Adam Szymanski – författare

Exploring how art cinema cultivates existential health through the films of Olivier Assayas This book proposes that cinephilia can facilitate existential health, which makes palpable the potential for subjectivity to be recomposed through meaningful encounters with cinema. Cinephilia and the Adventure for Existential Health: Recomposing Subjectivity at the Cinema draws on the ethos of psychoanalyst Fé lix Guattari and thinks with select films from director Olivier Assayas - including Clouds of Sils Maria and Personal Shopper - to theorize how the cinema can be invested with therapeutic value. Adam Szymanski engages the history of psychoanalytic film theory, excavates its long-standing concern with the production of spectatorial subjectivity, and challenges pathologizing understandings of cinema spectatorship couched in identification, fetishism, and voyeurism. By embracing the indeterminacy of the cinematic experience and the adventurous disposition of cinephilia, the book allies itself to the pursuit of collective health, challenging the logic of medical power in favor of life's indeterminate quality.

This book analyses and reveals evidence of changing patterns and processes of democratic or autocratic direction at subnational levels (provinces and cities) along with their relationship to those at central level.With Poland as a case study, the book examines the interrelationship between national and lower territorial levels and identifies and explains reasons for emerging democratic deficit. It argues that decentralisation processes constitute an opportunity for subnational authorities to become more democratic but also more autocratic, as they may enhance the divergence in democracy levels between different territorial tiers of governance.This book is of key interest to students and scholars of democratisation studies, local and regional politics, Central and East European politics, local government and policymaking.The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 International license.

The hegemonic meaning of depression as a universal mental illness embodied by an individualized subject is propped up by psychiatry's clinical gaze. Cinemas of Therapeutic Activism turns to the work of contemporary filmmakers who express a shared concern for mental health under global capitalism to explore how else depression can be perceived. In taking their critical visions as intercessors for thought, Adam Szymanski proposes a thoroughly relational understanding of depression attentive to eventful, collective and contingent qualities of subjectivity. What emerges is a melancholy aesthetics attuned to the existential contours and political stakes of health.,Cinemas of Therapeutic Activism adventurously builds affinities across the lines of national, linguistic and cultural difference. The films of Angela Schanelec, Kelly Reichardt, Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Kanakan Balintagos are grouped together for the first time, constituting a polystylistic common front of artist-physicians who live, work, and create on the belief that life can be more liveable. Cinemas of Therapeutic Activism offers a novel conception of political aesthetics in the discipline of film studies which takes mental health into consideration. It will be the first to situate Fourth Cinema (the category of global Indigenous feature filmmaking) within the landscape of global art cinema. The book will also creates a bridge between the contemporary neurodiversity movement and the historical sensibility of anti-psychiatry which was important for French theory in the 1970s.

According to various independent research institutions Poland is now seen as the fastest destabilizing democracy. After 1989, Poland was often presented in the international public discourse as an example of the successful political and economic transition away from Communism. However, since 2015, Poland has been associated with terminologies not previously linked with this country: “nationalism”, “populism” or “breaking rule of law”. The authors of the book analyze the reasons for democratic backsliding in Poland in a more comprehensive and systematic manner. Special attention is paid to political polarization, which is a substantial threat to democracy. This volume shows the de-democratization of Poland from various perspectives, cultural and historical, political institutions, party politics, and media. Can the liberal model of of democracy remain intact with Poland, and what role does the EU play in all of this?. The book should be an required reading not only for scholars and students studying democratic decline, but also for everybody who wants to understand what is happening currently in Poland.

At the beginning of the 21st century, there are an increasing number of states in which elections do not meet the standards of liberal democracy due to electoral malpractices. The analysis of the malpractices at all stages of the electoral cycle and their impact on the political regime is the primary objective of this book. The research focuses on Turkey. However, the authors move one step further and try to present the Turkish case from a comparative perspective. They analyse selected countries in Central Europe, the Balkans and Latin America. They investigate an interesting process of mutual reinforcement of increasingly serious electoral malpractices and change in/of the political regime. It leads to the development of ‘borderline regimes’ balancing between two types of political regimes.