“A Dress Rehearsal” of Empathy with Non-Humans in Olga Tokarczuk’s Short Story Cover Image

„Próba generalna” współ-odczuwania z nie-ludźmi w opowiadaniu Olgi Tokarczuk
“A Dress Rehearsal” of Empathy with Non-Humans in Olga Tokarczuk’s Short Story

Author(s): Szymon Kamiński
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies, Polish Literature, Philology
Published by: Wydział Filologiczny Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego
Keywords: post-environment; climate catastrophe; apocalypse; posthumanism; Olga Tokarczuk

Summary/Abstract: The work reflects Olga Tokarczuk’s short story Dress Rehearsal which deals with the topic of apocalypse, climatic catastrophe, and climate change. The article is a part of a scientific work, which is a master’s thesis dealing with the complex issue of the subjectivity of animals and nature, as well as the common environment and post-environment, and the study of the relationship between humans and non-humans. In the work, the Nobel Prize winner comes under the influence of a ‘world-creator’ and an ‘intense observer’, thus human relations can be complicated in times of the end of the world and how human attitudes towards animals and the world change. This time of the end, marked by Giorgio Agamben with the messianic era, allows for a certain non-action towards reality, and empathy and compassion begin being a remedy for centuries of objectification of other beings.

  • Issue Year: 2022
  • Issue No: 15
  • Page Range: 82-94
  • Page Count: 13
  • Language: Polish