We likes reading and writing but who use it? : some notes on the social networks of reviewers

The aim of this paper is to present and discuss the phenomen of unprofessional literary blogs. The main reference is lubimyczytac.pl which has over one hundred thousand of users who publish their reviews about books. Both lubimyczytac.pl and private literary blogs create an alternative place for discussing literature beyond professional, academic literary criticism. This alternative place pretends to be free from depending on market and to present an "authentic reading experience" rather than professional review. But schematic composition and language of those texts as well as the need to strive for the popularity causes the same mechanism of dependence as in professional literary criticism

Between haptics and kinaesthetics : body experience in some contemporary theories of sculpture

The text deals with the question about the perception of sculpture which is this kind of plastic art in which all human body is engaged in the process of perception. In Katarzyna Kobro’s and Władysław Strzemiński’s Composition of Space (1931) we can read that sculpture is a way of space organisation. The experience of sculpture is not (as in painting) based on looking or understanding, but on the feeling of spatiotemporal motion. Oscar Hansen also emphasised the role of psychophysical activity in contact with sculpture and went a step further than Kobro i Strzemiński experiencing the impact on the human body different sculpting materials. In William Morris’s Notes on Sculpture (1966-1969) sculpture exists only in subjective, corporal way of experience, away from consciousness and discursive association. All those theories and their artistic concretizations redefines the role of the viewer of artifact and extend the Classic concept of sculpture as an art close to the body. In a number of contemporary sculpture this is not the model’s body that is the most important. Rather they deals with viewer’s body which is increasingly drawn into artistic representation

Sculptural object of desire : eroticism in Michel Leiris’s "Aurora"

The article deals with sculptural metaphors presented in Leiris’s Aurora in relation to eroticism. Aurora is the name of the the surrealist novel’s central female figure, who appears in the stories of all the different male characters. All of the men - the narrator and subsequent characters - are searching for a point of stabilisation of their own subjectivities, which are losing their integrity and cohesion. The phantasm of Aurora, a Medusa like woman, is the only entity that guarantees petrification, and therefore can stabilise subjectivity. Eroticism connected to sculptural forms and Aurora’s ability to be at once a petrifying Medusa and an animating force of nature shows the paradoxical condition of the language and the illusory nature of any male character’s hopes for constructing stable subjectivity

Konieczność rytmu. (O książce Philippe’a Lacoue-Labarthe’a Typografie)

The necessity of rythmThis article is a review of the book Typografie by Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe. The article refers firstly to the problem of Polish reception of Lacoue-Labarthe’s philosophy, then discusses the question of the subject and finally concerns the main problem of relations between philosophy, literature and aesthetics presented in the book. The review also touches upon the question of Lacoue-Labarthe’s interpretation of Heideggerian ontology and political engagement in fascism which is explained in the context of his visions of both politics and aesthetics

Communication utopia in action : Charlotte Perkins Gilman's language of emancipatory literature and architecture

Artykuł prezentuje i komentuje działalność Charlotte Perkins Gilman, amerykańskiej sufrażystki, pisarki i aktywistki na rzecz praw kobiet. W centrum prezentacji umieszczam refleksję nad utopią komunikacyjną, projektowaną przez Gilman zarówno w tekstach literackich, jak też stojącą u podstaw jej planów zreformowania przestrzeni domowej. W tekście tematyzuję przede wszystkim zagadnienia języka, głosu i mowy kobiet, które w horyzoncie utopii komunikacyjnej określają ideał racjonalnego społeczeństwa.The article presents and comments on the activity of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, an American suffragette, writer and activist for the emancipation of women. The dominant feature of the presentation is a reflection on the project of utopian communication, to which Gilman subordinated her literature and plans for the reform of domestic space. In the essay I present the issues of language, voice and status of women's speech, inscribing them into the framework of the communication utopia as an ideal of a rational society

How does the contemporary Polish weird fiction scare us?

The text concerns different strategies of constructing weird fiction by contemporary Polish writers. In two anthologies published in 2013, authors of weird novels reinterpret the classic paradigm of weird fiction (associated with Lovecraft) as well as try to refer it to the present reality. Polish writers, inspired mainly by Stefan Grabiński’s work, use his best known motives, such as weird trains and desolate stations. The second source of inspiration is Poe’s dead subject (from The Facts in the Case of M. Waldemar), who acts as a living one and generates the horror. These inspirations, however, do not help contemporary writers with creating a new paradigm of weird fiction but rather close them in the circle of constant inspirations and dependence on their predecessors

On the genealogy of Polish queerness : on Dezorientacje. Antologia polskiej literatury queer

The article is a review of the book Dezorientacje. Antologia polskiej literatury queer [Disorientations. Anthology of Polish Queer Literature] by Alessandro Amenta, Tomasz Kaliściak and Błażej Warkocki, which is the first anthology of Polish queer literature, gathering literary material dating from the 18th century up to the present moment. The reviewer puts particular emphasis on the introductory part of the anthology and poses a few polemical questions around the book’s main assumptions

Against the sameness principle

The article is a review of Joanna Bednarek’s book Życie, które mówi. Nowoczesna wspólnota i zwierzęta [A Life that Speaks. The Modern Community and Animals]. In her book, Bednarek aims at redefi ning the question of animals (especially non-human beings) and their presence in the community of all animate beings. She goes against the utilitarian and abolitionist movements claiming that animals should have equal rights to human beings because of their similarity, either in their sensibility or in their non-questionable biological lives. Bednarek proposes a critical return to Spinosian ontology (through the lens of Deleuzian interpretation and biosemiotics), and argues for a community of beings based on their ability to speak (precisely, their ability to create signs). Linking some points from agential realism and new materialism with the Rancièrian concept of a community, Bednarek shows how we can go beyond the sameness principle and build our solidarity with non-human beings on their relation, not only with us, but with all the nonliving environment

Socialist realism as an anachronism : the case of Hanna Mortkowicz-Olczakowa

Artykuł jest próbą spojrzenia na powojenną eseistykę Hanny Mortkowicz-Olczakowej w perspektywie socrealistycznej poetyki i jej indywidualnego negocjowania. Głównym przedmiotem analizy jest zbiór eseistycznych reportaży o Nowej Hucie, do których lektury przydatna jest wojenna biografia pisarki, zasymilowanej Żydówki inteligentki, stosującej do opisu socjalistycznej inwestycji anachroniczne literacko stylizacje.The article is an attempt to look at the post-war essays of Hanna Mortkowicz-Olczakowa from the perspective of socialist realist poetics and its individual negotiation by the writer herself. The main subject of the analysis, a collection of essayistic reports about Nowa Huta, is interpreted in the article with references to the writer’s biography (of an assimilated Jewish woman of intelligentsia), and by close reading of her anachronistic literary stylizations that she employed to describe a new socialist landscape

Posągi jako źródła nowej epistemologii (przypadek Michela Serresa)

The article attempts to read the metaphor of the statue in Michel Serres’ philosophical discourse. Sculpture understood in the broad sense, as Serres proposes in Statues: The Second Book of Foundations, enables him to trace a whole array of concepts in western thought, and to make the statue itself a model of new cognition, extending beyond binary oppositions and open to unpredictability and a lack of continuity. For Serres a statue also offers the possibility to cross the boundaries of science and the humanities, and consequently to become, at the same time, both a critical and utopian figure.The article attempts to read the metaphor of the statue in Michel Serres’ philosophical discourse. Sculpture understood in the broad sense, as Serres proposes in Statues: The Second Book of Foundations, enables him to trace a whole array of concepts in western thought, and to make the statue itself a model of new cognition, extending beyond binary oppositions and open to unpredictability and a lack of continuity. For Serres a statue also offers the possibility to cross the boundaries of science and the humanities, and consequently to become, at the same time, both a critical and utopian figure