Bez przyszłości. Queerowy sprzeciw "Anhellego" Juliusza Słowackiego w kontekście prób kontynuacji poematu

Abstract

LUDMIŁA JANION University of Warsaw ORCID: 0000-0002-7325-1172 MILENA CHILIŃSKA University of Warsaw ORCID: 0000-0003-3940-3416 NO FUTURE A QUEER OBJECTION OF JULIUSZ SŁOWACKI’S “ANHELLI” IN THE CONTEXT OF THE POEM’S ATTEMPTED CONTINUATIONS The article applies negative queer theory to investigate the Polish Romanticism. Employing selected terms of queer theory, namely the Child, reproductive futurism, and queer asexuality, it interprets Juliusz Słowacki’s Anhelli as a poem which links the rejection of future with asexuality. In this reading, Anhelli’s melancholy becomes a literary exemplification of alienation from the Symbolic, emptiness of fractured Lacanian subject, while the title character becomes a future-denying queer outcast. This claim is supported with the analysis of the endings added to Anhelli by Kornel Ujejski and by Wacław Gasztowtt, which indicate a cultural resistance towards the queer call to abandon the fantasy of stable meanings, complete identity, and better future. 53 Zob. A. C v e t k o v i c h, An Archive of Feeling, Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures. Durham 2003. – L o v e, op. cit. – S. A h m e d, The Promise of Happiness. Durham 2010. – H a lb e r s t a m, op. cit.