Poetry of Polycrisis: Ecology, Language, and Global 3300-PEJM(KZ)-OG

The lecture invites participants to explore the relationship between poetry, ecology, and the planetary circulation of matter and capital, as well as the ways in which poetic language can shape our perception of the relations between the human and the more-than-human world, between individual engagements with the environment and global processes of exchange.
Through Polish and international poetry (in translation) from the last few decades, we will investigate various aspects of representing nonhuman living and non-living nature, environmental pollution, biodiversity loss, and the entanglement of these phenomena with the global economic system based on resource extraction.
The course will also reflect on the notion of polycrisis—the entanglement of ecological, social, and economic crises—as well as on alternative economic models (such as degrowth, circular economy, and ecosocial models of justice). Special attention will be given to the relationships between the metabolism of the body, the metabolism of the planet, and the circulation of capital, which in poetry appear not only as images of an unfulfilled apocalypse but also as possible imaginings of another world.
The lecture will further engage with concepts of biosemiotics, understood as the study of biological processes in the context of meaning-making. By analyzing ecological poetry and discussing ways of using language to build planetary and eco-economic awareness, we will seek inspiration and strategies that may contribute to creating a more sustainable and responsible human relationship with the planet.
We will study the works of poets such as Paul Celan, Julia Fiedorczuk, Magdalena Lebda, Anna Adamowicz, Bianka Rolando, Stanisław Kalina
Jaglarz, Forrest Gander, Adam Dickinson, Anja Utler, Esther Kinsky, among others.

Type of course

general courses

Mode

Remote learning

Course coordinators

Monika Kostro
Paweł Piszczatowski

Learning outcomes

– students know the basic phenomena in Polish and international poetry of recent decades related to ecological issues,
– students know the basic terms and concepts in the field of posthumanism and environmental humanities (e.g. natureculture, Anthropocene, Chthulucene, dark ecology, ecology without nature, etc.) and are able to apply them to literary texts,
– students are familiar with key economic concepts related to contemporary debates on the polycrisis and ecological crisis (e.g. degrowth, circular economy, social metabolism) and are able to apply them to poetry in a planetary- environmental perspective,
– students can navigate interdisciplinary contexts and multi- level academic discourses within the scope of the curriculum,
– students understand the relationships between poetic works, scientific discourse, life attitudes, and planetary phenomena in the context of the planetary polycrisis.

Assessment criteria

For the general university subjects offered in the ZIP 2.0 Programme the mandatory method of verifying the assumed learning outcomes is a pre-test and post-test prepared by the lecturer in accordance with the specific nature of the subject, enabling the verification of the increase in knowledge and skills.

Test

Bibliography

– Aloi, Giovanni, Susan McHugh (eds.), Posthumanism in Art and Science. A Reader, New York 2021;
– Bakke, Monika, Bio-transfiguracje. Sztuka i estetyka posthumanizmu, Poznań 2015;
– Bennett, Jane, Vibrant Matter. A Political Ecology of Things, Durham/London 2010;
– Barad, Karen, Posthumanistyczna performatywność: ku zrozumieniu, jak materia zaczyna mieć znaczenie, przeł. Joanna Bednarek, w: Agnieszka Gajewska (red.), Teorie
wywrotowe. Antologia przekładów, Poznań 2012, s. 323–360;
– Braidotti, Rosi, Po człowieku, przeł. Joanna Bednarek, Agnieszka Kowalczyk, Warszawa 2014;
– Domańska, Ewa, Humanistyka ekologiczna, w: „Teksty Drugie” 2013, 1-2, s. 13-32;
– Fiedorczuk, Julia, Gerardo Beltrán, Ekopoetyka. Ekologiczna obrona poezji, Warszawa 2020;
– Fiedorczuk, Julia, Paweł Piszczatowski (ed.), Places that the map can’t contain: Poetics in the Anthropocene, Göttingen 2023;
– Haraway, Donna, Manifest cyborgów, przeł. Sławomir Królak, Ewa Majewska. w: „Przegląd Filozoficzno-Literacki”, 1 (3), 2003, s. 49–87;
– Haraway, Donna, Staying with the Trouble. Making Kin in the Chthulucene, Durham/London 2016;
– Morton, Timothy, Dark Ecology. For a Logic of Future Coexistence, New York 2016.

Additional information

Information on level of this course, year of study and semester when the course unit is delivered, types and amount of class hours - can be found in course structure diagrams of apropriate study programmes. This course is related to the following study programmes:

Additional information (registration calendar, class conductors, localization and schedules of classes), might be available in the USOSweb system:

Description of 3300-PEJM(KZ)-OG in USOSweb