The contributions in this volume examine literary and other texts as well as cultural and political discourses in relation to issues of identity formation and dis-formation, of self and society and of the socially local within the global. All these issues come into play through the exploration of the fantasmatic space of mutual mis-recognition and mythmaking between coloniser and colonised, between 'Africa' and 'Europe'.

The book (Mis)translation and (Mis)interpretation: Polish Literature in the Context of Cross-Cultural Communication is devoted to various aspects of the presence of Polish literature and culture in cross-cultural and international contexts. The chapters discuss the problems of the translation (and mistranslation), as well as the interpretation (and misinterpretation) of literary texts, cultural facts and even social interactions. Even though no specific literary or cultural theory is explicitly discussed in the book, each of the central issues raised in particular chapters implicitly refers to a significant theoretical problem. The first section of the book is devoted to five examples of English translations of Polish poetry and Polish translations of English poetry. The second section of the book is titled Polish Culture in European and American Contexts. The first three chapters discuss the issue of « hate speech and cultural misunderstandings in the context of Reformation polemics, and the problem of pattern poetry. The next five chapters deal with various issues of cross-cultural communication between Poland and America. All case studies discussed in the book exemplify one general problem: how to communicate effectively despite linguistic, cultural and religious differences and how to understand and translate the cultural heritage of the past to contemporary readers.

Disciplining the New Pragmatism is both a tribute and a corrective to the neopragmatist perspective in American literary studies. It sets out to give a detailed account of the contemporary pragmatists' views, but it also goes beyond those views to tender a new vision of the discipline of literary studies and to forge a new rhetoric, largely crafted out of tropes borrowed from their writings, which could be of service to literary scholars. Its primary objective is to argue that, despite their claims to the contrary, Richard Rorty, Walter Benn Michaels, Stanley Fish and the other latter-day antifoundationalists and neopragmatists make a difference to what is going on in the literature department. Consequently, the author argues that the neopragmatist positition may be made foar more effective and resonant than the neopragmatists themselves recognise in their writings. To this end, he offers his own category of a neosophistic pragmatism, which serves as an example of what may result from bringing the New Pragmatist insights into a sharper disciplinary focus.