Queer Rebels is a study of gay narrative writings published in Spain at the turn of the 20th century. The book scrutinises the ways in which the literary production of contemporary Spanish gay authors – José Luis de Juan, Luis G. Martín, Juan Gil-Albert, Juan Goytisolo, Eduardo Mendicutti, Luis Antonio de Villena and �lvaro Pombo – engages with homophobic and homophile discourses, as well as with the vernacular and international literary legacy. The first part revolves around the metaphor of a rebellious scribe who queers literary tradition by clandestinely weaving changes into copies of the books he makes. This subversive writing act, named ‘Mazuf’s gesture’ after the protagonist of José Luis de Juan’s This Breathing World (1999), is examined in four highly intertextual works by other writers. The second part of the book explores Luis Antonio de Villena and �lvaro Pombo, who in their different ways seek to coin their own definitions of homosexual experience in opposition both to the homophobic discourses of the past and to the homonormative regimes of the commercialised and trivialised gay culture of today. In their novels, ‘Mazuf’s gesture’ involves playing a sophisticated queer game with readers and their expectations.

Queer Rebels is a study of gay narrative writings published in Spain at the turn of the 20th century. The book scrutinises the ways in which the literary production of contemporary Spanish gay authors - Jose Luis de Juan, Luis G. Martin, Juan Gil-Albert, Juan Goytisolo, Eduardo Mendicutti, Luis Antonio de Villena and Alvaro Pombo - engages with homophobic and homophile discourses, as well as with the vernacular and international literary legacy. The first part revolves around the metaphor of a rebellious scribe who queers literary tradition by clandestinely weaving changes into copies of the books he makes. This subversive writing act, named 'Mazuf's gesture' after the protagonist of Jose Luis de Juan's This Breathing World (1999), is examined in four highly intertextual works by other writers. The second part of the book explores Luis Antonio de Villena and Alvaro Pombo, who in their different ways seek to coin their own definitions of homosexual experience in opposition both to the homophobic discourses of the past and to the homonormative regimes of the commercialised and trivialised gay culture of today. In their novels, 'Mazuf's gesture' involves playing a sophisticated queer game with readers and their expectations.

The author traces the resurgence of Don Quixote in the contemporary humanities. In the aftermath of World War II, the figure underwent the most radical re-interpretation since Romanticism. These changes speak volumes about our culture. Drawing on the theoretical framework of the specifically Polish variety of cultural studies, this book makes Don Quixote a patron of cultural reflection. With culture conceptualised as performative, Quixotism is "the cultivation of the soul," an axiotic space which forms human ways of life across epochs. In this way, the history of culture can be re-written as a history of values frenzy, bibliomania or evil.

Prestige examines whether social prestige is still an important axis of the stratification hierarchy. It appears that prestige has lost some of the close connection with social position it had in estates societies. Prestige distribution patterns have changed and individualized gradations emerged, while agreement in the occupational prestige in Poland is lower than in the West and still declining. However, low consensus in occupational prestige rankings does not entail a disintegration of respect norms as such: personal prestige is still a relevant factor in designing life strategies and people do care about respect. This volume presents empirical evidence that all social classes recognize the motivational, integrative and satisfying functions of prestige.

The book addresses the relationship between the literary representations of North Greenland and the Inughuit people in Knud Rasmussen's expedition accounts The New People and My Travel Diary and the historical process of Danish colonization of North Greenland. The aim of reading both works is to demonstrate the ambivalence in representing North Greenland and the Inughuit, and, through this, to prove the existence of common mechanisms and cultural practices connected to mapping of the Other in a situation of asymmetric power relations. Applying a textual approach founded on colonial discourse analysis, the reading proves that literary mappings of geography and identity can never be stable, as they are in the state of constant transformation, perpetually recontextualized and reinvented.

Edmond Jabes was one of the most intriguing Jewish thinkers of the 20th century - a poet for the public and a Kabbalist for those who read his work more closely. This book turns his writings into a ground-breaking philosophical achievement: thinking which is manifestly indebted to the Kabbalah, but in the post-religious and post-Shoah world. Loss, exile, negativity, God's absence, writing and Jewishness are the main signposts of the negative ontology which this book offers as an interpretation of Jabes' work. On the basis of it, the book examines the nature of the miraculous encounter between Judaism and philosophy which occurred in the 20th century. Modern Jewish philosophy is a re-constructed tradition which adapts the intellectual and spiritual legacy of Judaism to answer purely modern questions.

This book discusses the viability of "importing" the middle class to Poland. The 1990s were a step forward in the formation of the Polish middle class and, systematically yet barely discernible in daily life, the process was triggered by an increase in consumption and affluence. However, the changes of attitudes, life goals and value systems distinct for the Western middle class are ambiguous and rather slow in Poland. They ensue mainly from the changes in new social structures and the behavioral rationality of consumers. It appears that the middle class in Poland will not emerge as an exact copy of the original middle class - rather, it will be its contextually modified variant, affected by Polish cultural traditions.