Chowaniec Abstract UP

Urszula Chowaniec
University of Tampere/Jagiellonian University, Kraków
Mapping Feminist Theory in Poland: Between Political and Literary Studies.
All agree in recognizing the fact that females exist in the
human species; today as always they make up about one half of
humanity. And yet we are told that femininity is in danger; we
are exhorted to be women, remain women, become women. It
would appear, then, that every female human being is not
necessarily a woman; to be so considered she must share in
that mysterious and threatened reality known as femininity.
Simone de Beauvoir The Second Sex, 1949
W pisaniu kobiety „objawia się” pycha, lekceważenie
narzuconej od wieków pokory. Wchodząc przez pisanie w
przestrzeń publicznego mówienia-działania, kobieta wydobywa
się z milczenia i ciszy. Zakłóca więc tradycyjny rozdział ról
społecznych, poczucie ustalonej hierarchii, słowem: relacje
władzy.
Krystyna Kłosińska, Kobieta autorka, Ciało i tekst.
Feminizm w literaturoznawstwie – antologia tekstów, 2001
In my paper I would like to introduce the main problems and issues that have been brought up
by Western feminist theories in the early 1990s. What did the world “feminism” mean then?
What does it mean now? What new have the feminist methodologies brought to Polish
studies?
I will concentrate on the main questions, such as language, literary criticism and literary
theory that have been re-interpreted from the feminist perspective. The question of gender
(even the translation of the term itself), the woman’s question, equality, female sexuality and
eroticism which are primary connected to the political and social fields, appeared in Polish
academic studies and had to be adapted.
Drawing upon the early texts of Grażyna Borkowska, Krystyna Klosinska, Sławomira
Walczewska, Inga Iwasiów, Kinga Dunin for example, I will show the main feminist-centred
areas of interest to Polish literary critics. Among them the most important would be: 1)
Interpreting Western feminist works; 2) Re-writing literary history: and 3) Conceptualizing
feminist theory and women’s writing.
I will give a few examples of Polish texts that have been interpreted through feminist eyes:
Irena Krzywicka, Olga Tokarczuk and Izabela Filipiak.
Finally, I would like to give some space to Simone de Beauvoir and her popularity in Polish
literary studies. It is the 90th anniversary of her birth. How does Polish scholarship react to
Beauvoir famous research into the fact that “one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman”
(The Second Sex, 1949)?