds. One of the dogmas of the historical science is constant watchfulness and distrust of the sources. The historian always ought to ask what had been passed over in silence, for whom the author of those very sources was writing and who paid him for his work. It seems that vigilance must be displayed by the alternate histories scholar as much or even more, as this genre is highly emotive, politically involved, censorial to the past and full of nostalgic dreams of both writers and scholars. Friedrich Nietzsche, one of the fathers of “the school of suspicion” (Ricoeur 1970: 31-36, Markowski 1997: 202) demonstrated history’s dry dogmatism by reminding that the historian should not mistake faith in proper historical reconstruction of the past for his own ambitions and dreams. Historians have to abandon their fear of devotion to the truth and of objectivism. Vital in historical research are “mistake and lie” (Markowski 1997: 202), both showing that the scholar’s perspective is always subjective, the historian always choosing the scenario corresponding with his wishes and/or dreams. Those dreams, as will be proven below, play a prominent role in the creation of alternate scenarios, both literary, in alternate history novels, and academic, in counterfactual analysis. Paul Valėry claimed that history, always willing to become “vitae magistra”, was in fact “the most dangerous product of intellectual chemistry. Its abilities are perfectly known. It spins the dreams, intoxicates nations, creates their false memories, exaggerates their reactions, preserves old wounds, torments them in dreams, leads to the madness of magnitude or to the delirium of persecution. History makes the nations annoying, full of vanity, unbearable and lordly. History justifies everything that one wishes for” (Valéry 1931:63-64). All the more powerful are perils of history in possible worlds of alternate histories, the genre itself allowing for almost arbitrary “spinning of dreams” and of “the will of power”, to use once more Friedrich Nietzsche’s words. It is important to notice that critical opinions come from within the criticised historical reality. According to Grzegorz Dziamski, “The idea of subversion relies on emulation, on identification with the criticised object, and then on a delicate

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displacement of meanings. The moment of displacement is not always obvious for the public. This is not a straight criticism, but criticism full of ambiguity” (2001). Thus, whereas the “switching point of history” is obvious even for someone with only basic historical knowledge, the act of description of the critical potential towards past, society, future or historical science itself encrypted in alternate history novels is more discreet, constituting the next stage of the relation with the text. Alternate history novels, like the whole historiography, are highly politically and ideologically involved (Black 2008: 68-78; Lemann 2008; 2011a: 339-356; 2011b: 21-38; 2012c: 380-388; 2012c: 123-138); for instance, eagerly disavowing churches and religions. The issue of the religious fantastic subgenre within the alternate history deserves an individual study. Therefore, I will mention only several leading works, such as His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman, Quietus by Jacek Inglot or The Alteration by Kingsley Amis. His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman is an erudite, intertextual oeuvre, full of cultural contexts, denouncing the very rudiments of Christianity and Church institutions. Pullman speculates on, among others, free will problems and on gnosis, and particularly on the understanding of sin as encrypted in world’s creation.3 The leading contexts for His Dark Materials are the works of William Blake and John Milton, to name just a few. The title of the trilogy is derived from the fragment of Milton`s Paradise Lost referring to the most tragic failure of mankind, the original sin. In turn, Kingsley Amis in The Alteration created a gloomy, dystopian parallel world of new Middle Ages, where the Reformation did not take place. England is still subordinate to Rome, “science” is a forbidden word, electricity has been banned. Last but not least, Jacek Inglot in Quietus considered the possibility of amalgamation of Christian mercy and charity with shintoism, resulting in a religion of hate and blood. Alternate history novels also very often criticise, in a nearly “Swiftian” mode, the contemporary society with its beliefs and lazy self-complacency of capitalistic prosperity. It is striking that writers from countries which won World War II created pessimistic, dystopian alternative history scenarios with the Axis Powers as World War II winners (Rosenfeld 2005; Yoke 2003: 49-70; Hardesty 2003: 71-92 Schenkel 2012). The common scenario shows the USA or the United Kingdom occupied and enslaved. The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick, The Sound of His Horn by John William Wall, written under the pseudonym Sarban, Wenn Das 3

By way of comparison, let us mention a recent novel by Philip Pullman, The Good Man Jesus and Scoundrel Christ (Canongate, Edinburgh) published in 2010. It tells the story of Jesus and his twin brother Christ, two people with contrasting personalities. Christ is a calculating person willing to use Jesus’ legacy to build the Church. The book sparked controversy within and outside the Church. It seems that Pullman`s recent novel goes farther in its apocryphal criticism of the catholic church than such well known works as Nikos Kazantzakis` The Last Temptation or The Gospel of Jesus Christ by José Saramago.

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Der Führer Wüsste by Otto Basil or even Plot Against America by Philip Roth, are jeremiads against the political and economic reality in developed Western countries on the one hand, and against the self-complacency of history winners on the other. Contrariwise, writers from countries with more traumatic historical past often prefer the topos of “uplifting the hearts” and create guilt(less) heroic and hegemonic scenarios, trying to heal unsatisfying, traumatic and painful history by bringing it to the ”right” path. Alexander Demandt, a historian who promoted counterfactualism in history, said that “only history in the narrowest sense of the term, expurgated of its most fertile part, contents herself with the real” (1999: 20). In other words, what actually happened can be understood only by consideration of alternatives. Is history the result of coincidence, or is it created by nations or by outstanding individuals? Is it an effect of divine plans, of destiny, of predestination? Is history deterministic or contingent? These basic historiosophical questions are essential in the alternate histories field. Each alternate scenario contains encrypted historiosophy, uncovering the scholar’s/writer’s personality, its dreams, outlook on life and historical complexes. “The thinking subject simulates the unreal history and afterwards chooses from these alternates scenarios which he is able to discern” (Demandt 1999:21). Therefore, the final result of a specific counterfactual operation is always the effect of historical knowledge as well as of individual intellectual outlook and skills, using subjectivism and individual experiences. Thus, numerous historians did not allow for World Wars I and II to break out, and Arnold Toynbee dreamt of Alexander the Great living more than 33 years. As mentioned above, the latter scenario had already been considered in Antiquity by Titus Livy. In Poland, the Kremlinologist historian Paweł Wieczorkiewicz claimed that for Poland at the eve of World War II the real opportunity was an alliance with the Axis Powers, especially with the Third Reich and Adolf Hitler (Wieczorkiewicz, 2006: 56). This scenario was developed by a well known Polish writer, Marcin Wolski as a tribute to Wieczorkiewicz who passed away last year. Wolski`s Wallenrod was published in 2011 by the National Cultural Centre in the aforementioned series “Switching Points of History”. This series is very interesting from the viewpoint of studying the relations between the alternate histories often based on counterfactual scenarios, scholarly historians and the “history policy” (Cichocka, Panecka 2005; Gawin 2009). These connections could hardly be called guiltless, given their extensive links with so-called ”new patriotism”, linked with rightist parties. “History policy”, according to one of its promoters, Marek Cichowski, is “a reinforcement of public discourse of the past by various forms of its institutionalisation” (Cichocki 2009), or, to quote another adherent thereof, Dariusz Gawin, “an instrument of affirmation of collective identity, including most of all, the common past” (Cichocki 2006). History policy is nowadays a popular idea in Polish public debate as much

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as a controversial one, and it has a strong impact on the academic and politic communities, polarising both of them. It turns out that scholars as well as politicians are actually afraid of “institutional support”, which unfortunately could be easily transformed into promotion of a certain eligible version of the past (Kula et al. 1996; Tokarz 2011). Returning to “Switching Points of History” series, it seems that the National Cultural Centre decided to use the popularity of alternate histories novels to create a certain version of historical consciousness. This version is nostalgic, fantasising of hegemony, power and fame, unintentionally uncovering Poland`s deep complexes and its inability to forget ancestral postcolonial traumas, as claimed by Ewa Thompson (2000; 2006). A simple “uplifting of hearts” dispirited by history turns out to be, in fact, a return to what is denied, though with the opposite ethical vector. Could it be the effect of the essential but excessively simplified difference, using an inherited postcolonial mimicry? In any case, the aforementioned series has a strong educational potential, as does the entire alternate history genre (Black 2008: 22-23); hence “Switching Points of History” have an important place in Polish contemporary literature devoted to the past. The series was conceived as a commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the beginning of the World War II and of the 600th anniversary of the Grünwald battle. Therefore, it is not in the least surprising that in novels like Wallenrod or the otherwise brilliant Burza. Ucieczka z Warszawy `40 (The Storm. Escape from Warsaw `40) by Maciej Parowski, history is written in the modus of nostalgia, essentialism, nationalism and of the topos of “uplifting hearts”, known in the Polish literature since the age of Partitions. In those novels, Poland conquers the Third Reich and becomes a world power and a capital of art and culture. Alexander Demandt emphasised the emotional temperature of such scenarios, indicating that “such ideal or terrifying visions satisfy either our need for thrill and sensation or for consolation, which in turn enfeebles our sense of criticism and falsifies the capability to evaluate probability” (1999: 138). Jeremy Black reminds that counterfactualism “has encouraged some of the bitter criticism that has been made. It is all too easy to transform the “what if?” into “If only?” and to employ it to encourage a nostalgic approach that urges, explicitly or implicitly, a rewriting of the past in order to make another version seem not only possible but also legitimate and desirable” (2008: 5). It is not a coincidence, I believe, that alternate histories have been so popular in Poland after 1989. It is precisely the alternate history that became the heir of the sociological fantastic literature, very popular in the 70s and 80s. Those days the latter was used for a veiled and subversive, but bitter critic of the communist system, and for mocking its absurdities, utilising Aesopian language. Nowadays writers keenly create alternative history scenarios, simply because they are allowed to. Finally free from censorship, they introduce desirable “corrections” to history. An interesting commentary might be seen in the unfin-

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ished Goya sketch from 1804-1805, called Truth, Time and History, where “Time is conducting the Truth before History, but the latter seems completely oblivious to them. The mysterious, clearly self-satisfied History is much more interested in its audience” (Fernández-Armesto 1999:15) 4. Returning to Parowski and Wolski, it is important to emphasize that as far as the attitude towards history and hence the type of alternate history writing are concerned, both writers belong to the generation which had experienced the oppression of censorship. Therefore, it is quite comprehensible that now they use freedom to cure past traumas. It should be also noticed that the revanchist mode of alternate history is in fact the eldest one and has a long and fine tradition. The first modern realisation of the alternate history genre is Louis Geoffroy`s Histoire de la monarchie universelle: Napoléon et la conquête du monde (1812-1832), first published in 1836. Geoffroy depicted a world where emperor Napoleon Bonaparte had conquered almost the whole world, defeated the Russian and enslaved England. Such fictive scenarios illuminate the truths within Michel Foucault`s statement about history as the product of the power/knowledge discourse and a servant of ideology “belonging to the winners” since “our past is always an invention of our present” (Foucault 1972: 122). It is striking that that not only Poles, such as Jacek Komuda,5 reach for the scenarios of the Golden Age Poland in times of the Jagiellonian kingdom and the period of free elections (16th-18th centuries). An American writer, Alan Dean Forster wrote a short story Polonaise (Forster 1975: 164-175) in which he presented an alternate history of Golden Age Poland as the most powerful state in the world thanks to the Polish political system, specifically the free election of the king. This powerful, politically and economically, strong Poland, the world’s leader and model for the rest of mankind, had never been partitioned, and even brought down Hitler’s Third Reich. This vision seems truly splendid, but it is doubtful whether it 4 5

This sketch could be understood as an allegory of historical knowledge, and had been utilised by Jeremy Black as a cover of his book, The Curse of History (Social Affairs Unit, London 2008). Jacek Komuda, is the most famous Polish ”neosarmatic’ writer”although he has not written alternate histories. Komuda is enamoured with Poland of the gentry state era and with its idea of “golden freedom”. He usually comes to fantasy conventions wearing the Old Polish split-sleeve overcoat, ”kontusz”, and a characteristic coiffure, high-cut the at the back. Though not an outstanding writer (to put it mildly), Komuda has numerous fans. Cf. J. Komuda, Opowieści z Dzikich Pól, Lublin: Fabryka Słów 2002, 2004), Wilcze gniazdo (Lublin: Fabryka Słów 2002), Diabeł Łańcucki (Lublin: Fabryka Słów 2007). The best proof of Komuda`s nationalism, his historical revanchism and nostalgic yearning for a supreme position of Old Poland may be found in the series Orły na Kremlu (The Eagles in Kremlin), composed into a three volume novel Samozwaniec (The Usurper) (Lublin: Fabryka Słów, 2009-2011), taking place during the so-called Dymitriads.

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is possible, especially for Poles, to read this short story without an overwhelming sense of irony as well as permanent Bakhtinian grotesque. The emotional temperature of such alternate scenarios curing “sick history” is extremely high and, at the same time, it is also very informative of the historical and political consciousness of the writer, thus becoming, via Stephen Greenblatt, a testimony of the mentality of its time as well as an expression of New Historicism. Only a few writers are able to oppose the “uplifting hearts” mode introduced by Henryk Sienkiewicz. Symptomatically, it is especially the young generation, such as Jacek Dukaj (born 1974) and Szczepan Twardoch (born 1979), all of them having debuted after the 1989, who succeeded in refuting the traditional consoling scenarios. In this respect, a novel by Szczepan Twardoch Wieczny Grunwald. Powieść zza końca czasów (The Eternal Grünwald. The Novel from Beyond the End of Times), published by National Cultural Centre in the “Switching Points of History” series, turns out extremely interesting. It is arguably the best work in the whole series (so far consisting of seven volumes). Wieczny Grunwald was as one of the works commemorating the 600th anniversary of the Grünwald battle. However, it must have brought a bitter disappointment to those expecting a heroic, maybe even revanchist narration. Twardoch, coming from a sociological background, wrote a deeply satirical, critical and pessimistic novel, uncovering the traps and the disastrous stereotypicality of essentialist thinking about nationality and history. At the same time, Wieczny Grunwald is profoundly historiosophical, as Twardoch adopted an innovative perspective, looking from beyond time, after the end of history (Fukuyama 1992). In his novel he functionalised such fundamental historiosophical issues as periodicity of time, predestination, fate of the individual in history, repeatability of events, determinism, Christian eschatology encrypted in history, the “end of history” idea etc. It is a science fiction novel; hence Twardoch was able to materialise the Polish and German “Volksgeister”, criticising/caricaturing the common, stereotypical belief that their principium is the Eternal Grunwald (Wieczny Grunwald/Ewiger Tannenberg), i.e., the necessity for an eternal battle/war of two hostile nations recurring again and again in endless alternate scenarios and in a myriad of parallel universes. The main protagonist Paszko, an illegitimate son of the Polish King Casmir the Great, is the unwanted offspring of his two fatherlands, or, more precisely, his Fatherland Poland, and his Motherland Germany, while in common opinion Poland is symbolised by the Mother, and Germany by the masculine element, the Father. Moreover, the Polish ”Volksgeist” is called Motherland, “The Mother Poland” while the German one is named Blut — Blood. Paszko is a schizophrenic hybrid, a mongrel, with a personality reminding of Teodor Parnicki’s protagonists. Unfortunately, any deeper analysis of this parallel is beyond the scope of this paper, and will be presented separately.

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Paszko, like an earlier Twardoch`s character, Joachim von Egern (nota bene also present in Wieczny Grunwald), is a “metahistorical being (…). History in each second is divided into parts, into branches. This is my hell, I am always living in the wrong times, entangled in all revolutions and wars” (Twardoch 2005:194). A similar fate is experienced by Paszko, leading his postmortem existence, which duplicates the archetypical scenario of executioner and victim. This postmortem life is significantly different from the real, terrestrial one, completed on the battlefields of the historical Grünwald. Paszko seems to be a marionette of history, a puppet in the hands of truly Dantean allegories of Polish Mother and German Blut. The basic, essential difference between Poles and Germans turns out to be so important, that in the novel both nations do not even belong to the same species. “And we are different in everything. They built black castles pointing at the sky, whereas we built manors and castles from warm sandstone.6 (…) Them Germans have females, human and aantrophic, we Poles do not have females, because the only Polish woman is the Polish Mother whom we serve and who is the fusion of all Polish genes whenever they existed. She is the mother, sister and wife of us all and her cunt is the only one we desire. Even the whole country looks completely different: theirs is arranged with a masculine hand into a pattern of signs and symbols” (Twardoch 2010: 110-111). Seen from beyond the end of times and beyond billions of branches of the historical rhizome — labyrinth, this eternal archetypical fight turns out senseless, and all essential national classifications, so restrictive on the surface, appear doubtful, to say the least. Paszko, migrating between both countries, Poland, represented by and subordinated to Mother(land), and Germany, represented by and subordinated to Blood and Father(land), is only a puppet in the national and historical theatrum mundi, in God’s playground. The distinction female/masculine, breast feeding /blood feeding is fundamental for the “great difference”, the latter being not only a semantic but even an ontological one. The criticism of the Polish national, martyrological mythology is so strongly present in Szczepan Twardoch`s prose that it seems justified to label his novels as contemporary political ones, together with authors such as Marian Pankowski, Dawid Bieńkowski (Biało-czerwony, White-Red) or even Michał Witkowski (Barbara Radziwiłłówna z Jaworzna-Szczakowej). Twardoch could be also compared with such prominent writers as Witold Gombrowicz or Teodor Parnicki, who both discarded Sarmatic fantasies and nostalgia, derived from novels by Henryk Sienkiewicz (Gombrowicz in Trans-Atlantic and Parnicki in I u możnych dziwny). And given that Paszko (like Twardoch himself) is Silesian, it is possible to interpret Wieczny Grunwald as a bitter voice in the political discussion about the ethnical 6

The Polish adage ”budować zamki na piasku”: “to build castles on the sand” is the precise equivalent of the English expression “to build castles in the air”.

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affiliation of Silesians, a debate that has recently divided the already conflicted Polish political scene. Another young Polish writer refusing the use of the “uplifting hearts” modus is Jacek Dukaj. In his alternate history micronovel Xavras Wyżryn it is the Soviets who won the 1920 war. Dukaj destroys many of the nationalistic historical myths. For example, he undermines the idea of the Vistula Miracle, including the “providential” role of Józef Piłsudski in this historical event as well as the concept of a marvellous intervention of Our Lady in Polish history. In must be noted that in 1656, during the Polish-Swedish war (so called “Swedish deluge”), Our Lady of Częstochowa had been crowned the Queen of Poland, because of her alleged pivotal role in the salvation of the nation. In Xavras Wyżryn it is said about Józef Piłsudski: “Were it not for the bravura of this idiot, Józef Piłsudski, perhaps we would withstand and preserve the independence a little longer than twenty months” (Dukaj 2004:35). Dukaj refutes also the idea of Poland as a rampart of Christianity, originating from the Old Polish gentry state. Bitter words addressed to Józef Piłsudski and his myth as a “patria saviour” return in the remarkable novel Lód (The Ice). It is an epic, over 1000-page novel, founded on the idea of “freezing ​​history” as the effect of the Tunguska meteorite collapse in 1908. Poland is still ice-bound in 1924 and a part of the Russian empire. The fact that Dukaj derived the language of the novel and its poetics from the nineteenth and early twentieth century literature results in a wide range of intertextual references. Within the field of interpretative possibilities (I use this word because the author repeatedly states his belief that academic reflection on his work is like solving the Rorschach test, in which everyone sees their own projections:Dukaj, Winiarski, 2007/2008: 133-142), there are: The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann (the psychomachy motif in the form of the discourse between Settembrini and Naphta to Castrop, here a truly polyphonic discussion of the divine plan as well as of the chaos of history on the Trans-Siberian Express, the structural equivalent of the sanatorium in Davos, Switzerland), Homer’s Odyssey (Telemachus and Benedykt searching for their fathers), Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie (the murder committed on the Trans-Siberian Express and the conversation about the rules of constructing crime stories between Benedykt and Elena Muklakiewiczówna), Anhelli by Juliusz Słowacki, and many others. The subversive evocations of an angel travelling through the snow desert of Siberia and the exploitation of quotations from Słowacki`s Anhelli is for Dukaj an opportunity to undermine the messianism and the idea of suffering of Poles in Siberia. In fact, in the world created by Dukaj, Poles living in Siberia did perfectly well in the economic sense. It also turns out that the writer’s opinions are not as far from the truth as wished by the adherents of Polish messianism and martyrdom, as proven by the extensive bibliography supplemented to the novel. Dukaj invokes

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inter alia memoires of the exiles, absent from the Polish historical consciousness, because of their discrepancy with the commonly believed myths. The main protagonist of the novel is Benedykt Gierosławski leaving for Siberia in search for a father he actually cannot remember, who has the power to talk with the Lutys, angels of ice, a power which gives hope to control the course of history. Dukaj states (in Lód, in Xavras and in his interviews) that Poland as such was not at all historically indispensable. He consistently goes against authors uplifting Polish hearts in their subsequent novels, in which Poland defeats Hitler and becomes a power on a global scale: At the beginning, the history in which I was born was for me the most natural of all possible ones — all others are fantastical by definition. Then I started to free myself from these ‘certainties’. Common sense would suggest that we are actually living in a fantastical history. Lately, the history of Poland has been developing along the paths of low probability. Indeed, not only that of Poland — I agree with Richard Pipes that the rise of the Bolsheviks in Russia was a series of lucky coincidences. In general, if one looks at the twentieth-century Europe from a distance, it seems that God or the devil played with marked cards. If, for example, 90 percent of analysts argued that communism would remain in power for many more years — does it prove their stupidity and ideological contamination, or is it perhaps that the history which ultimately materialised was not the most likely of all the possibilities? (Dukaj, Orliński: 2007).

The effect of such thinking in Lód is the scene cited after the memories of Stefan Żeromski in which Pisudski, a terrorist, plays solitaire trying to predict whether he would become the dictator of Poland or not (Grzymała; Siedlecki 1972: 156161). It is interestingthat Parnicki also repeatedly reaches for the scene of playing cards or dice as a metaphor for history as an element of chance. Nota bene, at this very moment Dukaj ironically argues with the famous Polish proscriptive utopia (the vision of glass houses) known from Przedwiośnie (Early Spring) by Stefan Żeromski. In the world created by Dukaj Żeromski wrote a similar novel, but titled Niedoczekania (It Will Never See the Day!). Lód is then an attempt to find general development principles of history, “the physics of history”, except that as befits a SF writer, in the novel it is to be actual physics. In Lód, we find a truly polyphonic presentation of the most important historical and philosophical theories of the nineteenth century. Here, the significant difference between Dukaj and Parnicki in their manner of creating an alternative history becomes evident (Lemann 2012a: 301-319). Dukaj made a conscious artistic decision to construct the fictional world in accordance with the beliefs and ideology of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. The story takes place in the years 1924-1930, although one should also take into account the year of 1908 when history froze. This way, Dukaj, in his historiosophical reflections on human innocence, could retain the innocence of a man uncontaminated by the history of the twentieth century, which in turn is burdened by war, totalitarianism, the Holocaust, the crisis of representation and

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postmodernism. Many critics have accused the writer of a singular historiosophical naïveté (Mizerkiewicz 2007) or excessive emphasis on historiosophical debates. Probably, these critics have not understood the conscious decision taken by the writer. Dukaj reveals that constructing the world of the novel, he “draw[s] upon the method of deep stylisation, that is not so much the author pretending to the reader that the action takes place 80 years ago, but the author going back along with the text to the literature from 80 years prior. First, I am building the role of a pre-first world-war Dukaj and only then, like an actor ‘in character’ I write the book” (Mizerkiewicz 2007). Cutting off the knowledge that came after the period described in the novel is, I think, the result of both the consistent stylisation as well as the aversion to postmodernism and its methodological and literary ideas. Dukaj is aware that the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century was the era of history. It was a time when historiosophical discussions were present in intellectual salons and the subject of interest to all, regardless of their nationality or political views. At that time, people lived by history which was the queen of the humanities. Even Foucault in Of Other Spaces writes: “the great obsession of the nineteenth century was, as we know, history: with its themes of development and of suspension, of crisis, and cycle, themes of the ever–accumulating past, with its great preponderance of dead men and (sic!) the menacing glaciations of the world” (1967). As regards the twentieth century, Foucault sees such an obsession in the category of space and the concept of heterotopia, which is a topic that will reappear in my discussion and will be a “skeleton key” of interpretation. The hundreds-page long reflections on the meaning and purpose of history are necessary in this novel, while the obsession of controlling the historical process through the Lutys, although fantastical, was also very much the content of the era. Dukaj, thus, undertaking the most important historiosophical questions does so somewhat from the knowledge of the nineteenth century. Dukaj accomplished once again creating postmodernist historiosophical reflection by means of using the achievements of philosophy of the period. This refers, of course, to a problem of Kotarbiński’s trivalent logic, essential to this novel and also implying doubt in history and in the power to know the past. Readers of Lód know very well that this part of the novel is the most important as regards the building of the identity of the protagonist. It is ironical, then, that it was the Trans-Siberia part that received the most hostility from the critics. The aforementioned Foucault, describing heterotopias or places cumulating different stages of the palimpsest of history and culture, sees a heterotopia par excellence in the figure of the ship: the boat is a floating piece of space, a place without a place, that exists by itself, that is closed in on itself and at the same time is given over to the infinity of the sea, (…) you will understand why the boat has not only been for our civilization, from the sixteenth century until the present, the great instrument of economic development (I have not

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What the ship was in the sixteenth century, the train was undoubtedly in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries — one of the cornerstones of the experience of modernity (Tomasik 2007). The train is a heterotopia, a place without a place, which accumulates other places and possibilities, while not being any of them itself. On the train, “on the road, when for a short time we circulate among people we will never meet again, we allow ourselves to reveal much more of the truth about us than it is wise and good (...) the truth — that which we do not know” (Dukaj 2007: 77). While on the train, Benedykt, who feels that he does not exist, that he is a false man, adopts a mode of speaking about himself in the logical language of first level, different from the second level commonly used when speaking to others. Benedykt used the passive form (expressed in Polish with the reflexive pronoun się): myślało się, chciało się (“it was thought, it was wanted”). The word, derived from the Heideggerian das Man, is an existence of no specific form, an apparent existence of accepting judgments about oneself given by other people. Das Man is a non-specific, blurry figure who cannot exist fully, who is a cocoon on the way to establish oneself as a necessity. To be captured by “się” is to fall into slavery. And thus, Benedykt, who employs the form, until he reconstructs himself in the meeting with Father Frost, which almost ended in death and leaving out of time, is a man who does not exist, because he is not necessary. Only that reconstruction of self in the face of death and father, evocative of a shamanic sickness, freezes him in some form of being. Gierosławski, addressing Tadeusz Kotarbiński’s trivalent logic (logical sentences are not just truth or false, the third possibility is that to a certain point, some event, they are not entitled to a general category of truth and falsehood), was led to believe that the only certain element is the now, and just as uncertain the future is, so is the past. According to Benedykt’s logic, the past is a place of construction — memory is an uncertain element. After all, people remember different versions of the same event, and it is the memory that makes them real. Just as on the train Benedykt could construct himself based on people’s judgements, so the past can also be constructed, being nothing but a result of the present — it is the present that freezes the past as it pleases. The past, just as the future, is an element of modality — it is subject to conditional mood. “You shall not know the truth about the past — the truth about the past does not exist” (Dukaj 2007: 387); “beyond the truth and falsehood — past and future” (Dukaj 2007: 386); “every uttered word remains with us, whether true or false, while we remember it, an absolute truth for us is that we have uttered it” (Dukaj 2007: 246). What is more, Benedykt says that “the undone is truer than the done​​”( Dukaj 2007: 414). In order for the past to become the history, it must be frozen (Dukaj 2007: 293). This is how history is created! History is the realm

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of fantasy, said Hayden White, a postmodernist. Dukaj had the very same conclusions, reaching, however, to the theory of trivalent logic of the early twentieth century. Only the Lutys live with the inexorable logic of truth and falsehood. The difference between Winter and Summer is the struggle between necessity and possibility, “unitruth” and entropy. Following this logic, in the world of Summer, there is no history, as the truth is never stabilised, nor fully frozen. “We do not freeze” — proclaims the motto of the novel — in our world, the so-called current world, history is impossible — history based on an inviolable truth. A truly fantastical idea of the history industry — calculating events with mathematical precision, which consists in manipulating the forces of Summer and Winter, once again provokes us to pose the already asked questions. What is history — the voice of God through which He communicates with people? An element of pure entropy? Or perhaps it is the man who can make/calculate history? And if so, on what basis, as this is an ideal gateway to totalitarianism, which is no longer accountable even “before God and history”, since history is made without divine powers, if it is an outcome of mathematical precision. Finally, the history from before the fall of the meteorite, the one which was frozen — was it normal or wrong? These are fundamental questions for issues such as the existence of Poland. Is Poland therefore a historical necessity? Probably not, since in 1930, when the novel ends, Poland is still missing from the world map, and Polish soldiers bleed out under foreign flags. Dukaj criticises every kind of national resentments, striving to cure the sick “angel of history” (Benajmin 1974) from idyllic visions of the past. Dukaj`s irony and subversive dissent touched even the linguistic level of Lód. The most significant example is that the nest of Lutys, angels of the Ice, is called Soplicowo, also it is they who preserved history in the state of inability, precisely because of the disposableness and illogicality of Polish independence!7 The lovers of the Polish national epos Pan Tadeusz by Adam Mickiewicz have a thrill of horror! To conclude my deliberations, I would like to show that the term uchronia did not find its way to the title of this paper only for rhetoric’s sake. For this purpose, I will discuss the famous, but lately forgotten8 Jean D`Ormesson`s novel The Glory of the Empire (1971). This novel once caused a lot of commotion even amongst academic historians. It is interesting that not only common readers, but even professional scholars, fascinated by the perfect Empire, solicitously re-constructed by D`Ormesson out of the obscurity of oblivion, ran to the archives trying in vain to 7 8

It is perfectly known, that Soplicowo is the name of gentry`s manor in which Adam Mickiewicz`s Pan Tadeusz took place. Soplicowo is a symbol of Old Poland, Nobles` Republic and their rituals, cultural patterns and maybe little played-out political power. As shown for instance by the fact that in The Cambridge Companion to Utopian Literature, the work of D`Ormesson has not been mentioned.

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discover documents celebrating the achievements of the emperor Aleksy (Stomma 2008:122). Locating a perfect Empire, ruled by Aleksy, the ideal sovereign (wise, bellicose, ascetic, caring about his subjects) in the Dark Ages, d’ Ormesson actually created a historical utopia (Niecikowski 1974: 139-149), or in other words, an uchronia, built of archetypical narrative plots repeated in historiography. D`Ormesson sewed together an utopian historical patchwork of the ancient Roman Empire, the characters of Alexander the Great, Marcus Aurelius and many others, as the “character of the Emperor Aleksy is most of all the image and reflection of our dreams and our hopes” (D`Ormesson, 1975: 534). And those are inconstant as well as repetitious. This is the paradox, and at the same time, the mythical principle of coniunctio oppositorum. Aleksy is both an archetypical lover, as Romeo, and an ascetic, like the saint Aleksy. He is profligate and virtuous, equitable and brutal, he is Machiavelli’s ideal prince, “the fox and the lion”. He is everyone, the essence of humanity and man’s ability of acting in history, and “everyone should see in him exactly what they want to see” (D`Ormesson 1975: 535). Actually, Aleksy is the incarnation of the amoralistic (Niecikowski 1974: 14) affirmation of life, comprehended as the unreasonable, non-directional momentum, entropic élan vital. If we maintain that history is the non-assessed affirmation of life in all its aspects, then we have to admit that it might be its own antithesis or, perhaps, rather the entropic, essential principle of history. “History is the accidental necessity” (D`Ormesson, 1975: 533). The author gives us the motto for his novel, derived from the Book of Isaiah (43, 18). “Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old.” In accordance with this noble quotation, D`Ormesson states numerous times in his book that the historian himself is actually a God or maybe “the historian is much more powerful than God, because God is only the Lord of the future and the past evades Him. But the historian appears on stage and replaces God. History is a revision of the act of Creation” (D`Ormesson 1975: 478). The writer strongly opposes the understanding of history as “the mother of truth — this idea is astonishing.” Another motto of the novel originates from Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote by Jorge Luis Borges (http://www.danieltubau.com/museo/Borges_PierreMenardAutordelQuijote_eng.pdf). As is well known, Borges` Pierre Menard is a symbol for postmodernistic intertextual re-creation, or mise-en-abyme of textual mazes without the truth. It could be linked with the postmodern philosophy, for example of Hayden White, who argued that “the past is the land of fantasy” (2000: 37). “Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old” and now rephrasing the Isaiah Prophet — I will satisfy hereby your dreams of history and of a better, brave new world9. The world without traumas and without the feeling that the history known to us is sick: sick with ideology, injustice, contingency 9

Obvious reference to famous dystopia Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, 1932.

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and many other inalienable sins. As a matter of fact The Glory of the Empire is actually an uchronia and simultaneously its reverse, an antiutopia of “real” history. Finally, D`Ormesson`s novel is a blow aimed at history, this stunted and politically disavowed creation, unable to create true ideals — history comprehended as a servant of ideologies (Foucault 1972) worn out all its perfection and moral purity in antechambers of subsequent rulers and of political “accidental necessities” and this not once, but many many times (D`Ormesson 1975: 533). It is time to ask the (unanswered, I fear) question, if history in its hitherto existing, well-known form, is still necessary/possible? In the very conclusion of my considerations, I would like to express (with a little shyness and fear) the belief, that paradoxically, the historical fact could regain its proper place thanks to the alternate history genre. In alternate histories, this very fact returns as its own denial, since the informed reader as well as the historian is perfectly aware that “it happened differently”. I believe it could be argued that the alternate history confirms, by means of negation, the status of our current knowledge of the past and history. Historical science might actually turn full circle; departing first from the principle of its scientific character, it turned into narrativism, so now it could be time for a move in the opposite direction — from counterfactualism and lack of faith in the strong status of the historical sources to the “strong facts” category. Maybe alternate histories will be the ones to sober up historians who, long suffering from the undermining of the historical facts, will in turn, shout a non possumus? If Lyotard`s “pagan vision” (Lyotard 1997) assumes that there is no possibility of saying anything new and original, then could it be that only by breaking the bonds with the real world and historical truth one will be able to become original and therefore audible? Maybe the originality expressed by denial of facts confirms this very reality — that facts still exist? Bibliography: Ajnenkel Andrzej, Osica Janusz, Sowa Andrzej, (2005), Alternatywna historia: co by było, gdyby... Bellona, Warszawa. Amis Kingsley, (1976), The Alteration, Cape Ltd, London. Bart Andrzej, (1999) Pociąg do podróży, (The Attraction to Journey), Noir sur Blanc, Warszawa. Basil Otto, (1966), Wenn Das Der Führer Wüsste, Milena-Verlag, Viena. Benjamin Walter, (1974), On the Concept of History. Theses on the Philosophy of History. Gesammelten Schriften I:2. Suhrkamp Verlag. Frankfurt am Main. English trans. By Denis Redmond, On the Concept of History, http://members.efn.org/~dredmond/ThesesonHistory. html. Black Jeremy, (2008), What If? Counterfactualism and the Problem of History, London: Social Affairs Unit, London; Borges Jorge Luis, Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote, http://www.danieltubau.com/museo/ Borges_PierreMenardAutordelQuijote_eng.pdf ds. 4/2010. D`Ormesson Jean, (1975), Chwała cesarstwa, przeł. E. Bąkowska, Czytelnik, Warszawa.

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Demandt Alexander, (1984), Ungeschehene Geschichte. Ein Traktat über die Frage: Was wäre geschehen, wenn ...? (Kleine Vandenhoeck-Reihe 1501). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen: polish translation: (1999) Historia niebyła. Co by było, gdyby...?, przeł. M. Skalska, PIW, Warszawa. Dick Philip Kindred, (1962), The Man In the High Castle, Putnam, New York. Divers John, (2002), Possible Worlds, Routledge, London. Dukaj Jacek, (2004), Xavras Wyżryn i inne fikcja narodowe, Wydawnictwo Literackie, Kraków. Dukaj Jacek, (2007), Lód, Wydawnictwo Literackie, Kraków. Dukaj Jacek, Orliński Wojciech, (2007), Polska z drugiej strony lustra. Jacek Dukaj interviewed by Wojciech Orliński, „Gazeta Wyborcza”, 26th December. Dukaj Jacek, Winiarski Jakub, (2007/2008), Autor po napisaniu książki powinien się zastrzelić. 2007/2008. Jacek Dukaj interviewed by Jakub Winiarski, „Studium” nr 5/6/1, p. 133-142. Dziamski Grzegorz, (1995), Co oznacza formuła „kryzys estetyki”, In: „Kultura Współczesna”, No. 3-4, http://kulturawspolczesna.pl/sites/default/files/artykuly/662.pdf ds. 19.09. 2011. Dziamski Grzegorz, 2001, Wartością sztuki krytycznej jest to, że wywołuje dyskusje i prowokuje do rozmów o wartościach, „Gazeta Malarzy i Poetów”, No. 2-3. Fergusson Niall (ed.), (1997),Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals, Basic Books, New York Fernández-Armesto Felipe, (1997), Truth: A History and a Guide for the Perplexed, St. Martin`s Press, New York. Forster Alain Dean, Polonaise, 1975, In: With Friends Like These, Del Ray Publ. Ballantine1977. Foucault Michel, (1967), Of Other Spaces. Heterotopias, translated from the French by Jay Miskowiec, http://foucault.info/documents/heteroTopia/foucault.heteroTopia.en.html. DW? 5/2011. Foucault Michel, (1972), The Archeology of Knowledge, trans. By. M. Sheridan Smith, Travistock Publications, London 1972. translated from (1969), L`Archéologie du savoir, Editions Gallimard, Paris. Fukuyama Francis, (1992), The End of History and the Last Man, Free Press, Glencoe, Illinois 1992. Gawin Dariusz, (2006) Wspólnota przeszłości, „Rzeczpospolita” 2006, nr z dn. 7 października. Quotation from: http://www.teologiapolityczna.pl/gawin_06_10_wspolnota_przeszlosci, ds. 30.12.2011. Gawin Dariusz, (2009), Polityka historyczna — próba bilansu, „Arkana” No. 6 (90), quotation from: http://www.teologiapolityczna.pl/dariusz-gawin-polityka-historyczna--probabilansu-arcana-nr-90-#p,1 ds. 30.12.2011. Goodman Nelson, (1978), Ways of Worldmaking, Hackett Publishing Company, Indianapolis. Grabski A. F, (2003), Dzieje historiografii, wprowadzenie R. Stobiecki, Wydawnictwo Poznańskie, Poznań. Grzymała-Siedlecki Adam, (1972), Wspomnienia Stefana Żeromskiego ze spotkania z Józefem Piłsudskim w Zakopanem; In: Rozmowy z samym sobą, Znak, Kraków p. 156-161. Hardesty William, (2003), Toward a Theory of Alternate History: Some Versions of Alternate Nazis, In: Classic and Iconoclastic Alternate History Science Fiction, ed. E. L. Chapman & C. B. Yoke, The Edwin Meller Press, New York p. 71-92. Hellekson Karen (2001), The Alternate History. Refiguring Historical Time, The Kent State University Press, Ohio&London.

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Inglot Jacek, (2011), Quietus, Serie „Zwrotnice historii”, NCK, Warszawa Komuda Jacek, (2002), Wilcze gniazdo Fabryka Słów, Lublin. Komuda Jacek, (2002, 2004), Opowieści z Dzikich Pól, Fabryka Słów, Lublin. Komuda Jacek, (2007), Diabeł Łańcucki, Fabryka Słów. Lublin. Komuda Jacek, (2009-2011), Samozwaniec Fabryka Słów, Lublin. Kosmologie światów możliwych, red. J. Jaskóła, A. Olejarczyk, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, Wrocław 2002. Lemann Natalia, (2008), Epicka historiografia we współczesnej prozie polskiej, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, Łódź 2008. Lemann Natalia, (2011a), Czy można uchronić się od przeszłości?- historie alternatywne i uchronie jako literackie aporie polityki i wiedzy historycznej, „Zagadnienia Rodzajów Literackich”, T. LIV, No. 2 (108), p. 339-356. Lemann Natalia, (2011b), PODobna historia, czyli rzecz o historii alternatywnej i jej miejscu we współczesnej historiografii i literaturoznawstwie, in: Exploring the Benefits of the Alternate History Genre/ W poszukiwaniu pożyteczności gatunku historii alternatywnych, red. Z. Wąsik, M. Oziewicz, J. Deszcz-Tryhubczak, Philologica Wratislaviensia: Acta et Studia. Vol. 5, Wydawnictwo Wyższej Szkoły Filologicznej we Wrocławiu, Wrocław p. 21-38. Lemann Natalia, (2012a), AntiPODes of History? „Muza dalekich podróży” by Teodor Parnicki and “Lód” by Jacek Dukaj as Two Diffrent Models od Approaching Alternative History, in: (Re)Visions of History in Language and Fiction, ed. By D. Guttfeld, M. Linke and A. Sowińska, Cambridge Scholar Publishing, Cambridge 2012, p. 301-319 Lemann Natalia, (2012b), Czy historia może być skandalem? Rzecz o historiach alternatywnych i ich sporach z przeszłością/teraźniejszością, w: Skandal w kulturze europejskiej i amerykańskiej, red. B. Płonka-Syroka, M. Dąbrowska, J. Nadolna, M. Skibińska, seria: Tabu-Trend-Transgresja, t. 1., DIG, Warszawa, p. 123-138. Lemann Natalia, (2012c), Historia alternatywna w: Słownik rodzajów i gatunków literackich, pod red. G. Gazdy, PWN, Warszawa p.380-388. Lewis David, (1973),Counterfactuals, Blackwell, Oxford. Lewis David, (1986), On Plurality of the Worlds, Oxford. Lyotard François, (1997), Kondycja postnowoczesna: Raport o stanie wiedzy, przeł. J. Migasiński, M. Kowalska, Aletheia, Warszawa. Łebkowska Anna, (1998), Fikcja jako możliwość, Universitas Kraków. Markowski Michał Paweł, (1997), Nietsche, filozofia interpretacji, Universitas, Kraków. Martuszewska Anna, (1992), Powieść i prawdopodobieństwo, Universitas, Kraków. Martuszewska Anna, (2011, Światy (nie)możliwe powieści, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego, Gdańsk. McCullagh Behan V., (1998), The Truth of History, Routledge, New York. Metafizyka w filozofii analitycznej, red. T. Szubka, Wydawnictwo UMCS, Lublin 1995, Mizerkiewicz Tomasz, (2007), Dwuznaczny urok historiozofii, http://www.artpapier. com/?pid=2&cid=1&aid=1197. Niecikowski Jerzy, (1974), Utopia historyczna D`Ormessona, In: „Literatura na świecie” No. 4, p. 139-149. Niewiadomski Andrzej, Smuszkiewicz Antoni, (1990), Leksykon polskiej literatury fantastycznonaukowej, Wydawnictwo Poznańskie, Poznań.

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Parnicki Teodor, (1970), Muza dalekich podróży (The Muse of Distant Journeys), PAX, Warszawa. Parnicki Teodor, (1976), Sam wyjdę bezbronny (I Shall Leave Defenseless), PAX,Warszawa. Parowski Maciej (2010), Burza. Ucieczka z Warszawy`44, Narodowe Centrum Kultury, Series: Zwrotnice Czasu, Warszawa 2010. Polityka historyczna za i przeciw. Rozmawiają Marek Cichocki, Marcin Kula, Paweł Ukielski, A. Werner, (1996), „Mówią Wieki” nr 8. Polityka historyczna: historycy-politycy-prasa. Konferencja pod honorowym patronatem Jana Nowaka‑Jeziorańskiego, (2005), red. A. Cichocka, A. Panecka, Muzeum Powstania Warszawskiego, Warszawa. Pomorski Jan, Punkt widzenia we współczesnej historiografii, w: Punkt widzenia w języku i kulturze, red. Bartmiński J., Niebrzegowska-Bartmińska S., Nycz R. Wydawnictwo UMCS, Lublin 2004, s.11-32: http://metodologiahistorii.umcs.lublin.pl/jan.pomorski.bibl. html/PunktWidzeniaWeWspółczesnejHistoriografii. Pullman Philip, (1995, 1997, 2000( His Dark Materials: Northern Lights; The Subtle Knife; The Amber Spyglass, Scholastic Ltd, London. Redliński Edward, Krfotok, (1998) (The internal bleeding), Prószyński i S-ka, Warszawa. Renouvier Charles, (1857), Uchronie. Utopie dans l`histoire. Histoire de la civilisation européenne, telle qu’elle n’a pas été, telle qu’elle aurait dû être, La critique philosophique, Paris. Ricoeur Paul, (1970) Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation. trans. Denis Savage, Yale University Press, New Haven. Rosenfeld Gavril, (2005), The World that Hitler Never Made, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Roth Philip, (2004), The Plot Against America, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston. Rushdie Salman, (1999) The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Joanthan Cape, London. Samsonowicz Henryk, Sowa Andrzej, Osica Janusz, (1998) Co by było, gdyby...: historie alternatywne, Bellona, Warszawa. Saramago José, (1st 1989: eg. trans.1996), The history of the Siege of Lisbon, Harcourt, New York. Schenkel Guido, Alternate History-Alternate Memory: Counterfactual Literature in the Context of German Normalization, Berlin-Vancouver 2012. Stomma Ludwik, (2008), Jak Gorbaczow zabił papieża, In: „Polityka” No. 19 (2653), p. 122. The Cambridge Companion to Utopian Literature, ed. By G. Claeys, Cambridge University Press 2010. Thompson Ewa, (2000), Imperial Knowledge: Russian Literature and Colonialism, Westport, CT and London: Greenwood. Thompson Ewa, (2006), Sarmatyzm i postkolonializm, [In:] „Europa” nr 137. Titus Livy, The History of Rome, trans by D. Spilan & C. Edmonds, IX, 17-19, http://www. gutenberg.org/files/10907/10907-h/10907-h.htm#book9 dw. 12.2011. Tokarz Tomasz, (2011), Koncepcja „polityki historycznej” w myśli konserwatystów polskich, „Kultura i historia”, [@] http://www.kulturaihistoria.umcs.lublin.pl/archives/2468, ds. 4. 1. 2012. Tomasik Wojciech, (2007), Ikona nowoczesności: kolej w literaturze polskiej, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, Wrocław.

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Twardoch Szczepan, (2005), Obłęd rotmistrza van Egern, Fabryka Słów, Lublin. Twardoch Szczepan, (2006), Wiedeń z dykty, ludzie z czasu, „Czas Fantastyki” No. 1 (6). Twardoch Szczepan, (2010), Wieczny Grunwald. Powieść zza końca czasów, NCK, Series Zwrotnie czasu Warszawa. Valéry Paul, (1931), Regards sur le monde actuel, Librair Stock, Paris. Wall John William, (1952), The Sound of His Horn, Peter Davies Ltd, London. White Hayden, (1973), Metahistory. The Historical Imagination in 19-th Century Europe, John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore. White Hayden, (2000), Przedmowa do wydania polskiego, [Preface to Polish edition], In: Poetyka pisarstwa historycznego, red. E. Domańska, M. Wilczyński, Universitas, Kraków. Wieczorkiewicz Paweł, (2006), Sojusz z Hitlerem był lepszy. Z Pawłem Wieczorkiewiczem rozmawia Rafał Pazio, In: „Angora” No. 38, (848), p. 56. Wieczorkiewicz Paweł, Urbański Marek, Ekiert Arkadiusz, (2004), Dylematy historii: nos Kleopatry czyli Co by było, gdyby..., Klub dla Ciebie, Warszawa. Yoke Carl B, (2003), “A Dance of Apes”: Sarban`s “The Sound of His Horn”, In: Classic and Iconoclastic Alternate History Science Fiction, ed. By E. L. Chapman, C. B. Yoke, The Edwin Meller Press, New York, p. 49-70.

The Escape From Castle Tower — Feminist Re-Writing Of Fairy Tales In Polish Prose Since 1989 Magdalena Bednarek* Abstract Re-writing is, as outlined by A. Rich, a way of both criticising the old and building a new order. As a literary technique it is one of the most significant and distinguishable elements of feminist poetics. The manipulation of famous plots, motifs and traditional genres in works of writers such as A. Carter, J. Winterson, M. Atwood show their limitations. Fairy tales and myths of any culture contain beliefs essential to the people inhabiting it and this is the reason their new versions have an important position among other re-written stories. 1989 was a turning point for the presence of this technique in Polish prose. Polish writers (S. Chutnik, K. Dunin, I. Filipiak, Matka Bolka, A. Nasiłowska) in their re-written fairy tales present diverse attitudes to the well-known stories (both to the plot and the genre itself). The writers show different kinds of oppression embodied and caused by the old tales. They also transform the traditional stories in various ways — from stylistic to narrative alterations, from changes in the assessment of characters to acts of modification and contamination of whole plots. All these techniques turn re-written fairy tales (despite the limited number of them) into a significant series of important statements about the Western culture and have inspired a discussion among Polish feminists. * Institute of Polish Philology, Adam Mickiewicz Univeristy, Fredry 10, 61-701 Poznań e-mail: [email protected]

Once upon a time, over the hill and far far away there was a dreary castle with a deep moat, with massive walls and towers reaching the sky. On the last storey of the highest keep, a ruthless King Baj lived. From the unconquered walls one could hear helpless moans of the Princesses tormented by eternal sleep, cries full of despair of the Princes fatigued by the endless climbing on the glass mountain, and the cry of village girls sent for the encounter with a wolf. Thanks to good amplification King Baj also ruled in places where no light comes from a wand but it flows through the wires from a water power station or a nuclear power station, covering long distances by plane, which offers a much more comfortable way to travel than on a goose’s wings or on a magic carpet because you can grab a glass of Martini and stare at moving pictures, as long as the amount of money in your wallet allows you to. No surprise then, that when the King Baj’s lieges realised that the cruel practices were absorbing his attention so much that he ceased looking through the window, and immediately appeared on a tower thanks to storming the palace and using sorcery. How big was their surprise as it turned out that some (though very persuasive) talks was enough to make the King abandon his dishonourable activities, not only started providing the residents of the castle with more interesting (and

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more enjoyable) activities than eternal sleep or encounters with maneaters, but also gave them a little more freedom in managing their time and space. As if that was not enough, by changing his costume (like Orlando) he transformed into a woman, from then on called Bajka who favoured fields of opportunities over dreary castles. Although the convention of a fairy tale requires the action to be set ages ago, or even in mythical ancient times, the story above is neither old, nor universal. Behind the fairytale mask hides a tale of feminist reading and re-writing of traditional folk narratives from the 18th century, which constitute the canon of children’s literature (frequently adapted beforehand ad usum Delphini). The second wave of feminism applied those practices obviously not only to fairy tales but Western literature in general, as well, showing exceptional interest in texts which profoundly shaped its countenance. The works of Angela Carter, Margaret Atwood, A. S. Byatt and Jeanette Winterson are full of intertextual references to classics — The Odyssey, Greeek mythology, Shakespeare’s dramas — and to fairy tales. Interesting plots full of magic play a vital part in this sequence because, as Bruno Bettelheim noted, “since these stories answered the child’s most important questions, they were a major agent of his socialisation” (Bettelheim 2010: 24). Typically though, as Jack Zipes stresses in the example of Beauty and the Beast, of the ladies de Villeneuve and Leprince de Beaumont, as well as Sleeping Beauty by the Brothers Grimm, seemingly the same tales represented different systems of values: the folk theme written by 17th-century female writers propagated not only aristocratic aesthetic taste, but also social relations, whereas the Grimms spun a tale about bourgeoisie virtues (Zipes 2002: 13; 2006: 66). The 20th-century researchers initially found in fairy tales either hidden meanings (psychological or moral), or a relic of ancient, feudal times included in a storyline, a presented world.1 The attention to the class and ideological determinants of those narratives was drawn only in the second half of the 19th century (Zipes 2002, 2006, 1989; Helms 1987). The second wave of feminism subsequently developed this attention substantially, recognizing that “these narratives continue to play a privileged role in the production of gender”, as Christina Bacchilega wrote (1997: 10). Conquering the fairytale keep by feminist criticswas performed in stages, as shown by Donald Haase, (2004: 1-36). Initially, only the poisoned apples were seen in such literary works (Daly 1978: 44) — described as the product of patriarchal culture, which under the cover of innocent stories about family happiness propagated models of femininity and masculinity based on dichotomous and evaluative thinking about gender. Snow White, concerned about keeping the house of 1

The first of those tendencies is represented by the idea of Bruno Bettelheim (2010), the second by — Wladimir Propp (2003).

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the dwarves neat, then in her sleep waiting for the awakening kiss of a prince, was a peculiar antimodel: of a passive woman, weak, closed in a circle of household chores, unaware of her sexuality, deprived of positive bond with her mother.2 This stage of criticism was soon advanced beyond. In the middle of 1970s a now famous book by Marie-Louis von Franz appeared entitled The Feminine In the Fairytales which contained some reinterpretations of traditional fairy tale themes, based in Jungian theory, though representing a feminist perspective3. The Swiss researcher, finding in female fairy tale characters not an image of anima, but of the female ego, showed how Sleeping Beauty as well as other narratives depict women’s psyche and enable us to grasp the culture from the women’s perspective. This trend of thinking about fairy tales was continued by Clarissa Pinkola Estes in Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype (1992), as well as (on the Polish ground, in a popular version) Bajki rozebrane [Undressed fables] by Katarzyna Miller and Tatiana Cichocka. In the stories considered earlier as oppressive to women, these writers perceive some positive aspects. Both Estes and von Franz interpret the motif (also present in Cinderella or Vassilissa the Beautiful) of a girl downgraded to the role of a dogsbody by the stepmother, differently than did the first critics of this fairy tale — not as a story about the rivalry of women over a man in patriarchal culture, but as a narrative about the integration of woman’s psyche, to which the phase of loneliness and reflection are indispensable (Estes 1996: 70-110;von Franz 1976: 143-194). The late 1970s saw a search for an alternative fairy tale tradition, which was, as Elisabeth Wanning Harries writes, “an act of inclusion, an attempt to make readers understand the genre as wider and more capacious than they have supposed, more open to a variety of forms and themes” (2003: 5). Marina Warner, and later Harries, found in fairy tales by Duchess de Beaumont, d’Aulnoy, lady de Villeneuve this long neglected tradition. The long works of these writers, commonly forming an interjected story, full of metaliterary references and digressions, were different from the stories by Perrault or the Grimms — short narrative pieces full

2 3

This kind of attitude toward fairy tales can be found in an exposee by K. Szczuka, K. Dunin or A. Araszkiewicz (Graczyk, Graban-Pomirska 2002). Feminist reinterpretations of fairy tales not always, obviously, originated from psychoanalysis; the combination of various inspirations of critical and also creative thinking about those stories is really visible in R. Bożek’s essay, referring to both Zipes and to Kaschack, and also to Žižek. The end of Little Mermaid by Andersen in this rereading “can mean a realistic but also symbolic death: madness or revival in a new form (…). In this act of self-destruction a destruction of the system of relations in which she had, is included…” (2004: 24).

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of marvels, which had served to define the genre or, frequently, had served as a genre model (Wanning Harries 2003: 16-18; Warner 1995). If the feminist studies on fairy tales show what Bacchilega described as “the dynamic differences and complex interdependence between ‘Woman’ in fairy tales and ‘woman’ storytellers/writers and listeners/readers” (1997: 9-10), then the research by Warner and Harries focuses on the former. Feminist (re)structuring of a fairy tale castellum was often based on scholars’ quests for new story tellers and also for heroines of their marvellous stories. The Virago Book of Fairy Tales by Angela Carter published in 1990 (reissued repeatedly since that time under different titles) is a compilation of fairy tales from all different parts of the world and times, the only thing they have in common being the gender of the protagonists. This British writer explained in the preface that what made her create such a collection was “a wish to validate my claim to a fair share of the future by staking my claim to my share of the past” (Carter 2008: XVIII), indicating that the process of rebuilding of tradition is a project both identity-forming and political. At the same time, it is worth mentioning, Carter was strongly opposed to the feminist mythocreation depicting a forgotten, ideal world of women (Carter 1978), which can be noted in works of some feminist critics and writers dealing with fairy tales. Carter’s anthology, open to all fairy tale narrations about women, was preceded by re-writing of tales marked with definitely stronger criticism4, parallel to the academic practice of reinterpretation. In her essay When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision, Adrienne Rich defined re-writitng as “the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical direction” (1972: 18). Re-writing aims not only at critique and restructuring of literature, what we can draw from Rich’s words, but also results in a renewal of the genre which was noted by Bacchilega: As literary texts, cartoons, movies, musicals, or soap operas, postmodern fairy tales reactivate the wonder tale’s ‘magic’ or mythopoeic qualities by providing new reading of it, thereby generating unexploited or forgotten possibilities from its repetition (1997: 22).

1. Backwards In Polish prose writing attacks on the fairy tale castellum can be found as early as 1970s — in Bajka (1976) by Barbara Czałczyńska as well as in Kołowaty (1971) 4

Re-writing of fairy tales can be understood as an intertextual phenomenon, and even though the analysed works can be interpreted by means of terms of parody or travesty, popular in Polish literary studies, the choice of key terms in this article indicates the tradition in which this article needs to be interpreted — feminist critique and not only the translation of the word ‘re-writing’.

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by Ewa Najwer.5 However, only the 1990s brought on a stronger storm. The person responsible for the first acts of sabotage to the fairy tale canon after 1989 is Matka Bolka (Beata Kozak), her sabotage being committed in the first issue of “Pełnym głosem”.6 The author justifies her projects by echoing the arguments of Western feminists: the concern for the first, therefore the strongest influence, specifically, the books for children. Four traditional motifs, Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel, Little Red Riding Hood, as well as Sleeping Beauty were subjected to “practical feminisation” as an antidote to the image of “passive, silly, not independent women waiting to be saved by a man” (Matka Bolka 1993: 141). In this statement, primarily the socio-cultural role of biological women was criticised. Marriage and caring functions are not the subject of women’s interest in these re-written tales. Rather, importance is placed on discovering their own potential, which is most visible in a tale about Princess from Pionca (Sleeping Beauty), who converted her castle into a private temple of knowledge. She could fulfill her wishes only because the whole kingdom was sunk in a deep, hundred-year sleep. This story (similarly to other reinterpretations by Kozak), departs from the simplest interpretation of a traditional motif, based on the conviction that it is harmful. Instead, Kozak offers a positive aspect of sleep. (This simpler interpretation is characteristic, as I noted above, of the first feminists’ skirmish with fairy tales in the 70s) Beforehand, this motif was analysed by von Franz, who claimed that “time is the essential thing; nothing else can help and all interference is wrong” (1976: 47). Here, in Kozak’s version, such a study is necessary not for an individual, a women who must mature, but for the whole society, or even culture. Other fairy tale heroines created by Kozak, similar to Princess from Pionca, also show initiative, are physically strong, have a hobby which departs from gender stereotypes (motorcycles, karate), and express their own opinion, reason and plans, both personal, and political: Kopciuszek […] nie miała zamiaru wychodzić za mąż tuż przed habilitacją. W końcu jednak […] uradziły, że małżeństwo jednej z nich z królewiczem pozwoli na wprowadzenie rządów kobiecych w całym królestwie. Kopciuszek ujawniła się więc jako właścicielka pantofelka, wyszła za Królewicza i od tego czasu wszystkim kobietom w królestwie miało się pod jej rządami o wiele lepiej, niż przedtem. [Cinderella […] did not have the intention of marrying before habilitation. In the end […] they concluded that a marriage with the prince would allow them to establish women’s rule in the whole kingdom. Cinderella revealed herself as the owner of the shoe, married the prince and from than on all female citizens have lead a better life] (Matka Bolka 1993: 142) 5 6

Such a use of fairy tales can be observed already in Wędrówka Joanny by E. SzelburgZarębina (1935). In this issue also a piece by N. Goerke re-writing a fragment of Genesis, entitled Księga obyczaju, appeared.

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The concept of matriarchy is an alternative to an equally enigmatic fairy tale “and they lived happily ever after.” What is more, a happy ending concerns women; the prince hovers somewhere in the background, not individualised, rather objectified, because limited to his narrative role — the road to the power for the Cinderella. At the same time, in fairy tales he performs the function reserved for women, but being the remains of matrilinear society — what Wladimir Propp wrote about, giving the example of narratives about princesses who give their rivals tasks or riddles. The union of women, matrilinear tradition, and sisterhood are the central categories in re-written fairy tales by Kozak, as seen not only by the finale of the tale about Cinderella, but also her reinterpretation of the stepmother figure. The foster mother does not evoke negative feelings, nor does she take any measures against her stepdaughter. She is therefore quickly accepted in her role of a “new mother”, and the stepsisters become the best friends of the heroine. Such a reinterpretation of the relations between the characters leads to destruction of the dramatic effect of the plot, though it is not important here, and the concept of ideal society. Kozak seems to share Marina Warner’s view that fairy tales show a wishful reality, rather than an actual state of affairs (Warner 1995: XVI). In addition, plot tension is not as important because it is substituted by intertextual tension — and it is a dialogue with hypotext, all changes introduced in the given motif, in the plot, the new context and the values behind it essential. The transformation fairy tales undergo thanks to Kozak’s analysis is based on a trick which can be associated with the convention of the world backwards (especially, because male figures, portrayed with higher or lower dose of irony, are characterised by stereotypically female features: weepiness, helplessness, being prone to gossiping). The structure of society itself, based on oppression, was not abolished. What changes is only the participation of sexes in power: women, due to their virtues, are those who possess power; men are excluded from using power according to the same principle. The question whether this simple act of presenting things backwards is only resentiment, or the need to show the absurdity of the order which discriminates against half of humanity, no matter which half, is a separate issue. It seems that the first intuition is right — it may be supported by repeating dualistic, evaluative division of socio-cultural roles entangled in the problem of power of the protagonists of both sexes. What is more, those texts present thinking about gender that is deprived of categories of difference (characteristic of firstwave feminism): the fairy tale heroines prove that they are not worse than men performing activities culturally attributed to the other sex. On the other hand, the second option is suggested by the situational and verbal humour present in those narratives, including many of the figures characteristic of the second wave of fem-

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inism (the relations between women: mother, friends) connected with such inconsistency in the perception of socio-cultural gender. The fairy tales re-written by Kozak are a kind of electrical reservoir of feminist motifs and symbols which, taking into consideration the fact that we are dealing with literature miniatures, gives the effect of unbelievable density, and, in consequence, builds humour. The pieces are, therefore, intertextual in two ways. The first point of reference would be the tales from the Grimms’ or Perrault’s perspective, the second, however, re-written tales by Western feminists, often addressed to children as a source of antidote to the traditional narratives which are poisoned by patriarchal thinking.7 Each of those relations is created in a different way, by reversing and by thickening. Both are critical in a comparable degree, showing that dichotomous, evaluative thinking may, at best (literary), result in humour, at worst (socio-cultural) — violence. Re-writing in Kozak’s Bajki is not restricted to changes in plot and constructions of figures, but also includes stylistic and narrative alterations. Archaisms are substituted with colloquialisms, and the plot is intertwined with metaliterary comments. Kozak directly challenges the traditional version of fairy tales, which is clearly visible in the story about Little Red Riding Hood. The story reveals itself to be a tale — a fabrication by a drunk forester, in which no reasonable person believes (Matka Bolka 1993: 143). The plot of Cinderella placed in Karoca z dyni (2000) by Kinga Dunin develops in as surprising way as the stories by Kozak. First wishes of a girl are immediately fulfilled by a mother, but when the girl asks for another miracle — a royal coach indispensable to get to the ball — nothing happens. Owing to such construction of the plot, there is an effect of thwarting her expectations; only then, when the character’s, as well as the reader’s, vigilance is relaxed because of the predictable cause of events, there is a twist, a change. The induced passivity, wishful attitude to reality (also by fairy tales) leads to logical consequence — starting from square one. What the female protagonist perceives as surprising, depressing finale may awaken the readers, leading them to write their own, more optimistic and autocratic story. This is, however, a practical and not fiction-making task, reaching beyond the text. Kinga Dunin converted the fairytale plot not only into “the superior metaphor combining all texts” (Warkocki 2002: 119), as the narration opening a collection of articles in various magazines can be understood, but also into a compositional frame for journalistic disquisition. The book begins with a re-narration of the whole story; the following parts, on the other hand, are preceded by the re-written episodes that serve as a metaphor of mechanisms excluding individuals and whole social groups from a variety of areas of public life. In this way, a nonlinear story 7

A characteristic example of this type of work are writings by R. Lake (2002).

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is formed, full of twists, repetitions, alternating generalisations as well as elaborations, plot and axiological alterations, sometimes isolated from the discursive course of deliberation (whenever it takes a narrative form, highlighted graphically by means of light and italics), or penetrating it right through, when it is mentioned immediately in the form of interpretation. Although the works of Beata Kozak and Kinga Dunin may seem similar, their authors take, as it turns out, opposing positions — the former creates optimistic, though utopian and mocking countertales, the latter exaggerates attitudes presented in the traditional narratives, leading them consistently to absurd, though causing the problem presented in a tale to be impossible to notice. It obviously influences the interpretation of a tale as a genre and noticing (or not) the possibility of grasping it — for Kozak this means that for women it is possible to take initiative and to change perspectives, as it has been done in various forms for decades. This kind of attitude towards fairy tales is close to observation by Jack Zipes that they are constantly assigned as a response to changes in the leading ideologies (Sellers 2001: 14). According to Dunin, though, we are still stuck in the same gloomy story regulated by Dominant Discourse, and Cinderella (or whoever the heroine of this story is — a girl mentioned in the title or her sisters) always faces a sad ending: a happy ending is written only for a prince — in the arms of one of the male courtiers. The ending of the story clearly proves that literally presented homosocial desire, which overfills the patriarchal society, excludes women from their share in happiness, power and tales. The fairy tale, therefore, appears to be a strictly conservative genre. Dunin states that “a narrative can take different paths, there can be new knots in the story, new solutions can appear, but if we do not want to fall out of the masterstory, we need to obey the rules that exist in its world” (2000: 9). Such an unaffirmative attitude to fairy tale, but also to its rewriting, probably made Marta Kęsik criticise Dunin’s strategy. The critic, taking into consideration the similarity of intertextual technique used in Karoca z dyni and Sexing the Cherry by J. Winterson, claims that the Polish writer does not stick to “her concept” from the preface, but manipulates the tale voluntarily. She cannot decide on the final version, but creates a story that resembles tangled branches, which includes assets of the story in which Cinderella is excluded, becomes a victim, rebel, beneficiary of the order imposed by DyDo (Dominant Discourse) [Dyskurs Dominujący]. (2001: 80)

The aim of re-writing of fairy tales, however, is not to show our own and proper tale, but rather to present one of its versions, existing side by side, and not instead of different stories tangled around the same plot. In one of her books, Dunin, which may seem unusual, realises this rule of alternation (which usually accompanies, in a more or less direct way, the feminist practice employed also in the works by

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Winterson). Her ability to change the point of view (consequently, focalisation) deserves recognition, especially as it is a narrative incarnation of the idea of Karoca z dyni (Royal couch made of pumpkin) — the opposition to excludability performed in societies which define themselves as democratic.

2.Three faces of Snow White The works of both writers present, in their optimism and pessimism respectively, sharpened visions of gender. This is not surprising as they are a kind of provoking journalistic discourse. It is totally different in the case of Absolutna amnezja (1995) by Izabela Filipiak, Królewna śnieżka (2004) by Anna Nasiłowska as well as Kieszonkowy atlas kobiet (2008) by Sylwia Chutnik.8 Filipiak, Nasiłowska and Chutnik present the attempts to deal with helplessness and passivity of a princess; all three attempt to get rid of or to escape from the tower. As evident in the title,the strongest, relation with a fairytale tradition appears in the tale by Nasiłowska. The fact that the storyteller of Czteroletnia filozofka is pregnant leads to her fantastic metamorphosis, as it makes a mother of two, a working woman aware of her values and aims, start to move in an alternative, fairytale reality — quiet, deserted, idyllic and sentimental. When “w domu jest trochę wolności” [“there is a little bit of freedom in the house”], which is tantamount to solitude, Snow White is born and appears to be the true face of the narrator. Pregnancy makes the woman look inside herself, though not listening to a beating heart of the baby, but to her ego which was deafened by everyday chores and meaningless words. The voices of close relatives distress her because she was accustomed to “szemrania, tego wewnętrznego, cichutkiego, płynącego z wierszy” [“this inner mumble, hushed and coming from poems”] (Nasiłowska 2004: 149-150); similarly the vocabulary brought home from work by the husband, or from school by children, hurts her ears tuned into archaisms. Between poems and cooking soup, with effort (because “gdy miesza się w garnku, trudno nawet przewracać kartki” [“when she is stirring the soup in a pot, it is even difficult to turn pages”]) an inner voice is awakening, and finally, “świat wypełni się głosami, zaśpiewa cały chór” [“the whole world will be full of voices, a whole choir will sing”] (Nasiłowska 2004: 152). These are not human voices though, but those of animals and plants. From this perspective, escaping inside herself is similar to being in a forest of fairy tale heroines which, according to von Franz, facilitates the process of female’s individualisation: “The forest would be the place of unconventional inner life, in the deepest sense of the Word. Living in the forest would mean sinking into one’s innermost nature 8

Chwała czarownicom (1994) by K. Koftaand Prawiek i inne czasy (1996) by O. Tokarczuk can also be listed. These works use another fairy tale motif — the motif of a witch, analysed by Iwasiów (2004: 148-159) and Lizurej (2005).

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and Winding out what it feels like” (1976: 85). The heroine of Nasiłowska’s story cannot go to the forest (she is a wife, a mother, a housewife), but mentally this is the place where she really exists — as Snow White. The pregnancy made her a child again (she is defenceless, helpless, she yields to the needs of the baby on the way, and medical control, on a tram she hears people calling her “a Snot”); once more she has to find herself. Awaiting the childbirth is therefore double — it concerns the child, but also — and mainly — herself as a woman. What is most important, though, is the imperfective aspect — expectation, underdetermination. Being Snow White means living in a reality „mniej konkretnej, nieograniczonej, w której ukochany niekoniecznie musi nazywać się mężem, sucho i oficjalnie (i zawsze niecelnie), a może inaczej. Dowolnie!” [“less concrete, unlimited, in which the beloved does not necessarily have to be called husband, officially (and always inaptly), or in another way. Freely!”] (Nasiłowska 2004: 152). Snow White may appear the reflective, sensitive and the free part of ego, but what is obvious does not come from the narrator’s inside, but from books. Not only is she a character from books (or even a film character, as Nasiłowska refers to the Disney’s Snow White in the characteristic yellow and blue gown with a ruff) but she is also attracted by the rustle of pages of poetry books and everyday chores concerning small creatures. From this perspective, Snow White appears to be nothing more than a strongly interiorised cultural model which when displaced or eradicated, reveals itself when the identity of the heroine is endangered by the changes her body and life undergo. Another child reduces her to an infantile level, pushes into a story of helplessness and, in consequence, isolation in the house because of the fear of the outside world. Snow White makes the everyday life of the woman harder, makes her shut herself in her apartment and solitude as if it was her stronghold. Imprisoned in this fairytale narration, she loses the ability to use a human language and, consequently, the ability to function in the society. From this perspective Snow White appears to be a dybbuk who possessed a woman, changing not only her way of thinking but also her appearance: ”Byłam w jej oczach dziewczynką, dzieckiem nawet. Więc te blizny, które mam, bo pozostawiły je na mnie wydarzenia, są niewidoczne?” [“In her eyes I was a little girl, a child even. So those scares which I have, because they were marked by some events, are they invisible?”] (Nasiłowska 2004: 154). The evil spirit did not manage to possess the storyteller entirely. She was aware of who she was. She observes her actions as Snow White with changing distance — sometimes she identifies herself with her totally, at other times she observes her with fear and misunderstanding. The tale about Snow White has another heroine, though, which is used also by Nasiłowska to create a counterbalance to oversensitive Snow White. ”Trzeba będzie coś z zrobić z Królewną Snieżką. […] Niech wreszcie zniknie. […] zas-

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traszyć na amen? Uwięzić? Utopić? Zabić?” [“Something needs to be done about Snow White […] Let her disappear at last. […] terrorise her completely? Imprison? Drown? Kill?”] (Nasiłowska 2004: 154). Could that be the voice of the stepmother, envious of Snow White, of her peace and freedom? It is possible, but in Nasiłowska’s story it means the survival instinct; the evil queen, the stepmother has the will and the power to fight for herself. ”Ale gdzie ona ma to, w co można by ją — tak po cichu — mocno trzasnąć?” [“But where does she have a place, where we could, silently, hit her very hard?”] (Nasiłowska 2004: 154) — asks the author of Dominoes. So that no one sees that another female guardian of well-behaved girls lost her position. But, “delikatnie, nie robiąc sobie krzywdy” [“gently, without harming herself”] (Nasiłowska 2004: 154), Snow White became a part of female’s imagination and fighting with her should not lead to self-destruction. Although the hypotext is as directly indicated as in previously analysed texts, the re-writing of a tale has a more complicated form in Nasiłowska’s works. The function of Snow White in the story from Czteroletnia filozofka is only in the form of the name of the main character, which is the personification of the stereotype of a female socio-cultural role, not necessarily identical to the fairytale one. Nasiłowska almost completely eliminated romance elements from her story, her Snow White being a princess before meeting the dwarves and the Prince, the eternal maiden, running away from children and their screaming and boring stories told by a husband, the maiden who, following the Romantics (but also Disney) listens to the language of the world as well as to the language of herself. Nasiłowska’s attitude to such a re-created model of femininity is ambivalent — therefore, the whole story can be characterised by a typical schizophrenic polyphony. Snow White is at times revealed as the true face of the female protagonist, an ironically accepted social role and a dybbuk which overwhelms the heroine in the moment of weakness. Re-writing Snow White does not lead to the simple turn in evaluation or criticism of historical models of femininity, but rather to showing the power of their interaction based on vulnerability of re-narratives. This flexibility does not mean travesty, but making a choice of those plot elements, or plot variants, in order to tell the fairy tale in a traditional way, and show those values which were so far present, but marginalised.9 Nasiłowska uses re-written Snow White to create a strongly autobiographical narration, where grounds for ambivalence can be observed, the ambivalence with 9

This kind of modelling tradition is clearly visible, by making a comparison of two psychoanalytical interpretations of the motif of a girl oppressed by stepmother. Bettelheim chooses the Grimms’ Cinderella, where a girl with a great help from her father manages to win the prince’s heart, whereas von Franz (and later also Pinkola Estes) prefers less popular version of this story about Vassilissa, where the female figures (Baba Yaga, a crone) play a vital part in liberating the main character.

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which the heroine of the tale was treated. Although the traditional story should be a tool for self-cognition, it cannot be adequate as it presents a teleological, finished story. For this reason, Harries admitted that fairy tale in the contemporary autobiographic prose of women is more a broken than a magical mirror (Bacchilega’s metaphor): “the mirror that does not pretend to reflect subjectivities or lives as unified wholes” (2004: 109-110). Nasiłowska’s fluctuations are a very good reflection of such a fragmentary nature.

3. Guerrilla Princesses Nasiłowska ends her story about the ego that reflects in the fairy tale like in a mirror with a question, squaring the circle without finding a solution — contrary to Filipiak who brought her heroine out of the house of bondage. Among the intertextual references present in Absolutna amnezja such as the Greek myths, Kochanowski’s poetry and Romantic literature (Janion 1996; Kraskowska 1996: 11), we can find fairy tales. Contrary to the pieces analysed earlier, this novel is more connotative than denotative of the genre as it lacks direct allusions, references to this type of literary works. Instead, there are motifs (that include fictional situations, concrete scenes, the construction of characters) that evocatively indicate the field of intertextual references.10 The motifs, though possible to distinguish, remain labile. The change of perspective makes one see the same character or the same scene in a new light, belonging simultaneously to several tales. This kind of activity characterises the traditional attitude to the genre, as “Every tale we know as a fairy tale or ‘old wives tale’ has probably been pieced together from various narrative sources and fragments. Each teller splices those story threads together for his or her own purposes” (Wanning Harries 2003: 153). Marianna is living in a house, which is guarded by a huge dog; there is a barbed wire at the top of the wall and a paternal ban on inviting strangers; this is the contemporary princess imprisoned in a castle. Absolutna amnezja clearly shows that the function of all obstacles located between the girl and the outside world is not, as according to Propp, testing if a potential spouse and heir to the throne possesses all the necessary objects for distributing power (and if he uncovered the secret of the royal family) (2003: 371), but simply and more literally the protection of paternal power over the girl. The Secretary somehow felt that Marianna, his only daughter, is the chance to have descendants, which is tantamount to losing the absolute power, leading to mythical, eternal lasting with the change of generations and succession of time: “A difficult task, marriage and seizing power 10 Surely, reading those motifs in the context of re-writing fairy tales in a strictly interpretational decision, deriving from the conviction that fairy tales are a reservoir from which themes originate, seems to be the most obvious and popular. They are treated in a similar way by the researchers of popular prose (Martuszewska, Pyszny 2003;Miculi-Sawicka 2005).

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create an indissoluble complex. This case clearly shows that the presence of a mature daughter and the appearance of a potential fiancée pose a great threat to the old king” (Propp 2003: 374). From this perspective, the ritual of Marianna’s first haircut is not only a parody of the initiation ceremony, but rather its negation — the Secretary wants to erase any signs of gender, effacing femininity from Marianna’s body in order to deprive her of the possibility of escaping, and to make her become a space where his power is distributed forever. In the fairytale plot, the first haircut would successfully prevent any spectacular escape. The motif of cutting hair leads us to another fairytale land — the story about Rapunzel who thanks to her hair was set free from the tower where she was imprisoned by an evil witch. However, Filipiak presents a story where the old woman is imprisoned equally to Marianna: incapacitated, deprived of any kind of power, decrepit in the end, only able to exhibit small signs of sabotage — significantly, however, only against Marianna and Krystyna. The two women are the victims of her petty theft or nasty remarks. The three female figures, in which we can observe three feminine aspects (maiden, mother, an old woman) cannot be recognised as identical in situations in which they found themselves while being aggressed against by the Secretary. They are not able to cooperate in order to gain freedom or (in a mental plan) re-integration. What is more, they constantly fight against each other, making their alienation deeper. The one thing they have in common is the Secretary — the son, husband and father, who defines the relations between them. A young rebel and a school friend, Turek, seems to be a chance to break the vicious circle. While her oppressor is away he is courting Rapunzel: he sneaks up to her household and enables her to get to know a different world: guerrilla fight; not only symbolical (which Marianna continued on her own by writing under the table), but political. The young man even takes over one of the symbols of power — the decoration of the Secretary, therefore seeming to be deemed Marianna’s liberator. As Filipiak shows, this traditional script, however, does not mean a happy ending for the woman. Tales based on the analysed motif present a matrilinear character of inheritance, in which the woman is only a synecdoche of earth/the power transferred by men and distributed among each other. And even if the motive of Turkish rebellion was the willingness to reproduce the existing structure of power with the change of its possessors (which was perceived by the girl and later rejected by refusing to become a leader in a band, after the boy’s fall). Marianna’s knight appears to be unfaithful, abandoning the idea of rebellion as well as the willingness to free the girl from her father’s house. This is the moment the witch enters the fairy tale (and novel) scene. As it later appears, she is essential to the ending of the story. After freeing herself from her son’s life and power, the old woman breaks the closed circle and assists Marianna

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to escape by giving her a compass which will lead her to…Exactly, where will the compass lead Marianna? We do not know, but wherever it is, is out of her father’s reach. It is a surprising change with no fairytale explanation — the witch could have changed the initial negative attitude towards the female protagonist by attempts which she had taken. In Absolutna amnezja Marianna does not perform any tasks ordered by the old woman. It seems, however, that the key to this figure’s metamorphosis lies in her death. Even though the relationships between the women in the Secretary’s family are determined by patriarchal relations of power, marking them with scars (which was noted by Luce Irigaray (1981), Marianna can look for support among other women in the symbolical space. The old lady during her life undergoes a transformation from an evil witch into a good fairy godmother who fulfills her child’s wishes. The fact that the figure of Aldona gained a totally symbolic character is proved by the reference to Kochanowski’s Sen in this context. Marianna’s grandmother became similar to Urszula’s grandmother, though in a different role to play. Instead of comforting the father devastated by the loss of his daughter, she makes her escape possible. At the same time, it turns out that the search for old ladies, feminine tradition from which other Mariannas are able to draw strength and faith, is done by reinterpretation of the legacy, which seemingly does not have anything to offer to women. Filipiak, in a way similar to Nasiłowska, reveals an ambivalence in her attitude to fairytales. They contain cognitive and evaluative schemas; however, in Absolutna amnezja they do not have such overwhelming power. Freeing yourself from the chains of one narrative is possible thanks to another one: deregulation of the fairytale storylines is a sign of fighting with other stories, and the result of this fight is the formation of such a narrative that enables an individual to escape. Is this really more than just survival? It is doubtful, as in the house of the Secretary there was one more woman left, Krystyna, and Marianna’s scars cannot be erased by amnesia either. Partial victory, or even continual fight is the also the third princess’s destiny — the heroine of the fourth part of Kieszonkowy atlas kobiet by Chutnik (2008). Marysia Kozak is a little princess, seemingly completely fulfilling the role assigned to her by socio-cultural gender: well-behaved, kind, helpful, pure. This, however, is just a cover. Looking underneath the cover one might see filth, flaw — totally intentional and desired: Marysia schylała się przy krawężniku i śliniła palec. Wycierała nim piasek i brudy ulicy. potem mocno szorowała rękę o wewnętrzną stronę ubrania. Niby wszystko wyglądało czysto, ale pod spodem koszmar. Rozmazane smugi tworzyły na materiale plamy nie do zmycia. [Mary often leaned near the kerb and licked her finger. She wiped it against sand and dirt on the street. Then she rubbed her hand on the inside part of her clothes. Everything seemed clean, but underneath there was a real nightmare. Smudges caused stains impossible to clean. ] (Chutnik 2008: 169)

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Purity, associating both the moral values as well as erotic ignorance, is the basic value (alongside beauty) of the fairytale heroines — and in the form of cultural obligation, also of women in general. Here, it becomes blurred but is not negated. Similarly, strong resistance to cultural violence is visible in nocturnal escapades by Radical Princess. Mary, like a character of The Shoes that Were Danced to Pieces by the Grimms, leaves her warm bed every night, puts on make-up, which in her case looks like war colours, in order to follow her heart. Her destiny is not to be swept into the whirl of dancing and a charming prince, but to cause destruction. The girl’s hidden desires are not sexual in their nature, but instead socio-political. Rebellion, open fight — the one Marianna leads, or moving to another level of reflection by Matka Bolka — is not possible according to Chutnik. Unlike Marianna, she cannot escape; there is no total liberation. Only survival is possible — in opposition to the culture which forces a little girl to play the part of a Little Mermaid, totally dependent on a man, a seductive but sexually inaccessible woman: ”Nie będę Syrenką. […] Nie będę ofiarą” [“I shall not be a Mermaid […] I will not be the victim”] (Chutnik 2008: 229). Little Mary actually finds herself in a role of a basilisk killing by its stare. We are now getting closer to the most famous characters analysed by the second-wave feminism — the Medusa11. Instead of bursting out laughing, little Mary lowers her eyes and cannot control her power; she is afraid of it. The character created by Chutnik leads a guerilla fight. She attempts to blow up the system, but from the inside, imperceptibly, with little acts of sabotage: stains or by sticking gummy bears into door locks and cash machines. She is always ready to withdraw, skulk, hide: “Wracam do domu. Nie domyślą się, że to ja zrobiłam, a jeśli nawet to powiem, że to niechcący” [“I’m coming back home. They will not guess I did that, and even if they did, I would tell them that it happened by accident”] (Chutnik 2008: 229). Contrary to Marianna, Mary is totally lonely. Positive bonds between women do not exist since the desires of women focus on men whom they have to fight for. Culture does not provide any support either: the presence of the one and only advocate of the girl turns out to be fake. In the basement Mary meets Mother of God, and not an old madwoman, a living proof of what kind of future awaits the girl if she does not yield or start an open fight — she will lose. With Księżniczki, Chutnik indicates that intersexual field of reference is very general, and identifies it similarly to Nasiłowska’s Królewna Śnieżka: as a socio-cultural role of woman, formed by stereotypical, only partly fairytale, figures.

11 I. Słomak noted that even if “the theoretical layer incorporated in the text in the form of a row of feminist concepts is so visible, the narrative part gives an impression that it is only its picture” (2008: 167).

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*** Feminist re-writing of fairy tales in contemporary Polish literature takes a variety of different forms — from the simplest, explicit travesty by Beata Kozak, to dispersed narratives, polyphonic (Nasiłowska), alterative (Dunin) or labile (Filipiak). The use of such constructions moves the texts based on re-writing closer to the beginnings of female fairy tale writing of complex pieces,12 digressive ones, metatextual ones, which make use of the story within a story. None of the analysed writers, apart from Beata Kozak and Kinga Dunin, use the plot as a whole. Usually, the elements and motifs derived from the storyline act as a synecdoche not to a specific story, but rather the values conveyed, and the strands of the plot become coalescent. The common feature is also a borrowing of the fairytale artefacts and figures to present times, which is frequently accompanied by an extensive use of colloquial words. The re-written tale is becoming a narrative defining present times, diagnosing culture and society, not exactly the old one which created it, but the contemporary one which still keeps them strong and expresses the willingness to change and calls to take action. The classification of techniques used in re-writing created by Harries does not have a full reflection in Polish prose. Admittedly, it is possible to observe a simple twist in Beata Kozak’s works, the use of first person narration in Nasiłowska’s, transliteration in a part of Chutnik’s piece. It would be conventional, though, and the analysed works make use of a few techniques. Among these techniques, a dominant part is played by a twist: princesses escape from the castle, do karate, or at least they are a little dirty, and the stepmother turns out to be good. Mainly the construction of the female protagonist undergoes some changes by being given higher or lower power, the ability to exist independently and to object to the symbolic order of the presented world. Following Jane Caputi and Susane Schmid, we can identify two goals delineating a continuum of the feminist fairytale writing: breaking the patriarchal myths and creating new, female ones (Sellers 2001: 134;Szczuka 2001). Cristina Bacchilegia sees those two poles as two aspects of the same phenomenon, text, considering them as inseparable. In her view, the postmodern fairy tales, including also the feminist re-written stories ”are doubling and double: both affirmative and questioning, without necessarily being recuperative or politically subversive” (1997: 22). Polish contemporary prose far more strongly stresses the critical aspect of re-writing rather than the one that creates myths. From the historical perspective one can observe an unsettling line of development in the short history of Polish feminist fairy tale re-writing: the earliest works (by Beata Kozak and by 12 Though not in the sense which is determined by Harries, who uses it in reference to the tales using a frame and story within a story (Wanning Harries 2003: 104-134).

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Filipiak) express the greatest optimism, a conviction that it is possible to adopt the language of a fairy tale, but also to rebuild gender models. The later works by Dunin, Nasiłowska and Chutnik do not share such optimism. Taking part in a ball, not to mention escape from the tower, is problematic, impersonation of a princess cannot be removed and the open, uncompromising fight for the change of the cultural models and language is impossible. Re-writing of fairy tales is not the gloomy re-conquest, but the upheaval of carnival. Traditional fairytale motifs in the works of aforementioned writers look at themselves in a distorting mirror (Bacchilega’s metaphor): monstrous and humorous at the same time. It does not mean, however, that the critical potential of re-written tales is negated or ignored. Quite the opposite, it seems that in this double distance to the traditional fairy tales and ourselves there is a power of re-writing of the well-known narratives. The power which rejects all stories that are unambiguous, ideological (even in an implicit or unconscious way), which claim, on the basis of multiplied repetition, the right to status of truth. Bibliography: Bacchilega Cristina (1997), Postmodern Fairy Tales. Gender and Narrative Strategies, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia. Bettelheim Bruno (2010), The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales, Vintage Books, New York. Bożek Renata (2004), Czego pragnie Mała Syrenka?, „Czas Kultury”, nr 1. Carter Angela (2008), Angela Carter’s, Book of Fairy Tales, ed. A. Carter, Ill., by C. Sargood, afterword by M. Warner, Virago Hardbacks, London. Carter Angela (1978), Pornography in Service of Women, In The Sadeian Woman and the Ideology of Pornography, Pantheon, New York. Chutnik Sylwia (2008), Kieszonkowy atlas kobiet, Korporacja Ha!Art, Kraków. Daly Mary (1978), Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism, Beacon Press, Boston. Dunin Kinga (2000), Karoca z dyni, Wydawnictwo Sic!, Warszawa. Estes Clarissa Pinkola (1996), Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype, Ballantine Books, New York. Filipiak Izabela (1995), Absolutna amnezja, Wydawnictwo Obserwator, Poznań. Franz von Marie-Louis (1976), The Feminine in Fairy Tales, Spring Publications, Zűrich. Graczyk Ewa, Graban-Pomirska Monika (2002), Siostry i ich Kopciuszek, Wydawnictwo Uraeus, Gdynia. Haase Donald (2004), Feminist Fairy-Tale Scholarship, In Fairy Tales and Feminism. New Approaches, ed. D. Haase, Wayne State University Press, Detroit. Helms Cynthia (1987), Storytelling. Gender and Language in Folk/Fairy Tales: A Selected Annotated Bibliography. “Woman and Language”, nr 2 (10). Irigaray Luce (1981), Le Corps-à-corps avec la mere, Les éditions de la pleine lune, Montreal. Iwasiów Inga (2004), Gender dla średniozaawansowanych. Wykłady szczecińskie, Wydawnictwo W.A.B., Warszawa. Janion Maria (1996), Ifigenia w Polsce, In Kobiety i duch inności, Wydawnictwo Sic!, Warszawa. Kęsik Marta (2001), Mamy papieża?, „FA-art”, nr 3.

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Kofta Krystyna (1994) Chwała czarownicom, Wydawnictwo PDW, Warszawa. Kraskowska Ewa (1996), W świetle pokwitających dziewcząt, „Arkusz”, nr 4. Lake Rosemary (2002), Once Upon a Time When the Princess Rescued the Prince, Dragon Tree Press. Lizurej Marzena (2005), Baśń u Olgi Tokarczuk, In Baśnie nasze współczesne, ed. J. Ługowska, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, Wrocław. Martuszewska Anna, Pyszny Joanna (2003), Romanse z różnych sfer, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, Wrocław. Matka Bolka [Kozak Beata] (1993), Bajki, „Pełnym głosem”, nr 1. Miculi-Sawicka Krystyna (2005), Czy to bajka czy niebajka… Motywy baśniowe w romansie popularnym, In Baśnie nasze współczesne, ed. J. Ługowska, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, Wrocław. Nasiłowska Anna (2004), Czteroletnia filozofka, Wydawnictwo Literackie, Kraków. Propp Wladimir (2003), Historyczne korzenie bajki magicznej, Wydawnictwo KR, Warszawa. Rich Adrienne (1972), When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision, “College English” (Vol. 34), nr 1. Sellers Susan (2001), Myth and Fairy Tale in Contemporary Women’s Fiction, Palgrave, New York. Słomak Iwona (2008), Rzecz to niesłychana, „FA-art”, nr 2-3. Szczuka Kazimiera (2001), Na odsiecz dziewczynkom, In Kopciuszek, Frankenstein i inne. Feminizm wobec mitu, Wydawnictwo eFKa, Kraków. Tokarczuk Olga (1996), Prawiek i inne czasy, Wydawnictwo W.A.B., Warszawa. Wanning Harries Elizabeth (2004), The Mirror Broken: Women’s Autobiography and Fairy Tales, w: Fairy Tales and Feminism. New Approaches, ed. D. Haase, Wayne State University Press, Detroit. Wanning Harries Elizabeth (2003), Twice Upon A Time. Women Writers and the History of the Fairy Tale, Princeton University Press, Pinceton. Warkocki Błażej (2002), Karoca z dyn(i)amitem, „Polonistyka”, nr 2. Warner Marina (1995), From The Beast to the Blonde. On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers.Vintage Books, London. Zipes Jack (2002), Breaking the Magic Spell. Radical Theories of Folk and Fairy Tales. Revised and expanded edition, The University Press of Kentucky, Lexington. Zipes Jack (2006), Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion. The Classical Genre for Children and the Process of Civlization, Routledge Press, New York. Zipes Jack (ed.) (1986), Don’t Bet on the Prince. Contemporary Feminist Fairy Tales of North American and England, Routledge Press, New York.

The Ecological Novel as Critical Genre Izabella Adamczewska* Abstract The article is dedicated to presenting an environmentalist (environmental, ecological) novel as a ”critical genre”. I show its attributes in contrast with a nature novel which in turn I define as a thematic novel, a form being mainly educational and set in nature. The ecological novel, on the other hand, is an ideologi­cal variety of a novel related to social ecological movements arising after the fifties. Its plot does not need to take place in natural environment and the ecological value may be emphasised mere­ly in the discursive layer. While the nature novel is dominated by an anthropocentric viewpoint, the ecological novel is strictly oriented towards ”ecocentricism” and utilises accomplishments of fe­minist and postcolonial literature. The true commitment of this genre is quite distinctive, which I de­monstrate by exemplifying three characteristic types of ecological novel: the philosophical tre­aty (Elizabeth Costello, J.M. Coetzee), the futurological ecological dystopia (Possibility of an Island, M.  Houellebecq) and the social novel about ecologists (Low-tech, M. Olszewski), while simultaneously highlighting its close connections with feminism (Prowadź swój pług przez kości umarłych, O. Tokarczuk) as well as its critique of capitalism. * Institute of Contemporary Culture, University of Lodz, ul. Franciszkańska 1/5, 91-431 Łódź e-mail: [email protected]

”Ecological novel” is a genre name used incidentally in Polish literature studies, yet absent in dictionaries of literary terms. Interest in this genre abroad, especially in the United States, involves phenomena that have also inspired ecocriticism — a theory in literature focused on the mutual relation between man and the natural environment1. Ecotheory of literature may be derived, for instance, from the interest in Thoreau’s, Walden and Romantic poetry or essays. However, contemporary, conscious ecological criticism starts no sooner than in the Sixties2: marked by such issues as fear of nuclear catastrophe, the growing number 1

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Greg Garrard in his book Ecocriticism defines it as follows: “the widest definition of the subject of ecocriticism is the study of the relationship of the human and the non-human, throughout human cultural history and entailing critical analysis of the term ’human’ itself (2004: 5). William Rueckert is considered to be the author of the term (1978). Ecocriticism has many variants, e.g., ecofeminism (related to the cult of Mother Nature), postcolonial ecocriticism (which coined such terms as ecocolonisation or bio-imperialism); in relation to other disciplines one can write about ecotheology or ecocracy. In Poland, the first approximation of ecocriticism is given by Julia Fiedorczuk and Grzegorz Jankowicz (Marecki 2010: 399-408). Glen A. Love (2003) introduces ecocriticism derived from Joseph W. Meeker’s (The Comedy of Survival: Studies in Literary Ecology, 1974) and Anette Kolodny’s texts (The Lay of the

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of extinct species, rising level of air and water pollution. In 1962 Rachel Carson’s book, Silent Spring, inspired ecological movements, focusing public scrutiny on the ongoing poisoning of the natural world. Ecology (by definition, a science of nature’s structure and functioning on various organisational levels) is no longer associated solely with biology, but also with lifestyle. Ecocriticism, on the other hand, becomes a part of the so-called ethical turn in the theory and rehabilitation of moral committments of literature. “The dilemma of a man who is standing in front of a store-shelf, wondering whether he should pick up milk in either a glass bottle or a plastic bag, is not unworthy of mentioning, it is worth a novel”, writes Michał Olszewski (2010: 412).

Environmental Novel and Ecological Novel Maria Gołaszewska’s book, Święto wiosny (Spring Feast), is an attempt to outline connections between literature and ecology. The book’s message is broader — it concerns ecoesthetics defined as “scientific knowledge of cooperation of beauty with ecologists’ theses”. The author seeks proecological aspects already in ancient texts, mainly bucolics and pastorals. She deems both the Romantic appreciation of nature and Young Poland’s criticism of industrialisation (expressed in Reymont’s The Promised Land by a monster-city topos) rooted in ecology. Therefore, ecoesthetics in Gołaszewska’s approach includes diverse phenomena — according to the broadest traditional definition of ecology. Discussing the novel genre, she observes three tendencies tying it to ecology: including the bucolic approach (she places Czesław Miłosz’s Issa Valley in this category), and the realistic approach, “revealing the true state of affairs together with ecological threats” (so-called ”fighting stream”, e.g., The Elephant Song by Wilbur Smith or The Pelican Brief by John Grisham). The third category would contain texts criticising ecologists’ activities: “grotesque ridiculousness of their battle for impeccable cleanliness (…) of the natural environment”3. The contemporary common understanding of the ecological approach, as characteristic of social and political movements aiming at the natural environment protection, pertains to the second category, and, au rebours, the third. Gołaszewska does not attempt to examine the aforementioned novels generically. Neither does she differentiate between texts, whose main subject matter is ecology, and those in which elaborate descriptions of nature constitute a background. As a result, literary works revealing threats to the natural environment are contiguous with the regional novel in which nature (together with

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Land: Metaphor as Experience in American Life and Letters, 1975). Some French literary critics regard Romain Gary’s The Roots of Heaven (1956) the first ecological novel (it dissects the extermination of elephants). M. Gołaszewska, Święto wiosny: ekoestetyka — nauka o pięknie natury, Universitas, Kraków 2000.

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the inhabitants) is an element of the region, and often the main focus of man’s struggle to survive. The distinction between the environmental (nature-oriented) and ecological novel is well-founded. I would define the former as a thematic generic type of primarily educational quality, set in nature. The latter is the ideological version of a novel closely related to the ecological movements born in the second half of the twentieth century, not necessarily playing out in the natural environment (the ecological virtue may only be contained in the discursive layer). While the environmental novel is dominated by the anthropocentric point of view, the ecological novel problematises ecocentricism4, and utilises accomplishments of feminist and postcolonial literature. The difference is clear because the function of the positivistic environmental novel (and its variants such as the landscape5 novel) has been strictly didactic, and subjected to the primacy of science. Popular science fictionalisations were written, in order to introduce young readers to the world of nature. To give an example, Erazm Majewski (a scientist, inter alia, archaeologist and biologist) in Doktór Muchołapski (1890; subtitle: Fantastyczne przygody w świecie owadów — Fantastic Adventures in the World of Insects) shrinks his protagonist and transports him to the world of insects. A meager fantastic plot poses a pretext to dwell on biological matters, e.g., the life of ants or bugs’ life cycle, while the stories are embellished with figures and indices of the mentioned plants and animals. In the epilogue, the author admits mystification, explaining what inspired his change of perspective: “instead of a mere point of view, I have taken on another one, the more appropriate to appraise existence of small winged entities. My goal was the desire not to bore you” (Majewski 1890: 367-368). Sometimes, the dominating pedagogical function gives way to the moralistic one. Such a trait characterises Zofia Urbanowska’s Gucio zaczarowany (1984). Transformation into a fly, which happens to the main character, a misogynist, bully and ignoramus, is a punishment for laziness. Of course, ”the atoning man” fathoms the mysteries of animals’ hard work and finds out that ”despising the weaker and smaller is wrong”, but the true objective of the expiation is different — Gucio will remain under the spell ”until he learns to love work, and, by this, becomes worthy of being a human.” 4

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Ecocentricism, biocentricism and zoocentricism are to be distinguished as follows: the zoocentric perspective gives the same rights to humans and ”higher” animals, the biocentric perspective gives equal rights to all elements of living nature, the ecocentric perspective gives those rights to the whole ecosystem. In the 19th century landscape novels were written by, e.g., Klementyna z Tańskich Hoffmanowa, Teresa Jadwiga Papi and Zofia Urbanowska; Ryszard Waksmund derives the exploited fictional scheme from Lagerlöf’s Nils Holgersson’s Wonderful Journey, adding that the Vistula trail in particular was willingly depicted (Waksmund 2000: 295-296).

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Thus, Urbanowska’s novel is governed by the anthropocentric perspective. Environmental novels as well as travel novels, popular at the time, share the choice of a background. For example, Stefan Gębarski’s Robinson tatrzański (1896) familiarises the reader with fauna and flora of the Tatra Mountains. A similar form of animal or, in general terms, nature’s submission to science (and thus, to man) were the so-called ”animalia” — animal collections exhibited in cabinets of curiosity, peculiarities of nature, menageries and bestiaries preceding modern zoological gardens, nowadays compared to colonies.6 Modernism brought anti-urbanistic tendencies, the result of which was a boom of novels set in nature, or, on the contrary, in the city — in order to highlight the negative impact of industry on man and his surroundings. For instance, in Hutnik Artur Gruszecki writes about harmful influence of zinc fumes on factory workers in Dąbrowa Górnicza. In Lato leśnych ludzi (1920) Maria Rodziewiczówna criticises the ”destruction of nature by the expansion of industry”. The bestowal of animal cryptonyms on the protagonists (Wolverine, Panther and Crane), and thus blurring the boundaries between the human and animal world, may be considered an attempt to move beyond the anthropocentric viewpoint. But Lato leśnych ludzi is a regional (or even bioregional) novel praising the lanscape (like other Rodziewiczówna’s works memorialising the Eastern Borderlands of the Second Polish Republic, e.g., Dewajtis7), but is by no means ecological. It harks back to the robinsonade and is supposed to convey patriotic ideas. Therefore, not protection of nature, but regionalism and patriotism dominate the book (even if the text was thought of as a kind of ecological utopia — after all, the wilderness inhabited by forest people consitutes a topos of the locus amoenus).

Critical Genre Contrary to the environmental novel, the function of which is mainly didactic and moralistic, the ecological novel is a critical genre. Introducing this term I refer to the observation of Stephen Greenblatt who describes genres as “specific points of 6

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See G. Świtek (2007), Dział zwierząt, ”Czas Kultury” nr 6, p. 4-15. In the same ”animal” issue of “Czas Kultury”, the subject of colonies is discussed by Podemska-Abt who harks back to Marjorie Spigel’s observation — the attitude of man towards animals is a legacy of the times of colonial expansion. Abt adds: “in Australia decolonisation of zoological gardens is being conducted together with their reconstruction into hospices or ‘houses’ for animals” (T. Podemska-Abt 2007, Kangur w potrzasku, “Czas Kultury”, nr 6, p. 43). In this context, Romain Gary’s Roots of Heaven is worth mentioning once more — the novel juxtaposes rationales of an opponent of the slaughter of African elephants and an indigen desiring a decolonisation of Africa. See E. Tierling-Śledź (2002), Mit Kresów w prozie Marii Rodziewiczówny and J. Szcześniak (1998), Drzewo wiecznie szumiące niepotrzebne nikomu. Kresy w powieściach Marii Rodziewiczówny.

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view on the world” (1998: 17). Although every literary genre may become critical in its individual expression, there are, in my opinion, literary forms defined by their criticism and ideology. The examples given by Greenblatt include satire and panegyric, reprimand and praise based on rhetoric. But political novels (let alone their exclusively thematic variants) or feminist novels (in opposition to the so-called chick lit) may also be listed in the critical genre category. As every ideological (not thematic) genre, ecological novels are hybrid forms feeding on diverse generic schemes. For instance, John Maxwell’s Elizabeth Costello is a novel-essay, Olga Tokarczuk’s Prowadź swój pług przez kości umarłych (Drive Your Plough over the Bones of the Dead) is a crime story, and Michał Olszewski’s Low-tech — an environmental (social) novel. The ecological novel often employs utopic and anti-utopic schemes, as can be seen in Michel Houellebecq’s The Possibility of an Island, which moreover, is a model example of a ”blurred genre”. This term was proposed by Clifford Geertz, first and foremost in relation to speech genres. “This genre blurring is more than just a matter of Harry Houdini or Richard Nixon turning up as characters in novels or of midwestern murder sprees described as though a gothic romancer had imagined them” (Geertz 1993: 19), because it concerns not only crossbreeding literary forms, but also discursive practices (as examples Geertz gives ”philosphical deliberation taking shape of literary criticism” or ”parables feigning ethnographic descriptions”). Molding ecological aspects into a belles-lettres form is an excellent example of such strategy. Subsequently, as Geertz writes, similarities between texts begin to cloud their disparities, and the reader is brought face to face not with a text that is clearly genre defined, but with a collection of various works that may be classified and arranged according to an adopted purpose. I will present the ecological novel with respect to the three most interesting variants: philosophical treatise, futurological ecological dystopia and environmental (social) novel.

The Ecologist is a Female In Elizabeth Costello John Maxwell Coetzee makes the eponymous heroine — a seventy-year-old Australian (from the American perspective — ”of the other side of the world”) writer and former colony resident — a defender of animal rights. A moralist, with big aspirations to reform society, she considers her family a bunch of criminals who are violent against animals by eating meat. Therefore, she represents cultural margins and creates such characters in her novels. In the most famous of them Molly Bloom plays the leading role. Based on Joyce’s Ulysses, Costello’s The House on Eccles Street is an example of a herstory — a revision of female literary biographies.

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Olga Tokarczuk, the author of Prowadź swój pług przez kości umarłych (Drive Your Plough over the Bones of the Dead), is often and quite rightfully juxtaposed with the fictional novelist Costello. The axis of her thriller novel is a criminal mystery — there is a series of enigmatic murders reported in the Klodzko Valley. Tokarczuk’s character, Janina Duszejko, suspects that animals avenging the injustice are the culprits. She is a retired teacher, believer in astrology, and, in the opinion of others, a ”rabid lunatic”. The presentation of old women as eccentrics binds the novel with feminist thought. It is certain that Costello’s and Duszejko’s statements will not be taken seriously because they are emotional and hysterical. “Sometimes I wonder, if a young, handsome and stalwart man said the things I do, would he be treated in the same way? Or a comely brunette”, says Duszejko (Tokarczuk 2009: 38). The hegemony of man over the animal is compared to the primacy of masculine perspective and cultural domination of men over women. Costello’s expositions are in fact Coetzee’s Tanner Lectures (published separately as The Lives of Animals) intertwined with the fiction, thus the choice of a narrator in Elizabeth Costello is all the more significant. In David Attwell’s opinion, Coetzee made use of the figure of the Buffoon, as did Erasmus of Rotterdam in The Praise of Folly. But it is not insanity and folly masking Costello’s wisdom; the writer can afford public expressions of beliefs because she is protected by her age and sex. Laura Wright decodes The Lives of Animals through Judith Butler’s theory8 as a performative dialogue or ”lecture in drag”. Therefore, Coetzee is able to expand beyond the binary male-female opposition — the voice invoking animal rights is neither emotional nor rational, neither masculine nor feminine. In Costello’s lectures, which Wright pays attention to, and, on the higher level, in Coetzee’s novel, fiction allows the contrasting of the two discursive modes: a rhetorised, academic conclusion and an emotional diatribe based on experience. Picking women for animal rights defenders, which may be viewed as giving voice to the weaker, is also a prelude to the radical change of perspective — from the anthropocentric to ecocentric one. Elizabeth Costello signalled this already at the descriptive level. The writer is compared to a seal, python or cat, and she herself compares her Joyce-derived heroine to a lioness. Costello’s son says about her: “My mother has been a man (...) She has also been a dog. She can think her way into other people, into other existences” (Coetzee 2003: 22). As if denying these words, Elizabeth, when interviewed, cites Thomas Nagel: ”what is it like to be a bat?”9 An American philosopher concludes: “one cannot answer this question be8

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See J. Butler (1993), Bodies that Matter, London and New York. Butler’s concept obviously referred to the gender (sexual cultural identity as opposed to biological sex), which, by the author, is not given, but constantly played and imitated. To picture her theory, Butler used a drag queen example. The text can be viewed online: http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/nagel_nice.html.

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cause it is impossible to empathize with an animal.” Costello adds: “The question to ask should not be: Do we have something in common — reason, self-consciousness, a soul — with other animals (with the corollary that, if we do not, then we are entitled to treat them as we like, imprisoning them, killing them, dishonoring their corpses)” (Coetzee 2003: 79). According to Costello, the question should be: how would it be were I in their place? Therefore, she refers to the domination of man over nature, which may be viewed as one of the spaces of people’s fight for racial equality. Peter Singer gives a similar perspective in Animal Liberation, postulating that his ability to feel pleasure and pain should be considered a measure of the moral subject10. Introducing the notion of ”species chauvinism” (speciesism) he specifies: Racists violate the principle of equality by giving greater weight to the interests of members of their own race when there is a clash between their interests and the interests of those of another race. Sexists violate the principle of equality by favoring the interests of their own sex. Similarly, speciesists allow the interests of their own species to override the greater interests of members of other species. The pattern is identical in each case. (Singer 1975: 9).

A counterargument may be found in Elizabeth Costello. One of the writer’s opponents criticises: “It’s the kind of easy shallow relativism that impresses freshmen. Respect for everyone’s world-view, the cow’s world-view, the squirrel’s worldview, and so forth” (Coetzee 2003: 91). Coetzee’s heroine polemicizes against Cartesian rationalism, which deems animals to be biological automata that do not deserve fullness of being, because they do not think, as well as the concept that man should become “the master and possessor of nature” (Cartesius 1964: 45)11 and use it for utilitarian purposes. The theological genesis of this assumption is essential. Nature is perceived as haphazard and metaphysically chaotic — and thus negatively valorised. “The universe is built upon reason. God is a God of reason. (…) And the fact that animals, lacking reason, cannot understand the universe, but have simply to follow its rules blindly, proves that, unlike man, they are part of it but not part of its being: that man is 10 “So the limit of sentience is the only defensible boundary of concern for the interests of others. To mark this boundary by some other characteristic like intelligence or rationality would be to mark it in an arbitrary manner. Why not choose some other characteristic, like skin color?” — P. Singer (1975), Animal Liberation. A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals, Random House, New York, p. 9. 11 Full quote: “Instead of the speculative philosophy now taught in the schools we can find a practical one, by which, knowing the nature and behaviour of fire, water, air, stars, the heavens, and all the the other bodies which surround us... we can employ these entities for all the purposes for which they are suited, and so make ourselves the masters and possessors of nature”.

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godlike, animals thinglike” (Coetzee 2003: 67). Costello gives a theological argument and categorically refutes it: “reason is neither the being of the universe nor the being of God.” The theological lineage of Cartesius’s beliefs, which are being disputed by Costello, is related to the battle for equality of human and animal rights conducted by Duszejko against the church. The priest advises her: “One cannot treat animals as humans. It is a sin and hubris (…) God gave animals a lower position, a position in service of man” (Tokarczuk 2009: 274). Tokarczuk’s character concludes elsewhere: “Even the meanest felon has a soul, but you do not, beautiful Doe, neither do you, wild Goose, and you, Pig, and you, Dog. Killing has become impune” (page number etc.). The problem of unjust distribution of power and cultural domination allows a connection between the ecological issues pondered by Coetzee and the postulate of acceptance of cultural differences. Following the idea of multiculturalism, Bruno Latour writes about multinaturalism12 in Politics of Nature — noting that we are dealing not with one nature (in opposition to many cultures), but many. With respect to nature he introduces the term ”collective”, enfolding both humans and non-humans as equal partners, and doing so he rejects the opposition between nature and culture (because there is no nature without culture): “As soon as we stop taking nonhumans as objects, as soon as we allow them to enter the collective in the form of new entities with uncertain boundaries, entities that hesitate, quake, and induce perplexity, it is not hard to see that we can grant them the designation of actors. And if we take the term ’association’ literally, there is no reason, either, not to grant them the designation of social actors” (Latour 2009: 76) “Thus we have put an end to the anthropomorphism of the object-subject division” (Latour 2009: 82). Characteristically, he also connects ecological thematics and treatment of animals with the prefeminist male and female antagonism, noting that the words ”nature” and ”man”, unlike the word ”female”, are unmarked (Latour 2009: 49). In the “animal” issue of ”Czas kultury” (6/2007), Agata Araszkiewicz places the question about ”humanity” in the context of ”animality” in a borderline situation, calling upon Emmanuel Levinas’s essay The Name of a Dog, or Natural Rights. The eponymous dog is a hero of Levinas’s story which takes place in a Nazi concentration camp. The dog attends musters and joyfully barks: “for him, there was no doubt that we were men” (Levinas 2004: 49). Therefore: “At the supreme hour of his institution, with neither ethics nor logos, the dog will attest to 12 The term is sometimes referred to man’s biological differences (not culturally defined). Eduardo Viveiros de Castro uses it in relation to Native American Indian animistic beliefs giving an example of Piro in Peru — a female inhabitant of the village maintained that drinking bolied water caused ilness explaining her conviction with the statement: „Our bodies are different than yours” (E. Viveiros de Castro 2009: 238).

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the dignity of its person. This is what the friend of man means. There is a transcendence in the animal!” (Levinas 2004: 48). However, Araszkiewicz adds that Levinas remained Cartesian: the animal is not the Other, because it does not have a face. Depicting elements of nature and animals as Others or Natives positions the problems brought up in ecological novels within the boundaries of contemporary anthropological thought13. The argument summoned in Costello’s diatribe can be set together with the emic approach directed towards searching for a subjective sense in a given culture — searching for what Clifford Geertz called the ”native’s point of view”. Geertz, like Nagel, rejects empathy as, apparently, the best way to describe the Other. In his sketch From the Native’s Point of View: On the Nature of Anthropological Understanding, he shows how “the myth of the chameleon fieldworker, perfectly self-tuned to his exotic surroundings, a walking miracle of empathy, tact, patience, and cosmopolitanism, gets demolished by the man who had perhaps done most to create it” (Geertz 1983: 56). If one, for the lack of psychological proximity, cannot empathise with a native man, it is all the more impossible towards an animal — although it is empathy that Costello calls for, comparing the treatment of animals by humans to the existence of Nazi concentration camps. “The horror is that the killers refused to think themselves into the place of their victims, as did everyone else. They said, ‘It is «they» in those cattle-cars rattling past’” (Coetzee 2003: 79). Setting the fate of animals together with the Shoah is the leading motif of Coetzee’s novel. Costello, invited to Appleton College to give an inaugural lecture, decides to speak of animal rights: “They went like sheep to the slaughter.’ ‘They died like animals.’ ‘The Nazi butchers killed them.’ (…) The crime of the Third Reich, says the voice of accusation, was to treat people like animals” (Coetzee 2003: 65). Then she reverses the perspective: it is animals in slaughterhouses, laboratories and on farms that are being slain on a mass scale, like people in concentration camps. A reference to extermination is also present in Tokarczuk’s novel. In one of the interviews she compares hunter’s booths to concentration camp guard towers (Sobolewska 2009: 60-62). “Murder has been legitimised and become a daily act. Everybody commits it. That’s what the world would look like if concentration camps came to be a norm. Nobody would see anything wrong with them” — Duszejko remarks (Tokarczuk 2009: 129). The reference to the extermination in the context of animal rights is not only a break with the principle 13 Bruno Latour sees the connection: “Of all people, anthropologists will have no difficulty in recognizing in this question the dramatic encounter between the anthropologists’ gaze and the various cultures (natures) they have discovered, studied, helped destroy, helped repair, helped reinvent, across the long and painful history of their discipline” (Latour 2009, p. 459-475).

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of decorum, but also an inclusion of the animal issue in the sphere of modernist criticism — Zygmunt Bauman in Nowoczesność i Zagłada (Modernity and the Holocaust) points out that the Holocaust means a return to the sources of modernity, which already from the beginning has shown some symptoms of a crisis. “In the Final Solution, industrial potential and technological knowledge, which are the pride of our civilisation, have reached an unparalleled efficiency in dealing with a task of unprecedented scale” — Bauman writes (1992: 39). In his opinion, the Holocaust was not equivalent to the end of civilisation, but rather the quintessence of bureaucratic culture.

Posthumanism. Dystopia The Cartesian ”power over nature” and primacy of science also mean biotechnology, genetic modifications and cloning. This stream of the ecological novel has its beginnings in Mary Shelley’s story of Frankenstein14. The present-day reflection on this subject, and, in the broader sense, on the consequences of consumptionist capitalism and postmodernity, is included in Michel Houellebecq’s Possibility of an Island, being an instance of ecological dystopia15. A catastrophic model of 14 See e.g. Clark 2011: 66. Frankenstein anticipates also postmodern literature, e.g., Don DeLillo’s White Noise (1985) is often given as an example of an ecological novel. 15 Jacqueline Dutton qualified Houellebecq’s novel as religious utopia; in my opinion it is dystopia, and, to be more precise, ecological dystopia (all the more so as in the Houellebecq’s text religion has been replaced by science) (Dutton 2009: 29). Any way the ecological problems are touched upon in the novel is the ecotopia — a form of utopia focusing on sociopolitical problems, but only to create an ecologically perfect world. William Morris’s News from Nowhere (1890) is considered a prototype of this particular type of novel, and Aldous Huxley’s Island (1962) would be the first realisation although there is not that much ecological talk in Huxley’s novel, in reality its proecological load is essentially contained within two pages discussing the environmental protection classes in school: “Treat Nature well, and Nature will treat you well. Hurt or destroy Nature, and Nature will soon destroy you. (…) The morality to which a child goes on from the facts of ecology and the parables of erosion is a universal ethic” (Huxley 1972: 218). The name itself has been drawn from Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopia (1975) and Ecotopia Emerging (1981). The etymology of this neologism is a combination of the words oikos or eco and topos — a ”place” (in the sense of the word: ”homeplace”), following J. Anderson, ”Elusive Escapes? Everyday Life and Ecotopia”, in L. Leonard, J. Barry, ed., Global Ecological Politics, (2010), p. 93, where ecotopia is understood as an ecologically perfect place. Callenbach describes a republic having arisen from the old states of Washington, Oregon and California which separated from the USA to create an ecological space. After twenty years, this isolated country is visited for the first time by a New York newspaper reporter, William Weston. The specific creation of the protagonist, characteristic of the environmental (social) novel, lets him observe the habitat from the outsider’s perspective. Weston, as contemporary Gulliver, wonders at the proecological rules adopted by its society (e.g., they do not drive

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the world comes up in futurological and post-apocalyptic diagnoses16. In Houellebecq’s novel as well as in Doris Lessing’s The Four-Gated City, the apocalyptic scenario reveals itself in a nuclear disaster17. The ice meltdown after the explosion of two thermonuclear bombs causes the whole Asian continent to submerge. A great drought completes the calamity. Some people survive, but they live under regressive circumstances, like savages. Cities have fallen down; so has industry. Apart from primitive beings, functioning like animals, there are also neo-humans in the post-apocalyptic world — immortal due to the preservation of DNA and genetic retrification, i.e., perfected cloning18. They dwell in enclaves. Unlike ”savages”, they have access to culture, they can read and write, but the separation from nature has made them unable to laugh, cry and love. The consumptionist capitalism promoting the idea of youth contributes to the creation of an artificial man. Neo-humans are no longer discriminated against because of their age. In order to keep them from attempting suicide and experiencing pain of sexual rejection, their cravings have been neutralised and their relations with other neo-humans limited to a minimum. Living a life of separation is highlighted by the independence from the mother — no longer needed to generate offspring. According to Houellebecq, in the last years of the Western European civilisation new movements began to cars, but ride bikes; cutting down trees is not allowed, except under special circumstances; the country is socially progressive: the work week has been reduced to 20 hours and the government is dominated by women). 16 The examples would be George Stewart’s Earth Abides (1949) or Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Word for World is Forest (1976) (people establish a terran colony and military base named ”New Tahiti” on the planet Athshe; the plot is very similar to that of James Cameron’s Avatar movie). 17 Modern dystopias exploited the theme of a nuclear catastrophe mainly in the 1950s and 1960s tying it to the Cold War. M. Keith Booker gives the following examples: John Brunner’s The Sheep Look Up (1972) thematises the ecological irresponsibility of Americans with the Cold War in the background. In George Stewart’s Earth Abides the population is decimated by the nuclear war and mysterious plague, probably caused by a mutated virus. The survivors rebuild the civilisation, possibly this time more integrated with nature. Booker points out that dystopias of this kind were not necessarily leftist — in Pat Frank’s Alas, Babylon (1959) a nuclear catastrophe has become a means to eradicate communism. Of course, the motif of ecological disaster itself is not enough to qualify a novel as ecological. For example, in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road it plays a pretextive role. 18 A mention of such a scenario appears in the ending of Houellebecq’s Elementary Particles — one of the characters, Dzierżyński, publishes Prolegomena for perfect copying. Obviously, Aldous Huxley’s vision was the prototype. In Brave New World he predicts that people will be artificially produced and cloned. There are more similarities between Huxley’s antiutopia and Houellebecq’s The Possibility of an Island, inter alia, savages who, in Brave New World, live in a reservation.

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form, inspired by ecologists who emphasised the necessity of protecting nature from human activity and defended the idea that all species have equal rights to share the planet. Some supporters of those movements even seemed to be taking sides with animals against humans. The cynical narrator of Houellebecq novel adds ironically: when humans almost went extinct, animals easily reproduced in the ruins of their cities. In view of the diagnosis made in The Possibility of an Island Latour’s distinction between humans and non-humans takes on a new light — what is the level of humanity in neo-humans, if they are set against not animals (also subject to ”cloning”) but humans that have become primaeval again? Peter Singer’s argument comes to mind: if “the limit of sentience” (not intelligence or rationality) is the only defensible boundary of concern for the interests of others, what interests should be respected considering neo-humans, who function like plants and are unable to suffer? “Postmodernism is gone, posthumanism begins. One asks about himself in the context of all those living beings, that are ’still’ not human: animals, plants, cyborgs” — notes Zygmunt Bauman (Bauman, Kubicki, and Janiszewska 2009: 130). Houellebecq’s zones, separating neo-humans from space, nature and primitive beings, resemble camps that Giorgio Agamben defines as “biopolitical paradigm of the modern”. Biopolitics (that is “the growing inclusion of man’s natural life in the mechanisms and calculations of power”- Agamben 1998: 119-120) leads to creation and reproduction of people who are completely reduced to ”naked life” (zoe), i.e., biological life,19 not only through cloning or in vitro fertilisation. Agamben also writes about ”neomorts” — living bodies intentionally kept in a coma state for the sake of possible future transplants. “The comatose person has been defined as an intermediary being between man and an animal.” According to Agemben’s theory, biopolitics leads to the rule of power over the sphere of nature. Houellebecq concludes otherwise: the end of society (bios) and politics and the turn to biology (zoe)20 are consequences of postmodernism, with the exception that the problem has been transferred into the premises of religion (or science rather, because in the world created by Houellebecq it supersedes religion, which is not a remote reference at all when one considers Bruno Latour’s remark that “the link between technology and theology (…) hinges on the notion of mastery” — Latour 2007). A sect known as the Elohimites, based on the existing Raelian Movement (whose followers believe that the life on planet Earth is a result of genetic engineering), redounds to the rise of neo-humans and the spread of cloning technology. 19 “Now it is present everywhere: in the sexual atmosphere of the times, it shows up in conversations about refugees, social drop-outs, in vitro fertilisation, abortion, and in debates about cloning and sustaining ’neomorts’ (or ’living cadavers’) in their coma state” (Nowak 2008: 163). 20 A reference may also be found in Bülent Diken’s Nihilism (2009).

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The ecological anti-capitalist novel Coetzee’s and Tokarczuk’s works, as well as Houellebecq’s dystopia are all non-obvious examples of ecological novels, but at this point it is worth mentioning that this literary genre does not have to employ the publicistic style to deal with the issues of global warming or air and water pollution. It does not have to, but it can. Michał Olszewski’s Low-tech contains allusions to the authentic recent events in Poland: protests in defence of the Rospuda Valley or the case of a bear killed by tourists in the Tatra Mountains. Low-tech has an environmental value — a group of ecologists fighting, organising manifestations and blockades becomes a collective hero of the story, in which the proecological thought has been combined with the critique of consumptionist capitalism. The novel may be placed in the stream of the so-called small anti-capitalist realism21 and is patronised by Dostoyevsky’s Idiot (the motto: “I don’t believe in these waggons bringing bread to humanity” — Olszewski 2009: 5). Low-tech’s leading hero, nicknamed Cfiszen, is a specialist in blurred genres, an amateur of eclecticism, a contourless individual. He is an unstable man of no ideological orientation, designing luxurious homes, longing for a ”great epic” that would define his life. Having entered a group of ecologists, “the young wolf still on stand-by” begins his own private ecological and anti-capitalist protest. For Olszewski’s protagonists a care for the natural environment is a fight for public space, which is constantly shrinking because of privatisation (one of the characters notices: “somebody is trying to steal another chunk of the world, which doesn’t conform to the hegemony of right angles”). Cfiszen is a meaningful name — in German the word zwischen means between. Low-tech may be perceived as psychomachia: there is a fight for Cfiszen’s soul going on between an entrepreneur under the name of Ratnicyn and an ecological extremist M-sky, who, at the end of the novel, commits self-immolation in the departures hall (because “one can do without airplanes”). In M-sky’s perfect world there will be “No air conditioning, no golf fields and overly fast trains. No highways, no airplanes. No grill gloves. No telephones, screens, fertilizers and novelties. No brand new oldness, no bright colours. No powder, sherbet, cream, exotically scented soaps… M-sky actually puts his idea into effect: I do not use disposable razors, I wash my clothes seldomer than recommended. Often I reek of sweat, because my perfume shelf is empty. I am hardly elegant and I plan to keep on going this way. We have been intemperate in bowing before His Highness Body for far too long” (Olszewski 2009: 78). Ratnicyn, on the other hand, is afraid of revolutionary solutions: “I pay my taxes, I build my country. I give work to peo21 I explain the term in: I. Adamczewska (2010), Mały realizm (anty)kapitalistyczny w prozie roczników siedemdziesiątych i osiemdziesiątych, in Inna literatura? Dwudziestolecie 19892009, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Rzeszowskiego, Rzeszów, p. 117-135.

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ple, I can afford baby toys, a vacation and car. I carry out a landscape revolution (…) with a brick, roof tile and plasterboard”– he says (Olszewski 2009: 130). Therefore, the ecological novel, as shown in a few examples, is a critical genre, although not tendentious. The worlds depicted in the works discussed are not unequivocally and evidently subject to any particular idea, even if this idea is formulated in a straighforward fashion.22 Neither Elizabeth Costello nor Tokarczuk’s heroine has been judged by some higher authority — the auctorial narrator is absent. Neither can they be deemed authority figures themselves, but it is not equivalent to the loss of narrative moralistic value. Coetzee’s and Tokarczuk’s novels are both instances of the engaged literature, which does not imply “its subjugation to a certain party or social group, but constitutes a form of expression of individual stand towards sociopolitical occurences” (Głowiński, Kostkiewiczowa, and Okopień-Sławińska 2002: 286) Even in Olszewski’s Low-tech proecological, radical slogans have been softened by exposing them to the opponents’ opinions. Exhibiting Cfiszen’s dilemmas in the form of psychomachia develops from the reference to Bakhtin’s polyphonic novel, which is an intentional measure after all.23 I would tie the psychological background of ecological novels not only to the modern redefinition of ecology, but also to the critique of humanism after Nietzsche, Heidegger and Foucault. The revelation of hyper-subjective motivations driving human behaviour and thought as well as the decline of faith in logocentrism and anthropocentrism have brought a need to rethink the essence of humanity and man’s position in nature. The ecological novel uses the tools honed by the criticism of racism, sexism and class inequalities, dissecting the notion of a norm and accenting the necessity for tolerance towards diversity. It also poses meaningful questions about benefits and losses resulting from modernisation. Bruno Latour observes: “Whereas at the time of ploughs we could only scratch the surface of the soil, we can now begin to fold ourselves into the molecular machinery of soil bacteria. While three centuries back we could only dream, like Cyrano de Bergerac, of traveling to the Moon, we now run robots on Mars and entertain vast arrays of satellites to picture our own Earth. While in the past, my Gallic ancestors were afraid of nothing except that the ’sky will fall on their heads’, metaphorically 22 I use a definition of tendentiousness by Michał Głowiński (”Tendencyjna literatura”, in M. Głowiński, T. Kostkiewiczowa, A. Okopień-Sławińska, J. Sławiński, Słownik terminów literackich (Wrocław: Ossolineum, 2002), p. 578). 23 Se e Je ste m mo delow y m pr ze d sta wiciele m p ok ole nia WS Z YST KO, M.   Ba n ia k t al k s t o M.   Olszewsk i, http://www.wydawnictwoliterackie.pl/ekurier. php?ID=artykul&ID2=113&ID3=23 Low-tech harks back to the Russian 19th-century prose, Dostoyevsky in particular, who built his books around the conflict of ideas. Demons, Crime and Punishment or The Idiot are polyphonic novels hiding depositaries who are in possession of diverse, sometimes extreme, radical and incompatible ways of thinking.

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speaking, we are now afraid quite literally that the climate could destroy us” — (2007). “To modernize or to ecologize? That’s the question”, he adds and answers: “The course of events has settled the matter quite firmly: modernizing will not do. What is not clear, however, is what ecologizing will mean exactly”, because “it might not be the time to sound the retreat and to betray the progressivist ethos of modernism by suddenly becoming ascetics” (Latour 2009). Bibliography: Agamben Giorgio (1998), Homo Sacer. Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Stanford University Press, Stanford. Anderson Jon (2010), Elusive Escapes? Everyday Life and Ecotopia, in L. Leonard, J. Barry, ed., Global Ecological Politics, Emerald Group Publishing, London. Attwell David (2006), The Life and Times of Elizabeth Costello. J. M. Coetzee and the Public Sphere, in J. Poyner, ed. J. M. Coetzee and the Idea of Public Intellectual, Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio. Bauman Zygmunt (1992), Nowoczesność i Zagłada, transl. F. Jaszuński, Fundacja Kulturalna Masada, Warszawa. Bauman Zygmunt, Kubicki Roman, Zeidler-Janiszewska Anna (2009), Życie w kontekstach. Rozmowy o tym, co za nami i o tym, co przed nami, Wydawnictwa Akademickie i Profesjonalne, Warszawa. Booker Matthew (2005), Science Fiction and the Cold War, in D. Seed, ed., A Companion to Science Fiction, Blackwell Publishing, Malden. Cartesius (1964), Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One’s Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences, in: Idem, Philosophical Essays, trans. L. J. Lafleur, Macmillan, New York. Clark Timothy (2011), The Cambridge Introduction to Literature and the Environment,Cambridge University Press, New York. Coetzee John Maxwell (2003), Elizabeth Costello, Viking, New York.Diken Bulent (2009), Nihilism, Routledge, New York. Dutton Jacqueline (2009), Forever Young?, in E. Russell, ed., Trans/forming Utopia. Looking Forward to the End, vol. 1, Bern. Garrard Greg (2004), Ecocriticism, Routledge, New York. Geertz Cliford (1993), Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology Fontana Press, London. Głowiński Michał, Kostkiewiczowa Teresa, Aleksandra Okopień-Sławińska, Sławiński Janusz, ed. (2002) Słownik terminów literackich, Ossolineum, Wrocław. Gołaszewska Maria (2000), Święto wiosny: ekoestetyka — nauka o pięknie natury, Universitas, Kraków. Greenblatt Stephen (1988), Peasants: Status, Genre, and The Representation of Rebellion, in Stephen Greenblatt, ed., Representing the English Renaissance, Berkeley. Houellebecq Michel (2006), Możliwość wyspy, W.A.B., Warszawa. Huxley Aldous (1972), Island, Harper&Row, New York. Jestem modelowym przedstawicielem pokolenia WSZYSTKO, M. Baniak talks to M. Olszewski, http://www.wydawnictwoliterackie.pl/ekurier.php?ID=artykul&ID2=113&ID3=23.

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J.  M. Coetzee and the Idea of the Public Intellectual (2006), ed. J. Poyner, Ohio University Press, Ohio, Athens. Latour Bruno (2007), ‘It’s development, stupid!’ or: How to Modernize Modernization, http:// www.espacestemps.net/document5303.html. Latour Bruno (2004), Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences Into Democracy, trans. C. Porter, Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA. Latour Bruno (2009), Will non-humans be saved? An argument in ecotheology, http://www. bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/files/113-JRAI-PUBLISHED-GB.pdf. Levinas Emannuel (2004), The Name of a Dog, or Natural Rights, in Animal Philosophy: Essential Readings in Continental Thought, ed. M. Calarco, P. Atterton, London & New York, Continuum, p. 47-50. Love Glen A.  (2003), Practical Ecocriticism: Literature, Biology and theEnvironment,University of Virginia Press. Majewski Erazm (1890), Doktór Muchołapski, Gebethner i Wolff, Warszawa. Marecki Piotr, ed. (2010), Literatura polska 1989-2009. Przewodnik, Korporacja Ha!Art, Kraków. Nowak Piotr(2008), Posłowie, in G. Agamben, Homo Sacer. Suwerenna władza i nagie życie, trans. M. Salwa, Prószyński i S-ka, Warszawa. Olszewski Michał (2009), Low-tech, Wydawnictwo Literackie, Kraków. Olszewski Michał (2010), W obronie żabek, in Literatura polska 1989-2009, op. cit., p. 409-412. Podemska-Abt Teresa (2007), Kangur w potrzasku, ”Czas Kultury” nr 6. Singer Peter (1975), Animal Liberation. A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals, Random House, New York. Sobolewska Justyna (2009), ”Błąd w oprogramowaniu świata. Rozmowa z Olgą Tokarczuk”, Polityka nr 2730, p. 60-62. Świtek Gabriela (2007), Dział zwierząt, ”Czas Kultury”, nr 6, p. 4-15. Szcześniak Janina (1998), Drzewo wiecznie szumiące niepotrzebne nikomu. Kresy w powieściach Marii Rodziewiczówny, Wydawnictwo UMCS, Lublin. Tierling-Śledź Ewa (2002), Mit Kresów w prozie Marii Rodziewiczówny, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Szczecińskiego, Szczecin. Tokarczuk Olga (2009), Prowadź swój pług przez kości umarłych, Wydawnictwo Literackie, Kraków. Viveiros de Castro Eduardo (2009), The Gift and the Given. Three Nano-essays on Kinship and Magic, in S. Bamford, J. Leach, ed., Kinship and Beyond. The Genealogical Model Reconsidered, Berghahn, Oxford; Waksmund Ryszard (2000), Od literatury dla dzieci do literatury dziecięcej (tematy-gatunkikonteksty, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, Wrocław. Wright Laura (2006), A Feminist-Vegetarian Defense of Elizabeth Costello, in J. M. Coetzee and the Idea of the Public Intellectual, op. cit., p. 193-216.

The Evolutionary Potential of Metacriticality in Reference to Watchmen — the Graphic Novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons Michał Wróblewski* Abstract In this article I discuss the impact of self-awareness and metacritical tendencies within the texts of popular culture on the development of genres in the politypical chain. Preliminary analysis proposed in the second part of this paper concerns the contemporary comics — which represent the blurring of boundaries between “high” and “low” culture. As the subject of research in this brief study I chose Moore’s graphic novel Watchmen, which exemplifies the evolutionary changes associated with a metacritical attitude introduced in a schematic area of American superhero graphic stories. * Institute of Contemporary Culture, University of Lodz, ul. Franciszkańska 1/5, 91-431 Łódź e-mail: [email protected]

Because of their thematic and formal diversity, graphic novels have become an area of restless disputes among researchers involved in genre studies of cultural texts. Any satisfactory boundaries of graphic novel genre are determined and the use of this term is characterised by high flexibility.1 Of course there are attempts to designate the distinctive features which may characterise the graphic novel genre (indicating its similarities to the literary novel, transparent categories of the beginning and the end of a story, the narrative continuity of the structure, the use of literary narrative, a referral to an adult reader, conscious artistic value of the text, the emphasis on aesthetic, the tendency to look for new means of expression, and the volume of such publications) (Birek 2009: 248). But as long as the proposed definitions are based on the classical theories of categorisation, their effect on the study of comics will be negligible. This is because it seems impossible to determine the necessary and sufficient standards within every graphic novel. The differentiation among this subcategory of comics resembles the fluent and processual space of the literary novel (which is not equivalent with annexation of the graphic novel into literature itself). This element, understood in the Bakhtinian way, finds its reflection in different kinds and styles of graphic novels. In both cases — literary and graphic novel — the temptation to construct a normative definition must 1

For example, it is still widespread in the Polish media to use the term as a mark of every comic book. In France, ”graphic novel” often is referred to any issue of illustrated books series, which are published in one section (about 50 pages) and present a relatively complete plot. In the United States the willfulness in naming comics goes further. Publishers call a “graphic novel” collective issues of comic books in view of their bulk. Each such collection, released in the form of a suitably thick book, is signed under this term.

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fail. Fortunately, there are other solutions. One of them is to create a theoretical basis for the subsequent analysis provided by the typology based on a prototype categorisation theory and the politypical chains theory (Sawicki 1981). Running contextualisation and comparing analysed novels with a constructed prototype allow to capture both — changing conditions within the text as well as situations in the book market, which may affect the way comic books are being published (books, albums, issues, special editions, etc.) — and, therefore, to assign them to specific genres and kinds of the ‘”text world”. In this article, I would like to look closer at one of these prototype features, which has a significant impact on the politypical development of comic genres — the category of criticality. Research issues related to criticism among phenomena of popular culture — in this case, graphic novels — guide us toward a broader reflection on the overvaluation of theory and critique in cultural studies, which has occurred since the mid 60s. The growing scientific interest in the ‘mass’ — the study of the so-called new media and communication, redefining the concept of modernism which emerged out of poststructural and postmodern reading practices — has gradually allowed the sanction of the academic discourse on popular culture and at the same time it has begun breaking the hegemony in the ”high — low culture” classification. Currently, voices condemning pop culture, even these following Adorno’s negative dialectic — turned against the cultural industry and the instrumental reason — sound increasingly anachronistic. Those critiques which found ”popular” equal to ”mass” and ”apocalyptic” are slowly being replaced by the ”adjusted” ones (Eco 2010). Culture ceased to be an autonomous and elite domain; a notion of cultural production and demands, eliminating artificial divisions that are inconsistent with reality, has appeared. In some way the time of modernity has ended. It was replaced with many (post)modernities (Hansen 2009: 237). Theory has begun to carry out a revision of itself. Meta-theoretical discussions marked by mutual criticism of the 70s and 80s led to the overthrow of the methodology, language and the subject of studies. The ongoing debates, oscillating between attempts to define modernism and postmodernism, resulted in analyses of texts hitherto neglected (including comic books, films, graffiti, popular literature etc.). This opening is not only relevant to the scientific discourse. Expanding borders, their blurring, processes of penetrating, interference and convergence are characteristic mainly for the subject of the study — culture and its texts (Huyssen 1986). Tracing these unclear layers and mutual borrowings is a real challenge for contemporary cultural analysis. In this article I would like to draw attention to one of the symptomatic determinants of these cultural changes, which, it would seem, has no place in current (rapid and consumer) civilisation. This important factor is criticism/criticality and

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the category of distance which is an inseparable feature of such an attitude, even though, considering the concept superficially, it is easy to find it everywhere and classify it as a paradigmatic element of (post)modernity. An approach like this can consider as critical almost every action and event (Markowski 2007; Kraskowska 2011: 5). Remembering the dangers of the ”civilization of arguments”, especially related to depriving criticality its critical potential, I am going to consider this notion in the context of genre studies, paying particular attention to the critical aspect of genres’ self-consciousness, which — for the purposes of this essay — I shall call metacriticality.2 As an example, I have chosen the graphic novel, which, in my opinion, demonstrates the evolutionary potential of self-awareness and its impact on fundamental changes within a certain politypical chain. Graphic novels are also a characteristic subject to examine, because they represent significant displacement of the specific features of texts traditionally understood as culturally superior to the inferior — popular ones. By analysing the texts, which are representations of the hybrid genres (Grochowski 2000; Rachwał 2000), agenetic, mixed (Nycz 1996; Sendyka 2006), blurred (Geertz 1990: 113-114), it is necessary to mind their fuzziness and flickering genre status. The attempt to capture the leading permutations as well as newly introduced elements has a form of prototype typology, not an unambiguous classification, which — in the case of hybrid genres — seems to be impossible to construct. Comic books, to which the graphic novel genre belongs, bring additional difficulties arising from the complexity of the comic ”language”3. The ”language” of comics, which characterises itself by the icon-linguistic narrative unity, places comics among literature, film and visual arts. At the same time, it is a separate medium which developed its own artistic identity. There are tracks, where texts “wander”, transforming, gaining importance, or dying with the genre they represent. One of these pathways appears to develop the self-consciousness of the genre (metacriticality), which has become the basis for the comic books’ evolution since the mid-20th century. Speaking of the development of the comics, it is impossible to go directly towards the issue of self-aware2

3

Thus I depart from the traditional understanding of the term, which refers to the space of meta-theory and defines the relationship between the critical texts. I am only interested in the self-critical processes within cultural texts, which significantly affect the evolution of the particular genre. The terms ”language” as well as ”text” in this article are used metaphorically, in a wide understanding of both notions — as is the case with the concept ”language of the theatre” or ”film text”. Comics can be safely taken, for example, as a ”secondary modelling system” (J. Lotman) or verifed successfully by the seven criteria of the text (W.U. Dressler). However, a problematic aspect of defining comics’ semiotics remains — what the morpheme would be here — a comic bubble, a line, a point, a colour dot, a smear or maybe the whole frame or a strip?

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ness in graphic novels. The first stage which opened comics to face its barriers was a breakthrough of counter-culture in the U.S. and France. Picture stories, as they were often called, had gone through the small transformations only at the time. They grew out of satirical forms of newspaper proto-comics characteristic for the late 19th century and addressed mostly the adult reader and then became a medium aimed at children (R. Outcault, W. McCoy, R. Dirks). They re-opened to the older reader in the 1920s and 30s (science fiction, adventure superhero comics), then entered a phase of politicisation, propaganda and indoctrination (1940s and 50s) till they reached the period of extreme trivialisation (late 1950s) when the Comics Code was introduced (1954) and by means of preventive censorship — in the name of struggling with violence, eroticism and the moral corruption of comic books — restricted its prospects for development and closed the genre’s evolution behind the wall of schematic stories for children and young people. Fortunately, comic books changed significantly during the 1960s when Pop-art gained its popularity. It was a strong reaction to the consuming nature of Western civilisation. As a theme, it chose whatever was common, or belonged to everyday usage. It drew attention to repeatability within mass culture as well as to the blast of creativity underneath the popular. Pop-art also introduced advertising and commercial language, comics including, to the arts4. Not much later, the appeal of comics was discovered by the counterculture movement. Comics as an alternative art became a forum for discussion. The language of comics began to represent the frustrations, anxieties and desires of the youth revolution. Underground comics printing and new publishing houses grew rapidly from the mid-sixties to the late seventies. On the pages of comic magazines, in addition to subversive content and grotesque aesthetics, distinct changes resulting from intra-critical analysis appear for the first time. Narrative representations of authors and readers (often confronting each other)5 enter comic plots — full of political and moral incorrectness. Their talks and arguments have an autotelic and autothematic dimension. Also parodies of superhero stories, pastiches of popular characters and caricatures of contemporary celebrities become bread and butter during this period of comic books’ history. Comics also start the era of formal experimentation, drawing numerous patterns from literature and film6. The rapid evolution of the genre through the 4 5 6

Among other things, Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein’s works. E.g., Mr Natural by Robert Crumb, Art Spigelman’s comics in ”RAW” magazine or Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor. ”The result of the underground” and the development of the comic genre was the birth of feminist and gay comics — which are the beginning for contemporary gender and queer comic books. In underground comics the debate related to gender equality, chauvinism, racism and xenophobia has begun. Between 1970-1992 Trina Robbins created the series Wimmen’s Comix and published feminist comic anthologies. Robbins, with obvious irony,

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underground movement and, after that, the ”French revolution” under the aegis of Metal Hurlant magazine (since 1974 — including Moebius, P. Druillet, J.-P. Dionnet), has led to the metacritical perspective in relation to the devalued comic patterns of previous decades. In such circumstances the graphic novel was born. Inheriting the underground’s critical self-analysis came expressly to narrative and thematic paradigms known from the literature and became the closest comic form to the literary novel. It is the graphic novel, in which comics in general find the origins of the great transformation since the end of the 70s till today. Authors of graphic novels (as had Will Eisner, the Western graphic novel precursor) started asking questions that had not been asked yet. And if reevaluation of (post)modern literature is seen as a transition from the modernist (epistemological) dominant to postmodern (ontological) one (McHale 1996: 335-377), comics went, in a sense, through the opposite process. Comic books could be considered the postmodern text, even when the so-called high modernism reigned in literature. Comics, creating alternative worlds, parallel universes, separate attributes of characters, and inferring from the ludic, ”low” culture fair, at the same time opened themselves to other techniques and media (film, caricature, painting), which, according to such scholars as David Lodge, characterise postmodern texts and influences the diversity of literary representation of consciousness (Lodge 2003). However, when literature has begun to change rapidly, comics — and above all — the graphic novel (thanks to the growing self-awareness of the genre7) discovered for itself the epistemological space, which had been completely alien to this medium. In dozens of hastily created worlds, languages and figures first doubts (”why”, ”where”, ”what for”, ”how” etc.) began to emerge. The black-and-white construction collapsed. While literature pointed towards the possibilities of film and comics, the graphic novel noticed problems which have been present in literary fiction for a long time. This shift in thinking concerning what comic books are, their means and limitations, resulted in the constitution of the graphic novel as a subcategory — the separate genre among other kinds of comics in the whole graphic storytelling phenomena — one of whose main facets is the constant crossing of formal and thematic boundaries. That permanent need to ask questions at the level of a plot, narrative, relationships between author and the world presented, artistic techniques and other elements, make graphic novels continuously modify

7

showed a woman in need of liberation from the patriarchy. In the wake of Trina Robbins, other authors began publishing their works. Today, one of the most important feminists in comics world is Alison Bechdel, the creator of comic strips — Dykes to Watch out for and the graphic novel Fun Home. Linda Hutcheon underlines self-consciousness of text as one of the basic characteristics of postmodernism, which allows parodic gestures to appear and turns narration towards metafiction. (Hutcheon 1980; Hutcheon 1989: 3-32; Hutcheon 1988; Hutcheon 2001).

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metarepresentations of the genre. The graphic novel undermines the comic categories, setting different mirrors before them and critically and curiously looking at its own reflection. One of the graphic novels essential for the development of the genre (in the meaning I have drawn in this paper) is Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. This comic book illustrates how the evolutionary potential contained in metacriticality has an impact on the changes within the politypical chain. In this case, the permanent changes occur in a specific kind of comic books — American superhero comics, i.e., one of the most stereotypical types of comics in the history of the medium, often perceived through the prism of these stereotypes. Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons and Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns are considered breakthrough both by the fans and the theorists. The series, which consists of twelve issues (1986-1987), forms into brilliantly disturbing graphic novel, which settles with the myth-making era of superheroes. From the 1930s to the 1980s, the American comic books market was gradually filled with the growing universes of more and more (post)modern versions of ancient heroes and the like.8 The morally virtuous character was a dominant pattern and in a number of variants of a single paradigm was juxtaposed with his opponent. However, this adventure model, being played through a series of fights, did not seem to bore the reader. Nonetheless, at some point this scheme deeply rooted in popular culture cracked. The counter-culture revolution of the 1960s, by ridiculing the infantilism of such picture stories and pointing out their propaganda and political content, changed the view of comics. The 1960s and 70s gave the art of comics a breath of fresh air and a momentum it needed to start changing. Thanks to Spider-Man and X-Men, introducing new topics, moral issues and the figure of the Other, the change of optics took place and superhero comic books found the way to reach the adult recipient, which led to a search for new narrative solutions and topics. The climax of altering the apparently fixed world of superhero stories was the metacriticality charge contained in the graphic novel Watchmen. (...) Who is not afraid, he will find in Watchmen something completely unique, a rare hybrid which comments its own genre in a critical way, develops it, and yet is understandable to naïve readers. Indeed, this is probably the best feature of pop culture achievements — to be in dialogue with experts on the subject, overcome the limitations and reach the ignorant reader (Chaciński 2003).

Moore decided to debunk finally the image of a superhero. Even the first page of the book is revolutionary, on which the reader sees the murder scene, in which, as it turns out, the victim is one of Watchmen (Comedian). This solution resulted in the following experiments with reader’s ”horizon of expectations” among 8

Comics published mainly by Marvel and DC.

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superhero comic books (the writers have begun to kill or maim superhero icons — Batman, Batgirl, Superman, Captain America). Watchmen, however, breaking with black-and-white division into ”good” and ”bad”, is mainly the murderers of immaculate image of superheroes. Relativism of this graphic novel brought to the mainstream so far unknown shades of gray — morality ceased to be a clear category and motivations of the heroes began to be directed by the fuzzy logic, which had been at that time an undiscovered land in this kind of comic. Watchmen gave superheroes a human face, but not in a good sense. For example, Comedian abuses alcohol, he is guilty of rape and unjustified acts of violence, he pacified the demonstrators, he was a mercenary in Vietnam (where he had no hesitation to shoot a girl carrying his child). Dr. Manhattan is a kind of a “superman”, who is tired of the past, and who, at the same time, renounces more and more his humanity. The main character, Rorschach, is a grotesque implementation of a figure of hard-boiled detective, taken directly from Raymond Chandler’s novels. He is ”the other among the others” — Rorschach compulsively hates vice and evil. He is marked by the pathological childhood and remains truly alone in his crusade, which leads him towards a mental illness.9 Another example is Silk Spectre whom Moore presents as an aging beauty who lives in the past and former glory, drowning in grief, drinking glass after glass of alcohol. Night Owl II is portrayed as impotent, who, along with the order to withdraw Watchmen from public life, lives a meaningless existence. Ozymandias — the smartest man in the world, a businessman and philanthropist, turns out to be the author of a demonic plan endangering hundreds of thousands people (“the lesser of two evils” chosen for the sake of world peace on the eve of a nuclear war, whose beginning is counted off with the Doomsday Clock). There are many more examples of unconventional solutions in the construction of the characters in Watchmen. All of them may be explained by the vision of an alternate reality of the 1980s, which Alan Moore created. For the first time, politics and social issues appeared in the comic book on such a scale, playing the key role in the structure of the whole narrative.10 Moore also brought media to his story. By the time of Watchmen, almost the only sign of the media in superhero comics was the second identity of Superman, or Spider-Man (a journalist Clark Kent and a photojournalist Peter Parker respectively). In the graphic novel by Moore and Gibbons news programmes, talk-shows, live interviews, newspa9 The name Rorschach is a clear cultural allusion. 10 The reader is presented to the ”new” history of the United States, in which Richard Nixon was elected for the third presidential term and superheroes, widely regarded as renegades, operate on the outskirts of society, stigmatised and spurned by ordinary citizens. America and the Soviet Union are at the Cold War — only the presence of Dr. Manhattan (who is — literally — a walking nuclear weapon) saves the world from destruction.

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per articles, etc. play an important role in a plot and are also a relevant part of the narrative structure of the text. Mechanisms of propaganda, lies, political rhetoric and persuasion are shown in a vivid way. Sensationalism, which determines reality, and its major medium — television, are tools to build a nationwide paranoia. Superhero comic books created for teenagers were the last place to look for such sharp images of social relations and politics. Critically analysing the existing superhero stories, Moore and Gibbons presented the ”real adult” fiction. Their graphic novel, in addition to the proposals from the magazines Metal Hurlant and Heavy Metal and Will Eisner’s undeniable impact on the development of the comic art, initiated the time of involved mainstream comics. In Watchmen catastrophy, death, sickness, poverty, aging, infirmity, and many other afflictions known from the daily news appeared. The earlier superhero series were mostly dominated by the positive factors: youth, beauty, immortality, strength, faith in tomorrow. Watchmen is a negative pattern of that type of comic books. Currently, the comic book market, especially its graphic novel branch, is imbued with difficult and serious issues, from the Holocaust and the Gulag to terrorism. Since such publications as Watchmen, unidimensionality of comics was finally shattered. Watchmen became a link in the politypical chain, introductory storyline solutions, without which there would be no Martha Washington, Sin City and The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller, Preacher by Garth Ennis, Grant Morrison’s Arkham Asylum, and Kingdom Come by Alex Ross. Self-consciousness which reached graphic novels at this stage enabled a deep and critical review of its own representations. The effect was a reevaluation of superhero stories –one of the key varieties in comic books medium. Watchmen, however, played an important role in the transition process of the other elements of comic fiction — not only those connected with superhero plots. The main one is the structure of the narrative. At the beginning of the third issue, Watchmen presents a scene in front of a newspaper stand. The owner is clearly nervous. He is commenting on the political situation in the international arena and he is underlining his confidence in the U.S. nuclear power. Next to him, there is a boy who is sitting on the ground and reading a comic book about the Black Freighter, which we, the readers, also get to know. The motive of two supporting characters gradually returns. It is one of several innovative narrative tricks used in Watchmen. The authors seem to go to war with every accepted solution, likewise at the level of the narrative structure. A metacriticality is clearly visible in a contestation with the linearity, uniformity and homogeneity of the narrative surface — typical features of superhero comics from the 1930s-70s.

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The example of returning supporting characters in another simultaneous plot on the one hand points to the accumulation of figures (superhero comics used to be characterised by simplicity and transparency, such as a pair of leading heroes: protagonist — antagonist, aides/sidekicks on both sides and objectified ”persons of the background”); on the other hand, it suggests the text within the text technique. Moore did not stop by merely increasing the number of ”actors”. He decided to expand the relationships between the structures of the characters. The complexity of the actant model had its origins in a critical analysis of the popular adventure narrative paradigm. The decision that the protagonist could at some point be used as an aid and finally become the antagonist (Rorschach), and other similar narrative operations, have the significant influence on the literary value of the story. As for the placing text within the text — it is bound directly with metacriticality. The story of the Black Freighter and a survivor initially seems a paraliterary manipulation close to architextuality (Genette 1992). Telling the complex and innovative story, it refers to the adventurous comic books published from the mid-20s, at the same time paying them tribute and recreating them in a pastiche way. But this is only a first impression. The comic book read by the boy in the graphic novel which we try to read assumes the function of Rorschach’s fate as allegory to finally become an obscure symbol of the fate of all people living in that possible alternative world developed by Moore (or to be more precisely, by the virtual, model author). This final observation, combined with the reflective echoes of Watchmen, leaves the reader with the eternal question accompanied by the problem of Theodicy — unde malum? Further devices — to use Shklovsky’s terminology — of defamiliarisation that interfere with the one-dimensional and linear narrative are recurring flashbacks run by several characters, sometimes simultaneously. The way they appear in the text recalls techniques of the stream of consciousness (Humphrey 1977). Although the thoughts in individual streams are ordered, the narrative method of transition from one stream to another and the emphasis put on the catalysts of these thoughts (empirical stimuli, memory, imagination) are deceptively similar to the methods developed in the first half of the 20th century by James Joyce and Virginia Woolf,11 adapted here to the form of visual storytelling. Another example of a critical self-awareness of the genre is the apparent abandonment of the auctorial narration — until Watchmen the distinctive feature of the narrative in superhero comics. Moore replaced it with first-person narrator, Rorschach. To be more accurate, he used the figure of metonymy to ”equate” Rorschach’s voice/perspective with the bits and pieces of the diary that he had left behind. In Watchmen there 11 I quote these names, deliberately omitting other important writers such as Édouard Dujardin, or Henry James, because only works of V. Woolf and J. Joyce are the examples of successful attempts to revolutionise narrative techniques.

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are included also excerpts from fictional chronicles, articles, interviews, photos, fragments of lyrics, quotes and a number of literary allusions and associations with other texts related to pop culture. These are not only, it should be stressed, the mere ornaments and accessories to spice up the reading. On the one hand, they facilitate the suspension of disbelief, creating ”fictional documents” of this alternative reality; on the other hand, they form an important commentary for one of the first attempts to construct the morally and ideologically complex comic story. All these elements create an unprecedented effort to cross the barriers of superhero genres. Thus, they involve Watchmen in a critical dialogue with tradition, not only of the graphic novel genre, but also the whole medium, which, for decades, was developing exaggerated simplicity and schematic solutions. Achieving self-consciousness allowed graphic novels to rebuild the old narratives into the fascinating storyworld with a strong evolutionary potential — the world as complex and surprising as his literary counterpart. Bibliography: Adorno Theodor (1989), Űber Jazz (On Jazz), “Discourse” 12(1). Birek Wojciech (2009), Powieść graficzna, „The Problems of Literary Genres” nr 52 z. 1-2 (103104). Chaciński Michał (2003), Szara strefa moralności in: „Esensja — magazyn kultury popularnej”; http://esensja.pl/komiks/recenzje/tekst.html?id=767 Eco Umberto (2010), Apokaliptycy i dostosowani. Komunikacja masowa a teorie komunikacji masowej, W.A.B., Warszawa (first Italian edition: 1964). Fiedler Leslie Aron (1972), Cross the Border — Close the Gap, Stein and Day, New York. Geertz Clifford (1990), O gatunkach zmąconych, trans. Z Łapiński, „Teksty Drugie” nr 2. Genette Gerard (1992), Palimpsesty. Literatura drugiego stopnia, trans. A. Milecki, in: Współczesna teoria badań literackich za granicą. Antologia, ed. H. Markiewicz, vol. 4/2, Wydawnictwo Literackie, Kraków. Grochowski Grzegorz (2000), Tekstowe hybrydy, FUNNA, Wrocław. Hansen Miriam Bratu (2009), Masowe wytwarzanie doświadczenia zmysłowego. Klasyczne kino hollywoodzkie jako modernizm wernakularny, trans. Ł. Biskupski, M. Murawska, M. Pabiś, J. Stępień,T. Sukiennik, N. Żurowska, in: Rekonfiguracje modernizmu. Nowoczesność i kultura popularna, ed. T. Majewski, Wydawnictwa Akademickie i Profesjonalne, Warszawa. Huyssen Andreas (1986), After the Great Divide. Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism, Indiana University Press, Indianapolis. Humphrey Robert (1970), Strumień świadomości — techniki, trans. S. Amsterdamski, in: „Pamiętnik Literacki” z.4. Hutcheon Linda (1989), Historiographic Metafiction: Parody and the Intertextuality of History, in: Intertextuality and Contemporary American Fiction, ed. P. O’Donnell, R. Con Davis. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore. Hutcheon Linda (1988), A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction, Routledge, London & New York.

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Hutcheon Linda (2001), A Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentieth-Century Art Forms, University of Illinois Press, 2001 Illinois. Hutcheon Linda (1980), Narcissistic Narrative: The Metafictional Paradox, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, Waterloo, Ontario. Kraskowska Ewa (2011), Krytyka krytyczności, „The Problems of Literary Genres” nr 54, z. 2 (108). Lodge David (2003), Consciousness and the Novel, Penguin, London. Macdonald Dwight (1953), A Theory of Mass Culture, “Diogenes” vol. 1(3). Markowski Michał Paweł, (2007) Sztuka, krytyka, kryzys : obieg.pl (http://www.obieg.pl/ teksty/1863). McHale Brian (1996), Od powieści modernistycznej do postmodernistycznej: zmiana dominanty, trans M. P. Markowski, in: Postmodernizm, Wydawnictwo Baran i Suszczyński, Kraków. McLuhan Marshall (1975), Wybór pism, trans. K. Jakubowicz, Wydawnictwo Artystyczne i Filmowe, Warszawa. Nycz Ryszard (1996), Sylwy współczesne, Universitas, Kraków. Rachwał Tadeusz (2000) Genologiczne konteksty, czyli narodziny nie-gatunku, in: Genologia i konteksty, ed. C. Dudka i M. Mikołajczyk , Wyższa Szkoła Pedagogiczna im. Tadeusza Kotarbińskiego, Zielona Góra. Sawicki Stefan (1981), Gatunek literacki: pojęcie klasyfikacyjne, typologiczne, politypiczne? In: Idem, Poetyka. Interpretacja. Sacrum, PWN, Warszawa. Sendyka Roma (2006), Nowoczesny esej. Studium historycznej świadomości gatunku, Universitas, Kraków 2006; Wróblewski Michał (2010), Wstępna charakterystyka powieści graficznej. W stronę genologii humanistycznej, „The Problems of Literary Genres” nr 53, z. 1-2 (105-106).

Logo-visual Genres. From Criticism of Language to Social Critique Agnieszka Karpowicz* Abstract Since at least the beginning of the 20th century located in between word and picture, logo-visual forms have had a critical charge, which results from the impact of two different media (word and picture) in a single work. This clash provokes the challenge and question within of each of them. The Modern tradition of typographic poetry originates at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Two factors were crucial for the development of the logo-visual forms: changes of media environment and rapid growth of new reproduction techniques. The multimedia of the 20th and 21st centuries use technically reproduced words and pictures for advertising, ideological or persuasive purposes. Logo-visual art becomes a genre, which calls into doubt relationships among word, picture and the meaning. It establishes a philosophical and critical reflection on the systems of representation. Critical reflection on language and systems of representation, when one medium is reflected by the other one in a single work, makes the spectator’s reception of the work critical and nonautomatic. This way of engaging the work partly results from the twentieth-century experiences; thus the critical reflection on language fluently passes into cultural criticism. * Institute of Polish Culture, University of Warsaw, Krakowskie Przedmieście 26/28 00-927 Warszawa e-mail: [email protected]

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“If possible, for goodness sake don’t bring out such heaven-shriekingly bad stuff […] When I read it I had diarrhea, vomited, and became consumptive. If my life is dear to you, please choose your poems better. Rather none than such wretched poems…” (Higgins 1987: 15). So wrote a Hungarian poet, Sándor Petöfi in a letter to the editor of a journal Hazańk — this was a commentary on a poem in shape of a cross which was published there. Logovisual forms of expression, involving various media, rarely fit in the frameworks of traditional aesthetics, poetics, types and genres as well as the established ways of perceiving works of art. No wonder then that an inherently evaluative language was used in order to try and cope with the multimedia as an increasingly pervasive aspect of the twentieth-century artistic practices. Such forms were often criticised for not belonging to particular genres and using materials which were amorphous and heterogeneous. This is partially why ever since the beginning of the twentieth century the forms located in-between word and image have carried a critical potential. Works that can be classified as belonging to logovisual genres are created in the space in-between different media. They emerge between verbal and the visual, often leaning towards visual arts, whereas all the other intermedia of the verbal art simply occupy the spaces between the word and all the other areas of creativity. They mostly include phenomena involving two media. Their ontological status can only be described as transitory, always functioning in the space ”in-between” word and image, but not reducible to any one of them. The category of intermedia was first suggested by Dick Higgins in the 1960s as a way of joining the diverging poles of modern artistic activity and the traditional, negative modes of describing it (Higgins 1983, 1978, 1977, 1965). The term was intended to define all artistic forms, which outgrew the limiting — but exceedingly clean and proper — bounds of theoretical categorisations of literariness, theatricality, musicality and visual artistry. It was Higgins’s way of coming to terms with works of art emerging in-between different media, such as happenings which were between collage, theatre, music; or visual and concrete poems, existing in-between the verbal and the visual. Higgins himself created his original Visual Essays to explain the interrelations between various media of art. The first one came out in 1976 and illustrated the position of poetry. Poetry is in the center of a circle, while numerous arrows are directed from the centre to various disciplines. According to Higgins, visual poems develop towards visual arts. Similarly, there emerge the categories of video poetry (which develops in the direction of video art), mail art (connected with the mail), concrete sound poems (which develop towards music), conceptual poetry (which shifts towards philosophy). All the intermedia of the verbal art are simply the areas between the verbal art and any other discipline.

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Higgins used similar methods to explain other artistic forms such as performance, environmental art, Fluxus and conceptual art. The same framework of thinking about how works of art develop is illustrated in yet another visual essay. The areas with a question mark are meant to emphasise the fluidity, instability and openness of the intermedia art, and to bring out the lack of orthodoxy in the very categorisation.

It is just this fluidity, instability and openness of intermedia art as well as the unorthodox way of categorising it, that immediately make the language of logovisuality critical for the established modes of classification. In Higgins’s perspective, the quality of intermediality tends to be the basis of an unobvious kind of value judgements on works of art. A found art object — as incoherent with any pure medium — functions at the intersection of artistic means of expression and the reality. It is something in-between a sculpture and some other form, but can never be simply identified with either. Such an object, not rooted in any particular expressive sphere, can be more valuable than, for example, paintings by Picasso, which are limited to one medium. In that view, pop art and op art equally fall under the same kind of criticism, as they are a result of artistic self-limitation, which derives from employing means of expression belonging to old, narrow, primarily decorative functions of art. Thus, Higgins tries to transgress all poetics and aesthetics based on pure means of expression. Somewhere at the intersection of logovisual practice and the intermedia theory, he sketches a new model, one that is critical of the traditional poetics and aesthetics. It seems important to emphasise the points when Higgins, the artist and the theoretician, comments on the pervasiveness of the intermedia, which have always been there, but are usually marginalised and pushed outside the aesthetic centre by clerk-like-researchers driven by the idea of the purity of the material. Throughout the long history of logovisual genres, which performed multiple functions in various historical and cultural contexts, the critical potential they had was defined by the unclear, amorphous situation of the genre, which provoked questions about the

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limits of literature, visual arts, poetry and, quite simply, a poem. It put to doubt the established classifications and the classic poetics and aesthetics. Dick Higgins sees intermediality as a defining feature of the twentieth-century artistic practices and stresses that the very idea of a classification of the artistic materials does not exist in any objective way, as an eternal, unquestionable fact. He locates the beginnings of the idea of pure art within the Renaissance and he believes it to be connected with the social structure and awareness of the period. Higgins claims that the aesthetic division actually reflects the social divisions, the stratification based on a mechanistic, classifying way of thinking. Democratisation is, he says, a process which deprives strict conceptual and artistic categories of their legitimacy, making them inapplicable to creative phenomena. Just as in the seventeenth century the theatre reflected and justified the established notion of order, so intermedia are rooted in the contemporary understanding of the social order. However, the logovisual forms have not always functioned in a critical context, showing the discrepancy between word and image, between signifiant and signifié. It seems that the critical capacity of the logovisual language was only brought out to the full in its twentieth century forms. The genre belongs primarily to the medium of writing. Its primary mode of being is as a manuscript, and then as a visual text. Such media roots of the genre make it possible to employ the visuality of writing and bring out its essential spatiality, that is, its visibility, its shape. In addition, it invokes the practices of visualising the word and writing through image (e.g., ideograms, pictograms, hieroglyphics, Egyptian cryptography, rebuses). Within visual poetry, all these elements of writing’s potential are not merely a part of the composition; they actually perform a semantic function. Visual poetry was first created as a result of the processes of autonomising and specialising the artistic sphere, including literature (Pelc 2002, Rypson 2002). The very form and the means of expression typical of the genre, had appeared earlier however, though performing a function which had been neither artistic nor poetic, but which had in fact been mnemonic (a record serving memory) and magical (in which the written word is treated as an object). Works formally resembling visual poetry were created as logovisual prayers, as spells, gnostic amulets, written magical formulas, magic squares or curing spells. Later, authors of visual poetry often referred to this tradition, focusing on the alchemy of letters and numbers or on the mystical philosophy of language. Medieval and then Renaissance and Baroque letter mazes and cartographical works are testimonies of such phenomena. The link between the word and the object was also emphasised in the earliest examples of visual or pattern poetry, in its proper sense — created within the sphere of art. Greek literature of the Alexandrian period can serve as an example here. Visual poems created at that time illustrated an object, to which the verbal

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layer referred — they were called technopaegnia. The most renowned poems of this kind are The Axe, The Wings and The Egg by Simias of Rhodes, written around 325 B.C. They represented the title objects through graphic signs/letters. One hypothesis states they might have been intended to be placed on particular objects as inscriptions. Picture poems, created as literary works, but performing other functions as well, were particularly popular in ancient Rome. This is where the most famous examples, that is, carmina cancellata [grid poems] come from, especially those by Optatian. Such poems were placed inside the main text, forming a sign of cross or the monograms of Christ. They were primarily symbolic. In the Roman context, pattern poetry quickly became an expression of religious or state ideology and functioned panegyrically or even as propaganda. It also served the fundamental function of the visualised writing as inscription. This logovisual tradition was fully brought to light in Baroque monument poems, emblem poems or pyramid poems. This sort of architectural work, invoking the celebratory role of columns, obelisks and other similar monumental forms, had a practical function. They were created for various celebrations and they were supposed to praise and commemorate, while invoking shapes of particular objects. They worked upon the association with inscriptions on the statues of gods and rulers, on walls of temples and on tombs. They increasingly shifted the celebratory significance of inscriptions from the public sphere towards the private sphere, from royal courts to private residences. Pattern poetry decorated all sorts of occasional prints, for example commemorating a particular member of a noble family or an eminent dead person. At the same time, pattern poetry belonged to the increasingly autonomous literary sphere, which was considered sophisticated and erudite. The tendency, rooted in the tradition of word mazes, logogryphs, polyptotons and tautograms, resulted in a lasting current called poesis artificiosa. Emblematics, hieroglyphics and modern iconology were born from it around the 16th century. Emblematics then gradually became a separate discipline of art. The genre involved an erudite, intellectual play, but it was also didactic and moralising in nature, while at the same time related divine mysteries. A classic emblem as a stable genre consisted of a motto (lemma), an icon (picture, imago) and a phrase located below it — an epigram (epigramma, subscripti). The content of the motto provoked an interplay of meanings with the image, working similarly to a rebus. The semantic tension led to the discovery of a common significance — word and image functioned together as a semantic cluster referring to a shared meaning. However, originally the emblems (connected with artistry, which came to be positively valorised as the artistic sphere was becoming increasingly autonomous within the European culture) performed a function related to mosaics or patterns placed on everyday

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objects. Such decorative motifs were actually called emblema. This type of visual poetry was strictly related to heraldry and is treated as deriving from it. After the invention of print, typographic records supplanted xylography, chalcography and manuscript as the medium of the logovisual genre, which led to a transformation of its form and function. Typography is always an idealisation of writing, whereas visual poetry, in all its varieties, is based on the non-transparency of the written or printed word. Thus the medium draws attention to itself in reading (the quality of non-transparency) and makes it impossible to treat words as transparent containers for meaning. The culturally sanctioned function of readability, clarity of the written and especially the typographic message, which is characteristic of text in the narrow sense, becomes a material for art — a malleable material. Thus, logovisuality questions the automaticity1 of the medium it is created in and of the way it is perceived. It reinterprets the typographic word as a visible, sensual and material object, dependent in its being and meaning on its medium, on the sound and visual form. It is then a verbal art which brings out the materiality of text, but also the materiality of a language sign. This quality was fully acknowledged and employed in the modern and contemporary logovisual tradition.

The Critique of Language The critical potential of the modern logovisual genres lies in the very juxtaposition of two different media (word and image) within one work. It provokes mutual questioning of both. The modern tradition of typographic visual poetry goes back to the late 19th century and the early 20th century (Śniecikowska 2005, Skwara, Wysłouch 2006). The logovisual forms are largely influenced by two factors: the evolving media environment and the rapidly changing new techniques of reproduction (lithography, colour print, mechanical reproduction). The literary visual text is transformed as a result of poetry interacting with other typographic logovisual practices, such as signboards, posters, comic books, advertisements, postcards, illustrated magazines. One of the most important 20th-century authors of pattern poetry, Guillaume Apollinaire, gave the fullest testimony to such changes: ”Flyers catalogs hoardings sing aloud / Here’s poetry this morning and for prose you’re reading the tabloids” (Apollinaire 1995: 3). Thus the logovisual genres — posters, proclamations, hoardings, declarations, manifestos, announcements and advertisements — which are elements of the urban logosphere, become a material for logovisual artists. Poster art, as a new form 1

By that I mean: it strips the medium of the habitual, naturalized perceptions attached to it to the point that they seem automatic, just happening on their own, uninterrogated and unnoticed. It is this sort of automatizity that is being questioned

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of visual and verbal message, has artistically transformed information which had functioned in the city landscape for a long time on noticeboards. It has also been a field for experimentation in typography, which later modified the traditional forms of art. The emergence of the new media and new ways of processing word and image has intensified literary and visual searches for self-definition. Ever since the end of the 19th century the means of mechanical reproduction, which accompanied the development of print in the Western culture and was used mostly for copying verbal messages, has made it ever simpler to copy pictures and verbal-visual forms as coherent signs. These changes in the visual sphere found their expression within the domain of literature too, and they reorganised its earlier forms. Simultaneously, logovisual forms, which could now be easily and swiftly copied, opened the debate and the critique of reproduction, but also of the systems of representation. In 1889, Hans W. Singer thought it to be completely natural that one can use a visual work of art to create a new genre, because both word and image can be subjected to reproducing. He assumed that an owner of a soap factory could buy an oil painting representing a child blowing soap bubbles, order colour facsimile copies of it from a lithographer, and add the name of his company to it, thus obtaining a popular work of art (Singer 1971: 483). It is lithography, together with the invention of photography, that made the characteristic activities of the 20th-century artistic expression fast and widely available: taking words and images out of context and quoting, placing them in new contexts, juxtaposing with any chosen elements, transforming and repeating works of art, as well as reproducing complete logo-visual signs. Another important source was the art of advertising, which widely employed modern print techniques. A whole spectrum of shapes, sizes and styles of fonts and letters was created at the beginning of the 20th century (Bohn 2001: 2021). A commercial poster could function as an effective means of acting through word, even without the traditional pictorial element. Apollinaire wrote about it in 1912 — ”he added billboards, plaques and notices to his list of poetic devices and compared them to a flock of noisy, flashy parrots” (Apollinaire 1995: 20). The visual current in poetry was most fully represented and used in the avant-garde circles. The association with advertisements and press announcements was often invoked, using two-column layout for example. A characteristic tendency — especially in futurist works — involved combining word, image and letters as idealised sounds within the visual space of the text. This is also a moment when the tradition of visual poetry crisscrosses with the idea of a phonetic and optophonetic poem. Stanisław Młodożeniec made an attempt to represent a phone call in one of his poem –————————————– oh how is — how?!! — oh — — wohow — how

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Agnieszka Karpowicz – — — — — o — mia ’lumba’ — — you’ve uttered there a distant ’yes’ and disappeared in Chinese alleys – — — — — — — — – — — — – – – — — — — — — — – — — — — – [1921] (Młodożeniec 1978: 185)

The visual element (the dash) becomes here the image of sound of static. The image of a word functions as a representation of sound — the poem was undoubtedly inspired by telegraph record of a message, which was connected with the spread of this means of communication. The logovisual forms of expression in their typographic version were a result of the 20th-century search for unity and mutual adequacy of the auditory and the visual. It seemed to be an attempt to revitalse the lost unity of all arts in a one, complete and indissoluble, multimedia whole, which resembled the very old concept of correspondence between arts, but which gave up the earlier symbolic character of message and the elaborate skill required by ornamental poetry. This sort of intermedia combination is actually internally critical, which can be seen in the Cubist practices, for example. The words, bits of texts and letters appearing in the space of a painting are the first step towards the Cubist papiers collés. George Braque and Pablo Picasso simultaneously began to introduce words into their works of visual art. Before that, within the European visual arts words would have only appeared in miniature panel paintings and they would have functioned as a commentary to the scenes represented in the painting. Until the 19th century word participated in pictures as an inscription, a banderole or a comment, as part of an emblem. It then completely disappeared from paintings in the 19th century. It was only the Cubists who introduced it as a purely visual form into the space of a paintings, without reference to emblematic or symbolic functions (Morawińska 1982: 226-228; Rypson 1989: 143). This means that the letter has become an image, a visual form, not referring to any of the meanings that we had been used to read or reconstruct having a line of letters within our sight. The Cubists very quickly realised the threat connected with creating art, which did not attempt to reveal the structure of the world and was completely detached from life. Braque would place an entire phrase on his painting: letters ”BAL” painted through a template, an almost invisible ”O”, ”CO” next to “&” and digits 10 and 40 (The Portuguese, 1911). Or he would insert a syllable between the oak veneer and charcoal lines (Fruit bowl, 1912). The aim was to diversify the surface. The mute and meaningless letters, syllables and words are significant here, but only as a flat element among the representations of spatial forms. The objects could then represent, while the letter form could only remain itself (Wolfram 1975). The focus here is not language, of course, but the potential and meaning of the visual representation of reality. The words mainly brought out the illusion of reality and

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the meanings of the elements created through the painting techniques. Braque and Picasso started using letters and words on their paintings in 1911. They were the elements of urban space introduced into the space of a painting. They demanded being read and at the same time they were a visual form, an abstract component of the composition. These practices were the beginning of inserting bits of newspapers in the paintings.2 This breakthrough moment released the critical potential of language, which lies in the logovisual forms. The phenomenon is best understood as combining the meaning of a word with its form. Print idealises writing, the primary function of which is to record the idealisation of speech: ”the relationship between words and images reflects, within the realm of representation, signification and communication, the relations we posit between symbols and the world, signs and their meanings” (Mitchell 1986: 43). Writing in the phonetic alphabet requires dividing the content into small elements (letters), which resemble nothing in the surrounding reality, or, in fact, in language itself. Thus they can be treated as non-mimetic visual forms and be used in exploring the artistic spaces between writing, visual sign and meaning: The filter of the alphabetic writing has deeply changed language, including the spoken language. It occurred both in a positive sense, which cannot be discussed here, and in a negative one, mostly because language has not only been devoid of its sound qualities (especially in poetry), but also its visual dimension has become functionalized so that it records the verbal language — therefore in that respect a loss of substance has occurred in this dimension. (Mon 2006: 35)

The lack of substance that characterises visual and verbal representations falls subject to criticism, which runs parallel to attempts at reestablishing their substance. The modern logovisual forms which treat written word as an image are based on the idea of a word as a material object, dependent in its being and its existence on the medium, for example on the visual form. For the artists who represent this current, the written word remains, despite its abstract character, sensual and concrete, real, materialised and materialising itself in art. At the beginning of the 20th century, the word began to appear widely in a non-referential manner on posters and signboards, in announcements and in newspapers, functioning as the mute letter of visual surfaces. The situation partly generated the problem of the written word, which in turn started raising doubts as to the limits of linguistic reference in general: A visual poet does not trust ”a pure word”, he is aware of its insufficiency. Therefore he suggests transcending the boundaries of the isolated, technically heterogenic lan2

Harriet Janis, Rudi Blesh, Collage. Personalities — Concepts — Techniques (Philadelphia and New York: Chilton, 1962).

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Agnieszka Karpowicz guages through an original combination. Thus he transforms the structure of communicative codes, as well as the aesthetic codes. (D’Ambrosio 1978: 152)

Disbelief, questioning, exploring and testing meaning are attitudes to “the signification of a sign” (be it word or image), which spur new ways of using written and printed words within the space of visual art. A surrealist artist, René Magritte, for example, used to place inscriptions under the painted objects. In the painting titled Key of Dreams (1936) we see images of objects signed in English: a clock is signed as ”the wind”, a pitcher as ”the bird”, a horse’s head as ”the door” and a suitcase as ”the suitcase”. On the one hand, the subject of this work is the relationship between the thing itself, its representation and its name: The way we see things is affected by what we know and what we believe. In the Middle Ages, when men believed in the physical existence of Hell the sight of fire must have meant something different than it means today. […] Yet this seeing which comes before words, and can never be quite covered by them, is not a question of mechanically reacting to stimuli. […] We only see what we look at. To look is an act of choice. (Berger 1990: 8)

On the other hand, the artist also touches upon the problems of linguistic names and what things the names are supposed to refer to, because: ”All linguistic expressions risk distrust. It is never quite certain whether what I say is adequate to what induces me to this enunciation […]” (Mon 2006: 250). The criticism of language implied here refers to the problem of a linguistic sign and the related process in the history of media. The written word itself is a visual phenomenon. This specificity is due to the development of new media which materialise language in a graphic form. Walter J. Ong claims that alphabetic writing, and then print, decontextualise the spoken word, making it static, spatial, visual and abstract (1982). Written letters do not refer directly to any meanings, so we perceive them as abstract, but they do have their own, graphic materiality. Thus the medium itself attracts attention here in reading (it is not transparent) and makes it impossible to treat words as transparent containers for meaning. The alphabetic writing, especially within the order of a typographic page, seems to be an immaterial, almost transparent container, immediately mediated by speech. However, the written word is always a visual form, specific to the extent to which we simultaneously look at it and through it (Perloff 1991: 120). According to Stefan Themerson, one of the authors of avant-garde logovisual art, the human way of thinking emerges from behind the auditory and visual physicality of letters, from behind the spatial relations between words and from behind grammatical, logical and syntactic forms of language. Themerson suggests that by experimenting on the external materiality of signs one can act within the reality — model it and change the stereotypical forms of perception. The fundamental conviction here is that the structure of the medium through which we express our

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view on the world is identical with the structure of our thinking about this world. Themerson is very close to McLuhan on this point, when the latter writes about the print technology as based on placing individual characters in a composing stick, which produces linear words on a printed page. According to Themerson, such a layout reflects the human ways of thinking about the structure of the world and about the varying relationships occurring inside it. If the printing technology is connected with the way of thinking and conceptualising the world, then — the author suggests — one can see a hope of working out a non-linear way of philosophical thinking about the reality in the new, non-linear, alternative and logovisual layout of a printed page (Themerson 1974). The principle of typographic clarity of text has been in place steadily ever since the mid-15th century. This print technique has actually been labelled as idealising writing, which remains loyal to its early function of imitating calligraphy through methods which allow for quick and easy reproduction. The shape of letters becomes an aesthetic phenomenon then, one that depends on the type of alphabet. We are dealing with functional art here, of course. The shape of the Latin signs is responsible for formal irregularities, but they make the writing legible. Book typography has to follow the principle that it is to remain imperceptible in order to make reading text — and, in fact, content — easy. The human reader remains the final measure and criterion for the printed page, and in all standard print layouts employed by various schools the proportions of the human body, and especially those of eyes, hands, forearms as well as the anatomy of the eye, are the main model and scale for typography. However, the Themersons believed that the printed sign belongs to the material aspect of a work of art, and that in a picture that is the printed word one can perform operations similar to those that can be performed on the auditory aspect of words, or on a film tape, or a photographic film. The technical means involved, including the craft of typography, become artistic categories, which transform the potential an artist has at hand and which expand the space he can work in. Thus perception changes as well as the way of thinking about the substance of the world. The Themersons and their perspective are the evidence of the emergence of the new, 20th-century audiovisual environment, which itself is an expression of a new consciousness and a modern way of being in the world or thinking about it. In this context, it is worth reminding the hypothesis formulated by a theoretician of the media, Marshall McLuhan, who stated that it was the invention of print which contributed to the hegemony of the eye and the visual perception in the 20th century. Within this framework, reading itself initiates the ever intensifying process of visual conquering, reproducing and spreading knowledge. Moreover, reading is connected with the emergence of the situation where seeing a word dominates listening to it. McLuhan then, referring to the mental aspect of per-

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ception, brings out yet another way in which the written word is combined with image. Thus, the roots of modern visual culture, which is often said to be killing the culture of books, lie in the invention of print. In the work of Franciszka and Stefan Themerson typography became a legitimate form of artistic expression — it became an art and it was an expression of a specific artistic standpoint. Thus, Themerson suggests, just like one of the modern typographers, the author of The Elements of Typographic Style (Bringhurst 1992) does, the pattern governing how we print and record various contents is an intellectual pattern, and as such it actually reflects the social order in its implicit logical, hierarchical and ideological structure. In a poetic, metaphorical vein the author of The Elements… wrote about the marriage of writing and text, to which each partner brings its roots — its cultural heritage. The uppercase and lowercase become here the representatives of ”the constitutional monarchy of the alphabet”, a cultural institution. It is a matter of socially conditioned trends which are reflected in the fonts. For example, the widely accepted position of the footnotes corresponds with the Victorian order in which servants should be kept out of sight. Bringhurst can find signs of racism and ethnocentrism in a typographic form, when the fonts can only build the Anglo-American alphabet. Even the seemingly banal problem of visual differentiating between the letters ”f” and ”i” in the Turkish alphabet leads to discovering typographic relativism, modelled after the cultural one. Such typographic relativism is absent from the common thinking about print. From designing children’s books, through the avant-garde technique of internal vertical justification, to publishing books that were works of art, the Themersons worked with the conviction that the visual form of letters and words on the printed page is not merely a domain of artistic expression, but also a form which reflects the modes of human thinking about the world and allows for reorganising them, and which is linked with mentality, ethics and politics. Typography is not only a means of visual expression — it is an extension of thought. Within the domain of verbal art, the authors have explored graphical composition and typesetting, bringing to the fore the materiality and physicality of a word or a single letter, searching for equivalents between word, image, sound, motion and meaning. The ”multimedia” experiments which crisscross verbal art with visual art and sound are also an attempt to test the potential of translation from what is heard to what is seen, and from what is seen to what can be heard. Literary, visual and musical qualities function here as mutually translatable equivalents which co-constitute the total work of art. In Themerson’s literature, graphic and typographic categories and symbols can express sound and rhythm units as well as introduce motion in time and space. The author tries to solve the question whether it is possible to represent sound or silence on a mute sheet of paper and through mute signs in this space — he does so

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for example in Professor Mmaa, through the musical notation (Themerson 2010: 258-259). However, it is a sign that instead of sounding and then disappearing, remains silent. It is but a score that will only fulfill its meaning in performance. The auditory space has to be activated intellectually, rather than through the senses:

In reading, then, this space will be actualised in the silence of thought as an imagined sound, tone, rhythm and duration. Music exists in time, while notation exists in space. A score, including performance guidelines, is always the visual equivalent of sound units:

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Such experiments require reading skills, which were perhaps possessed by people many thousands years before Christ, when the auditory perception was prevailing. Hypothetical reading could have been based on ”hearing the cuneiform” and ”hallucinations of speech” then.3 Another type of typographic experiments carried out by the Themersons was the typographic collage, which emphasised the self-containedness of a word as a visual and sound phenomenon. It is a language conceived as a system of concrete, material signs. This is a typography which brings to the fore the materiality and physicality of a word, even a letter. Thus the language ceases to be understood as a transparent container for abstract meanings; it ceases to refer and represent, it just is. The final stage of the development of the typographic idea of internal, vertical justification was semantic poetry. It required that in print one word should be replaced with many other words which build its definition in such a way that in the text there would appear a pure, unequivocal message, made of precise words, in no way blurring the meaning. Translated into semantic poetry, the song Hajda trojka included visual representation of snowflakes, which exposed their belonging to ”the hexagonal system”. ”4. Thanks to that, all the words forming the definition of snow exist simultaneously and are inherently bound together. The internal vertical justification concept is not merely a graphical ornament on a page, but it has an intellectual rebellion behind it. In Bayamus, it is a consequence of the project of renewing and refreshing language, and, through this, the human, very automatic attitude to the word and its shape, which also implies an automatic attitude to reality. 3 4

Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of Bicameral Mind (New York: Mariner Books, 2000; first published: Boston: Mifflin 1976), p. 182. Stefan Themerson, Bayamus, in Selected Prose…, p. 32.

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The simultaneous verbal and visual play going on here is characteristic too. The optophonetic experiments which accentuate the visual and auditory layer of a work displace words from their traditional, mechanical meanings. The literary experiments on the linguistic material are motivated by deep self-consciousness and a desire to find a new function for the word (and the verbal art) within a culture undergoing a shift from the domination of the printed word to a multiplicity of verbal and visual media. In Themerson’s works, the image was often interpreted as part of the logosphere, while written and printed word was treated as an element of the 20th-century iconosphere, which allowed for seeing the whole range of practices which constitute the typographic environment and for not limiting the space of print to a white sheet in a book. It also made it possible to avoid enclosing printed text in the abstract universe of uniform black letter signs dwelling on white book pages. Visiting cards, stamps, user manuals, forms, writings on product packages, posters, plaques and notices are practices of the print culture too, after all. Therefore the Themersons used various types and forms of print in literature and in editing. Treating the printed word as a visual stimulus was also characteristic of the Themersons’ work on impressive book layouts published in their own publishing house Gaberbocchus, which they set up as emigrés in 1948 in London, where they were forced to seek shelter during World War II. Typographic collages had always been part of Stefan Themerson’s work — he participated in the European movement of visual poetry; he admired Apollinaire and his calligrams. These often funny typographic experiments suddenly begin to reflect the process of finding truth about reality. They are to induce action, but they also transgress the book page, show the alternative, equivalent ways of recording thought, and alternative thoughts too. Through that they are to teach tolerance and respect to all forms, which might seem weird experiments, like the three-legged Bayamus, the title character of one of Themerson’s short stories, who has no specified sex and looks like an oddity, or weird degenerated forms which break the norm — including the typographic one. Themerson wrote about the collages of another émigré, his friend, Kurt Schwitters, who, being a German Dadaist of Jewish descent, was exiled from Hitler’s Germany. Themerson described his work as an attempt to create an alternative order of reality through breaking the established classifications, classes and norms: To us, today, it may perhaps seem that the act of putting two or three innocent words together, the act of saying: ”Blue is the colour of thy yellow hair”, is an innocent aesthetic affair — that the act of putting together two or three innocent objects, such as a railway ticket, and a flower, and a bit of wood — is an innocent aesthetic affair. Well, it is not so at all. Tickets belong to railway companies; flowers to gardeners; bits of

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Agnieszka Karpowicz wood to timber merchants. If you mix these things together you are making a havoc of the classification system on which the regime is established, you are carrying people’s minds away from the customary modes of thought, and the people’s customary modes of thought are the very foundation of Order, whether it is the Old Order or the New Order, and, therefore, if you meddle with the customary modes of thought then, whether you are Galilieo or Giordano Bruno with their funny ideas about motion, or Einstein with his funny ideas about space and time, […] or the Cubists with their funny ideas about shapes […] you are, whether you want it or not, in the very bowels of political changes. Hitler knew it. (Themerson 1958: 14)

Playing with typographic patterns, experimenting with something as little, as seemingly unimportant and obvious as a letter, becomes an expression of the ethical stand always assumed by Stefan Themerson. Within this view, the conventional, regular and unified practice of distributing the characters between the typesetter’s drawers became an illustration of a schematic way of thinking about the world and of a conventional mode of classifying it, pigeonholing its various elements.

Logovisuality — a social critique In the multimedia environment of the 20th and 21st century, which subjects word and image to technological reproduction, and which uses them for propaganda, advertisement, ideology and persuasion, logovisual art becomes a genre which undermines and questions the relationship between word, image and meaning. Thus it follows the first avant-garde tendencies, but it also carries out a selfconscious, critical philosophical reflection on the representational systems. This was already the case with some of the avant-garde projects, including the work of Stefan Themerson. I wanted to shake off all these associations and parish subtleties from language […]. It was all happening in the period when the nuclei of words had lost any contact with reality and the emotional halos around them became independent and gained a magical power of affecting our nervous systems. A couple of syllables became enough to induce us to buy a toothpaste or slaughter each other. I rebelled against these halos. Sometimes I thought I must have been born on Mars and when I was looking on the pompous earthly words, I saw a jungle of carnivore orchids and I said to myself: ”Horses — I understand, Dogs — I understand, People — I don’t understand.” It’s because the affairs that occupy horses and dogs are always the immediate affairs of the present, while for people the vital problems are words, which represent the vital affairs of yesterday. I wanted to strip off the associations from them. […] I wanted to disinfect words, I wanted to scrub them to the bone of their dictionary definition. (Themerson 1993: 91-92)

Bringing together visual poetry and letter graphics or concrete poetry is, in fact, an expression of such an intellectual stand. A poem based on a graphical and se-

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mantic concept still undermines the classificatory categories that impose order on aesthetic phenomena, but it is the potential for a critique of language that seems more important. It brings the linguistic sign to the fore, with its materiality and its graphical shape. The visual poetry of the second half of the 20th century was mostly concrete poetry. This type of visual text has its roots in the tradition of letterism, which combines painting, literature, performance or film as well as calligraphic haiku. Concrete poetry becomes close to letter graphics as a visual and semantic concept. It brings out the problematic character of the linguistic sign itself, its materiality and its graphical form. It is dominated by asceticism, a tendency for conceit, by awareness of the arbitrary character of a linguistic sign which results in a crippled and purified language, analysed in its most abstract form. This in turn is connected with bringing to the fore the decontextualisation that happens in print. Liminality, temporariness and the intermedia character of visual poetry are also visible in the way it often returns as an artistic form of expression whenever it seems necessary to restore the communicative qualities of the poetic text, whenever expressing a new idea requires changing the quality of the medium, and the verbal and visual environment calls for renewing the artistic mode of communication, especially as new visual and verbal media permeate culture. This is why the concrete poetry is sometimes described as an extreme form of visual poetry, treated as a sign of the so-called ”crises of representation”, ”falls of art and literature”, ”ends of language” or ”deaths of the word”. Such an interpretation has a long tradition within the history of literature. Stanisław Estreicher’s comment on the visual poems by Władysław Simandi: “It is a very good example to learn the poetic ideals at the moment of an utter fall of a letter. The whole book is made of exceedingly artificial anagrams, word games, riddles, equivocations, rebuses and artistic deviations” (Rypson 1989: 248). The relationship between letter, word and meaning becomes the main problem here, and the letter itself, as a typographic sign on a sheet of paper, is subjected to experiments carried out in the typographic tissue of the text. Word and image question each other’s referenciality. This vision is a significant alternative to the structuralist theory of an arbitrary, abstract linguistic sign, for example. The most representative work of this type of visual poetry was done by Stanisław Dróżdż. He expressed this problematic in an extreme manner in the visual form of a concrete poem, which, written out in the middle of an empty sheet of paper, said: ”a word” (Untitled, 1972). Parallel to this conceit tendency, the ”images of words” are being contextualised by placing textual inscriptions in the public space (for example, in the everyday urban surroundings) and by combining them with various forms of acting through them (examples are the letter environmental art of Stanisław Dróżdż,

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the works of Jadwiga Sawicka or the Twożywo group). The context of the visual space, in which the verbal art occurs, becomes important. It influences the meaning of the verbal message. Moving the text from its primary medium — a sheet of paper — and placing it in the urban space transforms its meaning and function. It happens so, because the mechanism of writing, that is being questioned here, is connected with the not necessarily explicit mechanism of social control. Alphabetic writing is a tool of social control and it is perhaps the first panoptic mechanism known to humans. It appeared in the public space long before the expansion of film cameras and screens. It seems an immaterial, almost transparent medium for meanings, especially on the ordered layout of a printed page. The typographic character gives a visual shape to language, a shape which is seemingly transparent, innocent and almost invisible. The effect is enhanced by the regular lines of printed letters subordinated to the pattern of visual order and norm. Michel de Certeau saw the far-reaching consequences of the print’s specificity: Printing represents this articulation of the text on the body through writing. The order thought (the text conceived) produces itself as body (books) which repeats it, forming paving stones and paths, networks of rationality through the incoherence of the universe. The process later becomes more widespread and diverse. At this point it is only the metaphor of the more successfully rationalized techniques that later transform living beings themselves into the printed texts of an order. (1984: 144)

Writing remains a tool of control even when the authority or its delegate-guardian is absent. It makes social control possible from a distance, because a visual word sign carries human voice over time and space: The installation of the scriptural apparatus of modern ”discipline”, a process that is inseparable from the ”reproduction” made possible by the development of printing, was accompanied by a double isolation from the ”people” (in opposition to the ”bourgeoisie”) and from the ”voice” (in opposition to the written). Hence the conviction that far, too far away from economic and administrative powers, “the People speaks” (pp. 131-132).

The writings that are present within the urban space, with which the modern forms of logovisual art seek to interact, are usually made of big, capital letters and they inherit and intensify the typographic transparency — the impersonal, peremptory arbitrariness, the indisputability, objectivity and finality of the message. We can find examples of that in public spaces. The secular and church authorities have always been aware of the function of writing, to which history testifies well. Armando Petrucci wrote extensively on the problem of power manifesting and celebrating itself through writing visible in the city space (Petrucci 1993). The expansion of letters on city streets has been generally associated with the visual revolution of the late 19th and early 20th century, because this is when signboards, posters and advertisement forced their way into the urban space with double en-

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ergy, thanks to the technological developments (lithography, colour print and mechanical reproduction). However, it is possible to show that such phenomena are deeply linked with the presence of writing in the cities throughout the European tradition. For example, celebratory and commemorative writing forms are present on monuments and buildings of Europe as early as in the 11th century. It opens up a broad context for the problematic of the conditions of introducing and spreading writing in the public space, but it also shows the social function of writing, which makes it prone to becoming an important tool in the authorities’ hands. When discussing the spatiality of writing, which is by nature a graphical form, it is worth pointing to the links between the alphabet and architecture, to which inscriptions on monuments or funeral epigraphs on graves testify well. It is in fact possible to show a rigorous norm, a geometrical reference between an image and a letter, between a letter and its location in space, which shows that writing belongs to a certain order and is subjected to a norm. It goes all the way from the Renaissance imitations of the ancient and Medieval rules of inscription to Baroque transformations of inscriptions, which is not merely explicable by the aesthetics of transformation and of complex forms. As the norms become less strict, print grows roots in culture, and writing with its materials and technologies changes its function. The important link between the phenomena that visualise the letter and the writing in the city is to be found in the fact of adopting the classic typography — functional and coherent — which intensifies the process of standardisation, and which can be employed in all the prohibition signs. The right to write in public has long been the domain of public authorities, the dominant class. The written word in a city turns out to be essentially ideological, public and strictly kept as a prerogative of the official institutions. It is only in the 20th century that, through the growing common literacy, the logos of political power started to be privatised, and the technological progress, which made posters, signboards and advertisements possible, brought about a relaxation in the norms of use of writing in a city, making it more democratic in effect. This problem brings us back again to Michel de Certeau, who believes that the scriptural economy is based on ”imprinting” behaviours and ”inscribing” law on bodies of individuals. Thus, within the public space there continues a struggle in writing which is carried through grass-roots artistic forms such as graffiti. The stakes are sometimes prestige and power. Writing in this space, one can symbolically conquer it, take possession of a fragment of it. The 20th century avant-garde and revolutionary movements were among those aware of the phenomenon when they manifested their opposition through writing in the city space and tried to impose their vision of social order through slogans written out on walls (Petrucci analyses the examples of graffiti in European capitals in 1968). The city public areas, with their prohibition signs, mandatory signs, directions and all the written

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celebration of norms and rules, become identified with the space of the regime. On the other hand, the free, democratic writing in such a space implies breaking of rules, an individual self-expression; it is an act of grass-roots graphical annexation and privatisation of parts of the open space. The contemporary logovisual genres are created mainly as city neon signs and billboards, but there also appear some on the walls of galleries and museums as installations or environmental art. Today, they typically surface in the area in-between literature and advertising slogans, between art and commercial images, between art or poetry and graffiti or design. Such a visual poetry usually functions as a critique of language and the arbitrariness of sign, but also of consumerism and mass culture: ”in the act of transforming visual poetry into art […] visual poetry refers not only to itself but to itself referring to itself (Bohn 2001: 23). Thus, the history of the genre seems to be going a full circle by nowadays, returning to its original inscriptive and utilitarian character. The visual poetry transgresses the boundaries of a sheet of paper, and of an individual, silent reading of poetry. It strikes roots in the public sphere, inside the areas within the contemporary media environment, which allow the artistic message to be communicative and comprehensive. The visual letter as a subversive form is an attempt — paradoxically — to cancel the public writing through writing within the public space. It was only made possible by universal literacy. It brought about the individualisation and personalisation of writing as well as new, easier techniques of introducing writing into the city architecture. There is a sound reason behind the actions of the literate institutions of power which turn against writing and prohibit placing any written forms in a given place — about which, of course, they inform by placing an adequate textual sign on the spot. In the modern art, the typographic forms which made up the contemporary panopticon undergo an interesting deconstruction through writing. The logovisual genres seem to be double-edged: they are perfect means of exercising power, but they are equally ideal for subverting and contesting it. The panoptical qualities of writing as a control mechanism are not merely a result of its seemingly transparent visuality. The reason lies in the mechanism of language itself too. There are situations when language can exercise control and serve as a guardian to the established social order, even though no authority can possess it explicitly and visibly. It is not the question of an expropriating language, as Lacan sees it, which is a means of socialisation and the only way to enter the symbolic, but deprives us of our autonomy. What is more important is the linguistic surveillance carried out invisibly due to internalisation — this is the universal power over linguistic behaviours, conditioned by the cultural norms. It can be exemplified by the phenomenon of

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linguistic taboos or the often analysed impersonal forms, such as ”it is… (prohibited, advised, etc…)’ or ”one (is…, ought to…, etc.)”. It is worth remembering that any linguistic behaviours are a form of action and being in the world, while speech and writing are largely a verbal custom, which is conditioned culturally — that is subordinated to the power of norms and rules. On the other hand, however, language is flexible, so broad as to encompass an individual’s transgression of these norms and obligations. The word can support authority, but it can also discredit it — which is well illustrated by the example of various forms of writing appearing within the public space. The internalised linguistic control, in turn, is a result of social co-existence, within which everyone of us keeps an invisible guardian of the panopticon inside ourselves, and has a potential of becoming a supervisor to others in various interactions between people. Nevertheless, writing makes the linguistic power objective, it detaches the authorities from individuals, it makes prohibitions and obligations absolute and ties a letter of the alphabet with the institutionalised law in its written form. Thus, writing allows for supervising the social order from a distance and for spreading the general sense of being watched by an invisible guard — the lawgiver who had mustered writing, its functioning and the mechanism of placing text in the public sphere. This critical dimension, which is characteristic of the logovisual genre, reminds us that such forms have usually been born from a desire to renew the very communicative foundations of text, and whenever expressing new ideas has necessitated a change of medium, or the verbal and visual environment has made it necessary to question and renew the artistic forms of expression. The critique of language and systems of representations, which scrutinise each other inside one work of art, question each other and provoke the onlooker or reader to be critical and desautomatised — such critique of language is partly related to the 20th-century historical and cultural experience. And the critical reflection on language carried out here actually turns into a social and cultural critique. Translated by Olga Kaczmarek Bibliography: Ambrosio Matteo D’ (1978), Collage et poesia visiva: problèmes de définition, lecture et analyse rhétorique, “Revue d’Esthétique”, nr 4. Apollinaire Guillaume (1995), Zone, In Guillaume Apollinaire, Alcools, trans. by Donald Revell, Wesleyan University Press, Hannover. Berger John (1990), Ways of Seeing, Based on the BBC Television Series, Penguin, London. Bohn Willard (2001), Modern Visual Poetry, University of Delaware Press, Newark. Bringhurst Robert (1992), The Elements of Typographic Style, Hartley & Marks, Point Roberts. Certeau Michel de (1984), The Practices of Everyday Life, trans. by Steven F. Rendall, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles. Drucker Johanna (1994), The Visible Word: Experimental Typography and Modern Art, 19091923, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

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Higgins Dick (1978), A Dialectic of Centuries: Notes Towards a Theory of the New Arts, Printed Editions, New York. Higgins Dick (1977), George Herbert’s Pattern Poems: In Their Tradition, Writers and Books, New York. Higgins Dick (1983), Horizons: The Poetics and Theory of the Intermedia (Studies in Writing & Rhetoric), Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale. Higgins Dick (1987), Pattern Poetry. Guide to an Unknown Literature, State University of New York Press, Albany. Janis Harriet, Blesh Rudi (1962), Collage. Personalities — Concepts — Techniques, Chilton, Philadelphia and New York. Higgins Dick (1965), Intermedia, “Something Else Newsletter”, nr 1. Jaynes Julian (1976), The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of Bicameral Mind, Mifflin, Boston. Mitchell W.J.T. (1986), Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology, University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Młodożeniec Stanisław (1978), Radioromans, In Antologia polskiego futuryzmu i Nowej Sztuki, intro. by Zbigniew Jarosiński, ed. Hanna Zaworska, Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, Wrocław. Mon Franz (2006), Pędy języka rosną i rosną, trans. by Andrzej Kopacki, ”Literatura na Świecie”, nr 11/12. [The original text published in German as: (1994) Die Verzweigungen von Sprache nehmen unablassig zu, In Essays Gerhard Wolf Janus Press, Berlin]. Agnieszka Morawińska (ed.) (1982), Słowo i obraz, Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, Warszawa. Ong Walter J. (1982), Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word, Methuen, New York. Pelc Janusz (2002), Słowo i obraz. Na pograniczu literatury i sztuk plastycznych, Universitas, Kraków. Perloff Marjorie (1991), Radical Artifice. Writing Poetry in the Age of the Media, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Petrucci Armando (1993), Public Lettering. Script, Power and Culture, trans. by Linda Lappin The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Rypson Piotr (2002), Piramidy, słońca, labirynty. Poezja wizualna w Polsce od XVI do XVIII wieku, Neriton, Warszawa. Rypson Piotr (1989), Obraz słowa. Historia poezji wizualnej, Akademia Ruchu, Warszawa. Singer Hans Wolfgang (1971), Sztuka plakatu, In Moderniści o sztuce, tarns. by Adam Steinborn, ed. by Elżbieta Grabska, Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, Warszawa. Skwara Marek, Wysłouch Seweryna (2006), Ut pictura poesis, Wydawnictwo Słowo/Obraz Terytoria, Gdańsk. Śniecikowska Beata (2005), Słowo — obraz — dźwięk. Literatura i sztuki wizualne w koncepcji polskiej awangardy 1918-1939, Universitas, Kraków. Themerson Stefan (1974), Logic, Labels and Flesh, Gaberbocchus, London. Themerson Stefan, Professor Mmaa (2010), In Selected Prose, annotated by Nicolaas J. I. Mars, Expressis Verbis, Marum. Themerson Stefan (2010), Bayamus, in Selected Prose In Selected Prose, annotated by Nicolaas J. I. Mars, Expressis Verbis, Marum. Themerson Stefan (1958), Kurt Schwitters in England, 1940-1948, Gaberbocchus, London.

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