„Proszek katowicki we włosach”. Ekofeministyczna lektura „Ciała huty” Anny Cieplak
“The Katowice Powder in the Hair”. An Ecofeminist Reading of „Ciało huty” by Anna Cieplak

Summary/Abstract: The author of the article attempts an ecofeminist analysis of Anna Cieplak’s novel Ciało huty as socially engaged literature. The term “ecofeminism” is taken from Françoise d’Eaubonne’s essay Le féminisme ou la mort and is used to analyze the common space of experienced violence whose victims are nature and women. In criticizing the common features of patriarchy and destructive capitalism, the stereotypical identification of masculinity, reason, and technology, situated in opposition to the triad of femininity, intuition, and nature, is pointed out. The author emphasizes the rural origins of the characters in Cieplak’s novel and their folk attachment to the land, confronted with progressive degradation of the natural environment in which the Katowice Steelworks is being built. The novel presents the important similarities between mothers and daughters across generations, analyzing the attempts of the younger generation to return to nature. This return is achieved, among other things, through an interest in Friedrich Froebel’s educational methods, as well as the dangers of capitalist exploitation of ecological sensitivity in the form of greenwashing. References to environmental pollution and the heroic figure of Dr Jolanta Wadowska-Król are significant for the presented approach. The interpretation of the novel Ciało huty highlights the strong bond between women and nature, most evident in the descriptions of sexual violence and the community’s response to it, in which the alliance with nature plays an important role. Nature is also shown as accompanying the characters in healing the pain of trauma.

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