The article explores the productivity of applying notions developed by postcolonial studies to Polish romanticism. It argues that romantic literary strategies of subversion like improvisation, fragmentarisation or apotropaic reception serve as an instrument of protest against foreign domination. Divided Poland may not be adequately described in terms of colonization, nevertheless stateless Polish culture was constrained to “invent” or “re-invent” its nationhood by performative speech acts. This process of cultural nation-building via language and literature shows structural similarities to the Afro-American “signifying identity”. As Anglo-American postcolonial studies are a well established field of academic research it seems fruitful to undertake the effort of a new description of devices of Polish romantic literature (especially Mickiewicz) which is based on the categories of postcolonial studies.