Egzotyczna flora w śląskim mieście. Wałbrzyska palmiarnia w powieściach Joanny Bator jako heterotopia

Abstract

Space plays an important role in Joanna Bator’s works. The writer evokes Wałbrzych as a palimpsest and heterotopic city the images of which emphasize its structural non-homogeneity -spatial, historical, cultural and sociological oppositions. These characteristics accumulate in one of its components - the palm house which assumes the role ofsynecdoche -pars pro toto in the image ofthe city-text. Despite the use of traditional literary strategies, the image of the palm house surprises with shimmer accompanying details, the absence ofthe outside and diversity ofthe inside, the contradiction between persistence and destruction, dispersion and simultaneity which determine the contemporary world. The palm house is a component of an atropic, constantly changing world characterised by ambiguity. It is an example ofheterotopia ofdeviation. Whereas Foucault perceived space as the source of anxiety of our times, Bator turns it into a trail of domestic contemporary culture.