The Death of Language: Listening to the Echoes (of Georges Bataille) in "Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II—The Sith Lords"

This article is, firstly, an analysis of Kreia, a character from the Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II—The Sith Lords video game, a character whose role in the game is pivotal: the conversations the player has with Kreia serve as the main narrative basis for the entire game experience. Secondly, on the basis of a collection of quotations from these conversations, this article juxtaposes Kreia and Georges Bataille. An intriguing variant of the blind seer trope is revealed in Kreia through studying the game’s poetics, in which a focus on the sense of hearing is discerned. Kreia and Bataille are compared in their understandings of the universe, and a similarity between their ulterior motives is discovered: both of them struggled against something which was considered to be an inextricable element of their respective universes

“Shift Linguals – Cut Word Lines” Viral Topology and the Cut-Ups of William Burroughs

William Burroughs perceived the method of collage as a way towards a rebellion – an insurrection against the system of control inherent in language itself. In this article, a vision of language as a parasitic life-form presented by Burroughs in books such as The Ticket That Exploded and Nova Express is examined. The method of collage (or, as Burroughs calls it, the cut-up) is analyzed as an opportunity to tear down the oppressive structures of meaning self-reproducing themselves through our adherence to sociolinguistic rules. The very notion of struggling with parasites of meaning is connected with Roland Barthes’s conceptualization of myths as layers of meaning that envelop and parasitize signs in order to further their own agendas. I endeavor to reformulate Barthes’s dyadic model of myths into a triadic one (following Peircean semiotics), which I then relate to Jeffrey Elman’s text on language as a dynamic system, which allows for an in-depth perception of the way in which the parasite of language is described by Burroughs

Wcielenie czy maska? O dynamice ontycznej świata przedstawionego w twórczości literackiej i myśli teoretycznej Brunona Schulza

The essay entitled “Mask or Incarnation? On the Ontic Dynamics of the Fictional Universe in the Works and Theories of Bruno Schulz” is an attempt to look at the literature of Bruno Schulz as an entity profoundly connected with his worldview and engaged in a complex interaction with reality. Determining the nature of this interaction constitutes another facet of this essay’s aim. Two interpretations of this twofold influence are considered – one sees it as an operation of masking, while the other perceives it as an act of manifestation or incarnation. The contemplation of the subject matter takes the form of a discussion with Schulz’s literary and theoretical texts, and is supported by analyses performed by schulzologists and by elements from semiotic and mythological theories. With the help of these tools, an interplay of the categories of “mask” and “incarnation” is defined as permeating Schulz’s works. It is only at the level of his understanding of mythology that the category of incarnation triumphs