Między botaniką a poetyką (relacji)

Strategie humanistyki afirmatywnej w Patykach, badylach Urszuli Zajączkowskiej

Abstract

BETWEEN BOTANY AND THE POETICS OF RELATION: AFFIRMATIVE HUMANITIES STRATEGIES IN URSZULA ZAJĄCZKOWSKA’S PATYKI, BADYLE

This article examines Urszula Zajączkowska’s essay collection Patyki, badyle through the lens of affirmative humanities and plant studies. It argues that Zajączkowska’s writing exemplifies a relational form of eco-narrative situated between botany and poetics, in which scientific knowledge does not function as a tool of domination over nature but as a medium for recognizing non-human agency. The analysis focuses on several key dimensions of the text: the hybrid construction of the narrative subject as both botanist and poet, the practice of phytography understood as “reading” plant anatomy, strategies of vitalization, and the project of socalled “rescue history.” Particular attention is given to the affirmative treatment of movement, decay, and death as constitutive life processes, as well as to the ethical significance of linguistic gestures such as restoring forgotten plant names. The article introduces the author’s original concept of worldattentive literature, understood as a form of engaged writing grounded in attentiveness, relationality, and the idea of the “tender narrator.” From this perspective, Patyki, badyle emerges as an example of literature that not only diagnoses the ecological crisis of the Anthropocene but also proposes affirmative models of multispecies coexistence.