Ciało (nie)widzialne: spektakl wykluczenia w "Przy torze kolejowym" Zofii Nałkowskiej
A Body (in)Visible: The Exclusion Spectacle in Zofia Nałkowska’s "Przy torze kolejowym"

Summary/Abstract: In the short-story Przy torze kolejowym (By the Railway Track), Nałkowska shows a situation that becomes a spectacle for the local people: waiting till a Jewess, wounded as she fled while transported to an extermination camp, dies. The visibility of a female Jewish flesh pushes the character out to an excluded, alien position. The author centres her attention on the practices of the onlookers surrounding the victim, as they symbolically dispose of her before she really perishes. Nałkowska introduces a fundamental change into a world of discourse-conditioned glances: a distanced viewing option. We can reconstruct from the outside the rules of this peculiar show and identify the roles distributed to its participants and actors. On the last, and top, level does the author distil and reinterpret the issue of memory and testimony, which forms the short-story’s compositional frame.

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