Anthropology of documentation. Reporting strategies and their semantic bases

elective courses

Seminar with elements of a lecture

Teaching methods applied: reading and critical analysis of the text, reading and critical analysis of the image, discussion

The course is devoted to the analysis of the relationship between the culture of extreme individualism (represented by the figure of the minimal self as described by the American historian and critic of capitalism Ch. Lasch) and typologies of contemporary reportage. During the course we will look at several reporter strategies. The criterion for categorizing these strategies will be derived from the degree, nature and purposefulness with which the reporter's writing self fills the storyline of the reportage with their own identity (physical, cultural, intellectual, emotional). We will try to determine which strategy is the most narcissistic. Will it be the strategy of undercover reportage, for example, in the edition of John Howard Griffin, who in 1959 decided to undergo strong irradiation in order to dye his skin a very dark color, and then traveled to the southern United States to see what the condition of black people in America was really like, after which he wrote his famous book Black Like Me? Or perhaps the greater narcissist is the reporter writing contemporaneously, who, in relation to events, phenomena and people distant in time, uses categorization keys absent from the historical context being described, that is, the kind of reporter who uses history to shape discursive strategies in the present and towards the future, who ostensibly explicates the past, but in reality merely uses the past as a historical mask? Or perhaps, finally, the greatest narcissist will be the reporter who, as Paweł Zajas would say, uses the non-fiction passport to create a story with elements of fiction and, by means of a "reporter's pact," smuggles into the genre of reportage - let's put it euphemistically - the fruits of his own invention, that is, their vision of reality par excellence? If Christopher Lasch is right when he states that the culture of late capitalism is a culture of overexposure of the self, a culture of narcissism precisely, if we add to our considerations the various updates of Lasch's concepts, what results will come from the experiment of applying them to the genre of reportage? Will we collectively succeed in building a tool with which to examine the degree of narcissism of the reporter? Will we come to the conclusion that in the "culture of digital narcissism" (Magdalena Szpunar), even a genre of reportage that was created to depict real events and their accompanying circumstances, inevitably becomes the reportage of a narcissist?

G. Agamben, Homo sacer. Suwerenna władza i nagie życie, przeł. Mateusz Salwa, Warszawa 2008.R. Bonazzi, Reluctant Activist. The Spiritual Life and Art of John Howard Griffin, Fort Worth 2018.G. Didi-Huberman, Invention of Hysteria. Charcot and the Photographic Iconography of the Salpetriere, przekł. Alisa Hartz, Londyn 2003.Ch. Lasch, Kultua narcyzmu, Warszawa 2015.Ch. Lasch, The Minimal Self: Psychic Survival in Troubled Times, New York-London 1984.C. Ginzburg, Morelli, Freud and Sherlock Holmes: Clues and Scientific Methods, “History Workshop”, No. 9 (1980), s. 5-36.C. Ginzburg, Ser i robaki : wizja świata pewnego młynarza z XVI w., Warszawa 1989. C. Ginzburg, Clues, myths, and the historical method, Baltimore 2013.J. H. Griffin, Scattered Shadows. A Memoir of Blindness and Vision, Maryknoll (NY) 2004.J. H. Griffin, Czarny jak ja, Warszawa 2016. J. Kuciel-Frydryszak, Chłopki, Warszawa 2023. A. Meek, Biopolitical Media Catastrophe, Immunity and Bare Life, New York 2017. M. Piechota, O tym, którym trudniej. Reportaże literackie Lidii Ostałowskiej, „Naukowy Przegląd Dziennikarski”, nr 4/2014. A. Sekula, O wynalezieniu znaczenia fotografii [w tegoż:] Społeczne użycia fotografii (antologia tekstów pod redakcją Karoliny Lewandowskiej), przekł. Krzysztof Pijarski, Warszawa 2010.R. Sennett, The Fall of Public Man, New York-London 1992.S. Steensen, Subjectivity as a Journalistic Ideal [w:] Putting a Face on It: Individual Exposure and Subjectivity in Journalism, B. Kjos Fonn, N. Hyde-Clark (pod red.), Oslo 2017 (s.25-47).M. Szpunar, Kultura cyfrowego narcyzmu, Kraków 2016. G. Walraff, Trzynaście niepożądanych reportaży, Poznań 1973.G. Walraff, Na samym dnie, Poznań 1988.P. Zajas, Jak świat prawdziwy stał się bajką: o literaturze niefikcjonalnej, Poznań 2011.

Knowledge | The graduate knows and understands:

WG_01 - to the extent necessary for existing paradigms to be revised - a worldwide body of work, covering theoretical foundations as well as general and selected specific issues - relevant to a particular discipline

within the social sciences

WG_02 - the main development trends in the disciplines of the social sciences in which the education is provided

WG_03 - scientific research methodology in the field of the social sciences

WK_01 - fundamental dilemmas of modern civilisation from the perspective of the social sciences

Skills | The graduate is able to:

UK_05 - speaking a foreign language at B2 level of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages using the professional terminology specific to the discipline within the social sciences, to the extent enabling participation in an international scientific and professional environment

Social competences | The graduate is ready to

KO_01 - fulfilling the social obligations of researchers and creators

KO_02 - fulfilling social obligations and taking actions in the public interest, in particular in initiating actions in the public interest

KO_03 - think and acting in an entrepreneurial manner

Description of requirements related to participation in classes, including the

permitted number of explained absences: reading of the texts assigned for a given class; acceptable number of absences: 1.

Principles for passing the classes and the subject (including resit session): oral evaluation consisting of the preparation of an analysis of a selected reportage discussed during classes (corrective evaluation according to the same rules)

Methods for the verification of learning outcomes: oral exam

Evaluation criteria: Knowledge of theoretical texts, the ability to apply them to the analysis of the object of study, consistency and adequacy of argumentation

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