In his article, Rafał Czekaj presents Theodor W. Adorno’s aesthetic theory as an example of critical theory in the sense given to this term by the Frankfurt School. Czekaj outlines the context of the development of Adorno’s philosophy of art, which consisted of the School representatives’ insights into and diagnoses of contemporary civilization and social structures. He also names those themes of Adorno’s philosophical work which determined the conclusions of his aesthetics, i.e., chiefly the idea of instrumental rationality presented in Dialectic of Enlightenment as well as the so-called identity thinking, both being mechanisms responsible for the oppressive state of reality.

In the article, it is argued that in order to rejuvenate critical theory we need to revive the critique of technology first and, by the same token, redefine the very concept of critique in the context of the digital reality, with an account of how digital devices impact our ability to think in general. The function and meaning of critique under new circumstances (conceptualized as technostress) is discussed in a dialogue with three thinkers: Immanuel Kant, Michel Foucault, and Bernard Stiegler. It also suggests how Bernard Stiegler’s philosophical critique can be fruitfully these combined with social theory developed by Hartmut Rosa.

The subject of this article is the theatre as an engaged cultural institution in Poland. Its engagement means not only producing critical art (although that is often the beginning of structural changes in an institution), but also, and perhaps most importantly, revealing and verifying the mechanisms of its own functioning. Entering into dialogue with the institution itself is the beginning of its evolution “from criticism to critical institution”. Involving the institution in this context means changing its functioning towards democratic practices. Speaking of democratisation, we can think, on the one hand, of ways of winning the favour of the audience, involving them in the life of the institution and forming alliances with them to protect the institutions from the temptations of the authorities. And on the other, of changing the modes of management. The democratisation of the management process is primarily associated with the emancipation of theatre workers, meaning their self-organisation, the need for empowerment and the development of new management practices and decision-making processes. The empowerment of art workers seems to be an important step in order to “sever” the art institutions’ connections with their manorial dependencies, which are common and very often invisible (also to employees of institutions), because they form, as Andrzej Leder claims, the basis for the functioning of Polish society. Manorial relations, of which the authoritarian model of management is a frequent manifestation, exist not only inside institutions (the director of an institution in his relations with a theatre company), but also at the junction of an institution and its organiser, namely, local and state authorities.

The article discusses a groundbreaking post-critical project in Anglo-Saxon literary studies formulated in Rita Felski’s book The Limits of Critique. Tomasz Mizerkiewicz offers a comprehensive analysis of the “hermeneutics of suspicion” carried out by Felski, showing its numerous limitations. Felski argues that criticism – understood as an emotionally uninvolved reading of literature being part of the panoptic system of power that subjugates individuals – should be modified to embrace an affective quality and a new vision of the ontology of a literary work. Felski believes that thanks to Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory, it is possible to begin to perceive the literary work as a causative non-human actor. The work then avoids participating in the sterile dispute between the idea of the autonomy of art and radical pragmatism, which assumes the full dependence of the meanings of this work on the context. Theorized in new phenomenological analyses, literature demonstrates a capacity to exert influence. At the same time, it does not do anything by itself, but in cooperation with other important human and non-human actors (readers, schools, reading family customs and others). The type of critique described in The Limits of Critique becomes a conscious participant in the social interventions of literature consisting in the joint discovery of the possibility of the emergence of new types of connections, networks and communities. Thus, critique and literature contribute to the development of particularly effective varieties of aesthetic, economic and political agency.

Patryk Szaj attempts to inscribe Szczepan Kopyt’s Wersy o koniecznym oporze [Verses about the Necessary Resistance] into the theoretical framework of the Capitalocene. The starting point is the reconstruction of the condition of criticism in the Anthropocene. He opposes the beliefs expressed by some representatives of the Anthropocene discourse that criticism is ineffective in the face of the planetary challenges of this epoch. He argues that we criticism is till needed, as is also emphasized by the concept of the Capitalocene as an alternative to the Anthropocene. Next, Szaj moves on to a dialogue with Kopyt’s work. Using both the findings of critical theory and (new)materialistic concepts, Szaj points to Kopyt’s debt to both these traditions. He shows that Kopyt has managed to avoid the “speaking out of nowhere” that is associated with criticism. Kopyt speaks “from the world,” and his voice is that of a participant. This perspective, reconstructed in the article on the basis of Kopyt’s Wersy o koniecznym oporze, allows the poet to diagnose the anachronism of some Marxist heterodox practices (autonomism), as well as to note and creatively develop the positive and negative entanglements of human and inhuman actors in the era of Capitalocene. 

The aim of this interview is to familiarize readers with Jan Maszczyszyn, a writer of Polish origin living in Australia, and with his flagship work, Solar Trilogy. The first part of the interview concerns his experiences as reader and author, and also contains a brief description of steampunk, which is his literary mode of choice. This part of the interview is also about retrofuturism, associated with nostalgic and melancholic ways of thinking about the nineteenth century. The second part of the interview is devoted to Solar Trilogy and some of its motifs. Here Maszczyszyn talks about the sources on which he drew in the creation of the fictional universe of the Trilogy as well as the method of creating it. He also talks about the scientific theories that inspired the creation of that universe and about the scientific interpretations of the world related to it. 

Historia stylizowaana na XIX wieczna podróż na Księżyc. Bazowana na autentycznych wydarzeniach z okresu błędnej interpretacji plam księżycowych.

Jan Maszczyszyn’s Trylogia Solarna [Solar Trilogy] is a steampunk saga that combines retrospective imagery of the nineteenth century with futurological visions of the cosmos. In his article, Konrad Zielonka presents one of the ways in which the Polish-Australian author creates his universe, where the world of nineteenth-century scientism and futurological considerations combine with metaphysics and cultural-religious motifs. Comparing it with Kamil Flammarion’s Urania, Zielonka points out aspects characteristic of Kardec’s romantic and spiritualist tradition, as well as direct references to Aboriginal conceptions of the world (the Age of Dreams, or Dreamtime), whose common features include the dream state, dreamlike cosmic wandering, and unity with the universe. Zielonka presents Maszczyszyn’s way of linking Aboriginal mythology directly to the scientific world. By evoking nineteenth century ideas of progress and the role of civilization as well as the opposition between “savagery” and “civilization,” Zielonka emphasises the steampunk game Maszczyszyn plays with Victorian, colonial ideals.  

The article discusses, both polemically and critically, a few instances in which Maciej Świerkocki, in his new translation of James Joyce’s Ulysses, renders the novel’s puns into Polish. In order to indicate other possible translations in this regard, the author of the article quotes from previous Polish version by Maciej Słomczyński and the Czech translation by Aloys Skoumal.