Potencjały bezładu i cierpienia w biografiach młodych kobiet wchodzących w świat sztuki i medycyny
Potentials of Disorder and Suffering in the Biographies of Two Young Women Entering the World of Medicine and Art

Summary/Abstract: This paper, based on the analysis of autobiographical renderings of two women (a medicine doctor and an artist) being in their thirties, aims at outlining certain analytical dimensions connected with the narrators’ need to meet both expectations of their parents and significantly different requirements of a free-market economy in Poland. It is important to note that the informants belong to the generation that entered their adolescence and early adulthood period (and at the same time—labor market) in a very specific socio-cultural context, framed by the dynamics of interrelated processes of political transformation, joining the European Union, vibrant modernization, globalization, and, last but not least, development of neoliberal ideology. Consequently, special attention is paid to the potentials of disorder and chaos embedded, on the one hand, in the traditional family and, on the other hand, in the world of work governed by the capitalist rules of the game. Moreover, it will be discussed here how neoliberal mechanisms promoting such attributes as creativity, rationality, agency, responsibility, etc. are in fact a biographical trap that may initiate the processes of the trajectory of suffering. This is characterized by the neoliberal anti-values: powerlessness, irrationality, helplessness, and self-alienation.

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