Abstract
<jats:p>A short history of a certain project. Post-dependency studies: The author’s account The book provides an explanation of the concept of post-dependency studies and traces both its origin and development in Poland. It recalls the establishment of Centre for Research on Post-Dependency Discourses, an inter-institutional research network, which operated from 2009 to 2025 and produced an eleven-volume series of scholarly publications. The author outlines her academic contribution to the formation and expansion of post-dependence criticism within Polish literary studies. The volume comprises texts written by her between 2010 and 2025, and presented at conferences held by the Centre. Subsequent chapters revisit complex and often challenging issues of Polish reality as explored through the lens of post-dependency studies. The book is structured as follows: In lieu of an introduction: A personal reflection on the end of (not so) short a story A few remarks about the “history and theory” of the project I. Nothing is obvious or unproblematic. How did post-dependency studies emerge, and what do they talk about? II. Polish literary inspirations from postcolonial studies. The post-dependency impulse III. Post-dependency features of post-dependency time. The case of contemporary Polish prose Shame and humiliation: The silenced aspects of Polish stories IV. Themes of sacrifice and shame in the narrative of Polish fate. The literary (absence of) stories about shame V. Shame and shamelessness of humiliating/getting humiliated in the times of the Great Change Official and unofficial resistance to adverse circumstances VI. Cut your coat according to your cloth. Industrialization of the Second Polish Republic and its circumstances in the reportage by Melchior Wańkowicz VII. What does the subaltern’s (clothed) body say? Diaristic and evocative accounts of pasigraphy of clothing in Poland’s miserable times (1939-1956): A reconnaissance On minor yet significant characters VIII. Non-inhabitants, non-places. Literary traces of post-war “settlement” of people “from somewhere” IX. Prose of the People’s Republic of Poland on social dilemmas against the backdrop of the PKWN’s agrarian reform X. To remedy the troubles of subalterns… magical realism. How did Polish prose of the 21st century, dealing with the issues of periphery and subordination, draw on the literary ideas of Latin American writers of the 20th century? Between the centre (West) and the periphery (East) XI. Borderland autobiography in Polish conditions: A rough yet fairly representative example XII. After the partitions, after the Polish People’s Republic. Polish trips to the USSR/Russia An unobvious gloss on… post-dependency studies XIII. Hospitality in miserable times. Challenge, trap, ambiguity</jats:p>