EXTENDED DEADLINE - UNTIL 14 OF APRIL

Once again we invite you to join us in reflection on the contemporary literary culture. We understand it as an integral part of the global socio-cultural communication with its characteristic infrastructure and a dynamic system of relations between authors and audiences (to refer once more to the foundational principles of Stefan Żółkiewski and the complementary suggestions by Janusz Sławiński1) This time, we are interested in the question of collaboration, cooperation and participation in texts and discourses functioning in contemporary literary culture. We want to verify how much validity is still to be found in what Jack Stillinger called “the myth of the lone genius ”2, how this conception/formula functions in the context of text-making practices performed together with others: authors, readers, or other agents of the literary field. “Creation is not a herd act, but condemning oneself to solitude”3 – stated Wiesław Myśliwski in an interview. The creative output is, in this approach, the effect of individual labour, and writing itself – a constant overcoming of one’s own limitations, while using only one’s own resources. The creative process takes place without the necessity to engage others (or in fact while explicitly avoiding them), far from all forms of “herd” organization and codependence. The American playwright Tony Kushner situates himself on the opposite pole when he writes: “This fiction that artistic labor happens in isolation, and that artistic accomplishment is exclusively the provenance of individual talents, is politically charged, and in my case at least repudiated by the facts. (…) Had I written these plays without the participation of my collaborators, they would be entirely different – would in fact never have come to be”4. Kushner’s remarks admittedly refer to drama (a specific form, dialogic by definition), but perhaps it is precisely cooperation and collaboration that constitutes broadly understood literature today (as well as contemporary literary culture), especially in virtual space, which facilitates co-authorship? Here, however, another question appears. Even if we assume that the basis for creativity is cooperation, we must decide where its borders are to be set and how they are to function. When we form collectives, are we not at the same time locking ourselves in information bubbles5, closed to other ideologies, worldviews and world pictures?

More questions may be posed: who helps the authors, and who gets in their way, correcting, controlling and censoring them?; how important in contemporary text-making practices are such categories as ghostwriter, sensitivity reader, or a reader invited by the author to participate in creating the work? To what extent are collaborative practices an overt, immanent part of the work, and to what extent intentionally concealed activity, remaining in a sphere not available to readers (viewers) of the pre-text? Finally, what factors influence the final shape of the literary text, or more broadly – text of culture? Our conference is open also to analyses devoted to films, series, music, visual arts and video games…

Topics for reflection may include but are not limited to the following:
1. reconfiguration of the literary field and the communication present within it in the context of civilizational, social, technological, cultural, economic changes;
2. literature and literary culture as a field of creative cooperation or contestation;
3. literary groups, generations and orientations (motivated by artistic considerations or by worldview);
4. cooperation and text-making (including e-text-making), authors’ creations, narrations about creation (autopoiesis);
5. specificity of contemporary literary audience and its participation in creating (reading) literature, sociology of literature;
6. institutions of literary life: literary journals, associations, and other forms of collectivity, literary awards, libraries and their role in creating literary communication;
7. literary culture in contemporary education: the role and the significance of new technologies in teaching literature and language, pupils as recipients and active coauthors;
8. role of artificial intelligence in contemporary writing/art;
9. information/ideology bubbles in contemporary literary communication. Like last year, part of the conference will be a debate devoted to contemporary literary culture and the major themes of the conference.
The publication of post-conference texts is planned in the "Media and Society" journal (currently 40 points).
Online participation in our conference is an option, although we will be delighted if you accept our invitation to visit our beautiful city in person. The conference fee is 250 zł (on-site participation), 120 zł (online participation), to be made after receiving confirmation of acceptance. The languages of the conference are Polish and English.

Please submit presentation proposals (title and abstract) by APRIL 14, 2025, to the email address: kult_liter@ubb.edu.pl. Current practical information as well as the conference programme is to be found here: https://whs.ubb.edu.pl/projekty/wspolczesna-kultura-literacka
We are looking forward to meeting you at the University of Bielsko-Biała campus, situated at the foot of Silesian Beskids – just a step away from the mountains …

1 See S. Żółkiewski, Wiedza o kulturze literackiej. Warszawa 1980, J. Sławiński, Socjologia literatury i poetyka historyczna [in:] Idem, Dzieło. Język. Tradycja, Warsaw 1974, p. 39-77.
2 J. Stillinger, Multiple Authors and the Myth of the Solitary Genius, New York 1994.
3 Tworzenie nie jest aktem stadnym, [in:] W. Myśliwski, W środku jesteśmy baśnią. Mowy i rozmowy, ed. W. Bonowicz, J. Ilg, Kraków 2022 r., p. 205.
4 T. Kushner, Angels in America, Part II: Perestroika. New York 1996, p. 149.
5 E. Parisel, The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You, London 2011.