Dream? Democracy! constructs a philosophy and practice of hospitality to the Other. It projects a culture and politics of welcoming the strangers, minorities, women, where art as activism plays a key part: that is why the author analyzes feminist, antifascist, and queer works, including Pussy Riot’s performance art; LGBTQ visibility campaigns and exhibitions; and initiatives of rebuilding Jewish life in Lublin, Poland (Grodzka Gate-NN Theater Center, Transeuropa Festival). This book interprets intertextually passages on hospitality and utopia from the Mahabharata; the Bible; Ernst Bloch; Hannah Arendt; Maria Janion; Hélene Cixous; Adam Michnik; Martha C. Nussbaum; José Esteban Munoz; and the younger generation of Polish activists. Here is a performative book which is profound intellectually and socially engaged – for the cause of welcoming the Stranger, against prejudices and neoliberal exploitation.

CHAPTER 1. The Other Methodology of the Other 9 A Theory and Praxis of HospitALTERITY 9 Fichtean Hating versus Kantian Hosting 18 Today’s Transvalued Humanism after Anti-Humanism 28 A Philosophy of Affective Alterity: Love, Faith, and Democracy 39 Poetics and Politics. From Literary to Social Hospitality 56 Action! – After Hannah Arendt and Performative Art 64 CHAPTER 2. Interpreting Art, Interpreting Subjectivities, Interpreting Shared Life 67 Toward a Philoxenia of the Verbal and the Visual 67 Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein’s Affective (Inter)textuality and (Inter)visuality 70 Of Beauty, Brain and Sacred Bodysouls: Sublimation, Mother-Daughter, and Tenderness according to Helen Chadwick 84 Alina Szapocznikow’s Vulnerable Fetishes of Her Self 97 Krystiana Robb-Narbutt’s Art: Biophilia Against Trauma 105 Women’s Theatre à la polonaise Bisexuality and Jewishness on Stage 113 CHAPTER 3. The Power of Culture and Activism against the Far Right 125 Nationalism, Economic Neo-Liberalism, and Necrophilia 131 A Successful Uprising? 141 Culture, Always Already Counterculture 145 The Art of Revolt 150 The Social Impact of Art Exhibitions 157 Intertextuality as HospitALTERITY 164 The Transeuropa Public Art Festival in the Intercultural City of Lublin 169 Hostility toward Jewishness and Interculturality 182 A Brief Literary History of Cleanliness and Abjection in Poland 189 The Power of Poetry and the Crisis of the Academy 196 Art versus Moral Revolution in Poland and the U.S 201 CHAPTER 4. The Paradox of Poland and Europe: Caught Between Hostility and Hospitality 211 A Fragile Legal and Political Context 213 Culture and Activism Strike Back 227 A Hidden His-tory: Masculinity, Hysteria, and Homosexuality 238 A History of Male Hysteria 242 Against the Philosophy of the Death Drive 251 The Birth of Homosexuality 254 A Visual Politics of Europe’s LGBTQ Visibility Campaigns 267 The Art of Imagining Futurity – after Ernst Bloch, Hannah Arendt, and Today 269 A Queer Utopia of Love 271 An LGBTQ Dream of Diversity? 280 A Queer Utopia of Childhood 283 The Future-in-Love and in-Hospitality 285 CHAPTER 5. A Political Philosophy of Hope versus Horror 291 Eastern Europe’s Tales of Terror: the Gothic Art of Paulius and Svajone Stanikas 301 Hope: the Hospitality of a New Civil Society 320 Research as Activism: Thinking, Visualizing, and Performing the Ideas and Images of the Other 326 Bibliography 333

Koszyk

Dream? Democracy! A Philosophy of Horror, Hope and Hospitality in Art and Action