Homely yet dissonant. Cultural identity in Leopold Buczkowski’s early novels

Abstract

The article examines the notion of cultural identity in the fi rst three novels by Leopold Buczkowski:Wertepy, Czarny potok (Black Torrent, MiT 1969) and Dorycki krużganek. Although Buczkowski’swriting possesses a strong subversive potential, its disruptiveness is predominantly studiedthrough poetics or historiosophical refl ection. In this article anthropology serves as the main focalpoint to extricate from the setting of the novels a set of certain qualities that disturb the representationalunambiguity of certain topoi, such as national identity or borderland identity. These qualitiesconvey an image of a specifi c cultural formation – Galicia, however, this formation is a by-productof the locality and only constituted via contact with, and opposition to, the hegemonic discourse.Cultural relations defi ne the space of internal familiarity, while remaining „unfamiliar” to an externalobserver, a dissonance in the cultural landscape.