Cielesne o(d)słony: dyskursy erotyczne w polskiej prozie po 1989 roku

Abstract

Thinking about sexuality, we used to boil it down to a physical act of uniting lovers, the pictures of which are available in a wide array of possibilities: from pornographic presentations and erotically marked art to a life dominated by voyeuristic tendencies. Sexuality, though, is this sphere of human activity in which the surfaces of mutual relations of the psychology of an individual, philosophy, anthropology overlap and through which they are made manifest. Title erotic discourses show how the findings by Michel Foucault make themselves manifest ‘in practice’, according to which sexuality functioning in the “power‑knowledge‑pleasure” system, is verbose these days, as a result of which we deal with a paradox: speaking constantly about sex is contrasted with telling about it in the categories of mystery. Thus, the discourse is a tool of power thanks to which one can reach a sexual subject, though a fairly specific tool, the one which uncovering eroticism, covers it at the same time. The key words of the book title – discourse, eroticism, physicality – were used not only in order to show sexuality from the angle of a thematic choice underlying the artistic practice or a linguistic surface, but above all, to overlap different perspectives. Rzeczy nienasycone, Cud w Esfahanie, Straszne dni by Andrzej Czcibor‑Piotrowski, Antologia twórczości p. by Cezary K. Kęder and Szkice do obrazu batalistycznego by Adam Ubertowski served as an example confirming the thesis according to which for the contemporary writers eroticism is becoming a starting point for discussing such problems as initiation, outsiderism, sexuality, problems with describing intimacy of experiencing, lack of authenticity and need to articulate it. The sphere of eroticism allows for speaking about one’s own biography, -expression. The level of the subject‑matter (eroticism as one of many human experiences to be described) is nowadays the lowest of the very surfaces, above which the subsequent spaces, are showing a “suspension” between modernism and postmodernism. Undergoing an “imperative of a public transparency”, sexuality provokes the questions on the freedom of art again, resembles the difficulties with defining human identity, encourages doubts concerning thinking and presenting habits, having their roots in a Christian ban on revealing nudity and a prudish treatment of eroticism in the 19th century. Interwar avant‑garde tendencies, highlighting youth, sensuality, homosexuality or primitiveness, led to the “movement” of physicality from the margins to the space of a “dominating medial discourse”, uncovering with the use of an experimental going beyond what has been covered for centuries. Year 1989 and yielding the Polish culture to the dictate of the market and rules of the consumerist world, sealed the change of the sexual code which looks for other ways of articulation beyond the semantics of openness, medial staging, pleasure and fun allowed these days.