Osuszanie historii. Błoto i nowoczesność
Draining History: Mud and Modernity

Summary/Abstract: The point of departure for this article is Eastern Europe and its association with mud,which fascinated writers of the enlightenment period. They pictured the regionas a wilderness inhabited by fugitives, smugglers and miscreants – an image thatwent hand in hand with their “civilising” mission of harnessing both nature and thepopulation to productive work. In this narrative mud figures as a hindrance to progress.It is remarkable that mud reappears in the same role in modern Polish cultural textssuch as Stefan Żeromski’s Przedwiośnie [The Spring to Come] or Maria Dąbrowska’s Nocei dnie [Nights and Days]. The authors’ goal is to construct an alternative narrative of themodernising projects developed in relation to Eastern Europe from the eighteenthcentury until the present.

• Details
• Contents