https://doi.org/10.31261/PS_P.2026.37.18
This article explores the meanings embedded in the titular concept of “antibiography” in Wojciech Kuczok’s novel. The notion functions, among other things, as a record of the son’s internal disintegration caused by the actions of an abusive father, while simultaneously bearing witness to a rupture that constitutes the very process of subject formation. The study seeks to identify and analyse the contradictions and paradoxes inherent in this neologistic concept, which emerge as the central dynamic of antibiography itself. These include tensions between identity and the fragmentation of the self, existence and annihilation, as well as narrative and its negation. The discussion is situated within several, often divergent, interpretative frameworks, including theories of narrative and the impact of violence on personal development. Violence is understood here as a cruel method of upbringing that leads the subject to experience a sense of non-existence. The article also engages with antinatalist thought, particularly the work of David Benatar, one of the most influential contemporary representatives of this philosophical position (reference to concepts such as a life not worth beginning, a life worth or not worth continuing, and the asymmetry between pain and pleasure). This plurality of perspectives, combined with a close reading of Kuczok’s novel, seeks to capture the broad spectrum of meanings and ambiguities inherent in the concept under discussion.
Download files
Citation rules
Cited by / Share
Licence
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
The Copyright Owners of the submitted texts grant the Reader the right to use the pdf documents under the provisions of the Creative Commons 4.0 International License: Attribution-Share-Alike (CC BY-SA). The user can copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose.
1. License
The University of Silesia Press provides immediate open access to journal’s content under the Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Authors who publish with this journal retain all copyrights and agree to the terms of the above-mentioned CC BY-SA 4.0 license.
2. Author’s Warranties
The author warrants that the article is original, written by stated author/s, has not been published before, contains no unlawful statements, does not infringe the rights of others, is subject to copyright that is vested exclusively in the author and free of any third party rights, and that any necessary written permissions to quote from other sources have been obtained by the author/s.
If the article contains illustrative material (drawings, photos, graphs, maps), the author declares that the said works are of his authorship, they do not infringe the rights of the third party (including personal rights, i.a. the authorization to reproduce physical likeness) and the author holds exclusive proprietary copyrights. The author publishes the above works as part of the article under the licence "Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International".
ATTENTION! When the legal situation of the illustrative material has not been determined and the necessary consent has not been granted by the proprietary copyrights holders, the submitted material will not be accepted for editorial process. At the same time the author takes full responsibility for providing false data (this also regards covering the costs incurred by the University of Silesia Press and financial claims of the third party).
3. User Rights
Under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license, the users are free to share (copy, distribute and transmit the contribution) and adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the material) the article for any purpose, provided they attribute the contribution in the manner specified by the author or licensor.
4. Co-Authorship
If the article was prepared jointly with other authors, the signatory of this form warrants that he/she has been authorized by all co-authors to sign this agreement on their behalf, and agrees to inform his/her co-authors of the terms of this agreement.
I hereby declare that in the event of withdrawal of the text from the publishing process or submitting it to another publisher without agreement from the editorial office, I agree to cover all costs incurred by the University of Silesia in connection with my application.
Vol. 37 No. 1 (2026)
Published: 2026-07-13
10.31261/PS_P
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
English
Język Polski