Article / interview
From Maladic Narratives to Community. A Meeting with Dr. Iwona Boruszkowska and Maria Świątkowska, MA.
What attitudes do contemporary literary studies take toward maladic narratives? What is the communal and emancipatory aspect of these narratives? How can we view the theory of the "wounded narrator" from today's perspective, 30 years after the publication of Arthur Frank's The Wounded Storyteller (1995)? These and other important questions are answered by the editors of an issue of "Ruch Literacki," titled "Maladic Discourse – Illness as Narrative: Theories and Interpretations" (No. 4/2023). The issue of "Ruch Literacki," which prompted this conversation, is available on the journal's website at: https://journals.pan.pl/rl/150189#tabs.
Iwona Boruszkowska – PhD in Humanities; researcher of cultural representations of illness; literary and cultural studies scholar; academic lecturer and assistant professor in the Department of Literary Theory, Faculty of Polish Studies, Jagiellonian University. Translator and researcher of Ukrainian literature. Author of the book Defects. Literary Auto/Pato/Graphies – Sketches (WUJ, Cracow 2016) and the monograph Signatures of Illness. Defect Literature in Ukrainian Modernism (IBL, Warsaw 2018). Since 2023, she has been the head of the academic Center for Research on Cultural Discourses of Illness at the Jagiellonian University.
Maria Świątkowska – doctoral candidate at the Doctoral School of Humanities at the Jagiellonian University (doctoral program: literary studies). She is preparing a dissertation on autopathographies in recent Polish literature. Member of the Center for Research on Cultural Discourses of Illness at the Jagiellonian University.
The interview was led by Klaudia Muca-Małek, a participant in the "Engaged Polish Studies" project.
Cultural texts and scholarly publications mentioned in the interview (in alphabetical order):
• Małgorzata Baranowska, To jest wasze życie. Być sobą w chorobie przewlekłej, Wołowiec 2011.
• Stella Bolaki, Illness as Many Narratives, Edinburgh 2016.
• Iwona Boruszkowska, Sygnatury choroby. Literatura defektu w ukraińskim modernizmie, Warszawa 2018.
• Arthur Frank, The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics, Chicago 1995.
• Havi Carel, Illness: The Cry of the Flesh, London, New York 2019.
• Audre Lorde, Dzienniki raka, przeł. A. Dzierzgowska, Lublin 2022.
• Monika Ładoń, Wyczerpanie. O kondycji bohaterek narracji maladycznych, „Ruch Literacki” 2023, nr 4, s. 463-480.
• Mateusz Pakuła, Jak nie zabiłem swojego ojca i jak bardzo tego żałuję, Warszawa 2021.
• Aleksandra Zbroja, Mireczek. Patoopowieść o moim ojcu, Warszawa 2021.
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Information
Jest m.in. współredaktorką monografii Współczesne życie literackie (2018; z J. Osińskim), współredaktorką monograficznego numeru „Tekstów Drugich” o studiach o niepełnosprawności oraz autorką książki Poiesis doświadczenia, poiesis tożsamości. Narracje o afazji (2019).
Jej najnowsza książka ukaże się jesienią 2024 r. i będzie dotyczyła narracji niefikcjonalnych o niepełnosprawności, czytanych m.in. jako narzędzie wytwarzania nowej wiedzy o niepełnosprawności.
Dziedziny: humanistyka zaangażowana, studia o niepełnosprawności, literatura współczesna, dyplomacja naukowa
Wykaz publikacji: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=BKprct4AAAAJ&hl=pl
Tłumaczka i badaczka literatury ukraińskiej. Autorka książki Defekty. Literackie auto/pato/grafie – szkice (WUJ, Kraków 2016), monografii Sygnatury choroby. Literatura defektu w ukraińskim modernizmie (IBL, Warszawa 2018).
Od 2023 roku kierowniczka akademickiego Ośrodka Badań nad Kulturowymi Dyskursami Choroby UJ.
See also
Studying Maladic Narratives: A Meeting with Dr. Joanna Szewczyk and Wiktoria Kulak (MA)
Why is the story so necessary (within) illness? What does the statement that illnesses are political mean? What is maladic discourse and what are its characteristics? And why did Susan Sontag change her stance towards metaphors of illness?
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