„Szczere słowo o sobie”. Twórczość Waldemara Bawołka w świetle tradycji cynickiej

Abstract

“An Honest Word About Himself.” The Work of Waldemar Bawołek in the Light of the Cynic Tradition The article is an attempt to read the works of Waldemar Bawołek in the light of the cynic matrix of an other life, as interpreted in the texts of Michel Foucault and Peter Sloterdijk. The work of Bawołek is treated as an existential project in line with the cynic tradition of spiritual exercises, in which the key role is played by the ideal of honesty and the principles of shamelessness, poverty, vigilance and sovereignty that serve its implementation. In Foucault’s thought, this tradition was presented as a kind of wandering idea whose separate forms are, among others, Christian ascetic patterns, the Nietzschean concept of the superman, or the modernist paradigm of authenticity. The category of the subject’s sincerity in Bawołek’s work is presented with reference to the theoretical model of the sylleptic self, which in the final part of the article is confronted with the main features of the New Sincerity literary trend.