Studia Litteraria et Historica
Games with time, memory and history: About the prose of Milada SoučkováThe article discusses selected short stories by the Czech avant-garde writer Milada Součková. The author presents a brief interpretation of certain primary themes in the writer’s work, such as the themes of memory and history as a kind of framework of Součková’s writing. Another aspect of the article indicates subjects related...
Social genealogy of the Polish intelligentsiaThe text is a reprint of the second chapter of Józef Chałasiński’s essay Social genealogy of the Polish intelligentsia, originally published in 1946. Społeczna genealogia inteligencji polskiejTekst jest przedrukiem drugiego rozdziału eseju Józefa Chałasińskiego pt. Społeczna genealogia inteligencji polskiej, pierwotnie opublikowanego w 1946 roku.
Wstęp / Editorial
“It’s not a matter of choice.” Aleksander Smolar interviewed by Konrad MatyjaszekKonrad Matyjaszek’s interview with Aleksander Smolar focuses on the contemporary Polish intelligentsia, identified as a social group and a social milieu, and on this group’s self-image produced in relation to antisemitism, understood here both as a set of violence-based public activities and practices, and as an excluding...
National landscape with Lenin in the background. Imagined national communitiesin the former Eastern BlocThe paper is a critical review of two recently published monographs on the subject of the everyday and banal forms of nationalism in the post-socialist countries of Europe and Asia. The authors of the monographs, drawing on the theories of national identity and nationhood by Benedict Anderson, Ernest...
Out of gay, and into class closet. On politics of identity and reflexive sociology in Didier Eribon and Éduard Louis. Conversation between Kate Korycki and Anna ZawadzkaThe conversation starts with an in-depth analysis of two autobiographical works, Returning to Reims by Didier Eribon (2013) and The end of Eddy by Éduard Louis (2017). The discussion concerns, among other things, the double exclusion...
Homecoming. A case studyThe study concerns the homecoming story of a Jewish Holocaust survivor, Szlomo Himelfarb, who returned to his home town of Solec on the Vistula, and his murder by local policemen. It is based on the material of so-called sierpniówki [testimonies given in 1944–1946 before summary courts for the prosecution “of fascist crimes against the civilian population and traitors of the...
Corpus Christi, Corpus Delicti: A new narrative contract. Władysław Pasikowski’s Aftermath (2012) and the invalidation of the category of the Polish Witness to the HolocaustWładysław Pasikowski’s 2012 feature film Aftermath recapitulates and works through the existing resources in documentary cinema that deals with the Polish context of the Holocaust (Claude Lanzmann, Paweł Łoziński, Marian Marzyński,...
The intelligentsia and the Holocaust. Dispersing the imageThis paper in the field of cultural memory studies addresses the workings of memory, or more precisely – a politics of memory whereby the image of the intelligentsia and its role in the Holocaust vanishes from the collective consciousness. The relative visibility of peasants denouncing Jews, murdering them and plundering their property is accompanied...
Witnesses to their own cause. The dominant Polish narrative about the Holocaust during the HolocaustAfter Dariusz Libionka’s pioneering treatise entitled Berkom Joselewiczom już dziękujemy… [Bereks Joselewiczs, goodbye and good luck...] (2009), this is the second analysis of Maria Kann’s canonical and paradigmatic pamphlet. This time the research question is: why did the Holocaust not delegitimize...
Jan Stanisław Bystroń’s Old Easter traditionsFor many years, the view prevailed that Dawne zwyczaje wielkanocne [Old Easter traditions] was the first ethnographic study by Jan Stanisław Bystroń. Published in the journal Wiedza in 1905, it was considered to be the harbinger of a future scientific career of the young schoolboy from Cracow. My central point is that not only has the title of the periodical...
Between Fascination and Reproach. Jews and Judaism in the Writings of Rev. Prof. Józef Kruszyński (1877–1953), Pre-war Rector of the Catholic University of LublinIn the first part of the essay, the author presents a sketch of the life and works of Rev. Józef Kruszyński, the Rector of the Catholic University of Lublin. In the second part she analyzes Kruszyński’s anti-Jewish writings, collected in...
Things Turned Out the Way They Did: Failure and Weakness in the Culture of Central and Eastern EuropeThe text is the introduction to the new issue of Studia Litteraria et Historica. As such, it presents and conceptualises the category of failure in reference to Central and Eastern Europe in the last few decades of the twentieth century. It outlines the subject matter of respective texts and convergences...
On the one hand, the sphere of art offers the possibility to imagine a different, less oppressive and normative world, where just as in the case of cartoons even the greatest gawks, misfits, and outcasts would build friendships and alliances helping them to reach a happy ending. On the other hand, there is something of an artistic performance, at least of an illusionist show, to an intentional act...
The essay takes the 2014 book Kontaminierte Landschaften [Contaminated Landscapes] by the Austrian journalist and writer Martin Pollack as an opportunity to explore relationships between landscapes, (marked) places, and memory. In considering the relationship between the metaphorical (literary) image of contaminated landscapes and the actual crime scenes, I focus on the mass shootings of Jews by the...
The main theme of the text is the wartime and postwar history of the area of the German Nazi extermination camp Treblinka II, seen from the perspective of the production of landscape – with a special focus on the identity aspect, i.e. the nationalization of nature and the naturalization of the nation. The argument refers to imaging conventions of nature and ethnographic photography, like the German...
The Job Was Being Done: A conversation about Dominika Macocha’s video-sculptural installation 50°31’29.7”N 22°46’39.1”E, 50°30’56.2”N 22°46’01.0”E, 50°30’41.0”N 22°45’49.5”E.This article is a record of a discussion concerning Dominika Macocha’s video-sculptural installation 50°31’29.7”N 22°46’39.1”E, 50°30’56.2”N 22°46’01.0”E, 50°30’41.0”N 22°45’49.5”E. The work deals with the uses of discourse and...
Until the End of the World by Wim Wenders was a large project. This essay discusses the slow process of the film’s creation, its distribution, its content and critical response, in order to point at failure as the question key to each of those topics. Purpose, success, resolution, ending, the end of the world – those notions appear either irrelevant or impossible in the context of this film. The research...
This richly illustrated text is a descriptive introduction to Dominika Macocha’s video-sculptural installation, detailing the idea behind the work, the process of its creation, and its suggested interpretations. The file is concluded with a link to the film The Mystery of Forest Lakelet.
This article is a record of a discussion concerning Dominika Macocha’s video-sculptural installation 50°31’29.7”N 22°46’39.1”E, 50°30’56.2”N 22°46’01.0”E, 50°30’41.0”N 22°45’49.5”E. The work deals with the uses of discourse and landscapes in mechanisms of camouflaging the crimes perpetrated on Jews by Poles during the Holocaust. The author lays bare and deconstructs these mechanisms – above all the...