Entangled gonzo, violence of representation, and mosaic of national fantasies, or about “ukrainian trilogy” by Ziemowit Szczerek

The aim of this paper is an analysis of the three books by the Polish journalist, writer, and traveler Ziemowit Szczerek: “Mordor will come and eat us” (2013), “Tattoo with Trident” (2015), and “Intermarium” (2017). Due to the presence of themes related to Poland’s eastern neighbor the author of the paper conventionally groups them as “Ukrainian trilogy”. In particular, the paper focuses on the genealogical status of Szczerek’s work, highlights the consequences of writing books about the country with a long and complex history of colonial relations with Poland, and considers an attempt to look at the Ukrainian situation from a supra-regional perspective. In the case of “Mordor…” the author of the present paper is interested in the still dubious genealogical status of the novel, which, apart from its purely formal role, is also important for determining the writer’s position in relation to the described country. In the collection of reportages “Tattoo with Trident”, the writer gives up the easy strategy of exoticizing Ukraine and proposes his own strategy of domestication, which consists of three principles: a) rationalizing the attitudes of the people described; b) looking for analogies between the Polish and Ukrainian situation; c) introducing autobiographical threads. “Intermarium” is a literary guide to the countries that make up the pseudo-community, because they have a national idea that separates them. The comparison of dreams concerning power in the style of “Let’s make Poland (Hungary, Slovakia, Macedonia, etc.) great again” reveals the illusiveness of such thinking and the hidden imitative character of these fantasies, just like the slogan itself. Szczerek claims that escape from the West taking place in Central Europe resembles a “run of lemmings”, which will end with either a renewed victory of Western ideas in these lands or their gradual falling into the Russian sphere of infuence.