The brain in the humanities. The neural trends in the work of Stanislaw Przybyszewski

Abstract

Starting from a reflection about differences between the humanities and science, the author indicates the possibility of expanding the neuroscience on neurological literature criticism, based on the cultural theory of culture and concepts of embodied mind. She applies this new strategy to the works of Stanislaw Przybyszewski, expanding its traditional fields of references such as psychoanalysis, psychopathology or mystical Gnostic symbolism. She analyzes letters, essays and poems from the Berlin period, referring to journalism at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth century („Prawda”, „Zdroj”). She is interested mainly in imaginary space and tectonics of thinking, distinguished in the work, she distinguished the analyzed fragments in terms of the reference to „neurological styling” (an electric machine ganglia, synthetic knot, thread) and „neurological copies”. Finally, the writer’s reflections on the functioning of the brain, leads the author to the conclusion about the new image of the subject and domination of brain metaphors in culture (rhizome).