Search

Old age is a stage of life during which a person must confront the changes that occur both in the reality around them and in themself. Those are changes at the biological, psychological and social levels. Adapting to old age and the roles it brings becomes a difficult and demanding task. One of the most important developmental tasks of an elderly person is developing wisdom that can support and facilitate the process of adaptation to old age. Entering the period of late adulthood is therefore a special opportunity for further development and self-creative action of the individual leading to the creation of a mature identity of an old person. The aim of this text is to provide insight into the meaning and manifestations of this self-creative involvement, with particular emphasis on its importance in the process of adaptation to changing roles in old age and building wisdom.

Copyright of Nauki o Wychowaniu. Studia Interdyscyplinarne is the property of Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Lodzkiego and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The preschool teacher’s own literary text for children of a preschool teacher based on her professional experience, published in book form, is a special tool – the impact on the child and the development of the teacher. The main goal of the article was to reach the determinants of the teacher’s motivation for literary activity for children. An individual case study using a literary text and an interview with its author was used. The research technique used is the content analysis of the interview with the author and the analysis of her literary text. The analysis draws on categories related to one of the perspectives of existence in biography – the sensitive narrator. In the text, the teacher perpetuated the needs of a real child. The genesis of the author’s book lies in the therapeutic impact of the teacher on the child and the impact of the text itself. The process of creating a literary text for children combined the teacher’s awareness of her own ability to influence who she is and became a tool for her own development. The preschool teacher’s own book for children is a tool of (self-)creation – a story about the child and herself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to show Foucault’s adaptation and creative development of Nietzsche’s findings on the production of subjects through the interplay of, closely related, knowledge and power. What I am exclusively interested in is the problem of this production, or forming, of individuals. Because both authors have a lot of revealing things to say on it, I would like to analyse their concepts as complementary and, to some extent, mutually explanatory and … corrective. Showing the specific mechanisms of power in modern society allows Foucault to reveal certain aspects of today’s subjectivity that would be difficult to see from the perspective adopted by Nietzsche. His research therefore significantly complements Nietzsche’s account of our becoming what we are. But I also believe that the conclusions which Foucault draws from his creative interpretation of Nietzsche’s revolutionary insights can be corrected, or significantly supplemented, by some ideas that can be found in Nietzsche’s work itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper interprets the critical (and readers') success of Georgi Gospodinov's novel Time Selter, linking it to the potential crisis of contemporary liberal consciousness. Richard Rorty's concept in his book Chance, Irony, and Solidarity (1989) is used as a theoretical approach to defining liberal cultural consciousness. The article analyses the asymmetry in the representation of private self-creation and the construction of collective forms of identity. The main focus is on the workings of memory and the different modes in which the past functions in the construction of private and collective identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we try to show that in the present century, one of the theorists in the field of philosophy of education and training, Richard Rorty, the American neopragmatist philosopher, by criticizing the past philosophical thinking about education and training to the issue of "selfcreation" as the central core of education and training in the era the present emphasizes. According to this philosopher, the purpose of education in schools, universities and educational centers is to help a person to create himself. According to this philosopher, education in educational centers, especially in America, is generally divided into two parts. In the preuniversity stage and schools, a person is taught to socialize, and in the university and academic stage, a person learns to engage in self-creation and to question the image he had in the previous period of pre-university education. To analyze the key concept of self-creation, Rorty uses the updated thoughts of John Dewey, Foucault, Nietzsche and even Heidegger to show that the philosophy of contemporary education in the current century needs to place this concept in the center of its analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to show Foucault’s adaptation and creative development of Nietzsche's findings on the production of subjects through the interplay of, closely related, knowledge and power. What I am exclusively interested in is the problem of this production, or forming, of individuals. Because both authors have a lot of revealing things to say on it, I would like to analyse their concepts as complementary and, to some extent, mutually explanatory and ... corrective. Showing the specific mechanisms of power in modern society allows Foucault to reveal certain aspects of today's subjectivity that would be difficult to see from the perspective adopted by Nietzsche. His research therefore significantly complements Nietzsche's account of our becoming what we are. But I also believe that the conclusions which Foucault draws from his creative interpretation of Nietzsche's revolutionary insights can be corrected, or significantly supplemented, by some ideas that can be found in Nietzsche's work itself.

The text presented is a commentary on Wycinanki [Cutouts] by Wojciech Wrzosek, a historian and methodologist of historical sciences from Poznan. Wycinanki is a collection of excerpts of statements "cut out" from the texts of various authors such as historians (Robin G. Collingwood, who is also an archaeologist, Michel Foucault, Reinhart Koselleck, Jan Pomorski, representing a decidedly scientistic view of history, Hayden White, Jerzy Topolski), historians of science (Ilona Löwy--author of the Polish School of Philosophy of Medicine), philosophers (Arnold Ayer, Étienne Bonnot de Condillac, Hans Georg Gadamer, Martin Heidegger, Jerzy Kmita, Leszek Kolakowski, José Ortega y Gasset, Anna Palubicka, Willlard Van Orman Quine), as well as anthropologizing historians--(Fernand Braudel, Paul Veyne), ethnologists (Bronislaw Malinowski) or finally writers (Franz Kafka, Milan Kundera, Vladimir Nabokov, Marcel Proust). They express, in fact, the thought of the "cutter" about himself and historical thinking. Thinking about the subject matter that is Wrzosek's primary area of interest, namely historical thinking, is the main binding agent for the statements presented. It plays the role of a common language in Cutouts, the role of a kind of Koine, which makes possible the reception of the thoughts of representatives of various disciplines mentioned in the book. Wrzosek's meta-historical reflections on the historical thinking of representatives of various disciplines of the humanities are the reflections aimed at creating a new abstract figure, which is himself--a representative of integrated humanities, which creates in Cutouts--in comparison with the subject language of each fragment--a new metalinguistic quality. This is the AUTOCREATION of the author of Cutouts--the main message of the work, around which the narrative presented in it revolves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This editorial article is a study on the letters numbered as the first and fourth from the collection of engagement correspondence between poet and translator, Felicjan Faleński, and writer, publicist and translator, Maria Trębicka, from 1854–1860, kept in the Jagiellonian Library in Kraków, volume 5780. The set of letters in Polish is composed of 626 pages in 4º format. It comprises 81 letters from Felicjan Medard Faleński (1825–1910) to Maria Trębicka (1821–1896), his wife from 1859, as well as 151 letters from Maria Trębicka to Felicjan Faleński in chronological order (though not free from errors). The article depicts the strategies used by Faleński and Trębicka to establish a bond and build a space of intimacy between the participants of the correspondence in the context of communication and psychological theories. The poet achieves this purpose not only by enchanting the addressee with his erudition and originality (assuming the mask of an eccentric, or Don Quixote) and making references to literary knowledge and outlooks they shared, but also by taking more sophisticated steps. These include the highlighting of a meta-literary character of a letter, or an invitation to transgressing linguistic and social norms (e.g. revealing details of private life, introspecting on his own character, or encouraging to break the world’s conventions together). Trębicka’s letter creates an image of her as an excellent listener, emphatic and well-read, who will allow the interlocutor to show his best side. For both of them, the correspondence space of intimacy builds a ‘second reality’, allowing for a sincere expression of emotions, hopes and fears. Their letters are similar to intimate diaries, in which the necessary contact with the recipient enables both self-knowledge and self-creation.

This article presents a reading of Nalo Hopkinson’s short stories “The Glass Bottle Trick,” “Precious,” and “Greedy Choke Puppy” that considers Caribbean Canadian subjectivity through lenses of (inter)textuality and the material/metaphorical spaces and movements of interruption. It draws from Tiffany Lethabo King’s thinking on shoals to theorize the gathering and accumulation of tales that occurs in Hopkinson’s re/imaginings of “Bluebeard,” “The Kind and the Unkind Girls,” and soucouyant folklore. The article suggests that these shoals interrupt the paths of dominant narratives in ways that force detours to emerge, adapting Rinaldo Walcott’s use of the term to explore the transformative possibilities that occur through the creation of new improvised paths, of otherwise ways of conceptualizing Caribbean Canadian being. Ultimately, it proposes that Hopkinson’s stories acknowledge and yet interrupt colonial narratives of geography, identity, and femininity, providing a framework through which to consider the unstable grounds and the searching detours of Caribbean Canadian subjectivities.

In a famous passage in “The Death of the Author,” Roland Barthes describes the writing process as embodying the disintegration of the author’s personal identity: “Writing is that neutral, composite, oblique space where our subject slips away, the negative where all identity is lost, starting with the very identity of the body writing” (142). This postmodern position is deeply rooted in classical Greek thought, in particular Plato’s harsh critique of poetic inspiration, conceived as “holy madness.” Is this equation valid, however? Does writing necessarily serve as the ultimate act of self-negation? This essay seeks to elucidate Jorge Luis Borges’ and Fernando Pessoa’s alternative views of authorial subjectivity. Borges and Pessoa – arguably two of the greatest writers of the twentieth century – conceive the interplay between writing and self-identity in rather complex fashion. Pessoa’s term “heteronym” relates to the way in which an author’s subjectivity abruptly gives way to an idiosyncratic identity who composes the poem. This recalls the Kabbalistic idea of God’s contraction (tzimzum), the creator preserving his or her passive self-identity while giving birth to other beings from his or her inner void. Discussing Shakespeare and Whitman, Borges proposes that the act of writing is a form of self-creation in which the writer begets a unique narrative identity out of himself or herself that, transfigured, is simultaneously both the same and the other.

The aim of the article is to examine the self-creation process depicted in Leonora Christina Skov's two autobiographical novels (Den, der lever stille [2018], Hvis vi ikke taler om det [2021]). The theory underlying this analysis is that autobiographical acts are in their essence more performative than constative. Following the poststructuralists claims, the study assumes that an autobiographical project consists in (re)creating the author's self rather than reflecting them as a pre-existing individual. Furthermore, self-narration will be considered here as necessary in the process of identity formation just as it is stated in Lacan's identity theory. Such a project of (re)making oneself through self-narration is taken in Skov's novels and its structure consists of three main phases. The first concerns processing the childhood traumas as well as fighting for independence as an individual. The second involves delivering a specific model of oneself through the text production. The third consists of making corrections in the previously made self-portrayal (and thus placing the identity formation in a state of constant motion). The novels' main character's striving to take control over the narrative of her life resonates perfectly with the trends of our time, where identity is often demonstrated as an ongoing process of portraying oneself through various media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author of this article analyses "Trzeci dziennik" (The Third Diary) in terms of the transformations taking place in Jerzy Pilch's creative strategy. The self-creation characteristic of Pilch's writing also includes the most difficult issues: illness, old age and death. Speaking about them in the context of one's own experiences is impossible outside literature. Silence becomes one of the means of communication. "Trzeci dziennik" (The Third Diary) is an attempt to testify to the victory of literature over the impossibility of expression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article raises a series of doubts about Chris Voparil's reading of Rorty, particularly the claim that what he calls "Rorty's Pragmatic Maxim" represents what is at the heart of his philosophical vision. Those doubts are tied together with some scattered thoughts about how Voparil describes the affinities between Rorty and William James in chapter 2 of Reconstructing Pragmatism. Voparil is correct to claim that it is James, more than any other figure in the pragmatist tradition, who shares the most with Rorty in "basic philosophical orientation". Yet I also argue that Voparil fails to correctly puts his finger on what that "basic philosophical orientation" really comes to, due in large part to an excessively political reading of James and Rorty that he relies on. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Hipogrifo: revista de literatura y cultura del siglo de oro is the property of Hipogrifo: revista de literatura y cultura del siglo de oro and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This editorial article is a study on the letters numbered as the first and fourth from the collection of engagement correspondence between poet and translator, Felicjan Faleński, and writer, publicist and translator, Maria Trębicka, from 1854–1860, kept in the Jagiellonian Library in Kraków, volume 5780. The set of letters in Polish is composed of 626 pages in 4º format. It comprises 81 letters from Felicjan Medard Faleński (1825–1910) to Maria Trębicka (1821–1896), his wife from 1859, as well as 151 letters from Maria Trębicka to Felicjan Faleński in chronological order (though not free from errors). The article depicts the strategies used by Faleński and Trębicka to establish a bond and build a space of intimacy between the participants of the correspondence in the context of communication and psychological theories. The poet achieves this purpose not only by enchanting the addressee with his erudition and originality (assuming the mask of an eccentric, or Don Quixote) and making references to literary knowledge and outlooks they shared, but also by taking more sophisticated steps. These include the highlighting of a meta-literary character of a letter, or an invitation to transgressing linguistic and social norms (e.g. revealing details of private life, introspecting on his own character, or encouraging to break the world’s conventions together). Trębicka’s letter creates an image of her as an excellent listener, emphatic and well-read, who will allow the interlocutor to show his best side. For both of them, the correspondence space of intimacy builds a ‘second reality’, allowing for a sincere expression of emotions, hopes and fears. Their letters are similar to intimate diaries, in which the necessary contact with the recipient enables both self-knowledge and self-creation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a famous passage in "The Death of the Author," Roland Barthes describes the writing process as embodying the disintegration of the author's personal identity: "Writing is that neutral, composite, oblique space where our subject slips away, the negative where all identity is lost, starting with the very identity of the body writing" (142).1 This postmodern position is deeply rooted in classical Greek thought, in particular Plato's harsh critique of poetic inspiration, conceived as "holy madness." Is this equation valid, however? Does writing necessarily serve as the ultimate act of self-negation? This essay seeks to elucidate Jorge Luis Borges' and Fernando Pessoa's alternative views of authorial subjectivity. Borges and Pessoa - arguably two of the greatest writers of the twentieth century - conceive the interplay between writing and self-identity in rather complex fashion. Pessoa's term "heteronym" relates to the way in which an author's subjectivity abruptly gives way to an idiosyncratic identity who composes the poem. This recalls the Kabbalistic idea of God's contraction (tzimzum), the creator preserving his or her passive self-identity while giving birth to other beings from his or her inner void. Discussing Shakespeare and Whitman, Borges proposes that the act of writing is a form of self-creation in which the writer begets a unique narrative identity out of himself or herself that, transfigured, is simultaneously both the same and the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the role individual responsibility plays in contemporary political theory. It argues that the standard luck egalitarian view—the view according to which distributive justice is ensured by holding people accountable for their exercise of responsibility in the distribution of benefits and burdens—obscures the more fundamental value of being responsible. The paper, then, introduces an account of 'self-creative responsibility' as an alternative to the standard view and shows how central elements on which this account is founded has been prominently defended in the history of Western political thought but are comparatively neglected in contemporary political theory. Relying on this account, the paper argues that society should hold persons responsible when, and only when, doing so enables them to lead responsible lives, and only on the condition that doing so does not infringe other persons' equivalently valuable ability to lead responsible lives. The account of self-creative responsibility, the paper concludes, plausibly captures the intuitive attraction of holding responsible while respecting the value of being responsible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In some measure, in opposition to the contemporary studies on Chopin's letters emphasising their non-literary character, the aim of this study is to point at the multifaceted literariness of the correspondence of the author of the Revolutionary Etude. One of its crucial aspects would be the intertextual one: Chopin's letters constitute an intriguing community of style, including, above all, the schemes of Fredro-like comedy and Henryk Rzewuski's gawęda szlachecka (nobility tale). The idea of writing in the spirit of disciplined lightness, rigour of formulating thoughts in a casual, colloquial and easy manner, as Wiktor Weintraub put it, affects Chopin's planned skill of self-creation and autothematical procedures, always in similar styles that use humour for the purpose of making thing unusual, or even obscene. The arguments collected in the article force one to withdraw Ryszard Przybylski's conviction about Chopin's epistolography as representing the language "serving life" only outside of literature and literariness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Respectus Philologicus is the property of Vilnius University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In the article the question of constructing an image through epistolography is discussed based on the examples of Józef Pilch -- a bibliophile and historian amateur from Ustroń in Cieszyn Silesia. The volume of his correspondence was published on the occasion of 25th anniversary of his death in 2020. The authoress proves that his portrait is doubly mediated -- firstly, in the letters received by the article's hero, secondly, in the idea of the editor who chose to emphasize the unusual side to Pilch's personality -- and she ruminates over whether the editor's idea was well-founded. She considers relations between self-creation (self-presentation) and authenticity in order to point out that the recipient's authority at last decides about the sender's portrait. Especially when -- like in the case of the analyzed correspondence -- one deals with a relational subject and the dominance of forming and sustaining bonds between people on other functions of epistolography. It turns out to be crucial in the context of Pilch's image, because he sometimes created it by means of other people's phrases and autobiographical patterns, and notably because it was verified by the others -- not only in their answers for letters, but first of all during meetings and direct communication with the sender. Finally the authoress considers several aspects of Pilch's creation of his own archive -- on the basis of which the volume's editor built the image of the self-taught humanist from Ustroń. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is the story of the successful analysis of an experienced analyst being analyzed by an even more experienced analyst, told by means of prose, poetry and drawings. It is replete with attempts to be humorous, dramatic and ironic. It mixes up observations and commentary. Some have called it "transgressive," which is a bit of a surprise to me, because I didn't even realize it was irreverent while I was composing it. I didn't have a conscious intention for it to take the form it has. The desire, content and style flowed from the liberation and cultivation of my natural self-expression freed from painful inhibitions by my analysis. I am very grateful to my analyst Mel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper divides the question of "What is analysis?" into two questions: What are the commonalities among different types of analysis that makes each of them fit under the rubric "psychoanalysis"? This question is answered by the intent of the field, what it aspires to accomplish. The second asks "What is psychoanalysis, anyway?" That is, given this definition, what is the most theoretically cogent and clinically effective way to practice the craft? What, after all, does psychoanalysis do? The second question is answered by reference to the analysis between Bornstein and Frank by using the data they provided to show the importance of both understanding and creation in the analytic process. It is argued that the analysis reported demonstrated the cardinal importance of opening a potential space in analysis for the creation of new psychic capacities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Praxis Filosófica is the property of Universidad del Valle and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article presents and analyses the results of focus group studies conducted with students at an international university in Lithuania, interpreting the results in light of the extant literature on social media’s impact on the creation and performance of the self. The authors reveal a mixed picture whereby the respondents seem to demonstrate an unexpectedly casual and cynical attitude towards social media while, upon closer inspection, still remaining part of social media’s productive exchanges, contributing their data and attention in return for satisfaction. Hence, while by no means rejecting the standard interpretation provided in mainstream literature, the authors are able to present a more complex and nuanced picture of young people’s attitudes towards and interaction with social media and the self-creation affordances thereof, ultimately a close, constitutive, and creative interrelationship between humans and code. Santrauka Šiame straipsnyje pristatomi ir analizuojami rezultatai, gauti iš tikslinių grupių interviu su Lietuvoje esančio tarptautinio universiteto studentais. Šie rezultatai interpretuojami literatūros, aptariančios socialinių medijų poveikį savęs kūrimui ir raiškai, kontekste. Autoriai atskleidžia prieštaringą paveikslą – respondentai demonstruoja netikėtai atsainų ir net cinišką požiūrį į socialines medijas, tačiau, pažvelgus giliau, vis vien išlieka socialinių medijų produkcijos santykių dalimi, atiduodami savo duomenis mainais į pasitenkinimą. Tad, nors ir neatmesdami literatūroje dominuojančio požiūrio, autoriai pristato sudėtingesnį ir labiau niuansuotą požiūrį į jaunų žmonių nuomonę apie socialines medijas bei jų poveikį savęs kūrimui. Tokiu būdu parodomas atviras ir kūrybiškas santykis tarp žmogiškųjų aktorių ir programinio kodo. Reikšminiai žodžiai: savastys, aglomeracija, algoritmas, dėmesys, duomenys, savikūra, socialinės medijos

The article focuses on the self-creation dimension of the autobiographic narrative by Jan Tomasz Gross contained in his book …Long, Long Time Ago, More or Less Last Friday… (an example of talk literature). In his analysis, Kopczyk brings out the biographic models into which the authorprotagonist inscribes his life, paying attention to their relation with the Polish patriotic tradition, and romantic tradition in particular. In the fate of the protagonist, he perceives elements of “a typical romantic biography,” including the motif of mission and pilgrimage (for one’s homeland). The conclusion of the article suggests a relationship between Gross’s self-creation project and his work as a historian revealing the truth about the fates of Polish Jews during World War 2 and afterwards. Inscribing his own biography into “good models” alleviates what Gross perceives as personal consequences of disturbing the social taboo related to Polish people’s participation in the extermination of the Jewish minority.

This article presents and analyses the results of focus group studies conducted with students at an international university in Lithuania, interpreting the results in light of the extant literature on social media's impact on the creation and performance of the self. The authors reveal a mixed picture whereby the respondents seem to demonstrate an unexpectedly casual and cynical attitude towards social media while, upon closer inspection, still remaining part of social media's productive exchanges, contributing their data and attention in return for satisfaction. Hence, while by no means rejecting the standard interpretation provided in mainstream literature, the authors are able to present a more complex and nuanced picture of young people's attitudes towards and interaction with social media and the self-creation affordances thereof, ultimately a close, constitutive, and creative interrelationship between humans and code. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Colloquia is the property of Institute of Lithuanian Literature & Folklore and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This experience report has as its object the training course for young apprenticeship of a qualifying company which is located in Porto Alegre, State of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. The text thinks the teachers and their powers, from movements that inhabit and fill their daily lives. In this way, each one creates for himself/herself what is known as a teacher self-creation, in which he/she takes what is from others as a didactic experimentation, there is no identity in the teaching, there is an identity movement that does not deprive itself of differences. The research seeks to place in the fictional scenes of a reality of the class, to, from these materialities, conceive affections in the scope of teaching. For this it uses the biographic method, and the philosophy of the difference in education. What worked in teaching this class, what works, the elements that make a class that works, a sociography of affections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Autobiografia is the property of University of Szczecin Press / Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Szczecinskiego and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This study describes a unique approach to information transfer affecting the perceived value of this information and related impact on smoker behavior. Data were collected via survey, sampling approximately 120 participants. An online survey tool was used for the survey creation, data collection and monitoring. Another online tool was used by participants to create short animation videos as a means of increasing their engagement with information in an experiential fashion. Study findings included that the process experienced by the test group was influential and facilitated participants' change of mind regarding enrollment in a smoking cessation workshop. This was partly attributable to the IKEA effect. The study provides evidence that a change in habits crucial to improve health and enhance positive lifestyle choices can be stimulated through active engagement with artifact creation in a technology-mediated environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analysed different types of manipulation of human identity and development, the so-called anthropotechnics. This manipulation is described and analysed as material - the creation of soulless robots, as well as spiritual - the creation of fictional and fragmentary identity of John Carver (Howland), which originated between the multiple layers of narrative and under the influence of the constant monitoring by the Atlanteans. The starting point of the analysis is the idea of a human park by Peter Sloterdijk. The human park is a result of anthropotechnics as well as a reference to the zoological park, in which the taming occurs. The purpose of the paper is to seek the answer to the question on the nature of the relation between humans and their creations which Pekić presents in his novel.

This text analyses the self-creation strategy of Jerzy Ficowski, a Polish Romologist, who studied the Roma community in Poland from the end of World War II, publishing his findings in two texts Cyganie polscy (Polish Gypsies; published in 1953 and reprinted, in changed forms and under different titles in 1965, 1985 and 1989) and in a memoir titled Demony cudzego strachu (Demons of others’ fears; published in 1986). This strategy stretches between the poles of the extreme reduction of the speaker’s “I”, limiting itself to the coverage of sources, and the autobiographical narrative which maintains an intimate tone. The subject that emerges is a modernist ethnographer who uses the language of discursive domination and orientalising clichés. This is particularly evident in the passages devoted to the poetic genius of Bronisława Wajs-Papusza, which reproduces the classical concepts of tragedy and the sublime.

“I am aware of the difficulties and I do not get disheartened”: Wanda Dynowska’s Papers about India Collected in Tadeusz Pobożniak’s Archive The aim of the present paper is to discuss the process of self-creation discernible in hitherto unpublished letters written by Wanda Dynowska-Umadevi to Tadeusz Szukiewicz, her literary representative in Poland, acting on her behalf in 1938–1939. Besides discussing the documentary value of the letters, which, for instance, shed some light on Dynowska’s relationship with Tadeusz Pobożniak and her other eminent contemporaries, or contextualize the origin of selected volumes published afterwards with Biblioteka Polsko-Indyjska (Polish-Indian Library), I also try to show that the manner of Dynowska’s self-creation in the personal documents that predominantly concern the efforts to publish her articles intended to popularize India in Poland could have been shaped by the particular addressee of her letters, and thus culminated in Dynowska projecting herself in her own writings.

This text analyses the Homek magazine published by Ruch Społeczeństwa Alternatywnego (RSA) [Alternative Society Movement] - a community of people with neoanarchist views first co-creating the underground Solidarność and later functioning independently. Homek, as an underground newspaper, was initially published bi-weekly, then monthly and later irregularly. This article focuses on, firstly, the RSA community's position on hostile attitudes (including the so-called hate speech) and, secondly, on the use of the term walka [fight] as what we believe to have been a self-creation device. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Autobiografia is the property of University of Szczecin Press / Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Szczecinskiego and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The analysis in the text presented concerns the phenomenon of self-creation and self-perception, referring Paul de Man's contemplations in the Autobiography as De-facement study, as well as early monography by Emmanuel Levinas, From Existence to Existents. Self-creational and autobiographical statement or action reveal moments in which a certain multithreading is exposed, a tear, which becomes a basis for the analysis of works by Chuck Close, Yves Klein, Cy Twombly and Marina Abramović. Selfperception and self-introspection lay at grassroots of thinking and artistic creativity, and in a way also self-mythology of solipsistic ego. By creating a self-portrait the artist duels oneself in a most difficult self-creative clash. Impersonal "I" as another form of revealing "I", it exposes through, among others, vigil and insomnia as a particular state of mind, similar to de Man's "blurring" of the mind described by me. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The SAPE is first and foremost an aesthetic phenomenon of self-creation. The roots of this post-colonial dandyism trace back to the 1910s, when black houseboys started using their European masters' clothes in order to imitate them. In Bleu-Blanc-Rouge (1998), Alain Mabanckou shows that the SAPE is a dialectic mechanism in which the perception of a material surface gives shape to consciousness, the sapeur poses as a pure surface invested by the senses of whoever perceives it. Indeed, the main character observes with admiration his idol's homecoming from Paris, elegantly dressed, with whitened skin, and speaking "[l]e fameux français de Guy de Maupassant" (Mabanckou 62). The SAPE is both an imitation and a reappropriation of a certain colonial imaginary. The young narrator goes to France to pursue his goal and follow the path of his role model. This creation of the self is achieved through a process that presupposes the externalization of desire: to admire a sapeur is to want to be a sapeur. The sapeur is primarily a work of art, he creates a distance from himself, he objectifies himself in order to better contemplate himself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]