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No Future

The Queer Objection of Juliusz Słowacki’s “Anhelli” in the Context of the Poem’s Attempted Continuations

Summary/Abstract: The article applies negative queer theory to investigate the Polish Romanticism. Employing selected terms of queer theory, namely the Child, reproductive futurism, and queer asexuality, it interprets Juliusz Słowacki’s “Anhelli” as a poem which links the rejection of future with asexuality. In this reading, Anhelli’s melancholy becomes a literary exemplification of alienation from the Symbolic, emptiness of fractured Lacanian subject, while the title character becomes a future-denying queer outcast. This claim is supported with the analysis of the endings added to “Anhelli” by Kornel Ujejski and by Wacław Gasztowtt, which indicate a cultural resistance towards the queer call to abandon the fantasy of stable meanings, complete identity, and better future.

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