Bartosz Stopel

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor (Associate) at University of Silesia in Katowice

The aim of this essay is to attempt to engage in polemics with the theory of hate speech endorsed by Judith Butler in her book Excitable Speech. The text will try to show that the Butlerian strategy of textualization of hate speech. If it is understood as a main tool of fighting with injurious speech, fails and, in fact, hinders this fight. The arg...

The article investigates the structure of romance and grief narrative included in Bobbie Ann Mason’s “Shiloh,” on the basis of Patrick C. Hogan’s th eory of literary universals and his work on aff ective narratology. Following Hogan, I argue that emotions are deeply embedded in stories and that stories are typically designed so as to manipulate the...

It has been twenty years since Lev Manovich described the growing prominence of the cinematic in digital environments, claiming that cinema has managed to pour into computers and overtake the old printed word in the role of the dominant cultural interface shaping the design of operating systems, websites, apps, video games and other artifacts of di...

The article aims to determine the relation between literary theory and the analytic philosophy of literature. The former is understood mostly as a body of ideologically and culturally focused normative reading strategies, and the latter as an inquiry into the foundations, assumptions and aims of reading and appreciating works of literature. Althoug...

The article traces the relationship between what is called surface, aesthetic interpretation and deep, semantic, theory-driven interpretation of literature. The former is identified with how interpretation is typically understood in analytic philosophy of art, whereas the latter as belonging to continental literary theory, thus framing the discussi...

This chapter discusses the emotional structure of What Remains of Edith Finch, an acclaimed exploration video game. I argue that the game offers a working through of negative emotions associated with death, decay, dark family history and personal tragedies and attempts to convert them into a more appreciative outlook on everyday existence by way of...

The article sets out to discuss disruptions of the embodied flow of movie perception triggered by foregrounded categorical-thematic patterns. First, categorical-thematic patterns are framed in a cognitive perspective and tied to categorical (or parallel) information processing as opposed schematic (sequential). I argue that the former are not proto...

The article sets out to explore what role Burroughs’ critique of language, his famous “word virus” theory plays in his overall social commentary present in his Nova Trilogy. It argues that even though Burroughs can be called a fresh social critic of his times, anticipating and being in dialogue with a number of influential cultural theories, what m...

The papers in this volume concern events and narratives from a variety of theoretical and practical perspectives. The first and second papers by Janusz Badio deal with fictional dialogue and the use of stereotypical gender roles in the construal of a story. The chapter by Tomasz Dobrogoszcz analyses the story by A.S. Byatt’s “The Djinn in the Night...

From Mind to Text: Continuities and Breaks Between Cognitive, Aesthetic and Textualist Approaches to Literature explores the historical context of theory formation and of its contemporary status, including an overview of debates about theory’s role in literary studies provided both by representatives of theory itself, as well as by those who distan...

The general aim of this chapter is to analyze the actions, products, and consumer behavior related to the social groups often referred to as ‘bohemian bourgeoisie’ or ‘creative class’ in the context of research on material culture. Thus particular attention will be paid to specific products and items associated with the lifestyle of the creative cl...

The paper investigates the extent to which Stanley Fish's constructivism and E.D. Hirsch's hermeneutics are similar in their assumptions and program. Although it is commonly accepted that they constitute polar opposites of literary theory, Fish and Hirsch are embedded in the theoretical discourse of New Criticism's approach to literary studies and...

Umberto Eco's career as a literary theorist and a scholar might be divided into two stages. The first, early stage would be marked with an attempt at devising a semiotic theory of literary interpretation, as it was attempted in works such as The Open Work, A Theory of Semiot-ics, or The Role of the Reader, whereas the second stage would encompass t...