Contemporary utopian dreams: contemplating Staniewski's Golden Ass

This article contemplates Wodzimierz Staniewski's Metamorphoses as an adaptation of The Golden Ass of Apuleius. As Apuleius's text deals with a period of social and religious transition in the Roman Empire, Staniewski felt its themes were topical for modern-day Poland, where people have suffered a tragic estrangement from the ground of their being. His primary aim is to utilize the figure of the goddess Isis as a mode of establishing a consistent identity for the subject vis--vis the collective unconscious in relation to the protagonist's double transformation: humananimalhuman. My Lacanian analysis rejects this reading as an example of Jungian obscurantism that seeks to conceal the underlying utopian fantasy of unimpeded self-identity and social transparency; I argue that the unearthing of this fantasy in Staniewski's adaptation is the performance's primary insight.