This article aims to present the image of the Silesian women emerging from the novels by Anna Dziewit-Meller (Góra Tajget Mount Taygetus, Od jednego Lucypera All Because of One Lucifer). The analysis ...and interpretation focused on the category of silence inscribed in the studied text allow the author to draw conclusions about the complicated family relationships of women, marked by the twentieth-century history of Upper Silesia. In the article, the author posits a thesis about silence as an immanent trait of Dziewit-Meller’s protagonists, and asks whether they have a chance of breaking out of the circle of traumas passed down in their families.
In today’s Central Europe ethnolinguistic nationalism is the region’s standard normative ideology of statehood creation, legitimation and maintenance. This ideology proposes that in spatial terms, ...the area of the use of national language X should overlap with the territory of nation-state X, in which all members of nation X should reside. In terms of cultural policy, this means that only works written by “indubitable” members of nation X in language X can be seen as belonging to culture X. This self-limiting pattern of ethnolinguistic “purity” (homogeneity) excluded from 20th century Polish literature much of traditional Polish-Lithuanian culture and numerous authors writing in other post-Polish-Lithuanian languages than Polish. Democratization that followed the fall of communism in 1989 partly transcended this ethnolinguistic exclusion, but the old national policy has been back since 2015.
This article discusses the American avant-garde movement called New Narrative, which originated in the 1970s, as well as the poetic strategies that accompanied its socio-political involvement in the ...cause of emancipation of sexual minority groups. The author discusses the output of three representatives of this movement: Eileen Myles, Magdalena Zurawski, and CA Conrad, whose work and artistic activity have focused on the problems of civil rights and the freedoms, or lack thereof, of LGBTQ+ persons in the United States. The author undertakes an analysis of the three artists’ output within the context of the philosophical reflections of Joseph-Achille Mbembe on the necropolitics, a body of ideas currently investigated in the US in relation to queer identity and queer practices.
The 2016 referendum in the UK and then Brexit itself, formally introduced in 2020 and finalized – upon the conclusion of the transition period – at the beginning of 2021, have significantly affected ...the status of the border on the island of Ireland. Once the UK left the European Union, the border that separates the Republic of Ireland from Northern Ireland became an EU border as well. Although overnight the lives of the Irish people crossing the border did not change that much, gradual, and far-reaching, transformations have been taking place in the minds of the Irish and the British and in the overall economic, social and political circumstances on both sides of the old/new border. This essay seeks to address the Irish border’s history as well as its cultural and geopolitical contexts, based on the most useful insights of border studies. That perspective is enriched by elements of cultural memory studies to develop a position sensitive to the needs and aspirations of the border communities and individual borderlanders, who look for support and inspiration to their own local cultures and literary discourses. The aim of this essay is to explore various facets of the Irish border in light of the 2016 referendum’s results and ramifications. What is characteristic of the Tory neoimperialist vision and rhetoric in the UK is its disregard for the local, minority and regional issues on the island of Ireland. In consequence, the status of the 56 per cent of the inhabitants of Northern Ireland who voted “Remain” in the 2016 referendum may be described as that of a marginalized minority in their own country.
Ewa Szkudlarek’s book Portrety cieni Witkacego Witkacy’s shadow portraits is an innovative look at the work of Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz. The author discusses the visual and the metaphorical ...aspects of shadows by analyzing the artist’s oeuvre across different media. This has not been done so far. The shadow connects and differentiates the works of Witkacy. The multi-faceted nature of the shadow in the context of culture, psychology, psychoanalysis, and existentialism unites Witkacy’s work. The shadow acts as a metaphor for the human condition, human vulnerability and mortality.
In this article, the term “minor literatures”, coined by Deleuze and Guattari, finds its application in studies of contemporary Mediterranean writing. The author of the article combines this term ...with the notion of transculture. On the basis of examples from texts by authors such as Juan Goytisolo, Driss Chraïbi, Edmond Amran El Maleh, Najat El Hachmi, and Fouad Laroui, the author shows how literature created by migrating minorities introduces a dimension of synergy to a world marked by intercultural tensions, creating a new sense of community in individuals who radically deconstruct their identities.
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