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L'attention de l'auteur se porte sur l'analyse du pouvoir et de la connaissance par Michel Foucault. La réalisation majeure de Foucault consiste en un exposé empirique nourri des premières étapes de l'émergence de quelques modalités particulièrement modernes du pouvoir. Ses aperçus ont une signification politique importante et résultent de sa méthode généalogique unique de la description sociale et historique de micropratiques. Mais par la même occasion, son mode d'analyse fait naître de graves problèmes, dont le principal est de trouver le moyen de procéder à une critique politiquement engagée sans faire usage d'un cadre normatif. L'auteur cherche à déterminer précisément quels sont les aperçus empiriques de Foucault, comment sa méthode généalogique mène à de sérieux problèmes et à quelles questions politiques et normatives il faut encore faire face. Die Autorin konzentriert sich auf Michel Foucaults Analyse von Macht / Wissen. Foucaults wertvolle Einsichten bestehen in einer reichen empirischen Beschreibung der frühen Stadien der Entstehung einiger spezifisch moderner Formen der Macht. Diese seine Einsichten sind von wesentlicher politischer Relevanz; sie sind das Ergebnis seiner ungewöhnlichen genealogischen Methode einer sozialen und historischen Beschreibung von Mikro-Praktiken. Sein Verfahren der Analyse jedoch führt zugleich zu schwerwiegenden Problemen. Diese sind zentriert um das Problem, wie eine politisch engagierte Kritik ohne Voraussetzung eines normativen Rahmens möglich ist. Die Autorin versucht genau zu bestimmen, worin Foucaults empirische Einsichten bestehen, inwiefern sein genealogisches Vorgehen zu ernsthaften Problemen führt und welche politischen und normativen Fragen noch zur Lösung anstehen.
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L'auteur cherche à analyser la structure et les tendances de crise des sociétés contemporaines de type soviétique (sociétés d'Europe orientale). J'essaie de montrer comment ce système est à la fois "irrationnel" et "rationnel". Il est "irrationnel" dans la mesure où il mène au gaspillage et à l'inefficacité économique endémiques. Ce n'est pas simplement un trait fortuit du système mais une partie intégrante de son fonctionnement. Mais cette forme d' "irrationalité" apparaît "rationnelle" dès qu'on pénètre jusqu'à la fonction objective de but de ce type de système. La fonction de but de ce type de société est proprement politique — c'est une forme de domination sociale qui ne se limite pas à la sphère d'économie proprement dite mais qui renferme toutes les fermes d'interaction sociale. Pour peu qu'on comprenne cette fonction de but et la façon dont elle affecte la structure toute entière, on peut voir comment ce qui apparaît "irrationnel" d'un simple point de vue économique devient intelligible et "rationnel". Le système analysé, cependant, est fondamentalement instable et crée son propre déséquilibre — lequel encourage les tendances à la crise dans ces sociétés de commandement. Der Autor versucht, Struktur und Krisentendenzen der zeitgenössischen Gesellschaften des sowjetischen Typs (d.h. der osteuropäischen Gesellschaften) zu analysieren. Er versucht zu zeigen, inwiefern dieses System zugleich "irrational" und "rational" ist. Es ist "irrational", insofern es zu notorischer Verschwendung und zu ökonomischer Ineffizienz führt. Hierbei handelt es sich nicht einfach um zufällige Begleiterscheinungen eines solchen Systems, sondern vielmehr um einen integralen Bestandteil seines Funktionierens. Aber diese Form der "Irrationalität" kann auch als "rational" angesehen werden, sobald die objektive Zielfunktion dieser Art von System mit in Betracht gezogen wird.
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L'auteur cherche à clarifier la nature précise de la crise et du dilemme des États-providence contemporains. Il soutient que les théories classiques de la crise économique ne suffisent pas à rendre compte de l'État-providence contemporain et de ses instabilités naturelles. Après l'analyse de ce qui est caractéristique de la crise de l'État-providence et des phénomènes de crises propres à cette forme de capitalisme, j'examine trois "solutions" possibles aux dilemmes de l'État-providence. Ce sont la "solution" conservatrice qui vis à la destruction de l'État-providence; la "solution" sociale-démocrate qui consiste en un modèle corporatiste de politique; et la "solution" radicale démocrate fondée sur l'idée de participation et d'économie autonome. Les faiblesses des deux premiers types de "solution" font l'objet d'une discussion, surtout en ce qui concerne les zones de conflit du sous-emploi et de l'écologie. Malgré l'absence d'un agent politique pour amener une solution démocratique radicale, celle-ci paraît plus raisonnable et plausible er comparaison avec les faiblesses des deux autres solutions. Der Autor versucht, den spezifischen Charakter der Krise und des Dilemmas der modernen Wohlfahrtsstaaten zu erhellen. Er versucht zu zeigen, daß die klassischen Theorien der ökonomischen Krise für ein Verständnis des modernen Wohlfahrtsstaates und der ihm inhärenten Instabilitäten nicht angemessen sind. Nach einer Analyse der Grundmerkmale von Krisen und Krisenphänomenen in der wohlfahrtsstaatlichen Form des Kapitalismus untersucht der Autor drei mögliche "Lösungen" der Dilemmata des Wohlfahrtsstaates: die konservative "Lösung", welche die Zerstörung des Wohlfahrtsstaates zum Ziel hat, die sozialdemokratische Lösung, der ein korporatistisches Modell der Politik zugrunde liegt, und die radikal-demokratische Lösung, die auf der Idee der Partizipation und der ökonomischen Selbstverwaltung basiert.
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This essay puts forward an idea to read Bruno Schulz’s story „The Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass” against the background of a specifi c genre in European literature of the interwar period, namely, the ‘sanatorial text’. This term, coined here by analogy to V. Toporov’s ‘Petersburg text’, is based upon the observation that narratives set in sanatoriums share some semantic and structural features; the most important being the heterotopic character of the sanatorial world. According to M. Foucault, a ‘heterotopia’ is a place that ‘represents’, ‘contests’ and ‘inverts’ common places in a society. In M. Proust’s Recherche…, Th. Mann’s Magic Mountain, and M. Blecher’s Scarred Hearts the heteropic setting is used to produce a feeling of estrangement. These novels explore the notions of time and society by constructing a heterotopic counter-world where the ‘ordinary’ stream of events is interrupted and life becomes intensifi ed, it is made palpable again. Schulz’s story points to the deeply problematic consequences of such a renewal of ‘authentic experience’. It shows that a break taken from civilizational habits can unleash barbarism.
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Moje zdziwienia/My Marvellings/ is a column run by Henryk Markiewicz, retired Professor of the Jagiellonian University and one of the most outstanding Polish literary historians and theoreticians. In his essays, Professor Markiewicz presents and discusses various literary theory publications, comments on current events at the academia, argues with and questions authors of scholarly and popular articles, all the time being indefatigable in his insistence on respecting standards of academic professionalism, competence, honesty and responsibility for judgments and opinions expressed
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Schulz and Simulacra is an analysis of Bruno Schulz’s short essay entitled Mythicization of Reality. Michał Kłosiński argues with Dorota Głowacka, who tried to interpret Schulz’s prose with the use of Jean Baudrillard’s category of simulacrum, that her understanding of the term is wrong. Kłosiński searches for places in Schulz’s theoretical essay, where he is the most ambivalent and where his ambivalence works against the text’s consistency. He performs an interpretation of some of Schulz’s notions, such as sense, myth and poetry, to depict how the author of Mythicization defi nes them and how the poetics of Schulz’s text somehow changes these definitions. The main objective of the analysis is to show that Schulz’s theory points the reader not to the concept of simulacrum, but to another Baudrillardian notion – the symbolic exchange. Kłosiński finds evidence of the possibility of such reading in the example given by Schulz of the fragmented body of a snake in legends and the poetic mechanism which he calls „the short circuiting of sense”. In the conclusion the author performs an analysis of Schulz’s view on poetry and how the mythicization as a poetic act works against simulacra and the excess of meaning produced in language to constantly recreate a bond with reality.
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The article discusses Bruno Schulz’s attitude toward politics. It is well known that the author of The Cinnamon Shops was a nonpolitical man. This was the reason for some fi erce attacks against his prose conducted by politically engaged literary critics in the interwar Poland. The author mentions these attacks but he also analyzes Schulz’s less known essays about Piłsudski, Aragon and Brecht, and the way Schulz pictured politics in his prose. It seems that a political dictionary of the author of The Street of Crocodiles comprised terms from different political ideologies; he alluded to Marx, anarchism and Brzozowski. At the end of his article the author discusses the question whether Schulz’s nonpolitical attitude could be compared to the so called conservative revolution in Germany after World War I.
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The paper discusses several striking affi nities between some passages in the prose of Heinrich von Kleist and that of Bruno Schulz. The Austrian painter Oskar Kokoschka, designer of a life-size puppet and author of a text on his fetish, published in 1925, appears here as a go-between between Kleist’s marionettes and Schulz’ mannequins. All of the presented similarities by no means qualify as a case for plagiarism, nor even as imitations. Rather, they prove a soul affi nity, Schulz’s intensive reading of Kleist’s prose, and his accommodation of certain motifs and stylistic oddities, which are further developed in his prose, and, linked to other, not only literary, inspirations, yield a new and unique quality.
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The author discusses the book edited by Jerzy Jarzębski and Jakub Momro from different points of view. He examines the range of meanings of the terms used in the title. Considering the question of pessimism in the context of early modern literature, he states that the book gives an overview of an alternative history of Polish literature and draws attention to the role of philosophy in shaping the concept of pessimism (e.g., Existentialism). The book is both a monograph on a single topic, and a collection of material for a compendium about the present times built out of literature of the last few decades.
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The article is a review of Wielkopolski Alfabet Pisarek (The Alphabet of Women Writers in Greater Poland) – a collective work which is an effect of historical research in the field of Polish women’s writing carried out by academicians collaborating with the Center of Feminist Criticism (Pracownia Krytyki Feministycznej, UAM, Poznań). The review points out the most important assumptions taken up by the editors and the authors of the compilation , which determined the methodological consequences in the book – namely: the signifi cance of the sex/gender category and local context in both the production of literature and academic knowledge about it. Also the generic form of an „alphabet” – with its arbitrariness and variety – was analyzed here as the manifestation of a general principle chosen by the editors to provide a comprehensive view of the literary tradition created by women-authors who were (or are) related to the region of Greater Poland.
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The article is a review of Jakub Niedźwiedź’s latest book concerning literacy in medieval and early modern Vilnius. The author analyzes the notion of ‘the rhetorical organization of the city’ employed by Niedźwiedź in his book and points out some consequences stemming from the way such notions as ‘text’ and ‘rhetoric’ are used in it. The reviewer also emphasizes the signifi cance of the book as both a statement in the discussion concerning the dematerialization of the text in modern literary studies and as a work that may inspire a number of similar research projects.
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Zimbawbe – former South Rhodesia – has had a troubled history since 1980 when it won its independence. The author compares its present situation with that of South Rhodesia, a comparison that does not favor Zimbawbe, and at the same time offers an objective view o the social, economic and political situation during the domination of white colonizers
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A reportage on the present situation in Iran, where the so-called bourgeois circles but also the poor layers of the society challenge the government, and where political figures close to President Khatami back him up in his effort to reform the system without destroying it.
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A short essay on the books read by the author, that represented cultural landmarks along his life, among which Camus’ “The Stranger”.
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Moving pages on the Warsaw ghetto where the author spent past of his childhood, and on his and his family’s ordeals as escapees, obliged to live hidden in an attic, in a permanent state of fear not to be discovered.
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Staring from Catherine Merridale’s volume ‘Nights of Stone – Death and Memory in Russia, the author comments on the political violence in Russia, that has marred its history along the past century. The Russians’ relation to death, the radical students’ movements, the role played by the Orthodox church, the position of the main publications as regards the situation of the ordinary people, the Stalinist terror are topics of the interviews taken by Merridale and representing the essence of her book.
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How can one speak of enemies and not hate them? A question that the author tries to answer evoking several figures of the twentieth century who represented or still represent a real threat for humanity or became detested killers of mankind.
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An essay on the specific difference between enemy and foe, which is similar to that between “discord” and war. The historic references offer examples such as d’Artagnan, Richelieu, Hindenburg, Hitler. The author concludes: Don’t love the enemy, but forgive the foe who might prove your future ally.
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An essay on the Oder river, a witness of Poland’s history, but also the author’s “companion” in her childhood and youth.
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