Form and Instability: Eastern Europe, Literature, and Post-Imperial Difference busies itself with the work of accounting for this discrepancy between ostensible historical change and the persistence of anachronistic ways of thinking, a discrepancy that remains unaddressed and eludes attention; and it goes on to propose that literature—not simply as an archive of representations or a source of cultural capital but as a critical perspective in its own right—offers a way to apprehend and to redress this problem.Historical situations such as the post-1989 transitions to capitalism and liberal democracy, as well as the “Eastern” enlargement of the E.U., not only entail empirical change; they also call for and provoke intense renegotiations of cultural values and analytical concepts. Through rhetoric, reading, and translation—terms central to this book—literature will be seen to expedite and redirect such re-arrangements. It will be shown to destabilize discursively fixed categories without imposing, in turn, its own fixity.

Located at the intersection of comparative literature, area studies, and literary theory, this interdisciplinary study has a twofold commitment: to Eastern Europe on the one hand and to literature on the other. It aims to intervene in the way we conceive of Eastern Europe by seeking to develop a more equitable way of thinking, one that avoids subordinating it to Eurocentric narratives of progress. At the same time, it marshals literature as both object and method of this rethinking, in order to extend existing conceptions of the usefulness and of the proper organization of literary studies. The three terms in the title of this book mark a passage—via literature—from “Eastern Europe” as an inadequate and obsolescent category to “post-imperial difference” as a more accurate, if provisional, account of the region. By way of original readings of particular texts, and by attending to literature as a critical

"Form and Instability is a remarkable new study of “Eastern European” culture by a brilliant  scholar. Putting the regional identity in question, Anita Starosta shows how its literature abets on our conception of Europe itself. Equally adept at reading works of literature, political events, critical theory, and philosophy, Starosta discusses works from across the entire region, with a special emphasis on a range of Polish writers spanning the twentieth century, from Sienkiewicz and Conrad to Gombrowicz, Kapuscinski, and Tischner. A major contribution to comparative literature and modern European studies." —Aamir R. Mufti, Professor of Comparative Literature at UCLA

“Anita Starosta’s compelling book shows how the strongest literature slips through and corrodes the bins (historical periods, political geography) that have conveniently kept Eastern Europe in its place. She turns Conrad, Gombrowicz, and the amazing Józef Tischner to face us head-on, inconveniently. Their rhetoric, ‘a one addressing a one,’ destabilizes our literary formations.” —Dudley Andrew, Comparative Literature, Yale University

"Starosta focuses on literature by 20th-century Polish authors, but the questions she poses extend beyond literary studies. As exquisite as her insights into fictions [are]... her call to readers is to meditate on how form... ensnares; one craves its protection yet also longs to overthrow it in the belief that something true and great will be set free... Scholars and teachers of all sorts of 'post' literatures should take heed, Starosta warns convincingly. Summing up: Recommended: Graduate students, researchers, faculty." —CHOICE 

"In her timely, thought-provoking book, Anita Starosta sets out to challenge the dominant paradigms of knowledge production about and around Eastern Europe. Deftly combining a bold and sophisticated theoretical argument with careful close readings... Starosta engages with... projects that seek to understand post-imperial Eastern Europe as an existential condition in which 'the very distinctions between the abstract and the tangible undergo reformulation.' I would argue that Starosta's book itself is an outstanding example of such a productive intellectual exploration." 
—Slavic and East European Journal