Post-koiné. Studia o nieantropocentrycznych językach (poetyckich)
Post-Koiné. Studies in Non-anthropocentric (Poetic) Languages

Author(s): Anita Jarzyna
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies, Studies of Literature
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego
Keywords: poetic languages;animals in poetry;crimes in literature;extermination in Polish poetry
Summary/Abstract: The monograph proposes an original formula of community and communication transcending that of the human species. The concept presented in the book explores non-symbolic ways of representing animals, forms of weakening human subjectivity as well as the mechanism of producing anthropological difference. In the author’s opinion, a critical reflection on a language that serves to consolidate a community must lead to redefining the attitude of humans towards animals. Anita Jarzyna reveals the emancipatory potential of poems, designs the possibility of experimental reading, showing that male and female poets of the second half of the twentieth and the early twenty-first centuries, by describing interspecific relations, expose forms of oppression and discourses of violence (including anti-Semitic, theological, patriarchal, hunting, butchering, medical, zoological variants). Simultaneously, those same authors present their search for a non anthropocentric language, creating alternative visions of interspecies alliances, affirmative ties, creating polemical, inclusive languages, striving for the equality of attitude towards animals to be manifested in everything they say, not only when they refer to them directly. Finding various approaches to a non anthroponormative perspective in the poems, the author of the book treats poetry as a statement equal with discursive views demanding the abolition of human domination; she also points out that the conceptualizations of literary studies on animals can be derived from the poetic metareflection that is formed in the language used by people and which henceforth is not intended to serve them exclusively.“Anita Jarzyna's publication is by all means necessary; in Poland it is an innovative approach to animal studies and Polish poetry; intellectually courageous and deeply reflective. It can serve as a guide for passionate and ethically indifferent thinking, being a revision of the reading of poems by Polish authors and a proposal of a new perspective for the study of language and texts (not only poetic ones).

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