Poisoned Cornucopia - Conference Website

POISONED CORNUCOPIA:
EXCESS, INTEMPERANCE AND OVERABUNDANCE ACROSS
LITERATURES AND CULTURES
University of Opole, 12-14 September 2012
BOOK OF ABSTRACTS
Edited by Stankomir Nicieja and Katarzyna Molek-Kozakowska

Call for Papers
Arguably, most of the problems plaguing our societies today: pollution, substance abuse, obesity or
even the Global Financial Crisis, can be directly traced to the various destructive habits of excess and
intemperance. In this context, the question of how to deal with the excesses of modern life becomes one
of the most relevant intellectual challenges today. The other dimension of the problem is the price
developed societies have to pay for life in prosperity and comfort. Is material wellbeing inadvertently
linked to decadence and ultimately self-­‐annihilation? Is the consumption from the cornucopia of
modern civilizational achievements ultimately detrimental or even self-­‐annihilating? The questions
concerning excess are still far from being settled. On the one hand, we have a well-­‐established discourse
of moderation that deems all forms of intense consumption objectionable and destructive. Figures as
diverse as Zygmunt Bauman and Benedict XVI go out of their ways to castigate the pernicious
intemperance of modern society, as do intellectuals from Jürgen Habermas to Slavoj Žižek. On the
other hand, however, modern capitalism depends critically on consumption that is both constant and
instant, on the endlessly escalating flow of supply and demand. After all, explosive consumerism
brought the Industrial Revolution to a new level and helped to pay for our much-­‐cherished modern
luxuries. They include not only strictly material benefits, but also less tangible but more significant
achievements such as liberal democracy, longer lifespans, universal education, and emancipation of
women and sexual minorities. Famously, in the days immediately following the 9/11 attack on America,
President George W. Bush appealed to Americans not to curtail their consumer appetites and go
shopping. Hence, self-­‐limitation appeared far more dangerous to American prosperity than terrorism.
The dilemmas of excess versus moderation are also highly relevant to the advanced Asian cultures of
China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan. One cannot fail to notice the brewing contradiction between the
native Asian traditions that put strong emphasis on moderation and disavowal of material aspirations
such as Confucianism, Buddhism or Daoism, with the immoderation brought forth by the forces of
global capitalism and consumer society. Southeast Asia, the cradle of various doctrines of self-­‐control,
has already become the world’s biggest market for luxury products and the seat of the most spectacular
expressions of capitalist self-­‐indulgence. Consumerist excess empowers Asian societies, but
simultaneously weakens the ancient institutions that underpinned them.
Bearing all this in mind, we would like to investigate various cultural dimensions of excess,
intemperance and overabundance, and examine how the discourses of excess have been articulated,
how they have interacted and clashed. We would like to investigate their cultural manifestations in
literature, film and art as well as philosophy and cultural criticism. We are interested in how the
approaches to excess and overabundance have developed at different ends of Eurasia. We are also
looking for overlaps and fields of conflict. We would like to investigate how the philosophies of excess
have been expressed and counterbalanced, and how the era of colonial excess (and hence oppression,
dominance, humiliation) has affected contemporary post-­‐colonial cultures.
We hope that the conference will provide a forum for interdisciplinary dialogue on the various cultural
as well as literary dimensions of excess, intemperance and overabundance. We are interested in how the
notion of excess is framed differently in various national and cultural traditions, how the ideas of excess
evolved historically, and the determining forces behind those changes. The conference debates will
revolve around, but not be limited to, the following problems: excess of food, alcohol and drugs;
excessive consumption of commodities; excess and proliferation of ideas, concepts and theories; excess
of life in the ontological, the biopolitical, and the posthuman; excess of information and images; excess
of environmental pollution; sexual intemperance; excess of tolerance (of youth, multiculturalism,
fundamentalism etc.). We invite a wide range of voices – historical, critical and theoretical – that will
address the above-­‐mentioned aspects of excess.
1

Organizers
Department of Anglophone Cultures
Institute of English and American Studies
University of Opole, Poland
Academic Committee
http://excess.uni.opole.pl
Prof. Andrzej Ciuk aciuk@uni.opole.pl
Prof. Ryszard Wolny rwolny@uni.opole.pl
Conference Secretary
Stankomir Nicieja stann@uni.opole.pl
Conference Team
Tomasz Gornat gornatt@uni.opole.pl
Tadeusz Lewandowski tadzlewandowski@yahoo.com
Katarzyna Molek-­‐Kozakowska molekk@uni.opole.pl
Zbigniew Pyż zpyz@sowa.com.pl
In association with
Taiwan Humanities Society / 台灣人文學社
Under the auspices of
• Rector of the University of Opole
• Marshall of the Opolskie Voivodeship

LIST OF PARTICIPANTS
Name Affiliation Contact
1. Marek Błaszak University of Opole marbla@uni.opole.pl
2. Mateusz Bogdanowicz University of Warmia and Mazury in
Olsztyn
britannica@wp.pl
3. Barbara Braid University of Szczencin barbara.braid@gmail.com
4. Anna Branach-­‐Kallas Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń annabranachkallas@yahoo.com
5. Daniel S. Broudy Okinawa Christian University, Japan dbroudy@ocjc.ac.jp
6. Barbara Chyla University of Opole basiachyla@interia.pl
7. Stephen Dewsbury University of Opole sdewsbury@gmail.com
8. Ilona Dobosiewicz University of Opole Dobosiewicz@interia.pl
9. Tomasz Gadzina University of Opole tomgadzina@o2.pl
10. Zbigniew Głowala Maria Curie-­‐Skłodowska University, Lublin zglowala@tlen.pl
11. Jacek Grochowski State Higher Vocational School, Racibórz jacek.grochowski@gmail.com
12. Olga Grądziel University of Warsaw olga.gradziel@gmail.com
13. Masaya Hiyazaki Meiji University, Japan masayan2010@gmail.com
14. Lucifer Hung National Chung Hsing University, Taiwan lucifer.hung@gmail.com
15. Ewa Kębłowska-­‐Ławniczak University of Wrocław freeway.bohemia@gmail.com
16. Wojciech Klepuszewski Koszalin University of Technology wojciech.klepuszewski@tu.koszalin.pl
17. Krzysztof Kosecki University of Łódź kosecki@uni.lodz.pl
18. Sławomir Kuźnicki University of Opole slavekkk@wp.pl
19. Yu-­‐lin Lee National Chung Hsing University, Taiwan taiwanlit@gmail.com
20. Tadeusz Lewandowski University of Opole tadzlewandowski@yahoo.com
21. Hung-­‐chiung Li National Taiwan University, Taiwan hchlitw@gmail.com
22. Jasmine Wan-­‐shuan Lin Yuanpei University of Science and
Technology, Taiwan
jasmine-­‐lin@yahoo.com.tw
23. Jiann-­‐guang Lin National Chung Hsing University, Taiwan haydnlin@yahoo.com
24. Min-­‐tser Lin National Cheng-­‐Kung University at Tainan, linmt@mail.ncku.edu.tw
Taiwan
mintserlin@gmail.com
25. Aleksandra Lubczyńska University of Opole aleksandra.lubczynska@gmail.com
26. Paweł Marcinkiewicz University of Opole pmarcinkiewicz@poczta.onet.pl
27. Magdalena Mączyńska University of Opole magdzianka@wp.pl
28. Christopher Melley University of Maryland University College,
USA
melley@informatik.fh-­‐kl.de
29. Katarzyna Molek-­‐Kozakowska University of Opole molekk@uni.opole.pl
30. Stankomir Nicieja University of Opole stann@uni.opole.pl
31. Tomasz Pilch Foreign Language Teacher Training
College, Opole
pilch.tomasz@wp.pl>
32. Zbigniew Pyż University of Opole zpyz@sowa.com.pl
33. Tadeusz Rachwał Warsaw School of Social Sciences and
Humanities
trachwal@swps.edu.pl
34. Kamil Rusiłowicz John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin krusilowicz@gmail.com
35. Katarzyna Rybińska University of Wrocław ksjusza@op.pl
36. Eric Starnes State Higher Vocational School, Racibórz jestarnes66@gmail.com
37. Nelly Strehlau Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń nellystrehlau@gmail.com
38. Rachael Sumner State Higher Vocational School, Racibórz sumner_rachael@wp.pl
39. Andrew Taylor Edith Cowan University, Australia a.taylor@ecu.edu.au
40. Mark Wegierski, Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences in
Canada
mwegierski@sympatico.ca
41. Wrginia Witkowska University of Opole wirginia.witkowska@gmail.com
42. Ryszard Wolny University of Opole rwolny@uni.opole.pl
43. Pei-­‐Ju Wu National Chung Hsing University, Taiwan peijumonawu@googlemail.com
44. Nainu Yang National Kaohsiung Normal University, t3355@nknucc.nknu.edu.tw;
Taiwan
d90122001@ntu.edu.tw
45. Marzena Zielonka University of Opole marzenazielonka@wp.pl

ABSTRACTS
Keynote Speakers
Yu-­‐lin Lee
National Chung Hsing University, Taiwan
Modulating the Excess of Affect: Technologies of History in Contemporary Taiwanese Cinema
The affective turn in critical theories, as marked by Patricia T. Clough, provides a new perspective on
viewing contemporary cultural production. Many of critics and theorist who turned to affect often refer
to Gilles Delueze and Félix Guattari, Baruch Spinoza, and Henri Bergson, and conceptualize affect as
“pre-­‐individual bodily forces” capable of affecting and being affected by other bodies. Affect is thus
defined by an “excess of conscious states of perception,” and central to this affective turn is to open the
body to its “indeterminacy,” “automatic responses,” and more importantly, to link it to its potentiality.
Therefore, the “excess of affect” points to not only these “inassimilable” forces of life, but also their
movements, distributions, and resonances in the passages in-­‐between bodies. As a result, this turn
draws attention to the bodily aspect of subjectivity and involves a body politics that concerns territory.
The essay addresses these issues through a new released Taiwanese film, Seediq Bale (2011), a s a case
study of how the cinematic space can provide a technical frame that exposes the modulation of bodily
matters and also the distributions of power and affect. In this regard, viewing cinema is not merely a
visual, spectacle experience, but it constitutes an event that embraces the flux of corporeal sensation
and sensory perception of the embodied spectator in an encounter with the body of the text. I focus
particularly on the cinematic technologies to reconstruct an ignored history and a “missing” people,
which play a vital part in many recent Taiwanese “postcolonial” films, because they offer a case study of
an excessive apparatus that functioned by synchronizing the excess of affect. I argue that an open-­‐
endedly sociality emerges in the assemblage of corporeal sensation and cinematic matters; in addition,
this films presents particular temporality of the past that allows the spectator to think affect in terms of
the virtual as the realm of the potential.
Ewa Kębłowska-­‐Ławniczak
University of Wrocław
In Search of Eroticism in Urban Drama
The present discussion of eroticism commences traditionally with references to Georges Bataille and his
L’Erotisme to draw, later, on Zygmunt Bauman’s more recent essay, “On Postmodern Uses of Sex” (1998)
which aptly reflects on the instability of the concept. Further significant inspiration comes from Roland
Barthes and his “Semiology of the Urban” as well as from his classic, The Pleasure of the Text, and from
numerous specific studies concerning urbanity (Elizabeth Wilson, Marlin Coverley, etc).
The interest of the presentation in eroticism is narrowed and converges on the relevance of the
term eroticism in studies of cityness and urban drama in particular. In the course of the analysis I seek
to explore the concept trying to suggest a spectrum of entries and specific key-­‐concepts that would
allow for a differentiation between what seems to emerge as two major lines of argument. The first
focuses on the commonly observable erotic material found on display within the premises of the city
and is therefore often related to the image of urban milieu, traditionally believed to have facilitated
sexual adventure. An enquiry following this, more obvious, interest will be concerned with the way pure
sexuality, or eroticism, acts itself out in urban space. The second line of argument seeks to explore the
eroticism of the city itself, i.e. the “geography” or “architecture” of eroticism in the contemporary city.
1

In the latter case, relatively unexplored, erotic relationship involves the materiality of the urban context
and its user. The present discussion, focusing primarily on contemporary drama and assumes that plays
are written for the/a/some stage (their proper mode of existence). They not only represent but also
contribute to the materiality of the city they render/respond to. Consequently, plays functioning as site-­‐
specific or simply theatre projects, participate in creating the cityness they stage and, as a result, may
either enhance or reduce the erotic quality of urban milieu. This city/theatre or city/drama reciprocity
remains present, explicitly or implicitly, in the background of the discussion. Significant, in literary
terms, is also the very concept of urban drama and its genre affiliations.
Tadeusz Rachwał
Warsaw School of Social Sciences and Humanities
The End(s) of Excess
Having written an obituary for excess (“Excess: An Obituary”) Zygmunt Bauman does not seem to be
mourning after its death, mainly because this death is in a way unthinkable. Excess seems to be in a way
immortal. It is in obvious ways a notion which is relevant in thinking about the social construction of
various kinds of regulatory processes, but what might take place along with its elimination would be a
paradoxical tolerance in which the norm itself would become intolerable and tabooed. In my paper I
would like to concentrate on the ways in which the idea of excess functions as a normative power of
discourse, though one which makes itself dependable on what the excessive which it desires to
eliminate, and which it in fact institionalizes as its constitutive outside. Drawing from Mikhail Bakhtin’s
ideas and writings on the carnivalesque as well as from Georges Bataille’s writings on excess, I will try to
show how the “too much” of the excessive is controlled and domesticated by the categorical “enough!”
of the political and social, but also of aesthetic, acceptability.
Andrew Taylor
Edith Cowan University, Australia
‘If Music Be the Food of Love, Play On’: The Ambivalences and Necessity of Excess
Duke Orsino’s opening words in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night serve as a prelude to this brief
examination of Excess. As one expects of any Shakespearian text, this speech is laden with ambiguity
and provocative of multiple interpretations. As such, it is a fitting approach to a phenomenon that is
itself deeply ambivalent. While Excess is often considered as something negative, and the adjective
Excessive has inescapably pejorative connotations, it will be argued that Excess in its most radical
manifestations is what distinguishes Homo Sapiens (and possibly Neanderthal Man) from our hominid
ancestors and all other animals. Excess is not so much a Poisoned Cornucopia, as the conference notice
indicates, as what happens when abundance becomes harmful. None the less, there is one instance of
Excess which has been wholly beneficial, and the paper looks at the consequences of this for us today.
While ranging over various fields, this paper will draw also on works of literature in an attempt to
explain how we are able to empathise with, and even applaud, grotesquely excessive figures in it. Texts
to be referred to include Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great, Shakespeare’s two Henry IV
plays, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, and two Australian novels, Randolph Stow’s Tourmaline and
Peter Carey’s Oscar and Lucinda, which has also been filmed.
2

Presenters
Marek Błaszak
University of Opole
Excess, Intemperance and Overabundance as the Core of the 18 th -­‐century Sentimental Novel. A
Study of the Abbé Prévost’s Manon Lescaut
The article aims to present the phenomenon of sentimentalism in the first half of the 18 th century as a
reaction against the tenets of Enlightenment, and particularly against its utilitarian, mechanistic and
deterministic view on man. The said reaction was grounded in manifold sources and authorities,
including moral philosophy, aesthetics of art, and the religious movement of Methodism.
It might appear that in its literary dimension, sentimentalist excess, intemperance and
overabundance could be attributed to some belated productions from the second half of the century,
like Henry Mackenzie’s The Man of Feeling (1771). The article undertakes to demonstrate that the surfeit
of emotion was actually the “principal engine” (H. Walpole’s term) of sentimental fiction from its
outset. The subject of the analysis is Histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut (1731), a book
that achieved immediate, huge and long-­‐term success, and which was composed by Antoine-­‐François
Prévost, also known as the Abbé Prévost or as Prévost d’Exiles, a French monk (also a monk on the run),
philosopher and scholar, as well as a soldier, traveller and adventurer, an involuntary exile, and a highly
acclaimed writer. His story of the nobly born Chevalier des Grieux as a slave of all-­‐consuming passion
whose object is the beautiful but idle commoner of femme fatale, Manon Lescaut, written and
published in Holland in the interim period between the author’s two longer sojourns in England, is said
to have influenced a host of English sentimentalists from Samuel Richardson to Henry Mackenzie and
even Fanny Burney.
Apart from presenting Manon Lescaut as a canonical sentimental novel, the article also focuses
on the underlying note of social criticism directed against individuals and institutions that would
repress the call of passionate, true love. Still another important consideration is the reflection in
Prévost’s work of the wider debates on the nature of man, his body and soul, which engaged
contemporary scientists and philosophers.
Mateusz Bogdanowicz
University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn
Education in Times of Glut: the Birth and Development of Excess, Intemperance
and Overabundance in Polish Education 1989-­‐2010
The period between 1989 and 2010 established the foundations for a brand new quality in Poland in
almost all social, economic and political areas. Many spheres of life had to be reorganised, changed,
developed or given up. Since the change of the political system was a shock, enthusiastic adoption of
Western patterns was quite understandable. That was largely how excess, intemperance and
overabundance appeared and – later on – dominated numerous aspects Polish life. Broadly understood,
education was not – and still is not – an exception in this respect. In the context of the conference, the
paper’s aim is to voice concern and diagnose the situation in education in Poland in four aspects
throughout those thirty past years. The first is to analyse the evolution of the approach towards
education and knowledge of the “components of education” (i.e. students, parents, teachers, schools,
educational bodies, system, curricula/syllabi, teaching and learning styles and methods, peer
teaching/learning etc.). The second aspect is to trace the origins and development or the rapid
(predatory?) development of ideas concerning education that were largely influenced by the Western
philosophies of excess, intemperance and/or overabundance. Examples of such might be
3

commercialising education, turning knowledge into a commodity, the ‘customer’s always right’ attitude,
or superfluous consumerism. The third matter is to investigate the most striking manifestations of
excess, intemperance and/or overabundance in education in Poland around the turn of the centuries
(e.g. lowering standards to meet expectations, ‘creative’ statistics, rankings, master-­‐servant/client-­‐
service provider approach). The final aim is to forecast/outline the probable further development of the
phenomena of excess, intemperance and overabundance in the Polish education. Is education going to
survive the pressure of excess and revive itself or will it deteriorate and turn into ‘just business’?
Barbara Braid
Szczecin University
Madness as Excess: Victorian Insanity Discourse and Lady Audley’s Secret
Throughout the history of Western culture, the representation of madness has relied on clear divides
between rationality and irrationality, normalcy and pathology or humanity and bestiality. Nevertheless,
nineteenth-­‐century psychiatric discourse, especially the first law of thermodynamics when applied to
nervous diseases and Prichard’s notion of moral insanity, questioned these clear-­‐cut dichotomies.
Instead, it focused on madness resulting from excess or deficiency of these passions and faculties,
which, when in balance, are integral to normal life. This approach to insanity had two important
implications: on the one hand, it underlined the importance of self-­‐control and restraint as conditions
of mental health; on the other, it also meant that the borderline between madness and normalcy
became blurred and ambiguous. In this cultural context, Victorian sensation fiction characterised by
disproportionate melodrama and elaborate and often improbable plots was proclaimed to be in bad
taste. Today’s critics, however, note that the disruptions in the technical and psychological continuity in
these narratives undermined the certainties of the bourgeois discourses that realism reinforced. The
radical power of sensation novels lay in the excessive technical devices and themes, such as madness.
Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret (1862) is the perfect example of such a text. The
proposed paper will discuss the Victorian ideology of insanity and its links to excess, a latent, hidden
danger, undistinguishable to the untrained eye. It will also examine the motif of madness as presented
in Lady Audley’s Secret as both an illustration of the described notions, but also as a literary motif that
examines and undermines the gender politics of the Victorian society.
Anna Branach-­‐Kallas
Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń
Abjection, Sadomasochism, Extravaganza: Corporeal Excess as Post-­‐Colonial Resistance
in Asian Canadian Novels
The article focuses on the trope of excess in recent Asian Canadian novels, such as The Electrical Field
(1998) by Kerri Sakamoto, The End of East (2007) by Jen Sookfong Lee, and Chorus of Mushrooms (1994)
by Hiromi Goto. The analysis of Joy Kogawa’s classic North American Asian novel, Obasan (1981),
provides a background to further interpretation. As suggested by Traise Yamamoto, “explicit mention of
sexuality and the body has been until recently largely absent from the writings of Asian American
women” because of the hypersexual encoding of the female Asian body dominant in white culture (in
Ty 160). The paper highlights the tension between the tropes of lack and excess in the novels of
contemporary Asian Canadian female writers, situating the painful history of Asian immigration to
Canada on the level of affects. In The Electrical Field, the trauma of the Japanese Canadian diaspora
resurfaces in terrible acts of violence and cruelty that affect the whole community. The psychosomatic
symptoms displayed by the central protagonist, Asako, such as amnesia, repetition compulsion,
hypochondria, and premature ageing, are reactions to internalised racism. As to Jen Sookfong Lee’s The
4

End of East, abjection seems to permeate the relationships between the Chinese characters in the novel
and the female character’s engagement in sadomasochistic erotic games is dangerously identified with
bodily damage and death; yet, it also allows her to resist the stereotype of the subdued Asian female.
Finally, the corporeal extravaganza the Japanese Canadian character gets involved in Hiromi Goto’s
Chorus of Mushrooms seems to contradict the tradition of lack and restraint in North American Asian
diasporas. Excess therefore appears an effective postcolonial trope of resistance to hegemonic
discourses that enables traumatised communities to imagine new forms of self-­‐identity.
Daniel Broudy
Okinawa Christian University, Japan
Heavy on Fire Power: The American Media’s Complicity in Unrestrained Consumption
This presentation employs a discourse analysis approach to understanding prevailing geo-­‐political
strategies that serve American power and attempt to warrant excessive forms of militarization. Key to
challenging the bloated state of annual expenditures on military men, women, and materiel is
recognizing the attitudes and discourse practices cultivated through media which reinforce beliefs
about America’s conception of the world as the justified domain of its influence. Various studies
provide support for the view that media establish priorities, perpetuate events and mobilize public
opinion in accord with elite interests. The propaganda model (PM) developed by Herman and Chomsky
provides a theoretical framework for understanding and examining how media discourses serve to
legitimize this belief and create ‘boundaries of the expressible’ or range of opinion on crucial topics
(1988). This presentation examines military excess through the lens of media discourse and discusses
how media maintain control over the key ideas and definitions that represent America’s ostensible aim
of policing the globe. The goal of the presentation is to question whether the perpetual war on terror is
necessarily connected to America’s decadent appetite for energy and whether that taste will lead to self-­‐
annihilation, global conflict, or economic and environmental collapse.
Barbara Chyla
University of Opole
Escaping History in Christos Tsiolkas’s Loaded (1997) by Living in Fast-­‐ Forward Mode
The burden of history is one of the predominant issues with which multicultural Australia is trying to
cope. The past often casts a shadow on the life of young Australians searching for their identity in an in-­‐
between world of ambiguity, confusion and vulnerability, which mark the post-­‐colonial era. Christos
Tsiolkas’s novel Loaded (1997) presents the mobility and immediacy of the contemporary teen
experience in the example of Ari – a young Greek Australian, who speeds through his life desperately
trying to escape his dilemma as gay and a descendant of an immigrant family. Due to his ethnic
background and sexual orientation, Ari is at risk of double ostracism and, consequently, becomes a self-­‐
appointed outsider in a permanent state of disconnection. As a result, the young man lives a double life,
hiding his ‘shame’. Yet this duplicity is tearing him apart. The novel gives an account of one day in Ari’s
life by presenting an intense twenty-­‐four hours full of pain, during which he desperately attempts to
find relief in alcohol, drugs, casual sex, and violence. Speeding in fast-­‐forward mode and rejecting any
kind of categorization, he becomes an involuntary runner. As put by Tsioslkas, “He ran to escape
history. That’s his story”. By finding pleasure in sex and stimulants, Ari wants to brush aside his fear
that it is impossible for him to find a space to be himself without outside constraints or imposed
definitions. He is unable to live in the ‘ever-­‐shrinking present’ and his unrestrained abuse of passing
pleasures leads him to near self-­‐annihilation.
5

Stephen Dewsbury
University of Opole
It’s Just Not Cricket: The Bullingdon Boys at Play
Notorious for its drunken vandalism and its predominantly aristocratic members, The Bullingdon Club
of Oxford University has been on a rampage for over 200 years. Originally founded as a hunting and
cricket club, The Bullingdon Club was "ostensibly one of the two original Oxford University cricket
teams but it actually used cricket merely as a respectable front for the mischievous, destructive or self-­‐
indulgent tendencies of its members". Infamous for its post-­‐dinner destruction of restaurants and
university premises, in 1894 its members smashed all the lights and the glass of 468 windows in
Peckwater Quad of Christ Church as well as ruining the blinds and doors of the building. The same
destruction was repeated in 1927, and as a result the club was banned from meeting within 15 miles of
Oxford. Nonetheless, a plethora of members have courted the inner circles of this somewhat secretive
Oxford student dining club, from Edward VIII to John Profumo – both reputed for their involvement in
scandalous love affairs – and to the Rt Hon David Cameron MP, the incumbent Prime Minister of the
United Kingdom, and the current Minister of Foreign Affairs of Poland, Radosław Sikorski. Recently,
The Bullingdon Club has gained further popular renown due to prominent members of the
Conservative Party belonging to its alumni. This has led to Bullingdon being mentioned in the debates
of the House of Commons in order to draw attention to excessive behaviour across the British class
spectrum, and to embarrass MPs who are former members. This paper presents the excesses of The
Bullingdon Club and addresses how excess displayed in its crudest of forms is inextricably linked to
power and the elite. The paper also argues that this form of excess is peculiarly English.
Ilona Dobosiewicz
University of Opole
From Godfrey’s Cordial to Opium Dens and Pipe Dreams: Opiate Use in Victorian England
Opium is a substance that had been imported to Britain for many years, chiefly for medicinal purposes.
In the Victorian age it gained an unprecedented popularity as a cure-­‐all for many diseases, and until the
late 1860s its sale remained completely unregulated. Opium also began to be taken as a recreational
drug. Although early in the nineteenth century the use of opium was not perceived as a serious
problem, with the growing consumption and increased rate of addiction, its detrimental effects became
a cause for social concern. The aim of the presentation is to discuss Victorian attitudes towards the drug
as shaped by the class and race factors, and analyze representations of opium use in selected works of
Victorian literature.
6

Tomasz Gadzina
University of Opole
Excess of Space in Australian Literature
Australia, with its population of slightly fewer than 23 million people, is one of the least densely
populated countries in the world. When in 1788 Governor Philip and his fleet of three ships carrying
convicts, officials and marines landed in Botany Bay, the process of colonisation of the sixth biggest
landmass in the world began. The first Europeans perceived the continent as a vast uninhabitable
desert, which with its peculiarities – strange flora and fauna, reversed seasons of the year and harsh
climate – posed a challenge for these settlers to domesticate it. At the beginning, the vastness and
remoteness of the Australian continent were factors that evoked feelings of alienation and displacement
among the settlers. However, the establishment of the British colony in Australia brought tension
between the introduced culture, with its language, law, state structures and apparatuses, and land, with
its indigenous qualities and inhabitants. On the one hand, a sense of exile sharpened appreciation of
the homeland, heightened the feeling of incomprehension, and led some of the first settlers to a near-­‐
despair. But on the other, curiosity and wonderment with the new environment made them realize that
this was not just a temporary exile but their new home. Consequently, the unique Australian space,
environment and landscape gradually became essential in shaping new distinctive culture and nation.
For the colonisers, who perceived Indigenous population and its culture as uncivilised and barbarous,
the land was, in Marcus Clark's words, unwritten and unwritable. For him, Australian landscape
resembled a graveyard – stern, stifled, suppressed and silent – deprived of life and ghostly. In this
respect, this vast empty space of Australian continent should be first, in Edward Said's terms,
"penetrated," "possessed," "embraced" to be finally "domesticated," i.e. settled, described and defined
from European point-­‐of-­‐view. This presentation is an attempt to analyse the influence of space on the
development of Australian literature and literary traditions.
Zbigniew Głowala
Maria Curie-­‐Skłodowska University, Lublin
Longing for the Forbidden: On Excess of Restraints in the Works of David Lodge
In an interview with Mark Lawson in 2004, David Lodge, referring to the encyclical Humanae Vitae,
which disallowed contraception, claims that Catholic married couples living in the 1960s might have felt
doubly cheated: not allowed to have sex before marriage, they were also expected to limit it once they
got married. Among Lodge’s numerous works, most of which are campus novels, there are also novels
that are thematically Catholic. Rather critical in nature, they deal with the question of conscience,
dutifulness, morality and religious awareness. They touch upon the topic of proliferation in terms of
injunctions and restrictions imposed on Catholics. On the other hand, the author explores protagonists’
intemperance and indulgence in what is forbidden. The purpose of the paper is to demonstrate the
excess of restrictions and restraints foisted on protagonists by religion and religious institutions as
presented in novels of David Lodge.
7

Jacek Grochowski
State Higher Vocational School, Racibórz
The Fall of the Brave New World in Hubert Selby’s Requiem for a Dream
Though the dystopian parody of a perfect society in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World was not received
warmly by contemporary critics in the era of the Industrial Revolution, one may assume that the Great
Depression, the two World Wars, and finally the corruption of the Communist ideal should have
undermined the spirit of enthusiasm inspired by utopian thinkers such as H. G. Wells and G. B. Shaw.
Surprisingly, this did not occur. Instead, the concept of a superior society thriving on the fruits of
untamed technological progress and the notion of “happy consumerism” have taken a series of
pernicious twists, transforming into an unrealized, atavistic, and, in most cases, futile longing for the
unattainable, which, sadly enough, constitutes the core of what is known as the American Dream.
While some Americans have benefited from this utopian concept, many more seem to waste their lives
chasing its false promise, running a race to become someone they are not, which ends in a dead end
street. The predominant philosophy of acquisition as a measure of personal success takes us away from
what is, according to Hubert Selby, the true essence of life, namely, “integrity, ethics, truth, our very
heart and soul.” “Why?” he asks – “The reason is simple: because life is giving, not getting.” This paper
shall examine Selby’s Requiem for a Dream (1978) as a gruesome example of the ultimate demise of the
individual in the illusionary brave new world of materialistic consumerism and institutionalized
selfishness, with additional references to its film adaptation by Darren Aronofsky (2000). The paper
shall also focus on the continuity of the disintegration process spanning from Aldous Huxley’s futuristic
vision to its modern materialization.
Olga Grądziel
University of Warsaw
The Excesses of Popery Justified – The Revival of Roman Catholicism in Nineteenth-­‐century
Britain and its Connections with the Medieval Revival Movement
The conservative reaction against the French Revolution observed in British culture in the nineteenth
century coincided with a change of feeling towards Roman Catholic religion. Apart from the political
reasons that lay at the heart of the Catholic Emancipation and the solidarity with French Catholics
persecuted by the Revolution, the revival of Roman Catholicism had its grounds in the conviction held
by prominent intellectuals of the time that the Church of England was no longer able to satisfy the
spiritual needs of the people of their time. As the shortcomings of the reformed national Church could
be linked with the broadly understood crisis of culture diagnosed by the conservative minded thinkers,
so could the defense of the Roman Catholic Church as the sole preserver of original Christian doctrine
be carried out in connection with the vindication of a vision of revived medieval culture. The present
paper is an attempt to demonstrate how the contemporary defenders of Roman Catholicism, connected
with the Medieval Revival movement, responded to the Protestant charges against Catholicism, to large
extent based on an exaggerated view of “extremities” ascribed to the Roman Catholics (like idolatry,
superstition, and excessive attachment to symbols and ceremonies), explaining them as necessary
components of a religious system capable of satisfying all spiritual needs inherent in human nature, and
of preserving the truth of the Revelation against corruption throughout history. Referring primarily to
the argumentation provided by A. W. N. Pugin, Kenelm Digby and W.G. Ward it accounts for the
defense of Catholicism on the grounds of religious thought as well as the aesthetic and the broadly
understood spiritual culture.
8

Masaya Hiyazaki
Meiji University, Japan
Anarchism as ‘jikko no geijutsu’ (the art of deeds):
Considering “dionysisch” Frontier in Osugi Sakae’s Anarchism
This purpose of this research is to investigate “dionysisch” frontier in Osugi Sakae’s anarchism. Osugi
Sakae (1885-­‐1923) was the most famous anarchist in early twentieth-­‐century Japan. Labeled a “pioneer of
freedom” and “the originator of anarchism in Japan”, he was admired by some of his fellow Japanese
before and by many more after World War for his rebellion against an overbearing state and an
oppressive society. His influence was not limited to Japanese socialism and communism alone: he had
great impact on a wider “audience” because of his rebellious style. Osugi advocated his anarchism as
‘jikko no geijutsu’ (the art of deeds). In discussing deeds or practice (jikko), which he defined as “the
direct action of life,” he stated that practice is a deed in which “the background of the primary event is
activity quite amply reflected in our heads. There is contemplation as a consequence of this activity.
And there is fascination as a consequence of this contemplation. As a result of the fascination there is
emotion. And this emotion calls forth further activity. Therein is no simple subjectivity nor objectivity.
Subjectivity and objectivity are congruent. This is my ecstatic frontier as a revolutionary.”We notice
“appollonisch und dionysisch” (Nietzsche) stage here. Osugi advocates the art of deeds for two reasons.
One is due to indicating a way to get out of the despairing (jibo jiki) chord young people were getting
into under pressure of a capitalist structure and a state in those days. The other is due to “a propaganda
by deeds,” which he defined as “the creation of the new order.” This paper focuses on these aspects, and
analyzes “dionysisch” frontier in Osugi’s anarchism, throwing a light on ‘jikko no geijutsu’ (the art of
deeds).
Lucifer Hung
National Chung Hsing University, Taiwan
Phantasmatic Over-­‐Abundance and Excessive Politics:
On Queer Masculinity Bodies of Science Fiction and Fantasy
This paper proposes to provide gender-­‐outlaw readings on radical excess and anti-­‐normalizing agency
of queer masculinity in English science fiction and fantasy, forming a trajectory of queer transboy
representations from 1930s to the beginning of twentieth century. By this project, I plan to articulate
multi-­‐layered historical contexts between speculative literature, sub-­‐cultural sites, transgender politics,
and constructions on marginal queer-­‐gendered bodies. Through intertextual dynamics embedded
within and among theoretical frameworks such as sf study, paraliterary interaction, penumbra sub-­‐
subjective tactics, post-­‐human/trans-­‐species writings, I will conduct to generate forms and genealogies
of queer masculinity in sf realm, building their continuum and ruptures, agency and subversive power.
My thesis provides three different approaches to re-­‐read non-­‐realistic, fantasmatic queer gender
formations and trans-­‐masculine sexualities. From these positions and perspectives, I will argue for the
emergent force of queer transboyhood and gradual recognition given to several non-­‐normative
transgender masculine presences, starting from their connections and disagreements from old-­‐guard
lesbian feminist agenda and homo-­‐normative les-­‐bi-­‐gay politics. This multitude built by trans-­‐
masculine affects not only greatly disturbs hetero-­‐normativity and homo-­‐normative discourses, such
charismatic inscriptions which link into marginal territories also have created a persistent intervention
9

to interfere and even pervert canonized texts and representational modes. In these chapters to
extrapolate this queer masculine sf heterogenesis, I focus on analyzing three archetypes of trans-­‐
masculine personalities and their highly different subjectivities. My aim for these analyses is to theorize
how these marginal genders and bodies counterattack, infect, and thus re-­‐write mega-­‐historical
narratives by their cultural momentum and anti-­‐human poetics/politics. By performing these
“infections”, queer masculine subjectivity twists and transforms a seemingly liberal hegemony devoted
to excluding the non-­‐normative in the name of single-­‐minded progress and bi-­‐polar gender dichotomy.
Another major endeavor of this thesis concentrates on self-­‐formulations of these queer sf bodies and
textualities. My elaboration concerns their delineation of ontological pursuit, multi-­‐hybrid post/non-­‐
humanity, and a highly self-­‐aware appropriation of obscene, ambivalent and amoral performatives to
constitute new cultural strategies which have by far successfully counter-­‐written dominant politics’
desire to assimilate dissident voices and recalcitrant sites.
Wojciech Klepuszewski
Koszalin University of Technology
The proof is in the writing: Kingsley Amis’s literary distillations
Malcolm Bradbury has once labelled Kingsley Amis’s novel, The Old Devils, as ‘drink-­‐soaked’ and
‘washed in wine and spirits’. This remark can easily be extended to a number of other novels written by
Amis, most of which provide ample evidence to support Bradbury’s claim. The aim of the article is to
explore several of Kingsley Amis’s novels within the context of excessive drink consumption in order to
show the extent to which Kingsley Amis’s novels are alcohol-­‐ridden.
Krzysztof Kosecki
University of Łódź
Mass Culture as Excess in Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf and Jose Ortega y Gasset’s The Revolt
of the Masses
Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf (1927) and José Ortega y Gasset’s The Revolt of the Masses (1930), a novel
and a sociological analysis written almost at the same time, both present the contemporary mass
culture as excess. The writers show how the mass outlook affects the condition of the individual,
diminishes the role of classical humanism, makes intellectual discourse shallow and primitive, and
contributes to the Americanization of Europe. They also emphasize the role of technics in creating the
mass society, as well as warn of the naked force to which the masses resort as prima ratio. The paper
discusses similarities in the description of contemporary mass man advanced by Hesse and Ortega y
Gasset, illustrated by parallel excerpts from both the books.
Hesse, Hermann. 1972 [1927]. Steppenwolf. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Ortega y Gasset, José. 1994 [1930]. The Revolt of the Masses. New York: Norton.
10

Sławomir Kuźnicki
University of Opole
Sex and Religion: The Paradox of Excess in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale
In her most famous novel, The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), Margaret Atwood provides a dystopian vision of
the United States of America following ecological catastrophe and political takeover by Christian
fundamentalists. What is most striking in the society portrayed in Atwood’s book is the direct return to
a strictly religious and patriarchal system of values, where the position of women is degraded to the
most basic and stereotypical social functions such as housekeeping and giving birth. All this seems to be
achieved thanks to literal interpretations of some carefully selected passages from the Bible, mainly
those focusing on relationships between men and women, emphasizing man’s superior role in society.
However, the excessive and instrumental way of religion does not exclude the explicit attitude to
sexuality, which exists beneath the façade of piety (at the same time underlining men’s privileged
position, too). What is then presented in The Handmaid’s Tale is a bizarre mixture of strict puritan
religiousness with a surprising but one-­‐sided treatment of sexuality, which also serves as a tool to
dominate women and treat them as objects. The excessively weird combination of religion and sex
produces a paradox in that the very mixture of those two realms, not religion individually, reveals the
still patriarchal mechanisms of Atwood’s fictional society as a mirror-­‐reflection of ours.
Tadeusz Lewandowski
University of Opole
Joel Osteen, the Prosperity Gospel, and Wages of Christian Conspicuous Consumption
Preaching from his podium at Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas, self-­‐help author and televangelist
Joel Osteen (1963-­‐) is the foremost of a new generation of pastors who promote the gospel of prosperity
to devout Christians worldwide. Boasting 7,000,000 viewers weekly and many more millions of books
sold, Osteen’s message of achieving material abundance through faith in God has clearly ignited the
passion of many determined to claw to the top of the economic food chain, or for those already there,
justify their great wealth as an unambiguous consequence of divine favor. In apparent contradiction to
Jesus’ statements in “The Sermon on the Mount” regarding the blessedness of the meek and poor,
Osteen insists that God does not wish his children to act defeated or accept penury, but to revel in their
financial blessings as ‘victors’ rather than ‘victims.’ Unsurprisingly, the charismatic Osteen and his feel-­‐
good dictums have been the target of bitter criticism from some quarters of America’s various
theological establishments, which depict his reading of the Gospel as deeply flawed. Nonetheless, the
pastor continues to attract disciples among America’s economically disadvantaged through permissive
doctrines that promise prayer leads to worldly riches on Earth and spiritual rewards in Heaven. This
paper examines Osteen’s relevant sermons and writings within the context of American consumer
capitalism, arguing that the former is the logical conclusion of the latter, and that the brand of worship
Osteen advocates has significantly contributed to far-­‐reaching economic consequences appropriately
dubbed ‘the wages of Christian conspicuous consumption.’
11

Hung-­‐chiung Li
National Taiwan University, Taiwan
Exchanging the Inexchangeable: The Profanation of Capitalism
in Li Ang’s “The Ghost at Dingfanpo”
In the capitalist system of “general equivalence,” practically nothing cannot be exchanged, except the
system of exchange itself. This leads to two implications. On one hand, this relatively open system has
the potential to unlock the traditional organic closed system and to help liberate the formerly repressed
or inexchangeable. On the other, feeding on excessive desires, capitalism casts people into a maddening
hunt for money, relegates to the abject what has lost the exchange value, and has become the very
inexchangeable thing: the urgent task now is to reflectively exchange this inexchangeable system. “The
Ghost at Dingfanpo,” a story by the Taiwanese novelist Li Ang, portrays a Han-­‐aborigine hybrid
woman’s suffering when alive, spectral wandering after death, and eventual freedom. Her personal
history is intertwined with Taiwan’s from the 19th to the late 20 th centuries. Being brutalized to death
by a Ching district governor, she returns as a ghost for revenge but finds her enemy dead for many
years. She then lingers on through the Japanese reign and the successive Kuomintang’s regime to the
contemporary era. In the late 1970s, people around the island are infatuated with lottery-­‐guessing
gambles; they turn to her shrine for inspiration. One night, the ghost for some unknown reason begins
to imitate the dance of a stripper. At the final stage of her ghostly dance macabre, the wounds in her
body that seem to stay there permanently fall off, and she undergoes self-­‐dissolution and disappears out
of the scene: it is the system of excessive exchange that is exchanged by means of the termination of
this ghostly excessive life. Mainly drawing on Giorgio Agamben and Jean Baudrillard, this paper
attempts to show how the ghost effectuates this act by dint of an inoperative “profanation” of
capitalism.
Jasmine Wan-­‐shuan Lin
Yuanpei University of Science and Technology, Taiwan
That Videotape/Video Clip That Preserves the Pure Past and Affects
Released in 1998, the Ringu series has gained so great popularity both in domestic and overseas market
that has since then sustained what is now known as the J-­‐horror boom. The first installment burst onto
the horror movie scene with its innovative employment of the element of urban legend, which revolves
around a cursed videotape which kills whoever watches it within seven days. It is disclosed toward the
end of the film that the only way to survive the curse is to copy the tape and spread it around. The
exploitation of modern home appliances by Sadako, the revenge-­‐seeking ghost, for the purpose of
murder and circulation has been believed to account for the success of the film. The 2012 3D remake of
Ringu updates the means of multiplication and turns smart phones as well as internet into Sadako’s new
territory and weapon. This paper focuses its attention on the manner in which the storage media have
been appropriated to preserve both the past in its truth and a being of sensation that exists in itself. The
cursed videotape/video clip, the product of Sadako’s resentment toward her father who pushed her into
a well, presents an assembly of incomprehensible images which hints at the essence of the past instead
of a coherent narrative of the incidents as having been experienced by any of the characters. While
reproduction seems to imply reiteration and thereby passing down of the same history, the cursed
videotape/video clip passes into the domain of repetition which yields us rather the past’s being in
itself. Exceeding any lived, what the videotape/video clip catches is then affects which invincibly stand
up on their own and moreover demand wider circulation. The primary theoretical perspective of this
paper will be Gilles Deleuze’s discussion of how past in itself can be saved for us as well as how a bloc of
sensations exceed lived experiences.
12

Jiann-­‐guang Lin
National Chung Hsing University, Taiwan.
More Is Less: Sex, Body and the Human in Tsai Ming-­‐liang’s The Wayward Cloud
One obvious feature of Tsai’s films is the paradoxical coexistence of scarcity and excess. Different from
most feature films, Tsai’s work contains very few dialogue, action, plot, characterization, etc. This lack
of story, meaning, or explanation constitutes his famous minimalist style. On the other hand, the
audience is often struck by a strong, enigmatic sense of excess. His long take, for instance, is always too
long; the water image too much; the unsaid, the unrepresented too rich and “meaningful.” The minimal,
in other words, is always too maximal, and vice versa, so that the two poles tend to lose their stable
positions. In The Wayward Cloud (2005), the logic of “more is less” is expressed mainly through love
and/ or sex. There are so many sex scenes in the film that many people consider it as a porn movie,
rather than one which castigates the pornographic film industry. The protagonist, Hsiao-­‐kang, is a
pornographic actor, who sells pleasure, affect, or desire to the public. Not surprisingly, there are plenty
of naked bodies in Cloud. These, however, are not bodies which arouse sexual desire, but ones which,
trained and tortured by the global porn film industry, provoke the sense of disgust, horror and
abomination. They are more like biological, or biopolitical bodies than human bodies, for the “human”
is here reduced to the status of a “meat-­‐thing.” What the film critiques is a modern cultural
phenomenon, in which contemporary global porn film industry produces pleasure, love, or sex to
conceal the fact that such things no longer exist. Just as the proliferation of images in the society of
spectacle makes it impossible to reach the real, the proliferation of sex is symptomatic of a culture in
which sex itself has become impossible. The porn film does not arouse human desire. It rather produces
a landscape of desire inhabited not by humans but biological citizens who can only remember what
love/sex is by nostalgically watching the pornographic images. These characters, furthermore, are less
than humans, not because they are in want of human qualities, no matter how these qualities are
defined, but because they are way too-­‐human. They walk too much, eat too much, drink too much, and,
above all, fuck too much, only to conceal the fact that human life has been reduced to the sum total of
these biological activities. What the film reflects is a new form of humanity, one in which the flowers of
excessive humanism bloom in a no man’s land.
Min-­‐Tser Lin
National Cheng-­‐Kung University at Tainan, Taiwan
In the Circuit of Excess and Ennui: Ideological Uncertainty and its Ethical Implications
in the Contemporary Fantastic
When Tzvetan Todorov in his ground-­‐breaking work The Fantastic first isolates the literary device and
explicates it as a genre, he pinpoints “uncertainty” as the defining feature of the fantastic—an
uncertainty in relation to the nature of an extraordinary incident described in a “fantastic” tale. As
Todorov himself admits, it is difficult to maintain the fantastic uncertainty in a narrative of proper
length, because the extraordinary incident eventually needs to be identified as either natural or
supernatural in nature. As fantastic narratives since the twentieth century, especially those told in such
media as film, tend to veer toward the supernatural fantastic (or the “fantastic-­‐marvelous” in Todorov’s
term), the uncertainty characteristic of the genre is melting away—without, however, the fantastic
relinquishing its purchase on the “natural,” everyday reality. In this way, a typical fantastic tale
nowadays presents an ordinarily “extraordinary” world, where ghosts, vampires, werewolves, or suchlike
monsters roam and their existence is accepted as such without much perturbation by the human
characters—and by the audiences. To keep the contemporary fantastic from losing its narrative
momentum and to maintain its aesthetic strength of “uncertainty” and “shock,” narratives under the
rubric resort to excess in plotting stories and devising imageries. So far visual technologies seem to have
13

done the trick though little narrative tour de force can keep the contemporary fantastic from falling into
a phase of entropy. Indeed, a more general spell of ennui has gripped the genre—just in terms of its
characteristic “uncertainty.” Todorov’s theorization of the fantastic is notoriously “structural” in its
approach, not concerning itself with socio-­‐cultural issues. Despite many critics’ efforts to redress the
bias, ideological concerns remain tangential, if not simply irrelevant, to the contemporary fantastic.
Consequently, fantastic narratives nowadays either hesitate about or simply ignore the ethical
implications of the ideological issues their supposedly transgressive worldview brings along. The
fantastic then pursues excess in sensory stimulation, ad absurdum and ad nauseum.
Aleksandra Lubczyńska
University of Opole
Scenes of Perverse Nature – Excess and Transgression as Art of Existence
This presentation collates various sex representations displayed in three transgressive films from 1972,
1976, and 2006. These are: John Waters’ Pink Flamingos, Serge Gainsbourg’s Je T'aime Moi Non Plus, and
John Cameron Mitchell’s Shortbus. The films, selected from a range of those praising transgression,
reveal and illuminate the ways in which excess and transgression construe the aesthetics of existence.
There exist, however, films such as – to name one recently debated – Steve McQueen’s Shame, which do
not view sex as means of experiencing something new, “liberating” and, consequently, leading to
refashioning of one’s self. On the contrary, this critically acclaimed 2011 film introduces the problem of
excessive sexual drive, which leads to frustration and enslavement rather than liberation. In my
presentation I would like to pose the question of the difference between these representations and of
the reasons for praising transgression by, among others, Michel Foucault. My aim is to link this
scholar’s two crucial concepts – transgression and the aestheticization of life – in order to explicate the
possibility of refiguring potential social relations by multiplying the forms of experiencing pleasures.
Paweł Marcinkiewicz
University of Opole
Rhetorical Excess and Overabundance in Contemporary American Poetry
In “The Historical Genesis of a Pure Aesthetic,” Pierre Bourdieu, the great continuator of Wittgenstein’s
philosophical practice of interrogation, tries to characterize the fallacious grounds of artistic tastes and
comes to a conclusion that they depend on the “entire set of agents engaged in the field,” which include
artists, art critics, collectors, curators, etc. “who have ties with art, who live for art and, to varying
degrees, from it.” Similarly in literature, the meaning of a particular poem or a novel results from an
intricate web of activities and reactions, with so many different groups involved—publishers,
interpretive communities (pace Stanley Fish), individual readers, booksellers—trying to use their own
slippery criteria. The author, of course, is an active participant, and the rhetorical razzmatazz of
contemporary American poetry might be read as a Wittgensteinian language-­‐game of the late American
avant-­‐garde, descending from Getrude Stein, whose purpose is to resist—as it has always been—literary
mediocrity of the official verse culture and the marginalizing influence of the media.
14

Magdalena Mączyńska
University of Opole
Cornucopia Reversed – Visions of the Dehumanized Future
in Patrick Ness’s Chaos Walking Trilogy and Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games Trilogy
The future is a time of decline. It brings despair and loneliness of various kinds; it leaves humans
subdued and hollow for no change is deemed possible. Misused, knowledge and technological
development fail to provide prosperity and eventually lead to utter chaos and destitution. Desperate
circumstances favour the establishment of authoritarian rule that ensures complete subjugation.
Though the hardships bring people together, they also highlight the divisions artificially created and
fuelled by those in the position of power. Such grim and haunting images underlie both Patrick Ness’s
Chaos Walking trilogy and Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games cycle. Yet it is not the lack or restriction of
material resources that constitute the major themes of the trilogies. Both book cycles centre on the
notion of remaining true to oneself and one’s convictions when faced with the brutalised conditions.
The protagonists strive to regain (or rediscover) their identity while defying all forms of authority that
try to annihilate the deeply human feelings. Unconformity to suffering and violence prevents the main
characters from becoming savage and ruthless. Regardless of the fact that the authorities distorted and
blurred the very notion of evil, the protagonists have no difficulty in pinpointing its source. Still any act
of rebellion requires not only strength but also re-­‐evaluation of beliefs and values, which, in turn, may
help overcome the inertia that stifles any attempts to fight back. The paper focuses on the dystopian
visions of the future through which the disintegration of the system of values may be seen. It examines
the role relationships play in ascribing meaning to existence suffused with unwarranted cruelty. In
addition, the paper concentrates on the issue of progressing dehumanization of the futuristic world that
may be regarded as the main tool of subjection used by the authoritarian regimes.
Katarzyna Molek-­‐Kozakowska
University of Opole
Too Much Drama in the News? A Critical Discourse Analysis of Newspaper Headlines.
This paper explores the issue of the increasing intrusion of entertainment into news reporting, a
strategy known as infotainment. Media Studies literature demonstrates that commercial news outlets
tend to dramatize and sensationalize their news coverage to attract ever wider audiences and maximize
their profits from advertising. However, despite the general awareness of this issue, sensationalism,
understood as a discourse strategy aimed at increasing audience appeal, has rarely been researched
empirically from a linguistic perspective. This paper outlines the institutional factors that have been
responsible for the increase in infotainment. It also looks at what constitutes newsworthiness today and
presents results of current research into contents of news programming. All this is used as a
background of an empirical study of a corpus of over 200 newspaper headlines (sub-­‐headlines and lead-­‐
ins) collected in early and mid-­‐2012 from the British mid-­‐market tabloid Daily Mail. The study identifies
and categorizes the main linguistic devices used to dramatize and sensationalize news stories by the
outlet. Subsequently, the distribution and discourse function of those devices is discussed and assessed.
15

Stankomir Nicieja
University of Opole
Exgaggeration and Excess in Maritn Amis’s Fiction
Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie, Julian Barnes and Martin Amis are probably the most famous
representatives of the influential post-­‐war generation of British novelist. Born soon after the horrors of
the World War II, raised in the 1950s and educated in the rebellious 1960s, they have often concentrated
on motifs of excess and overconsumption in their books. They were also not shy about taking full
advantage of the post-­‐war political freedoms and moral permissiveness. Without much hesitation, they
explored topics that only a decade earlier had been taboo.
Despite this general tendency towards overstepping boundaries prevalent among his
generation, Martin Amis’s writing has always been distinguished by audacity and immoderation. In my
paper, I will look at exaggeration and excess as defining features of the author’s literary output that are
prominent on many levels: from stylistic exuberance to the preoccupation with the extremes of human
behaviour. I will examine his consistent deployment of hyperbole and caricature by juxtaposing two
novels, his most famous and celebrated work Money (1984) and his latest book, Lioel Asbo: State of
England (2012).
Tomasz Pilch
Foreign Language Teacher Training College, Opole
Dead or Alive; or, When is Excess Excess? The Composition of Melville’s Mardi, and a Voyage
Thither in the Context of the Romantic Debate on the Nature of Literary Creation
After the initial unanimous success of the first two narratives dramatizing Melville’s experiences during
his years at sea, his third novel and first venture into the realm of fully fictional composition incited
dramatically diversified critical reactions, ranging from high praise to disparaging condemnation. Some
of these attacks were dictated by nothing more substantial than individual taste, others, however,
focused on more objective aspects of the composition, primarily the ‘kaleidoscopic’ nature of its
structure, combining apparently a number of poorly integrated types of narrative, the whole clearly
deficient in overall uniformity. It seems that the verdict of the hostile critics was a result of the fact that
the novel was reviewed on the grounds of the concept of the artist as a ‘maker’ responsible for the shape
of the work of art submitted to the reader – the composition being an effect of careful planning and
competent progression towards realization of the final predetermined effect. However, a careful
analysis of Melville’s letters from the time he was writing Mardi, as well as of the process of working out
the final version of the composition, clearly suggest an equally probable alternative explanation for the
shape of the novel in the context of the vitalistic intuitions within Romantic aesthetics. When
juxtaposed with the opinions of the proponents of literary organicism, the aspects of the novel that on
the grounds of ‘mechanical’ criticism make it look like a case of objectionable excess, turn into the
possibly natural consequences of the growth of a living being coming into shape according to its own
internal momentum and singular nature.
16

Zbigniew Pyż
University of Opole
Choked by Abundance: Criticism of Consumerism in Chuck Palahniuk’s Novels
Issues of consumerism have been approached by a number of modern philosophers and writers.
Inherent traps existing in the materialistic and self-­‐indulgent lifestyles of modern societies in developed
countries cause concern to those who see the emptiness and futility of human existence filled with
objects, which become worthless as they accumulate.Chuck Palahniuk’s prose interestingly presents
and comments on these contemporary social phenomena and their influence on individuals – in reality
and fictitious worlds of literature. This article is an attempt to analyse and emphasise the motifs of
excess, consumption, chaos and the lack of self-­‐limitation, on the basis of selected novels by Palahniuk
Kamil Rusiłowicz
John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin
Excessive Architecture: The Poetics of Neobaroque Space
The emergence of the Baroque in the seventeenth century marks the crisis of European culture, at that
time in transition from pre-­‐modern to modern and experienced by societies rapidly realizing their own
contingency. In the second half of the twentieth century a similar “crisis” has been witnessed, addressed
by critics commonly labelled as postmodern, who attempted to explain the failed (or “unfinished”)
project of modernity. However, as thinkers such as Greg Lambert, William Egginton or Monika Kaup
argue, the “crisis” of contemporary culture can be seen not merely as a reaction to modernity, but as a
reaction that uses pre-­‐modern measures, as the return of the Baroque in modern culture, for it
approaches this culture via the tropes already investigated by seventeenth-­‐century thinkers (a
prominent example may be Deleuze’s re-­‐reading of Leibnitz). The purpose of my paper is to focus on
one aspect of neobaroque theory – the way it addresses space – and discuss the ways it can attribute to
the discussion of textual houses. As pointed out by Mark Wigley, all houses are haunted, for the process
of delineating borders always means violence inflected upon space. Hence a clear division between the
inside and the outside is never possible and visual/textual manifestations of the transgression of borders
can be analyzed in terms of excess, as suggested by Omar Calabrese. Finally, in my paper I will try to
place the discussion of neobaroque space in context of Gothic poetics as the most famous discourse
addressing the theme of houses that resist representation.
Katarzyna Rybińska
University of Wrocław
Liquor as Burning as Life in Guillaume Apollinaire’s Literary Production
In works by G. Apollinaire life does not exceed the boundaries of quotidian existence. Predominantly, it
limits itself to steps, trifles, inessential gestures, and common objects of everyday use. A napkin that
serves to wipe the lips during the meal is promoted to the rank of the symbol of life and death only
when it becomes stained and shows visible signs of wear. A rose gains imperishable beauty when it
loses its aroma, life and freshness. In both Apollinaire’s poetry and prose each object and notion has
17

their own reverse. Life implies death, sadness – laughter. In those endless antinomies, alcohol enjoys
certain privileges. Perhaps because liquor is as intoxicating as life itself. Moreover, Bacchic drink
intensifies transitory experiences, as a way of usurping eternity. The feeling of intoxication, as in the
case of Noah the Patriarch, gives a unique opportunity to overcome the problem of human impotence.
For Apollinaire wine was, is and forever would be, no matter where it comes from or how it is
obtained, a miracle comparable to that of Cana of Galilee; a divine drink that fosters an interest in
entertainment and meditation on the banality of human existence.
Eric Starnes
State Higher Vocational School, Racibórz
Excess of Diversity: Dystopian Visions of the American anti-­‐PC Right
The excesses of various forms of cultural Marxism that have culminated in the politically correct
movement at universities in the U.S. and later in society have produced a variety of backlashes and
responses, from the ‘culture wars’ of the 1980s and ‘90s to the revival of the male chauvinist ‘knuckle
dragger’ culture of Maxim, FHM and The Man Show. While these responses have been viewed by some
academics as the dying gasps of traditional WASP male culture, there has been a growing body of
fictional works painting a bleak picture of these brave new forms of thought, taking the West’s, and
particularly, the U.S.’s adherence to cultural Marxist ideology to its penultimate conclusion. This paper
analysis three such responses – Kevin Beary’s Savaged States of America: a Futuristic Fantasy (1998),
Ward Kendall’s Hold Back This Day (2001) and Scott Wilson’s Utopia X: A Novel (2004). By exploring
these works through the prism of Wolfgang Schivelbusch’s Culture of Defeat as regards their responses
to political correctness and various other forms of cultural Marxism, it is hoped light may be shed on
the backlash against political correctness among the white population of the U.S. Furthermore, by
analyzing these books, and the theories underpinning cultural Marxism [mostly those associated with
the Frankfurt School of critical theory], new light will be shed on the overall white American attitude to
intellectualism, ‘foreign’ ideologies, and the response provoked by the introduction of these ideologies.
Nelly Strehlau
Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń
Feminizing Temperance: the Postfeminist Woman as the Perfect Neoliberal Subject
Excess, a condition peculiar to the interrelated discourses of postmodernity and free market capitalism,
has traditionally been associated with women. Within the gender binary, masculinity would then
connote mastery and temperance, unlike unruly femininity, connected to corporeality and disturbance.
In fact, this idea of feminine excess can be seen as rich in subversive potential. However, this binary
opposition, frequently applied for instance in soap opera scholarship (cf. Fiske 1987: 192-­‐194), falters
when considering postfeminist television, where masculinity crisis comes to be taken for granted and
consequently, temperance comes to be associated with women, perceived as better able to control their
emotions and bodies. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in legal drama and police procedurals,
where women often come to represent justice and order, to which male characters pose a threat
through their sexual, emotional and financial overindulgences. The paper analyses the re-­‐gendering of
the binary opposition between overindulgence and moderation using selected examples from
contemporary scripted American television series, such as Damages and The Good Wife, to trace the
origins of this shift, the discourses contributing to its formation, and its ideological repercussions
(including whether it can be seen as an instrument of containment), as well as to determine the
meanings to which it gives rise.
18

References
Fiske, John. 1987. Television Culture. London-­‐New York: Routledge.
Rachael Sumner
State Higher Vocational School, Racibórz
The English Riots of 2011: Shopping with Violence?
Appearing on a televised debate on 13 th August 2011, British historian David Starkey elicited public
outcry following his analysis of the causes of the riots which had swept across English cities the
previous week. With his provocative assertion that “the whites have become black,” Starkey pinned the
blame for the acts of violence, looting and vandalism upon the rise of gangster culture within British
society. His views were met with criticism from politicians and the general public alike. However,
Starkey made a further observation which, ironically, seemed to align his perspective with that of
postmodernist theoreticians such as the late Jean Baudrillard. The key televised image he brought into
the sphere of the debate was that of a woman “coolly trying on a pair of trainers outside a looted shop.”
There was, after all, nothing unusual about such extreme acts of public disorder. They were, ultimately
“shopping with violence.” Baudrillard has demonstrated the shift which occurs in capitalist societies
from the Marxian model of labour as commodified, saleable product, to the fetishisation of products
themselves which no longer bear any relation to a conceivable “use-­‐value.” Human desire has become,
in Baudrillard’s own terms “atomized into needs,” (83) making the act of looting an obvious
consequence of a service economy in which the marketed commodity acquires a far higher status than
its use-­‐value would allow. This paper will explore the extent to which the riots of 2011 can be
regarded as a logical extension of the consumer culture to which Britain has subscribed since the 1980s.
There was nothing perverse, it will be argued, about such behaviour given the collapse of the
relationship between the representation of a commodity and its intrinsic value.
References
Baudrillard, Jean. 1981. For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign. (transl.) Levin, C. St. Louis,
Mo: Telos Press Ltd.
Mark Wegierski
Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences in Canada
A Poisoned Imagination?: Examining the “Late modern” Excess of Dark and Disorienting
Imageries in Fantasy, Science Fiction, Comic-­‐book, Horror Gaming, and Media
It is argued that “late modern” societies – especially America and Canada -­‐-­‐ have become dominated by
an excess of dark and disorienting imageries, especially in the various subgenres of “the fantastic.”
These fantastic imageries are often used to “capture” the interests of some brighter and more inquisitive
younger persons, which might otherwise have found an outlet in real politics and social engagement.
What often occurs is a “short-­‐circuiting” of the imaginative faculties – that otherwise might have been
engaged by various earlier “idealisms” – especially the currently unfashionable “idealisms” of traditional
religion and nation. The paper will look especially at fantasy role-­‐playing games (rpg’s) (such as
Dungeons and Dragons), as being among the most highly absorbing imaginative activities. It will be
noted how many rpg’s have evolved in ever darker directions in the succeeding decades, or have been
created with ever darker premises. Life in late modernity is often so fluid and malleable that it may
seem that there is no "hard reality" to ever get hold of. The information traffic many persons are caught
in seems to lead to a “postmodern blur.” The notion of reality may indeed be tied to the sense of having
19

oth a personal and historical past. Insofar as many persons become wrapped up in a never-­‐ending
series of fantasies and phantasms, their very sense of reality may become profoundly fractured. There is
a tendency for the disappearance of non-­‐materialist outlooks (such as those tied to the duties and
obligations of traditional religion or nation), in favour of material consumption, and a frenzy of
imaginative overloading.
Ryszard W. Wolny
University of Opole
Eroticism: Its Excesses and Masks in Contemporary Consumer Societies
For long, eroticism has been considered a taboo in Western societies and largely confined to private
spheres. Yet, in the times of rapidly developing consumerism in contemporary capitalist societies, both
in the West and East, it became a commodity for sale.
Stemming from Georges Bataille’s renowned formula that eroticism is assenting to life to the
point of death, this paper tries to explore various aspects of eroticism that go well beyond the realm of
sexuality and uncover eroticism’s multifarious excesses in contemporary consumer societies alongside
deadly masks it often wears.
References
Bataille, Georges [1957]. Eroticism: Death and Sensuality [L’Erotisme]. Trans. Mary Dalwood. San
Francisco: City Lights Books, 1986.
Pei-­‐Ju Wu
National Chung Hsing University, Taiwan
Infinite Thought and Nomadic Becoming in Yi-­‐Chun Lou’s Western Xia Hotel
In James Clifford’s essay “Traveling Cultures,” he argues that fieldworks by ethnographers since the
1920s has been conceived as a sort of “mini-­‐immigration”. Many ethnographers are not simply traveling
to the location of their fieldwork but also dwellers who have acquired the languages that are needed to
communicate with the “local” people. Clifford reminds us that the locals are not necessarily a group of
people who settled in one place when the ethnographers-­‐travellers come and go conducting their
samplings of “native” cultures. Instead, the centralized way of defining normalizations of in-­‐and-­‐
outsider in a dwelling/traveling hierarchy is an interpretive mechanism. This “dwelling-­‐in-­‐traveling”
and “traveling-­‐in-­‐dwelling” anthropological trope is what I maintain as an aesthetic project of reaching
Taiwanese as well as world literature. For contemporary Taiwanese readers, the way we view world
literature has a lot to do with the way we view the world. By examining literature from non-­‐Eurocentric
views of the world and to put forward Taiwanese views of “world-­‐ing” literature, this paper attempts to
use Yi-­‐Chun Luo’s Western Xia Hotel as an example to illustrate how history, as an archaeological site,
has become a haunted resort in which those endless reincarnated bodies (corpses) regain their thoughts
of agency. Although confined by the spaces and movements of time within the designated “rooms” (41
chapters), the nameless narrator(s) lodges in Western Xia Hotel, embarking on ceaseless journeys into
an encyclopaedic retrieving of past events—a simulation of our current human condition. In Luo’s
Western Xia Hotel, the novelist revisits the two fundamental problems of identity and agency. The
question of agency in Luo’s work entails both one that certain subjects can initiate an action in an
autonomous becoming manner and also one that the singularity of a subject “emerges” through a chain
of actions or through a plethora of camouflaged past events within a ceaselessly migrating milieu. This
20

observation might provisionally provide a Deleuzian or a Badiouian approach of understanding actions
of agency in Luo’s work; however, I contend that neither one nor the other offers a holistic reading of
the creative process of Western Xia. Many scholars contend that Luo “offers a world in which there are
words in the story, but each word in turn is a story, too” (Kailin Yang, Cue Yang, Wei-­‐Zhen Su). For
some, Luo’s writing represents a type of life-­‐writing in which he mobilizes the capitalized History of
Western Xia as a metaphor for those Taiwanese of the 70s who share similar personal memories with
Luo. The nomadic metamorphosis includes over-­‐abusively rich adaptations of the unknown erotic
social scandals, personal as well as political interpretations upon the retreat of Chiang Kai-­‐Shek’s KMT
government to Taiwan in 1949, debates about the national identity, and those fragmented unnameable
traumas by birth as humans. In brief, Luo’s Western Xia Hotel ends in a schizophrenic version of the
biblical moment of enlightenment (with electricity) and a translated erotic modern version of Adam
and Eve with both their eyes wide opened. The Ending of Luo’s Western Xia Hotel, Room 41, reserving
those not-­‐yet-­‐visited rooms of infinite stories, like the newly-­‐coined words of Western Xia, evokes both
a spirit from the dead and invites continuous rampages from the upcoming travellers.
Nainu Yang
National Kaohsiung Normal University, Taiwan
Romantic Love and Its Image as a Temporal Object in Song Tswen-­‐show’s
Outside the Window
In the 1960s and 1970s, while the films of healthy realism were the mainstream, Qiong Yao films (瓊瑤電
影) brought up another trend-­‐-­‐ romance films. Her love stories were adapted as well as interpreted into
romance films with manifold faces under the hands of several film-­‐makers. For instance, Lee-­‐hsing (李
行) added the elements of healthy realism into two of Qiong Yao’s stories, Four Loves (婉君表妹) and
The Silent Wife (啞女情深), which aligns the two film with the dominant genre, healthy realism. Outside
the Window (窗外), adapted from Qiong Yao’s first novel and filmed by Song Tswen-­‐show in 1972,
faithfully presents the fictionalized love in Qiong Yao’s novel, rendering the film a unique
representation in Qiong Yao films. To compare with Lee-­‐hsing’s interpretation which vastly reduces the
main features of Qiong Yao’s stories, that is, sentimentality and subtlety of emotional expressions, Song
Tswen-­‐show maintained the depth and subtlety of emotional significance by means of different filmic
techniques. While Qiong Yao utilizes words as a medium to represent her imagination of love, Song
Tswen-­‐show employs his filming style to visualize Qiong Yao’s love story, turning it into images of love.
This paper aims to explore the significance of love in Qiong Yao films, which resonates with Anthony
Gidden’s concept of romantic love; the paper also interprets Song Tswen-­‐show’s Outside the Window
from Bernard Stiegler’s conception of cinematic time. It argues that Song’s audiovisual representation of
Qiong Yao’s Outside the Window folds out the cinematic consciousness of its viewers, rendering the
images of romantic love a temporal object. Re-­‐reading Hurssel’s theory of the temporal object, Stiegler
brings up the concept of tertiary memory, which, according to him, is interwoven with primary and
secondary memory. As the technological medium which records audiovisual images, cinema calls forth
the viewer’s tertiary memory, reinforcing his or her primary and secondary memory. Via Song’s images
of romantic love, the viewer perceives love as a unique temporal object of love.
21

Marzena Zielonka
University of Opole
Sláinte! Excessive Drinking as a Central Part of Irish Culture
The association between the Irish and drinking has been commonplace in the Irish cultural tradition.
Drinking seems to be a central element of social and economic life in Ireland and wherever the Irish
have migrated, the image of the hard drinking Paddy has followed. Representations of the Irishmen at
home and abroad, which have tended to focus on their drunkenness, have been depicted in literature,
drama, song and film. Surprisingly enough, in some places the terms “Irish” and “alcohol” have even
become synonymous. The relevance of beer, whiskey or poitin in Irish society is pervasive. Guinness
beer, for example, marked by its distinctive colour and foam, has become one of the most recognized
national product symbols in the world. Although such problems caused by excessive drinking as family
breakdown, domestic violence, child abuse, drunk driving or motor fatalities, which have increased in
Ireland after the fall of the Celtic Tiger, cannot be underestimated, it can be argued that drinking has
been an extremely important feature in the production and reproduction of Irish identity. Therefore,
while many social sciences have focused on alcohol and alcoholism as a psychological, social and health
issue, the aim of this thesis is to examine Irish drinking in its cultural and historical context, discussing
the ways the subject is treated in popular culture.
22