Diffractive reading (and writing) : on Aleksandra Ubertowska’s book Historie biotyczne : pomiędzy estetyką a geotraumą

The article is a review of Aleksandra Ubertowska’s book Biotic Stories. Between aesthetics and geotrauma. The author presents the most important methodological assumptions and inspirations, especially the theories of the fourth wave of ecocriticism: ecomaterialism, biosemiotics and ecodeconstructionism, which propose to perceive nature as a text. The effect of these assumptions is also a specific function of metaphors, that is, the deconstruction of the discourse-matter, text-nature opposition through their metaphorical, sympoetic interweaving. In this strategy, one can recognize the method of diffraction reading, which excludes the position of an external, distanced observer, using a neutral, transparent language and aiming at entangling separate orders. The author also places Ubertowska’s project on the map of contemporary Polish ecocriticism.