The purpose of reflection is an attempt to understand the basis of the crisis in which our cognitive “capacity” currently finds itself, which is influenced by technologically driven processes of disinformation and unreflective-orientated design of digital communication technologies. The realization of the indicated intentions required a preliminary definition of the very concept of reflection, allowing in the further course of analysis to trace the possible interrelationships occurring between its condition and the media-shaped communication environment. The research used a conceptual analysis. It was assumed that the remedy for the situation is critical reflection allowing to build a more balanced relationship with technology, supporting the quantity of reflection.

The text analyzes the place occupied by the French university in the processes of building and disseminating critical attitudes that influence the shape of public debate and political, economic and legal choices, which co-decide on the forms of the development processes of the state and institutions, providing knowledge, including critical knowledge, for their implementation. The answer to this question leads through a socio-historical analysis of the place occupied by the university on the map of institutions of high education and “producing” scientific knowledge in France: universities, CNRS, Grandes Écoles, Scientific Institutes and the effects of the university reforms since 1968. It also requires analysis of how scientific and student careers and university cultures can be built, which co-create the structure of hierarchical relationships between the groups forming the university community (teachers, students, etc.).

This paper attempts a new take on metaphysics with the help of philosophers who are usually perceived as opposing the metaphysical tradition. This was done on the basis of an etymological deconstruction and a demonstration of the “technical” way of being of man in nature. The next section shows Michel de Montaigne as an example of the outlined metaphysical nature of man – “customary nature.” Essential to it is the act of writing, understood both literally and metaphorically. Hence, in the last part of the article, for metaphysics as an ever-present challenge to contemporary philosophy, the essay turns out to be the best form.

It is well-established in cognitive narratology that all fictional worlds are necessarily incomplete and are only modelled in more detail by the story consumer’s mental operations. In addition, I argue that the mental models prompted by narratives are typically incoherent, too. Interestingly, neither poses a serious problem for cognition or appreciation of narratives, but contrary to popular belief, this does not happen due to conventional suspension of disbelief. Since our cognitive capacities for creating representations and drawing inferences involve the same processes for cognizing fiction and for mapping the real world, appealing to conventions is a hasty answer underneath which are hidden certain facts about human cognition: that in both cases the constructs tend to be similarly illusory and incoherent and that cognition itself tends to be messy and limited to the most important tasks at hand, guided by a narrowly understood practicality. I argue that in the end, we do not really have to imagine the fictional fantastic in detail, because the fantastic (or the marvellous) enters all cognition.

The article is devoted to the growing popularity of second-person narration in print literature. It explains why this form of storytelling, once considered extremely experimental, seems particularly compatible with contemporary media environment: especially interactive and digital media. The author discusses those immanent features of second-person narration that evoke the impression of liveness and activate the reader or media user, giving him a sense of direct participation in fictional events.

The aim of the article is to draw attention to and discuss the relevance of the migration studies to the better understanding of the transformation of the human identity on entering the digital spaces, in consideration of the fact that the latter are frequently presented as a utopian destination. It is argued that the said transformation and fragmentation of the human self and identity can be compared to the one experienced by migrants. Drawing parallels between the insights of Hillis (1999), Hron (2009), Zuboff (2019), and Sisto (2022), one can discover numerous common points between the utopian studies, migration studies, and digital culture, which allow taking a new perspective on the experiences of increasingly digitalized, post-pandemic society.

By referring to “Count Magnus,” one of M. R. James’s ghost stories, Jacek Mydla discusses ghost-seeing and narrative distance. The theoretical context of this analysis consists of ancient (Plato) and contemporary (Booth, Genette) theories of narrative and Mydla examines how “showing” (mimesis) is related to “telling” (diegesis). Despite Plato’s critique of mimesis in the Republic, Genette, with his concept of focalization, theorizes the manner in which literary narratives, including ghost stories, prioritize showing and thus seeing, as evidenced by recent studies of Victorian ghost-seeing (Smajić). Mydla discusses how M. R. James diminishes distance to enable vicarious ghost-seeing while also, through the use of narrative framing, warning readers about pitfalls of artistically delivered perceptual immediacy.

In the article discussing Leszek Libera’s novel, the author proves that, firstly, the writer’s debut deserves greater attention from researchers and readers, and secondly, it shows that the scandalous, dirty, immersed in the lowliness of bodily troubles Utopek can be read in the context of a subtle self-referential game, a story about a story that is expressed in criticism of fundamental ideas, stereotypes, as well as upside-down narratives about ethnic animosities in Silesia. Above all, a complete, artistic story – all the more interesting because it was written in the spirit of free-thinking anaidea (shamelessness). It is only a mask behind which hides the essential cultural and therapeutic role of literature as a medium that, by generating stories, sublimates the darkest energies and provides a language to express the inexpressible.

The article compares Marcin Czub’s novel debut, The Revelation of the Pig Goddess, with the second part of Paul de Man’s essay “Rhetoric of Temporality,” devoted to irony, pointing to the surprising convergence of the main motifs in these so different and temporally distant texts. This comparison allows us to interpret Czub’s novel as a secretly metafictional work, reflectively summarizing the literary achievements of the generation that includes the very late debuting author, and at the same time to deepen the understanding of the explicit and strictly contemporary layer of the text as a voice in the discussion about the relationship between humans and animals, especially slaughter animals.

The text is devoted to artistic reflections in the poetry of Anna Frajlich – a Polish émigré writer. The main subject of this analysis is the author’s personal thought on human existence set in the context of art broadly conceived. The author of this article focuses on several poems which were created during Frajlich’s two separate émigré periods, the Italian and the American ones, in which readers can trace symbolic but meaningful – in the context of the writer’s existential reflections – art inspirations. Though the scholarly analysis concentrates on the poetic works which reveal the evident pictorial context, none of them aims to verbally represent or reconstruct a piece of art, and for this reason they do not correspond with a classic definition of ekphrasis.

The text is a review of Jan Hartman’s book Twilight of Philosophy, in which he propounds the thesis of the inevitable end of the “cultural project called philosophy.” He conducts a metaphilosophical analysis of the unauthorised claims of philosophy, which has constituted its autonomous object as “philosophising” by imposing it on the humanities. Hartman argues that it is not a matter of self-reflection or self-criticism of philosophy, for it is precisely this attitude that sustains the pernicious belief in its unique role. Philosophy exhausts its “rhetorical resources,” loses out to science in social impact. It is a mere literary conceptualisation of the world, and lives on today thanks to universities and publishing houses. In the name of intellectual honesty, it is necessary to accept the cultural fact that there is an end to philosophy and nothing will reverse it.

Tomasz Żaglewski’s book is the first monograph written by a Polish academic on the film adaptations of the Batman comics. The book is divided into three parts. The first part deals with the 1990s reception of the films Batman Forever (1995) and Batman & Robin (1997) directed by Joel Schumacher. In this chapter, Żaglewski lays the foundations for his examination of the figure of the Neon Knight in Schumacher’s films. In the second chapter, he analyses the director’s concept of the “living comic,” also sometimes presented as the “living animated film,” which was constructed as an alternative to Tim Burton’s dark aesthetic of his two previous movies from 1989 and 1992 (Batman and Batman Returns). The third part of his monograph deals with the categories of cultural memory, the role of nostalgia in popular culture and the key role of online communities in digital comics culture.