Marzena Kubisz Knihy

Focusing on the unique phenomenon of Victorian children's vegetarianism, this book explores its literary and cultural representations. It serves as a comprehensive resource for researchers interested in vegetarianism, human-animal relations, childhood studies, children's literature, periodical studies, and Victorian studies, offering valuable insights into how these themes intersected during the Victorian era.

Motivated by a desire to reflect critically on the ways in which speeds, both high and low, and their representations affect the construction, deconstruction and reconstruction of meanings around particular cultural texts, images and practices, Resistance in the Deceleration Lane uses the velocentric perspective to examine the phenomenon of «slow living» and its rhetoric. The book analyzes cultural practices which are inspired by the conviction that the increased speed of everyday life cannot be accepted unquestioningly. It portrays slowness as a strategy of contestation and resistance on one hand, and on the other it highlights the process of the gradual commercialization of the slow logo and suggests the rise of a post-slow stage in the history of speed.

The book is a part of growing literature on human embodiment and attempts to answer the question of the role of the body in the construction of identity in consumer culture. The book examines two related spheres: the centrality and marginality of cultural practices. The phenomena discussed include cosmetic surgery, Modern Primitivism, photographs by Matuschka and projects by French multimedia artist Orlan. The aim of the book is to postulate that in the present conditions of the fragmentation and disintegration of subjectivity, the body may be employed in a strategy of identification. Practices of body modification, performed both in the centre and in the margins of culture, reveal the ways in which identity is constructed, experienced and negotiated. By presenting the body as a site for the construction of identity, the study adds to the ongoing discussion about the status of individual identity and the identity of western culture.