Basing his argumentation on Freud’s essay Civilisation and Its Discontents, the author poses a question about the essence of suffering which appears when the Law of the Father is suspended and no longer protects against the death drive. The author formulates a thesis that in the contemporary social space, abandoned by the Law of the Father, it is disciplinary practices that play a key regulative role, pretending to form the relations based on the law. These practices transform the drive energy of Thanatos, which then finds its embodiment in the everyday lifelessness of bureaucracy, the coolness of rules and the excess hidden beneath them. The answer to this situation is Eros, which drives people to community – yet not so much in the form of a family as of an infinite and noneconomic continuum of local games of love and death.

The article is an attempt to describe the literary genealogy of the cultural transformations of the role of a father and the relation father-son in the 19th century.The key role of literature in the modern liberal education allows us to see in this discourse the power which has conserved, violated and transformed this group of stereotypes of masculinity. The writer who exerted the greatest influence on the building of the attractive models of a man and a boy in the Polish culture was Henryk Sienkiewicz. The reading of these issues in his work brings the observations which immensely complicate the conventional images of masculinity or the relation fatherson in the 19th century culture.

The paper calls into question the status of (post)Lacanian atheism as can be inferred from writings of Lacan himself (mainly seminaries XI, XVIII, XX and XXIII) and Slavoj Žižek. Such atheism is based on the inexistence of “the Other of the Other”, which, however, cannot be merely stated, but must take the form of an injunction. In this postlacanian logic, true atheists are not those who deny the existence of God – even in its symbolic functions – but those who – actively relying on the absence of “the Other of the Other” – are able to carry out fundamental shifts within the symbolic structure of the Other. Yet, this atheism, which might be viewed as one of the strongest forms of denying the divine, is based itself on the monotheistic grid. Drawing upon some remarks from the late writings of Freud, the paper aims to reveal the inner, self-referential logic of the Father, who se position is preserved and strengthened after the actual death of the Father. Postlacanian atheism might be conceived of as the latest form of fatherly self-grounding, in which divine position perpetuates itself under the cover of injunctions to radical atheism. Finally, the paper propounds an interpretation of Kafka’s short story The Cares of a Family Man (Die Sorge des Hausvaters), in which the enigmatic figure of “Odradek” – a deathless half-object, half-creature – stands for the final material embodiment of the futile injunction to renounce the divine. Thus Odradek epitomises the Law, which is nothing but an insoluble rattle, emptied from the tension of desire, in front of which Kafka’s characters are forced to wait.

The author offers a re-reading of the figure of a father, around which Bruno Schulz’s work oscillates. Schulz’s father is made a patron of anti-hermeneutic literary studies, whose ambition is to transcend the opposition between comprehension and incomprehension of a text. This father favours a reading which is dissolute and scandalous. Therefore, as a figure embodying bliss, he is called here a father-shocker (in a creative reference to Lacan’s concept of le père... ou pire) – a perverted “lawgiver,” who obliges one even to violate the law and transgress the rules of the canon. He is the one who allows for acting on one’s own anti-rules: the more they are, on the one hand,
materialistic and subversive, and on the other, pragmatic and inclusive, the more difficult it is to distance oneself from them or to reject them – and thus create a space for the sovereignty of the subject. Yet, as the author persuades, the readers do not know other than an obscene father; thus they necessarily play on his terms – but it is only when one gives in to him completely that it is possible to outplay him, that is to liberate new reading possibilities.

The article constitutes an attempt at analysing the role of the image of a real and a symbolic father in Aleksander Wat’s work. The point of the departure is a reflection upon the issue of avant-garde gesture of breaking off with the past and identity through a change of a family name from Chwat to Wat. The problem of misunderstanding resulting from the use of different languages forms the basis of the relationship between Wat and his father and serves as the background for the proposed interpretation, whose figure becomes the Tower of Babel. The image which emerges from the analyses of the poems composed by the author of Buchalteria, and especially from the fragments of his journal, is one of the “voice of the Father,” tormenting the writer, which has a close connection with the return of the suppressed Jewish identity.

The presentation of the work of the now forgotten writer concentrates on three key issues: Wilhelm Mach’s homosexual biography and the problems arising from it, ambiguity of the categories of masculinity, brotherhood and fatherhood, used by Mach, as well as “family anti-utopias,” whose portrayals can be found in Rdza [Rust] or Jaworowy dom [Sycamore House]. The author attempts to restore Mach’s name as an important figure in the history of the struggles of the Polish modernity with nonnormative sexuality; the writer’s political involvement is read as a consequence of the faith in the emancipatory power of the new order.

The article constitutes an attempt at an extended analysis of Tymoteusz Karpowicz’s posthumously published poem, Commedia dell’arte, which concentrates
on numerous intertextual references operating within it (for example the references to D. Defoe’s and Ch. Baudelaire’s texts, to the figure of a fool, G. Tiepol’s painting or Bolesław Leśmian’s poems). It is the author’s firm belief that these references cannot be treated as mere erudite ornaments but should be acknowledged as the strategies revealing the hidden sense of the text. The latter turn out to lead the reader in the direction which shall be today called postsecular: although the text talks about God who has abandoned the world, and as such may be recognized as a story about secularization, I treat it as “inscribed positively in the destiny of kenosis” (G. Vattimo). Such a reading may be supported by a mimological correspondence between the strategies hindering a reading on the plane of expression and an affirmation of kenosis on the plane of content.

The article takes up a problem of a complex relationship between Hegel and the French Revolution, of which the philosopher was both a great enthusiast and a brilliant critic. The point of departure for the analysis is a critical reading of the traditional interpretations of Hegel’s relation to the Revolution (J. Ritter and J. Habermas), which enables the author to develop a “speculative interpretation of the Revolution” on the basis of Phenomenology of Spirit. The key to the understanding of the dynamics of the Enlightenment, which found its culmination in the Revolution, is the inner dialectic of knowledge and faith which constitutes this epoch. The ideas of the Enlightenment become undermined by the opposition between the German (reformation) process of working through the relation between faith and knowledge and the French (revolutionary) repression of its mutual relationship. This paradox recognized by Hegel (in R. Comay’s interpretation) leads the philosopher to formulate a dialectic position: revolution with reformation would be the work of mourning (the process of working through) on this lost object (the world of faith), whereas revolution without reformation would remain only futile melancholy of terror, compensating for the lack of reformation. The paradoxical lesson for the present times (inspired by S. Žižek’s reading) which arises from Hegel’s interpretation is the following: cultural revolution (revolution in thinking itself, in utopian dreams) is the condition of possibility of the success of social revolution.

The text considers the relations between friendship and revolution. The author seeks inspiration for the understanding of these relations in St. Thomas’s opusculum, On Kingship, Negri’s and Hardt’s books and Jadwiga Staniszkis Samoograniczająca się rewolucja [Self-limiting Revolution]. Friendship helps to rebel
against tyranny but the overpowering rebellion hinders the maintenance of friendship – St. Thomas suggests. The solution is a difficult art of the self-limiting of revolution, inspired by the Christian love of a neighbour and Mao Tse-Tung’s cultural revolution (within limits, of course).

The father is a dialectical figure. Taking C. Schmitt’s “state of exception” as a point of departure and drawing from G. Agamben’s and W. Hamacher’s analyses, I would like to present in my article the sense of this figure in the context of Hegelian speculation. Although “father’s” tendency appears to be a tendency towards the fullness of identity and pleroma, yet, it hides in itself negativity which cannot be eradicated and which condemns it to unresolvable ambiguity; whereas this ambiguity must lead to the sublation of “metaphysically” understood “fatherhood” for the sake of love.

The author offers a critical judgment of Lacanian psychoanalysis, pointing out its normativizing aspect. He acknowledges the impossibility of reconciliation of psychoanalytic thought with the theory of radical difference, the example of which is queer, which has been postulated by such scholars as Judith Butler, Lee Edelman or Leo Bersani. As Eribon claims, queer theory constitutes a continuation of (antipsychoanalytic) philosophy of Michel Foucault, and it would be theoretically much more inspiring – Eribon further argues – to try to juxtapose Foucault’s thought with Sartre rather than with Freud or Lacan.

An interview with Edward Pasewicz, a contemporary Polish poet.

Poems by Edward Pasewicz, a contemporary Polish poet.

A review of Adam Dziadek’s Projekt krytyki somatycznej (2014) [Plan for a Somatic Criricism]. The author emphasises originality of Dziadek’s conception, which combines certain structuralist and poststructuralist elements. As a result, Dziadek describes the text of a body: its manifestations or traces in the matter of language (above all, rhythm); at the same time he is interested in the body of a text: a mechanism of reading which transcends the aesthetic norm.

The review of Józef Maria Ruszar’s book Słońce republiki. Cywilizacja rzymska w twórczości Zbigniewa Herberta (2014) [Sun of the republic. Roman civilisation in Zbigniew Herbert’s work]. The author of the review emphasises that Ruszar convincingly inscribed Herbert’s fascination with antiquity (especially Roman antiquity) in the whole historiosophical reflection of the poet. The conviction about the progressive disintegration of the structures of civilization and society was closely related in Herbert’s writing with the sustained defence of Roman virtus. However, the thesis that in his poetic work Herbert was disputing with the programme and ideology of the literary modernism is perceived by the reviewer as questionable.

The review offers a presentation of Marta Flakowicz-Szczyrba’s book Dowód na istnienie. Poezja Julii Hartwig wobec egzystencji i sztuki [A Proof of Existence. Julia Hartwig’s Poetry on Existence and Art], where the lyric oeuvre of the famous poet is placed within the „poetry of metaphysical question.” A particular attention is given to a hermeneutic way of reading the works of the author of Zobaczone [Seen] and to the use of such categories as epiphany, empathy, ekphrasis, apocatastasis in the course of the analysis.

The subject of Wojciech Rusinek’s review is Marek Bieńczyk’s collection of essays Jabłko Olgi, stopy Dawida [Olga’s Apple, David’s Feet]. The author begins his reading of the book by placing it in the context of Bieńczyk’s earlier achievements: both artistic (novels, literary essays) and academic (bearing witness to his studies on Romanticism). While noting that Bieńczyk’s essays are governed by a wealth and a surprising variety of the explored themes, Rusinek emphasises, however, the worldview coherence of the volume. According to the author of the review, a key to the interpretation of all the essays in the book is “the praise of the taste of life,” which makes a new tone in Bieńczyk’s writing, so far associated mainly with the reflection on melancholy and melancholy discourse present in his artistic prose. In the following part of the review, by outlining the content of the essays devoted to Proust’s and Nerval’s prose,
Hopper’s painting or Sempé’s drawings, Rusinek analyses the anthropological figures around which Bieńczyk’s digressive and slow reflection revolves: gesture, light, escape, frozen time. The reading of Bieńczyk’s work becomes enriched with an analysis of style (a role of stylization). Moreover, the review points out those fragments of Jabłko Olgi, stopy Dawida where a description of artistic works becomes smoothly linked with the elements of the author’s biography. In the conclusion of the reflection upon Bieńczyk’s essays, the author states that the essays clearly lean towards poetics of epiphany, which, in the view of the author of Jabłko Olgi…, would mean an unclear, veiled by an infinite number of borrowings, allegories, allusions and stylizations, suspending the flow of time, experience of existence in its inexpressible fullness.

The author of the article, inspired by Dariusz Nowacki’s review, proposes a thesis opposite to that of the famous critic, who calls Szczepan Twardoch’s and Jacek Dehnel’s diaries “a show-off of avatars.” In defence of Twardoch’s book, Wieloryby i ćmy [Whales and moths] the author decides to concentrate on its ideological and literary values. Most importantly, he strives to prove that the diaries constitute an original and innovative attempt at developing a genre of intimate diaries and have a multifaceted interpretive potential. The author of Morfina [Morphine] expresses in his diaries a desire for “directing a great life,” understood as a consistent creation of literary works as well as a life imitating literature. The analyses and commentaries included in the article focus on the oppositions and hypostases found in the text, for example, of the world and provincial, history and life, literature and nothingness, settlement and foreignness, life and death, presence and absence, life according to spirit and life according to body, responsibility and its lack.

The article attempts to read Wojciech Wencel’s poem Imago mundi, focusing mainly on the process of opening up the Polish literary tradition by the poet (both the classic genre forms and stylization, direct references to the particular authors or symbols common in the Polish literature). Moreover, the author examines the poet’s “forces of imagination,” his characteristic way of depiction, small “obsessions” and the otherness of the analysed poem.

Report from the scientific seminar 'Nad tekstami Stanisława Trembeckiego' (2015).

Report from the 'V Transdyscyplinarna Szkoła Letnia dla Doktorantów' (2015).

The article discusses Edward Pasewicz’s poetry from the perspective of an organic metaphor, developed by the poet in his latest volumes (Pałacyk Bertolta Brechta [Bertolt Brecht’s Palace] and Och, Mitochondria. The author considers whether Pasewicz’s interest in the reflection on tissues, cells and DNA strands, and the idea of combining them with the issue of poetic coding, may be seen as an attempt at resolving the impasse between mythical and realistic forces of this work, or whether it merely constitutes a supplementation to the earlier proposed strategies of translating life into reality. Juxtaposing Pasewicz’s experiments with biopoetry and seeking in them a chance to transcend the poetics of the author of Dolna Wilda [The Lower Wilda], I come to the conclusion that in this case the organic metaphor serves further exploration of a private mythology; but it turns out to be not very productive for the rethinking of the concept of life and community.

The text is a synthetic description of Edward Pasewicz’s poetic work, which is included within the “plan for a somatic criticism.” The key operational concept used to describe this poetry is rhythm, which spreads out on all the levels of expression like a theme in a story and makes the texts of every poet unique and original. The rhythm is closely linked with the process of listening and with the body itself, which generates it. Following Charlers Berstein, the author performs an act of Close Listening, attempting to point out the relations between rhythm, the sphere of sound in Pasewicz’s poetic texts, and a speaking subject.