Cwaniary (Female Wanglers) is not only a metatextual novel with numerous references to popular culture, but above all an important contribution to the discussion about the place and role of women in contemporary society. The author breaks with the nineteenth-century image of matka Polka, the Polish Mother, whose existence is confined to family and home. The creations and actions of the female wanglers in Cwaniary, outsiders who defy popular stereotypes by pursuing outré lifestyles, are underpinned with allusions to a nascent rebellion against patriarchy, systemic suppression of women's rights, and the resulting marginalization of women in society. Unfortunately, Poles still have great problems with openness to other cultures, nations, and non-heteronormative sexual orientations. The Poles, it seems, are caught between an irrational fear of disintegration of the structures of their relatively homogeneous society and the need to move on and reinvent themselves as the 'modern subjects' of critical theory. It is a choice between holding on to an anachronistic model of Polish culture founded on suppression or catching up with the 21st-century world of openness, diversity and multiculturalism.
This article deals with literary pathography, i.e. texts which purport to project rage or a mental disorder, and use narrative strategies adopted specifically for that purpose. The analysis is focused on two novels by Aleksandra Zielińska, Przypadek Alicji (Alicja’s Case) and Bura i szał (Bura and Rage) treated as literary representations of the protagonists' mental condition. The literary character of these 'records' is revealed by multiple intertextual tropes and poetic devices that deconstruct the cultural stereotype of female rage. Consequently, Aleksandra Zielińska's novels should be seen as projections of a fractured female subject (un sujet divisé) fixed on her somatic vulnerability, driven by an urge to cry out her affliction, trauma and rage, unease about woman-to-woman relations, and the pressure of erratic affective impulses.
This article examines the relationship of disgust and perversion in Lovetown (Lubiewo bez cenzury) by Michał Witkowski. An overview of the reception of the book reveals that reviewers and critics have focused mainly on Witkowski’s portrayal of the LGBT community, the structure of the novel (dubbed the ‘queer Decameron’), and the textual (meta) creation of the writer’s voice, but it ignored his handling of disgust and perversion. Central to this reading of Lovetown, which draws on Sigmund Freud’s analyses of disgust and perversion, is the observation that the narrator interlards his lingo with neutral, ‘objective’ explanations of the main characters’ deviant behaviours. This glossary, written for the general reader, tends, in effect, to legitimize deviance. An in-depth analysis of the writer’s handling of the categories of the disgusting, the perverse and the sacred leads to the conclusion that Lovetown exemplifies a cathartic-therapeutic narrative in which disgust becomes a tool of self-fulfi llment.