Elżbieta Binczycka-Gacek

This article examines the myth of the white man, drawing on the theoretical frameworks of Ernst Cassirer and Hans Blumenberg. The myth of the white man is primarily rooted in the belief in the distinctive "civilizing mission" attributed to white Europeans, which is further reinforced by racist narratives, often intertwined with theological underpinnings. The focus of this analysis is to explore the origins and dissemination of this narrative, which emerged concurrently with the colonial expansion of European empires beyond their continental borders. Furthermore, the article aims to highlight the association between the myth of white hegemony and Christian religions, acknowledging that the narrative took shape differently within Catholic and Protestant contexts.

ubject to analysis in this article will be two related texts: the novel Song of Solo-mon by Toni Morrison, published in 1977, and Ewa Łuczak's article devoted the­reto, entitled Homecoming in "Song of Solomon": Nostalgia and the Construction of Identity. I would like to partially focus on examining Łuczak's text, for whom po­litical and social contexts depicted in the novel are the point of departure. Łuczak analyses the Song of Solomon in view of the 'discourse of home' present in Morri­son's work, and through the category of nostalgia. In my article, I would like to draw attention to other possible interpretations of the Nobel Prize winner's text, thus complementing the interpretation offered by Ewa Łuczak by introducing new contexts. I propose to replace the category of nostalgia by interpreting the Song of Solomon in the light of one of the most important myths of the African diaspora, around which the entire novel is structured - the myth of the Flying Africans. Łuczak notes this myth in just one sentence. Although this article contains some grounds for a polemic, I would like it to be, above all, an interesting starting point for a broader discussion of the cultural hegemony of Western readings of postcolonial literary texts.

The article explores the issue of heritage tourism in Africatown, Alabama, where the wreck of the last slave ship, the Clotilda, was discovered in 2019 and where the descendants of the enslaved people brought on the ship still live. This is a case in statu nascendi - the wreck was discovered relatively recently, and the site has not yet become a mass tourism destination. Interest in Clotilda has grown thanks to publications and documentaries, which largely shape the narrative of its heritage today. The main problem the Africatown community will be facing in the coming years is the risk of appropriation and for-profit tourism and overcoming the ongoing struggle with the adverse effects of heavy industry expansion and poverty. The article aims to provide a preliminary mapping of how the descendants of Clotilda Africans are attempting to protect their heritage, aiming towards sustainable tourism in the area.

Artykuł dotyczy problematyki turystyki trudnego dziedzictwa w Africatown, Alabamie, gdzie w 2019 roku odkryto wrak ostatniego statku niewolniczego, Clotilda, w którym żyją potomkowie osób przywiezionych w 1860 roku na tym statku. Jest to przypadek in statu nascendi-wrak odkryty został stosunkowo niedawno, miejsce to nie stało się jeszcze celem masowej turystyki. Zainteresowanie Clotildą wzrosło dzięki publikacjom i filmom dokumentalnym, które w dużej mierze kształtują dziś narrację o jej dziedzictwie. Problemem, z którym w najbliższych latach zmierzy się społeczność Africatown jest ryzyko zawłaszczenia go przez osoby niebędące jego spadkobiercami oraz turystyka for-profit, w wyniku której lokalna społeczność borykająca się obecnie z negatywnymi skutkami ekspansji ciężkiego przemysłu na obrzeżach miasta i biedą może zostać wykluczona z narracji dotyczącej ich przodków. Celem artykułu jest także wstępne zmapowanie sposobów, w jakie potomkowie Afrykanów z Clotildy usiłują chronić swoje dziedzictwo oraz uporządkowanie dyskusji toczącej się od wielu lat wokół inicjatyw sprzyjających zrównoważonej turystyce w tym rejonie.

The main objective of this paper is to analyze the 2013 documentary The Art of Disappearing, directed by Bartek Konopka and Piotr Rosołowski, using the category of spirituality. Although the film attempts to show everyday life in the Polish People's Republic from the perspective of a stranger, a Haitian voodoo practitioner, looking closer at the type of spirituality presented in the movie, makes the article's author lean towards an opposite idea: The Art of Disappearing permeated by the romantic spirituality makes its protagonist, Amon Frémon a convenient vessel for the worldview and ideas shaped by polish Romanticism.

The article provides a detailed analysis of the use of the myth of the Flying Africans in contemporary Caribbean literature, focusing on the Guadeloupean novel "Ti Jean L’horizon" by Simone Schwarz-Bart. The myth, central to the African diaspora's imagination in the Americas, tells of African slaves who transformed into birds to return home. The novel, translated into English as "Between Two Worlds," is unique for its portrayal of the protagonist Ti Jean, who transforms into a bird not to return to Africa but from Africa to the Caribbean.
Schwarz-Bart's narrative style is noted for its intertextual references and allusions to various literary and oral texts, with a particular emphasis on the Flying Africans myth. The novel is described as a blend of poetic prose, fairytale narration, and traditional realism, possibly qualifying as magical realism. It reflects the complexities of Caribbean identity, culture, and language, and questions the validity of returning to Africa while emphasizing rediscovering neglected Caribbean history.

The central theme of the novel is the "return home," which, in Ti Jean's case, is metaphorically and literally a return to the Caribbean rather than Africa. The novel delves into the African pre-colonial past, exploring themes of identity, culture, and the Middle Passage experience. Ti Jean, through his heroic deeds and survival skills, symbolizes resistance and hope, fueling the diasporic imagination.
The article also discusses the broader context of Caribbean literature, the role of myth in constructing cultural identity, and the postcolonial themes in Schwarz-Bart's work. It highlights how the novel subverts the traditional myth, offering a new perspective on Caribbean identity and history.

This article's objective is to compare different afrofuturistic texts containing references to the Flying Africans myth. I am going to analyse Anthony Joseph's text The African Origins of UFOs and Nalo Hopkinson's novel The Salt Roads in the musical funk and ambient context. My main focus is the song Star Child from album The Mothership Connection by the American band Parliament-Funkadelic and an electro-ambient album by the American group Drexciya, entitled The Quest, built around a story about an underwater human race living in the bottom of the Atlantic, born of pregnant women thrown overboard by slave ships.

Animist realism, introduced by Harry Garuba in his article "Ben Okri: Animist Realism and the Famished Genre" is a relatively new term. Garuba links it to African literature, while others (Ato Quayson, Graham Harvey) use it in association with a broader spectrum of fiction. The main objective of this article is to redefine the category of animist realism as a sub-genre of magical realism with its own connecting characteristics and its formal difference. Author of the article argues that animist realism is applicable
especially to postcolonial and indigenous literature permeated with myths and other elements derived from traditional belief systems.

The article attempts to examine the roots of the myth of Flying Americans and the way it is connected with the shaping of cultural identity of African Americans within the formation of new religious movements in America. The significance of this narrative cannot be separated from the traumatic situation which generated it, hence the importance of its roots. The reference to the ethnohistorical reality and the general outline of the slaves’ beliefs throughout the time, allows one to trace back the original area of its occurrence.

The author became interested in the body of the texts analyzed in this article during her research on variants and versions of the Flying Africans myth in 20th century culture and literature. In the US the main folkloric source of this narrative is an account of oral folklore collected in Georgia from African-Americans, published in 1940 as a part of Federal's Writer's Project. The book, entitled Drums and Shadows. Survival Studies Among the Georgia Coastal Negroes directed by Mary Granger, contains interviews with people many of whom had been born in slavery. African Americans interviewed in the project speak widely about talismans, spirits, lucky and unlucky omens and actions, as well as other aspects of their culture and folklore, including a significant amount of flight-related narratives. The dialect in the interviews is transcribed phonetically and difficult for a non-English native speaker, nevertheless the concept of 'conjuring' grabs the attention of the reader. This short study is an introduction to a broader analysis of the conceptual domain of 'conjuring' in the GWP interviews. The author uses the conceptual metaphor theory in order to establish how magic and witchcraft are conceptualized by the Georgia Writer's Project speakers.

The article is a study on the figure of Lazarus of Bethany in the poetic cycle "The Jesus Papers" written by American poet Anne Sexton, known in Poland mainly due to the selection of love poems titled "Kochając zabójcę".
Honored in 1967 with the Pulitzer Prize Sexton is primarily regarded as a representative of American confession poetry, but the poetic series The Jesus Papers and her following book "Transformations" proves that Sexton’s creativity goes far beyond this distinction towards a critical reflection on narratives and figures which continue to organize the contemporary imagination. In "Jesus summons forth", a poem from "The Jesus Papers" these figures are Christ and Lazarus and this article is focused on how they function and how are they related in this poetry.

Artykuł jest próbą zwrócenia uwagi na kwestię kiczowości w wydanej w 1984 roku w tzw. drugim obiegu powieści Tadeusza Konwickiego "Rzeka podziemna, podziemne ptaki." Podejmowane już wcześniej przez autora Małej Apokalipsy zagadnienie „gry z kiczem” dotyczy tu problemu kiczu patriotycznego czy też narodowego i stanowi jeden z głównych tematów tego stosunkowo rzadko analizowanego przez krytykę tekstu. Autorka wykazuje, iż "Rzeka podziemna…" stanowi nie tylko krytyczne spojrzenie
autora "Bohini" na współczesną mu literaturę, ale także na sam czas schyłku PRL z jego „potencjałem kiczowości” oraz kontynuuje refleksję Konwickiego dotyczącą problemu polskości i polskiej spuścizny narodowej, której początki widać już we wcześniejszej powieści tego autora zatytułowanej "Kompleks polski."