Double Narrative Temporality of the Postmodern Reportage. Tochman - Szczygieł - Hugo-Bader and the Absolute Present

Mateusz Zimnoch

The aim of herein paper is to point out a narratology as an inspiring source of inspiration for studies on the literary reportage. Following the most important debates of last decades—especially those on philosophy of historical writing—it tries to prove that studies on narrative may have a great impact on the nonfiction studies despite the fact that rarely have they been practiced together so far. Even more, because its critics’ observations (for example, Frank Ankersmit’s or Dominick LaCapra’s) however they may be adequate toward the historical writing they’re not so obvious in terms of literary journalism. The authorial concept of the double temporality basing on the Dasein onthology by Martin Heidegger distinguishes two fundamental levels of the text: 1) narrative of perception and 2) narrative of reconfiguration. The first one focuses on the narrative character of human cognition whilst the second one emphasizes the ability to bind and shape the ready-made narratives (in Hayden White’s terms). It is as important to contrast the narrator with a character acting within a text which solves the problem of differentiation between the referential character of empirical cognition and witness-mediated cognition, which was not as strongly divided among previous studies. All of those levels: 1) narrative perception vs. narrative reconfiguration and 2) empirical cognition vs. witness-mediated cognition are clearly visible, inter alia, among literary journalism by Wojciech Tochman. Two of his reportages: "Bóg zapłać" ("God bless you") and "Wściekły pies" ("Rabid dog"), make an expressive narrative opposition that is a great textual basis for proving the adequacy of the proposed methodological solutions. Arrangements assembled among the foregoing view, apart from picturing the literary specificity of the reportage, make an interesting starting point for cultural studies on that very genre. Their main goal, however, is to prove that analyses based on the double temporality concept of narrative may be inspiring and the narratology itself—appreciated mostly among studies on historical writing by now—is equally relevant for the literary journalism studies.