Czy w Strachopolis Doroty Wieczorek straszy?

Slany, Katarzyna

Czy w Strachopolis Doroty Wieczorek straszy?

Abstract

The article Are There Monsters in Dorota Wieczorek’s Strachopolis? analyzes selected elements of the topos of fear in the aponymous IBBY-awarded children’s novel. The author is interested in the contemporary version of the topoi of fear embedded in the landscape of globalized existence affected by the phenomenon of supermarketization and consumerism. In the article, the topic of fear highlighted by Wieczorek, is reinterpreted through the prism of a number of sociological theories, notably, Marc Augé’s concept of nonplaces, Zygmunt Bauman’s postmodern construct of “liquid life”, and Jeffrey J. Cohen’s cultural theory of monster. In Wieczorek’s novel, “monster” is a social metaphor for the excluded whom Bauman has called homo sacer. Their societal degradation in the fairy-tale futuristic metropolis is conditioned upon the post-panopticon power, exercised as persecution of the “Other’s” ethnic and gender identity. The excluded are thus outsiders, if not the discarded “social pariahs”. Besides presenting the sociological and cultural theme of the monstrum, the article further discusses the strategy of carnivalization put forward by Bachtin. This shift leads to the victory of the Others-Monsters as subjects within the liquid modernity. It makes the novel intriguing both on the textual and didactic plane.