Contemporary Polish literary reportage towards otherness

Knowledge of Otherness, Somebody Different, the own–alien relation, and multicultural interface processes are important aspects often addressed by all domains of humanities of the last century. However, researchers exploring this field very seldom seem to refer to literary reportage, while the category of “Otherness” has a key meaning for this genre. The exception is Przemysław Czapliński’s book Poruszona mapa [Moved map], in which the author describes different narrations about Others and uses also literary journalism samples to prove his thesis. What I believe to be the flaw of this book and what inspired me to present my point of view is the wrong understanding of the essence of literary reportage. In Czapliński’s divagations, one can find three essential features of writing about Otherness, which he defines as negative while for me they are basic and express the value of literary journalism. These three elements are: knowledge, distance and value. They are the reporters’ aim and they determine the skill which makes it possible to show selected parts of the world in its complexity so we can understand the intricate aspects of today’s reality and the mechanisms ruling the world surrounding us