In this article, I draw on the work of authors associated with New Materialism(s) and the material turn, in order to examine and compare various ways of developing a „new materialist” literary criticism/literary theory. I then set these projects against a more traditional historical materialist perspective, as exemplified for instance by Fredric Jameson, in order to point out some fundamental differences between literary criticism focused on the imagined „true” materiality of the text and one that chooses to emphasise instead the inherent materiality of the work of literature as such (on all its levels). Here, the oft-discussed Marxist distinction between the base and the superstructure provides a good example of how these two approaches, though ostensibly similar, may in fact represent two very different, even contradictory schools of thought and criticism. My goal is not to criticise new materialists for not maintaining some imagined Marxist dogma, but rather, to point out how a nominal attachment to the materiality of text, when combined with a desire to invent a new method of reading, may result in a point of view that, even on its own terms, cannot be seen as materialist. Drawing on Fredric Jameson’s remarks on materialist criticism as a work of „demystification and de-idealisation” rather than a „positive” method, I then refer to the work of Walter Benn Michaels as an example of „negative” materialist criticism that, instead of providing us with a new way of „doing interpretation”, allows us to de-idealize the way we discuss literature.
A Weird Inkling, As If the World Was Ending. Arguments for a New Periodisation The article examines the idea of year 2008 – the beginning of the so-called Great Recession – as a potential turning point in contemporary Polish poetry. Most of the authors commonly associated with the so-called “new Polish political poetry” have published their first books around 2008, and it was also around that year that the work of certain important young authors seems to have shifted from a relatively traditional form to a more experimental one, allowing them to accurately grasp the anxiety and precariousness inherently tied to the social experience of the young generation. I link these shifts to the issue of reference and dereferentialisation of sign/language under financial capitalism. Whereas pre-2008, the dereferentialisation of language might have seemed like an ongoing and somewhat ambivalent process, for the young generation it constitutes the very foundation of their everyday existence.
The article is focused on the theme of anger in Kamila Janiak’s poetry – its forms, types, and understanding that transpire as she develops her poetry. A paradigm of reception assumed herein as a departure point is the category of a “piss-off” (Polish vulgar noun wkurw, a strong sensation of anger), which is synonymous with intense and politically motivated indignation. The author of the article, however, attempts to show that Janiak’s poetry has been for a long time defined by other affective registers; emotions and moods in a way supressed – restricted, unfulfilled, most of all: incapable of climaxing and of “exploding.” The said state of affairs should be connected with the structure of individual and collective subjectivity appearing in Janiak’s poetry, namely, a subject that is shattered and (also politically) dispersed, lacking any devices to develop a coherent narrative, with hardly any access to political forms of anger which frequently cannot exist without consistent narrative. Instead of being expressed by one’s indignation, the said subject resorts to “little fits of pique” (a diminutive złostki is used here by Janiak), a series of minor, yet rapidly accumulating irritations, which do not find their outlet. This state of being affectively shattered may be seen in existential categories, but also political and generational ones.
This article elaborates on a conception of poetic form derived from the work of the contemporary Polish poet Andrzej Sosnowski, in order to further our understanding of form as something material and dynamic rather than static and purely “textual”. Sosnowski often comments on the materiality of poetry as a useful metaphor that allows us to grasp its peculiar semi-autonomous condition; hence his eagerness to employ the metaphors of poetry as choreography, bodily gesture or action. By putting Sosnowski’s comments in the context of contemporary debates on form and matter in literature—from historical materialism and its traditionally complicated relationship to formalism to a more traditional philological approach to the so-called “new materialisms”—I attempt to point out a possibility of transcending the usual tensions and divisions organising these debates. Here, I find particularly useful the notion of “affordances,” as used by Caroline Levine, as well as the techno-poetic approach of Nathan Brown, and certain conceptual tools offered by the “new formalist” movement. Finally, I reference the work of Adam Ważyk, Sosnowski’s predecessor and one of his main inspirations, in order to show the poetic form as a way of protecting/preserving certain forms of life. Ważyk’s idea of form as a means of resisting entropy provides a unique insight into the more practical aspects of the politics of poetic form.
Artykuł stanowi nieukończone przez autora wprowadzenie do książki, którą zmarły filozof Mark Fisher projektował pod koniec życia i której nigdy nie napisał. Przedstawia w nim zarys koncepcji kwasowego komunizmu, czyli myślowej prowokacji wskazującej na potrzebę przemyślenia dziedzictwa kultury radykalnych ruchów lat 60. i 70., zwłaszcza istniejącego w nich napięcia między indywidualizmem a kolektywizmem. Istotną inspiracją myśli Fishera pozostają zwłaszcza prace Herberta Marcusego.
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