Myśli różne o postkolonializmie. Wstęp do tekstów nie napisanych (Wstęp)
Various thoughts on post-colonialism. An introduction to unwritten texts (Foreword)

Summary/Abstract: The author considers why attempts at using the term ‘post-colonialism’ in the Polish literary science have yielded rather barren results. On the one hand, he argues, the fact tends not to be taken into consideration that as the colonial empires were developing (19th century), there was no Polish state existing. A more important reason, however, is an inability to find, in the Polish history or literature, any phenomena analogous to those being the subject of investigation in postcolonial criticism. In Bolecki’s opinion, Polish authors tend to slavishly copy some examples of western colonial works which have been described several times (Shakespeare, Austin, Kipling, Conrad, Coetzee), whilst not being able to identify either Polish events or texts that concern analogous issues. Bolecki’s approach is provocative in that he points out to a few examples from the Polish literature which should be subject to thorough analysis applied in a manner analogous to postcolonial criticism’s topics. Examples may include: the ‘Haitian revolution’ (with Poles fighting on Napoleon’s side); multiculturality phenomena in the history; the output of Mickiewicz ('Konrad Wallenrod'), Sienkiewicz ('the Trilogy'), Gombrowicz (the ‘slave/master’ motif, the issue of a hybridous national identity; the entire Stalinist literature; writings on national minorities; the output of G. Herling-Grudziński ('A Trip to Burma', 'A World Apart'), C. Miłosz ('Captive Mind'), R. Kapuściński, and, in the first place, Józef Mackiewicz, who was analysing the collapse of empires in as early as 1918, proving – well before the famous book by Said ('Orientalism') – that the so-called East is an imaginary figure in the discourse of the West.

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