Biograficzne puzzle. Czytając „Emigracje intymne” Agnieszki Nęckiej

Abstract

The article discusses the role the dissertation entitled "Intimate Emigrations. On the contemporary Polish biographic narrations" by Agnieszka Nęcka plays in the newest literary research on the issue of postmodernism in novel reconstructions of emigrant authors identities. The research proposed by Nęcka is composed by eight critical sketches on the prose of Zygmunt Haupt, Zbigniew Kruszyński, Manuela Gretkowska, Artur Leczycki, and referred to in comparative contexts of the quasi-autobiographic works by Mikołaj Łoziński, Tomasz Piątek, Magdalena Tulli and Michał Witkowski. These are not merely the profiles of the writers whose works still require a more profound reflection, but also the issue presented in the meaningful title – "Intimate Emigrations" – which permits multi-faceted and varied cultural contexts for the interpretation of their writings. From a narrower perspective, Nęcka’s dissertation constitutes a case study of a prose writer, who – in accordance with the rule of self-placement in the work – creates autobiographies based on the redefinition of the traditional patterns applied as a point of reference for the description of various models of “an exile’s” identity. From a wider perspective, the cases offered in the "Intimate Emigrations" illustrate the internal cultural mechanisms of denial and transformation of modernism, as well as indicate the difficulty in rejecting the heritage, which continues to be present in the contemporary works of postmodernist writers.