Description

• Title:
  Post-Pandemic Nature, Crisis, Catastrophes and Their Metaphorical Discourses. Editorial Introduction
• Creator:
  Płuciennik, Jarosław;
  Barcz, Anna
• Contributor:
  Barcz, Anna;
  Płuciennik, Jarosław;
  Uniwersytet Łódzki, Wydział Filologiczny, Instytut Kultury Współczesnej, Katedra Teorii Literatury;
  Polska Akademia Nauk, Instytut Badań Literackich;
  Jaroslaw Pluciennik (born 1966) He is a full professor of the humanities, a student of cognitive analysis, doctor of cultural studies, literary criticism and theory, the editor-in-chief of an academic journal. He used to be a Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Pol. prorektor) in charge of curricula and quality assurance and enhancement at one of the largest universities in Poland, University of Łódź (2012-2016). Then, he functioned as Rectors' Proxy for Open Educational Resources (2016-August 2020). He has graduated from the University of Lodz. He has also studied at the University of Lund, Sweden. He researched at the University of Cambridge, UK and in many higher education institutions in Europe. He was the local coordinator of an Erasmus Multilateral Project called The iProfessional (iPro), and an Erasmus+ Project entitled Boys Reading, and an Erasmus+ Project Digi.com/youth, as well as Language Learning on Mobile Devices (LLOM).;
  anna.barcz@gmail.com;
  jaroslaw.pluciennik@uni.lodz.pl
• Description:
  This article provides an extensive theoretical introduction to the main topic of the special issue of the journal. The authors aim at updating the metaphoric discourse on the environmen-tal crisis and climate change in the time recently challenged by the global COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, concerning the central theme of the journal’s issue, the authors review the “catastrophic criticism” developed in environmental humanities and ask how the perspective of depicting elemental nature has changed since modernity and its technological approach to the living world. Another question is what kind of metaphors are needed to reflect on the catastrophes and crises we face; and how the very concepts of crisis and catastrophe function as metaphors in the theories developed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. By reopening the question of agential nature distorted by crisis and catastrophe in a post-pandemic world, this article analyses the discursive and generic reappropriations of environmental risks, including the regional cultural background (e.g. the Chernobyl figure for CEE countries). An example which illustrates the irrelevance of nature theorized as a re-source in modernity is taken from the canonical Question Concerning Technolog y by Martin Heidegger. It is followed up by critical Frankfurt School philosophers’ perspectives and is de-tectable in such environmentally loaded literature of Olga Tokarczuk’s. The authors’ findings show in this article how the pandemic realm has immensely repositioned how we read the leading theoreticians of catastrophic discourse. The examples are, e.g. Albert Camus or Oswald Spengler, and what texts we find relevant in the political, economic and social contexts of the debate on the contemporaneity of crisis and catastrophe, e.g. Niall Ferguson, Slavoj Žižek, Steven Pinker. In conclusion, this article draws on reopening the question on the role and authority of science in mitigating the climate and ecological crisis since the recent pandemic is an integral part of it.
• Object availability:
  free access
• Rights: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 ;
  Anna Barcz i Jarosław Płuciennik;
  Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Międzynarodowe
• Date:
  2021.09.23;
  2021
• Type:
  Article
• Language:
  English
• Format:
  application/pdf
• Publisher:
  Łódzkie Towarzystwo Naukowe; Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego
• Relation:
  Zagadnienia Rodzajów Literackich;1;
  64
• Subject:
  metaphor;
  pandemic;
  crisis;
  catastrophe;
  climate change;
  discourse;
  genre;
  ecocriticism
• Identifier:
  Barcz A., Płuciennik J., Post-Pandemic Nature, Crisis, Catastrophes and Their Metaphorical Discourses. Editorial Introduction, "Zagadnienia Rodzajów Literackich" 64, nr 1, 7–18, DOI: 10.26485/ZRL/2021/64.1/1;
  0084-4446;
  http://hdl.handle.net/11089/39176 ;
  10.26485/ZRL/2021/64.1/1
• Data provider:
  Repozytorium Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego
• Can I use it?:
  seek permission
• Type:
  image