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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...
A few remarks on the persistence of the legend of bloodThe article is an extended review of Jolanta Żyndul’s Kłamstwo krwi (‘The Lies of Blood’). Żyndul unearths numerous cases of accusing Jews of ritual murders, which happened in the 19th and the 20th century, and were then forgotten by the Poles. Żyndul puts the libel of the legend of blood inside a wider context of social, religious and political...
Uncle JankielThe idea of Jewish self-hatred has been present in the humanities since the 1930s. The research on this subject has usually focused on Western Europe, especially German-speaking countries. The paper analyses Jewish self-hatred using examples from contemporary official discourse in Poland. Sander Gilman’s approach to Jewish self-hatred (1986) is used to interpret the examples. It seems...
Hassliebe. Jewish self-hatred as seen by Sander L. Gilman (part one: from Hermann of Mainz to Johannes Pfefferkorn)The present paper constitutes the first part of the analysis of Sander L. Gilman’s famous book Jewish Self-Hatred, and the pioneering interpretation of the concept of stereotype. According to Gilman, a stereotype emerges as a result of an active collaboration of the person who stereotypises...
Litotes situated in the grand narration of the anthropological theatre: a case study of Teatr Węgajty/Projekt TerenowyThis article is an excerpt of the author's MA thesis: Litotes in the anthropological theatre’s grand narrative. The case of Teatr Węgajty/ Projekt Terenowy. It analyses the attitude of the anthropological theatre towards principles that constituted its foundation, such as the fascination...
The Post-Jewish SpaceThe paper offers a critical analysis of a prevalently used contemporary Polish design strategy of alteration and modification, practiced on the former Jewish districts in Poland. A majority of these districts’ urban substance consists of property once belonging to Polish Jews, and appropriated by non-Jewish Poles during the Holocaust and after 1945. Such property and its urban...
Casimir the Great’s Flying Circus presents: ‘The narrowest house in the world – an event on a global scale’. Historical re-enactment on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the Aktion ReinhardtThe article provides a multifaceted analysis of the Keret House as an artistic installation and a cultural event. The construction is placed in the analytical context of Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon, Le Corbusier’s...
Heroines, fighters or losers? Spanish narrations about women left-wing activists of the first half of the 20th centuryThe Spanish public discussion of the recent years has given rise to new ways of speaking about women in the times of the Second Republic and the Civil War. First, they emphasise the importance of women’s actions and show how women’s public activities change their aspirations, the...
An illusion of symmetry. On the Polish translation of the Jewish anti-gospel “Toledot Yeshu”The article was inspired by the introduction to the Polish translation of Toledot Yeshu (by Jan Iluk). The translator suggests that Toledot Yeshu might have been the cause of the Christian anti-Judaism. This is an unjustified opinion, and this paper provides a review of the current state of research on the...
“This was not America.” Michael Charles Steinlauf in conversation with Elżbieta Janicka (Warsaw – New York – Warsaw, 2014–2015)Born in Paris in 1947, Michael Charles Steinlauf talks about his childhood in New York City, in the south of Brooklyn (Brighton Beach), in a milieu of Polish Jewish Holocaust survivors. His later experiences were largely associated with American counterculture, the New Left,...
Review of a book by Katarzyna Wrzesińska, Culture and civilization in the thought of National Democratic Party (1893–1918). Between the educational idea and politics, Warszawa: Instytut Slawistyki PAN, Fundacja Slawistyczna 2012, pp. 377.The book by Katarzyna Wrzesińska, a historian of ideas and Polish political thought of the 19th and 20th centuries, a researcher of the Institute of Slavic Studies...
To Recover Liberalism. Review of a book by Andrzej Walicki Od projektu komunistycznego do neoliberalnej utopii (From the Communist Project to the Neoliberal Utopia), Warszawa: Universitas 2013This review discusses a recent book by Andrzej Walicki, Od projektu komunistycznego do neoliberalnej utopii (From the Communist Project to the Neoliberal Utopia) (Warszawa: Universitas 2013). The book features a...
The Last PositivistThe polemics between Piotr Sztompka and Michael Burawoy was originally published in Contemporary Sociology. A Journal of Reviews no 40/4 as Debate on International Sociology. The starting point of discussion between Piotr Sztompka and Michael Burawoy was the publication entitled Facing an Unequal World: Challenges for a Global Sociology (Volume One: Introduction, Latin America...
Gustaw Herling-Grudziński and the blood libel, or is being a Jewish writer compulsoryThe article concerns Gustaw Herling-Grudziński’s medieval stories which explore the theme of blood libel. Despite Grudziński’s self-declared sympathy for the libel’s Jewish victims, his treatment of the theme is selective and only reflects the Christian perspective. The author then considers possible reasons for such...
Pamiątka, Zabawka, Talizman / Souvenir, Talisman, Toy (an exhibition in Cracow’s Ethnographic Museum, 2013, prepared by Erica Lehrer)The article is a review of the exhibition Pamiątka, Zabawka, Talizman / Souvenir, Toy, Talisman, which opened at the Seweryn Udziela Ethnographic Museum in Cracow on 30 June 2013, during the Jewish Culture Festival. The exhibition was curated by Erica Lehrer.Pamiątka,...
Memory acquired. The conception of the Polish experience of the Holocaust as collective trauma in the light of a revision of the concept of bystanderThe paper provides a reconstruction and proposes the deconstruction of the conception of the Polish experience of the Holocaust as collective trauma. The analytical framework is based on the revision of concepts such as Polish witness (bystander/onlooker...
"Objectivity fetish." Our Class by Tadeusz SłobodzianekOur Class was received in Poland with enthusiasm. The author was praised for his courage and his voice was considered a balanced part of the Jedwabne pogrom discussion, taking place in Poland since 2000. Why this enthusiasm now, when the publication of the Neighbours was received without it? What changes to narration about Jedwabne provided...
A few seconds. Konstanty Gebert in a conversation with Joanna Tokarska-Bakir, Elżbieta Janicka and Anna ZawadzkaIn 2012–2013, Poland was discussing ritual slaughter. Its adversaries claimed that the kind of animal slaughtering that makes the animal meat kosher and halal, causes extra suffering to animals and therefore should be banned. However, the postulate of banning ritual slaughter in Poland is...
Jews in the discourse of the Catholic ChurchThe article describes the most important changes which appeared after the Second Vatican Council in the discourse of the Catholic Church in reference to its attitude to confessors of Judaism. The change is the difference between the state of texts in two different moments, which is why the first part of the article is dedicated to the characteristics of...
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