Kręgi obcości w Extensie Jacka Dukaja

When reading Extensa (2002) by Jacek Dukaj and acquainting with its communicational and artistic implications, the reader becomes aware of relativization of otherness, as a result of the very essence of what the Other is. Thus Extensa is not exactly a story of otherness, but from the perspective of literary communication it is a story which exists outside of agreed taxonomy and is foreign to the clear, contemporary division into fantasy and mainstream. This means that Dukaj’s Extensa both presents the otherness of the novel (towards the reader’s expectations), as well as it is a story about otherness itself. Entangled in the strangeness of the novel, in the light of its line of communication and previous interpretational schema – created on the basis of previously read science-fiction novels – the reader is bound to feel alienated due to the difference between what is anticipated and what is presented. Paradoxically, the otherness both of the novel (in the context of the genre’s tradition and of the line of communication in which it functions) and its fictional world allows redefinition of the cognising subject who must manage his own, unpredictable “otherness.” This is because the Other remains a symbol of all that undergoes change. Thus, the attitude towards the Other becomes a challenge that requires a confrontation with our own self and, at the same time, it is an “empathy exercise” which rejects mutual dependencies of empathy and stereotypisation, typical for modern literature.