Biografie (nie)normatywne? Czyli o tym, co można ułożyć z biograficznych puzzli w internecie

Abstract

The authors give careful thought to selected digital “memorial sites” dedicated to distinguished creators of culture, literature and art (and collected under the banner of the KARTA Centre Foundation), such as Witold Lutosławski, Józef Gosławski, Agnieszka Osiecka, Wisława Szymborska, Pola Negri, Jerzy Grzegorzewski or Zofia Rydet. The overview of the collected material has assumed a search for (non)normative biographies, i.e. multi-modal, “patchwork,” “moving” biographies, as well as a confrontation of the observed patterns with well-established modes in biographical writing. What is more, the authors noted the liminal, borderline characteristics of the approaches, styles, genres etc. used today for various discursive practices that evoke or shape the images of the past. The conducted analyses, which have inscribed themselves into the stream of reflections on the phenomenon of the social archive and which are discursively and genologically oriented (cf. the assumptions and research methods of memory linguistics referred to in the text), have provided answers to, among others, the following specific questions: who the social actors reflected in the mirror of biographical archives (i.e. the creators and recipients of archives) are and what are their motivations; which people (and why these particular ones) are commemorated there, as well as through the prism of which objects a person’s profile is built.