Uroczystości żałobne jako narzędzie legitymizacji i delegitymizacji władzy
Funeral Ceremonies as a Tool for the Legitimisation and Delegitimisation of Authorities

Summary/Abstract: The research conducted by the author aimed to answer the question why public funeral ceremonies, which in Europe usually serve for the legitimisation of authorities, in Poland are often antistate in their nature. The materials used in the diachronic analysis are composed of archive documents as well as of press and literary reports. Referring to them, the article reconstructs selected practices in public space, starting from the funeral ceremony after the 10th April 2010 plane crash, and gradually moving back as far as to the medieval royal funerals. The genealogical analysis carried out thereby suggests that events inherit the forms of memory, that link them into logical sequences. The succession of memory forms builds its own narration, “a history of memory,” parallel and to some extent autonomous to the “history of events.”

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