The relationship between ruin and the problem of time is only apparent at first glance: a ruin is supposed to be a trace of the past. Based on the conclusions of Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling’s polemic with Immanuel Kant, in which Schelling argued that historical time is not an a priori form of intuition but is enclosed in objects, this article proposes a perception of ruin as the caesura that generates historical time. In particular, interpretations of the motif of ruin in the works of Georg Simmel and Walter Benjamin show that the time of historical experience created by this motif can provide a correction of collective consciousness in eras threatened by the loss of such experience.

The myth of Orestes, developed by Greek tragedians, may be the key to understanding the aporias of the modern world. Mycenae and its contemporary ruins may symbolize, respectively, the moment of the birth of modern subjectivity and the terrifying effects to which led the development of the civilization based on it. Following Adorno and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment, this essay attempts to ask about the Greek origins of subjectivity, which was fully revealed in the European Enlightenment and became the basis of modern consumerism, expansive technology and predatory exploitation of nature. The subject of consideration is also an alternative form of subjective individuality, outlined in the myth of Orestes and reaching us from the Mycenaean ruins of the modern world.

The concept of the risk society offers a critical perspective on modernity, wherein social life, politics, and culture are organized around uncertainties implicit in modernization processes. It is an inherently dystopian outlook that shifts our attention to the future, conceived primarily in terms of threats and civilizational crises. This article aims to explore subjectivity and its transformations in the face of a crisis in scientific and technological rationality, as well as the growing awareness of risks and uncertainties associated with it. In risk society, the subject is condemned to uncertainty and alienation as traditional methods of addressing threats collapse. The turn toward digital solutions further intensifies the precarious dependence of individuals on technology, leading to the emergence of terminal subjects.

The classical definition of ruins, as developed by Alois Riegl, emphasizes the respect for and the opportunity to engage with the “patina of the ages.” A similar perspective is presented by Georg Simmel, who, while acknowledging the “naturalization” of ruins, focuses his reflections on the melancholy arising from a sense of almost biblical vanitas associated with human-made objects. This definition, therefore, primarily concentrates on the past and the irretrievably lost grandeur of human creations. However, contrary to this definition, from a biological, post-anthropocentric standpoint, ruins are never static, passive objects – instead, abandoned spaces become inhabited by other “more-than-human communities” (Anna Tsing). The objective of this article is to reframe the definition of ruins in terms of their active, processual form as a verb (Ann Laura Soler) and to expand the concept of prospective ruination, understood as the active inhabitation of ruins by more-than-human actors (as defined by Bruno Latour), particularly ruderal plants (Latin: rudus, rubble), which are the first to undertake succession in habitats abandoned by humans.

This article attempts to analyze Jacques Lacan’s reflections on the ethics of desire and the subject’s relation to the object, with particular emphasis on the object of anxiety, juxtaposed with contemporary French post-Lacanian thought on ecology and climate crises. It demonstrates how ecological thinking intertwines with reflection on language and enables the creation of a new discourse, capable of addressing the effects of both capitalist and scientific models of knowledge, while fostering forms of social bonds that support the transformation of existing existential and ecological practices.

The article compares three different perspectives on the role of humans in shaping the environment. The first, eco-philosophy of Henryk Skolimowski, is based on the initial belief in the division of the human and natural worlds, which requires reconnection. The second proposal is Bruno Latour’s interpretation of the Gaia hypothesis. His thoughts are part of the posthumanist reflection on mankind’s agency and levelling of its subjectivity with the nature within the distributed system that is Gaia. The third perspective is Clive Hamilton’s defense of anthropocentrism who opposes narratives which, in his opinion, devalue humans. The anchor point is reflection on humanity’s relationship with the environment and determining their mutual subjectivity. Contemporary study on the ecological crisis refers to science and rationalism, and not to spirituality, as in the case of eco-philosophy. Participating in a network of mutual relationships is a constant process of negotiations for the human’s agency.

The article aims to problematize the way the ruins of postwar Warsaw are portrayed in selected works of Polish reportage literature. The analysis focuses on archival journalistic texts by Miron Białoszewski, written in the first years after the end of World War II, as well as contemporary reportages by Magdalena Grzebałkowska and Beata Chomątowska. The motif of debris in the aforementioned works is discussed consecutively using three antinomies: alienation and domestication, dislike and approval, and absence and presence. These categories help to highlight the ambivalence of social attitudes towards Poland’s ruined capital, destroyed as a result of the actions of the Nazi occupant.

The article explores the functions of found footage, waste, and remnants from other programs within the realm of experimental radio art. Utilizing interdisciplinary sound research methods, it investigates how radio artists repurpose discarded materials and archival sounds to challenge traditional approaches to radio art, its forms of delivery, and aesthetics. By analyzing selected artistic cases and practices, the article elucidates how radio artists navigate the tensions between creation and destruction, continuity and disintegration.

Writing about the modes of ruins representation in Andrzej Stasiuk’s travel prose, the author focuses on the patterns of their presence and distinguishes two major types of their representation: post-industrial and anthropic. The problem of the functions of ruins and the subject’s motivation based on the acts of perception and description constitute another important aspect. Hence, the article discusses both the theme of ruins melancholy, largely present in the reception of Stasiuk’s texts, and the less often analysed mystical experience for which ruins become a catalyst (consequently, applying the analysis of accidence, the fragments of On the Road to Babadag devoted to the ruins of the Solec cinema are examined).

Inspired by waste studies/garbology, the author examines the novels and dramas by Dorota Masłowska, where rubbish emerges both as a theme and a method of literary (smart)production. The analysis is grounded in Roch Sulima’s anthropology of everyday life and Maria Janion’s concept of “phantasmal critique.”

In this article, I will analyse Monika Lubińska’s volume nareszcie możemy się zjadać (we can finally eat each other) in the context of Jack Halberstam’s idea of “working with collapse.” I will aim to trace how Lubińska’s poetry responds to the ecological crisis and capitalist overproduction: I will focus on how this poetry conceptualises human relations with the non-human world, especially the rubbishy and the polluted. Attention will also be given to how the poet creates trash assemblages, both thematically and formally. Additionally, the analysis examines how Lubińska depicts the transcorpor(e)ality of the world and subverts dichotomies such as interior-exterior, subject-world, and purity-pollution.

The article is an attempt to reflect on the course of the relationship between the subject and the environment in a state of broadly understood crisis in Łukasz Barys’s novel If You Were Cut in Half (2022). The proposed reading strategy is based on the use of tools appropriate for psychoanalysis, hauntology (Derrida) and environmental humanities. The main thematic axis of the work are “spectres” related to the “I’s” experience of literary dependencies in relation to the littered and destroyed biosphere. In the context of spectral co-presences, I will reflect on the status of garbage, remains, remnants, and also on what is non-human, that is, the elements pushed to the margins of everyday life.

The article is an analysis of the essay Father’s Box by Lukas Bärfuss, today considered one of the most important and productive contemporary Swiss authors. A private history relating to his deceased homeless and indebted father is combined with reflections on sociology, economics, law and language. The paper answers the question of how the topics of remains, waste and rubbish, taken both literally and figuratively, function in the examined work. Particularly important in this context are the practices of tangible and intangible waste creation and removal, de- and re-evaluation of things and people from the perspective of the system and order deemed redundant and potentially harmful, and the consequences of these actions.

This article analyzes Ed Park’s Same Bed Different Dreams using the concept of the rhizome, which leads to the exploration of the entropy–utopia multiplicity. This advances the examination of the book’s dynamics and components, which point to the paradigm of metamodernism. Additionally, the novel’s use of fragmentation and intertextuality places it outside of the either/or dialectic, or any unifying notion. The article thus presents Same Bed Different Dreams as an example of a contemporary experimental novel that neither embraces nor negates fixed notions, but finds its own means of expression set on creating through and despite ruin embedded in its construction and subject matter.

Heidegger’s famous interview, which appeared in the magazine Der Spiegel, reveals the fundamental problems of modern man resulting from godlessness. For Heidegger, Hölderlin and Nietzsche are the creators who diagnose threats and try to cope with them. In ancient times, the sacredness of man and the world was maintained by the Stoics, who practiced philosophy as a spiritual exercise. Although Christianity also values spiritual exercises, it advocates the spirit opposed to the body and subordinated to the transcendent God. Only Nietzsche proposes a concept of spiritual development that is based on the earthly type of divinity and takes into account the overall needs of the (over)man.