The author or co-author of many books on aesthetics, philosophy, art, culture and anthropology. Her 1992 essay The Cracks in Existence was a literary event of the highest order.
A native of Warsaw, she studied philosophy at the university there and is a university professor and the author or co-author of many books on aesthetics, philosophy, art, culture and anthropology.
Her 1992 essay The Cracks in Existence was a literary event of the highest order. Enthusiastically received by critics and awarded the Polish Publishers' Prize, it won a large readership who reacted to the book in a highly personal way. The author seemed to use various languages of existence to describe the experiences of a mother, a prisoner, a victim, a dying person, and a newborn baby. Brach-Czaina's essay is a consideration of existence: what it means to say that something exists or that someone exists. "To Be," according to the author, "means making the effort to exist. To find some order, to find one's own space, to care about things." From the perspective of existence, the intellectual, artistic or philosophical enterprises are not the only ones that matter. Normal, everyday existence is also interesting. What is usually ignored is in fact worthy of attention: everyday chores, housework, the activities of everyday people. Brach-Czaina's book has been called a "Bible of Feminism" and has served as an impulse for further feminist studies, including those of a historical or literary nature. The book has helped to elucidate the existential message of the poems of Różewicz and Białoszewski. Jolanta Brach-Czaina's book is one of the most important to appear in the last fifty years, a brilliant combination of philosophical precision and poetry with an intellectual substance that is universally literary: a masterpiece.
Selected bibliography:
- Na drogach dwudzietowiecznej mysli teatralnej (Twentieth-Century Theatre Theory). 1975.
- Etos nowej sztuki (The Ethos of New Art). Warsaw, PWN, 1984.
- Estetyka pragnień (The Aesthetics of Desire). Lublin: Wydawnictwo Lubelskie, 1988.
- Twórczy odbiór sztuki (The Creative Reception of Art). Białystok: Dział Wydawnictwa Filii UW, 1992.
- Szczeliny istnienia (Cracks in Existence). Warsaw: PIW, 1992 (more...).
- Primum philosophari. Warsaw: Oficyna Naukowa, 1993.
- Od kobiety do mężczyzny i z powrotem: rozważania o płci w kulturze (From Women to Men and Back Again: Meditations on Gender in Culture). Białystok: Trans Humana, 1997.
Source: www.polska2000.pl; copyright: Stowarzyszenie Willa Decjusza.