Ciało huty

The Body of the Steelworks is an ambitious novel about the materiality of modernity. The author approaches this materiality from the perspectives of production, ecology and gender, and sets her work in a specific context: the action starts in the 1970s, when the construction of the Katowice Steelworks, a huge metallurgical plant in southern Poland, begins.

Cieplak narrates her industrial epic from the point of view of two generations. The first took part in the construction and starting up of the factory, while members of the second work far away from the steelworks. What unites them is their refusal to agree to the belittling of the role of the body in modern history. Those of the older generation felt they were participating in a historic advancement of their country and society. They believed that industrialisation would liberate matter, transforming destruction into energy. Those of the younger generation judge the steelworks not in terms of productivity but in terms of social value. They look to the body of the steelworks for ideas to avoid the inequalities of the past. One dark page in the history of the plant was the forcing of women into sex and into keeping the rapes secret – but the daughters of those female factory workers belong to a culture where instances of harassment are reported immediately. Human violence against the ecosystem also ceases to be invisible. In other words, the second generation is looking for social and ecological justice – but it’s not able to connect individual stories into a new whole.

The Body of the Steelworks argues that if the new generation wants to make the world differently, it has to tell the story of modernisation anew.