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“Who’s going to dangle there?” – Peasant revolt in urban imagination. On the Gore album by R.U.T.A. and on its receptionThe author presents a review of a recent album “Gore: Songs of Rebellion and Misery from 16th to 20th Century” by a Polish punk rock / hardcore group R.U.T.A. The album, which combines traditional peasant lyrics with modern arrangements and folk instruments, has received acclaim...
How I became a communist. About Marcel Łoziński movie "Tonia and her children"Marcel Łoziński's documentary “Tonia and her children” is a long-form interview with children of Tonia Lechtman – a communist, Jewess, and victim of Stalin's persecutions, born in 1916. Daughter and son of Lechtnam tell about their mother's life from their own perspective. They try to understand her, but they also...
The terror of modernism or Scott’s 'tunnel vision' The article analyses James C. Scott’s book Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. Scott’s book examines different aspects of a modern state’s activity and its methods of control over the population. Scott describes diverse failures in state planning and links them to the ideology of what he terms “high...
An interview with Ewa GąsowskaIn the interview, Ewa Gąsowska described her ten-year-long struggle with the Polish legal system. Gąsowska’s objective has been to reinstate the good name of her grandfather, Jan Rybak, who was murdered in 1945. According to Gąsowska, the reason for her grandfather’s death was his political activity in PPR (Polish Labourers’ Party) and his post-war commitment to the reconstruction...
The unforgotten 1942 Ewa Weinberg relates her story of the deportations of Polish citizens to the USSR in the summer of 1940 and their life in 1942. After the Sikorski-Majski Pact had been signed and Anders‘s Army established, the deportees tried to leave Siberia for Samarkand, Uzbekistan. In Samarkand, it turned out that the category of citizenship is no more valid for the deportees: anti-Semitic...
‘You have the floor, Comrade Mauser’. Literature and engagement: Mayakovsky’s revolutionary poetry as a case studyThe Russian futurist poet Vladimir Mayakovsky was criticised not only by conservative or moderate critics and writers, but also by Bolshevik ideologists and activists. While moderate authors criticised Mayakovsky’s engagement in the communist movement and worried about the waste of his...
Incognito ergo sum: on indifference The present article is an analysis of various types of indifference of non-Jewish inhabitants of Warsaw to the plight of Jewish Poles. The words of Krzysztof Dunin-Wąsowicz, a historian and “Żegota” activist, provide the vantage point for the analysis: Dunin-Wąsowicz claimed that around 75 per cent of the inhabitants of Warsaw “were indifferent to what was taking...
But... These worlds are tendentious The article focuses on the term tendentious novel and its special use in the Polish literary theory: the context of socialist realist novels. Taking into consideration Louis Althusser’s concept of ideology and Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of pure and impure taste, the article calls into question the idea of tendentiousness in discourse, and categorizing novels as “strongly...
The body and the stigma. Defloration as an act of building femininity The paper offers an analysis of the cultural meanings of the bodily attributes and practices related to virginity and defloration; the most important are “bloodstains” (a sign of the loss of virginity) and “penetration” (regarded as the only “true” form of sexual intercourse). The obligation to present the defloration and the shame...
Communists have no homeland: a portrait of Wanda Wasilewska The paper offers an analysis of a number of biographies of Wanda Wasilewska, written in different historical periods. An attempt was made to reconstruct the mechanisms that governed the functioning of Wanda Wasilewska’s communist figure in the Polish political discourse; explain how she was perceived by the society, and how it altered in...
Producing the 'guilt of indifference' and the category of "indifferent witness". A case study of Jan Błoński’s 'Biedni Polacy patrzą na getto'Błoński’s article Biedni Polacy patrzą na getto (1987) is regarded as a milestone for the Polish awareness of the Holocaust. Błoński tried to tackle the issue of the Polish complicity, and his narration updated an important model in the Polish culture...
From melancholy to despair. About Andrzej Stasiuk’s prose worksIn Moja Europa, Jadąc do Babadag and Fado Andrzej Stasiuk describes his travelling to the countries of the East-Central Europe: its diminished, forgotten part, lying on the margins of History and Progress. It is a land of melancholy, of the eternal emptiness and lack. To praise it means to give an ironic response to the enthusiasm of a...
An interview with Nada Prlja Nada Prlja is an artist who works in the public space and tackles the issues of social inequalities and exclusion. During the 7th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, she built a Peace Wall across Friedrichstrasse and thus she blocked the passage between the northern part of the street, which is a tourist attraction, and where expensive shops and restaurants are located;...
Mutually illuminating planes: the silent and the distant in J.S. Foer’s 'Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close'The paper offers an analysis of sub-renting relations in J. S. Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, which are put in the context of the author’s debut novel Everything Is Illuminated. I suggest that the two novels shed light on, or “illuminate”, each other. The writer, a descendant of...
Non-whites, non-males and other non-genuine citizens. The reproduction of social inequalities as seen in Karen Brodkin’s 'How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says about America'The article offers a review of Karen Brodkin’s How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says about America. Brodkin analyses the social and political transformations in America and puts the analysis in the context of...
"Sublokatorka" now. An interview with Hanna Krall: Warsaw, 28 February and 28 March 2013The interview was conducted by Elżbieta Janicka and Joanna Tokarska-Bakir. Hanna Krall told the story of the issues related to the publication of Sublokatorka, which finally appeared in the Paris-based printing house Libella, owned by Zofia and Kazimierz Romanowicz, in 1985. Hanna Krall also spoke about...
Tearing Off the Masks: Narratives on Jewish CommunistsThe paper presents an analysis of the contemporary Polish debate on Jewish communists. The analysis was performed in the framework of colonialist theories. I deconstructed narrations about Jewish communists, which belong in the Polish political mainstream, and are regarded as moderate, objective and devoid of any ideology. The tropes shared by...
"Aftermath", after-Gross and the fans of PolishnessAftermath was released in the late 2012. Its director, Władysław Pasikowski, had previously been famous for his violent action films with strong male protagonists. He has also written some of the most sexist dialogues in the history of Polish cinema, as well as a number of lines, often obscene, which have become catchphrases and slogans...
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