• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

BORDER CROSSINGS: TRANSGRESSIONS OF NATIONAL AND GENDER IDENTITIES IN TWENTIETH CENTURY POLISH FICTION BY JACK J. HUTCHENS DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Slavic Languages and Literature in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2016 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Associate Professor George Z. Gasyna, Chair Associate Professor David L. Cooper Professor Harriet L. Murav Professor Lilya Kaganovsky ii Abstract The goal of this dissertation is to make a literary intervention with a political message into the cultural life of Poland through the analysis of twentieth century Polish fiction. In the works I analyze transgression of normative identities takes on a quite deliberate, politically charged character. The limit is clear, and entirely unambiguous. The act of crossing that limit is purposeful, the goal being to subvert hegemonic institutions such as, in the works I read, nationalism and heteronormativity. It is my hope that the present work will function as an act of interference within the Polish political reality. My purpose, as idealistic as it may sound, is to make an intervention into both the cultural and political life of Poland. I wish to challenge the sometimes subtle but more often open support for nationalist, anti-gay voices in Poland. Instead of accepting the notion that identity is an always-already bounded, stable structure, closer investigation reveals its actual permeability, and therefore instability. More than the parallel processes of their creation, what links gender and nationality much closer to one another is the nationalist desire for an immutable, uniform standard of identity. Nationalism is necessarily a heteronormative system. It is a regulatory regime with a need to maintain fixed stable borders, which, whether political or sexual, must be guarded against invasions and pollution. The several works of twentieth century Polish fiction I analyze in these pages refute these attempts at regulation, subverting a nationalist mythos of a homogenous, straight Poland. iii Acknowledgements So many people have helped me in writing this work that I hesitate to call it my own. Without their gracious support it would have been nearly impossible to complete. I would like to start by thanking the American Council for Learned Societies (ACLS) for their generous dissertation research fellowship, which I received in 2010, and allowed me to travel to Poland to begin my work. Through it I discovered research I would not have had access to otherwise. It also provided me several months free from teaching, during which time I was able to make a significant start on my writing. I would also like to thank my colleagues in the Center for European Studies at the University of Florida. Through their kindness and comradery, the start of my professional career has been amazing. Thank you as well to my students from my Queer Nations course which I taught for the first time in 2014. Their insightful discussions and comments on the texts we read led to some revisions in two of my chapters that most definitely helped my analyses. I have been fortunate enough to have worked with some of the most supportive professors in academia during my graduate career at the University of Illinois. I would like to thank the following who graciously agreed to act as members of my dissertation committee. Professor Lilya Kaganovsky has provided patient advice as well as repeated explanations of Freud over the years, for which I will always be grateful. Professor Harriet Murav allowed me to enter the Slavic Langauges and Literatures program at Illinois and worked tirelessly to accommodate me in my study of Polish literature. Professor David Cooper has been an unfaltering supporter of mine from the moment I started my doctoral studies, more than once agreeing to teach me through independent studies when his time was already stretched thin. He has proven to be an amazing editor of my work, continuously revealing the weaknesses of my iv less-than-perfect arguments, and praising the strengths in my more successful ones. Finally, I must thank Professor George Gasyna who immediately became my mentor in Polish literature when we met in 2005. Without his guidance, advice, and unwavering support my study of Polish would have ended before it even began. I cannot thank him enough for his tireless efforts on my behalf, his patient reading and re-reading of my work, and his incisive notes that made this project much more successful than it would have been without him. Thank you all so much. None of the following work, nor any of my graduate studies would have been possible without the love and support of my family. I must thank my parents, Jackie and Hal Hutchens for all they have done for me over the years. Despite moments when my path did not seem to be the straightest, they never wavered in their belief in me and my dreams. I would also like to thank my brothers, Hal and John Hutchens for all their love and kindness through the years. I love you all. Finally, I would like to dedicate this work to my amazing wife and best friend, Amanda Klousnitzer-Hutchens. Her love and infinite patience have helped me overcome mulitiple creative roadblocks over the past three years. I cannot imagine that I would be where I am today if not for her. Despite having to be apart for much of the past two years due to my position at the University of Florida, her unending support has made an incredible difference in my life. The beginning of my academic career has been a success thanks largely to her. Kocham you mucho! v TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………………………..…1 CHAPTER ONE: “WHEREFORE NEED YOU BE A POLE?”: SEX, DEATH, AND PANIC IN THE TEACHER AND TRANSATLANTYK…………………………………………………........32 CHAPTER TWO: POLISH, JEWISH, QUEER: HYBRID IDENTITIES IN THE WORK OF JULIAN STRYJKOWSKI…………………………………………………………………….…76 CHAPTER THREE: POLISH, FOREIGN, QUEER: PANKOWSKI’S ANTI-NATIONALIST, ANTI-MARTYROLOGICAL PROJECT IN RUDOLF……………………………………….110 CHAPTER FOUR: SUBVERSIVE LANGUAGES, SUBVERSIVE BODIES: OLGA TOKARCZUK’S PLAY WITH TRANSGRESSIVITY……………………………………….140 CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………………...……….172 APPENDIX: ORIGINAL POLISH OF QUOTED PRIMARY TEXTS…………………...…..177 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………………202 1 Introduction “Quant à l'action qui va commencer, elle se passe en Pologne, c’est-à-dire nulle part.” from Ubu Roi, 1896 When I first began this project my goal, I thought, was simply to add to the body of work on the “construction” of identities, whether gender or national, and how those constructions have been expressed in twentieth century Polish fiction. In the middle of finishing my final chapter, however, I finally realized that what I was investigating was not the constructedness of identity—which is nearly axiomatic in contemporary scholarship—but rather the ways those constructions are transgressed in the various works I analyze. I finally understood, after almost two hundred written pages, that what intrigued me was not the question of whether or not identities are constructed, but what results when their limits are challenged. Although, unfortunately, this realization meant that much of my work would demand a new approach and extensive rewriting, it also offered me a better understanding of my study. My goal had always been to make a literary intervention with a political message into the cultural life of Poland through the analysis of twentieth century Polish fiction. With the transgressive aspects of those pieces of fiction now at the center of my study, I was able to focus better on their political power. After realizing that my true subject was transgression I turned immediately to what seemed to be the most obvious source for theoretical grounding, Michel Foucault’s essay “A Preface to Transgression” (1977). This, however, proved to lead me down a blind alley. In his least confounding moment of the essay, Foucault states the following about transgression: Transgression does not seek to oppose one thing to another, nor does it achieve its 2 purpose through mockery or by upsetting the solidity of foundations; it does not transform the other side of the mirror [. .]. Transgression is neither violence in a divided world (in an ethical world); nor victory over limits (in a dialectical or revolutionary world); and for this reason its role is to measure the excessive distance that it opens at the heart of the limit and to trace the flashing line that causes the limit to arise. Transgression contains nothing negative, but affirms limited being—affirms the limitlessness into which it leaps as it opens this zone to existence for the first time. But correspondingly, this affirmation contains nothing positive: no content can bind it, since by definition, no limit can possibly restrict it. (35-36) Foucault sees the transgressive moment as almost accidental, as something that cannot be recognized until well past the limit looking back. For him transgression is neither productive nor destructive; it is neither affirmation nor negation. This refusal to admit a larger degree of power to the transgressive act makes much of Foucault’s assessment of transgression less useful to my project. In the works I analyze transgression takes on a quite deliberate, politically charged character. The limit is clear, and entirely unambiguous. The act of crossing that limit is purposeful, the goal being to subvert hegemonic institutions such as, in the works I read, nationalism and heteronormativity. As Peter Stallybrass and Allon White note, transgression acts as a “kind of reverse or counter-sublimation, undoing the discursive hierarchies and stratifications of bodies and cultures which bourgeois society has produced as the mechanism of its symbolic dominance” (201). Two examples of transgression being deployed as a consciously political tool are the Queer Nation movement, specifically their activities in the mid-1990s, and gay pride parades, 3 particularly those that have taken place in Poland.

Load more

  215

Copy Link