“I Felt That Two Cultures Were Competing For My Identity”: Bicultural Families as aSpace for Discursive Identity Creation
“I Felt That Two Cultures Were Competing For My Identity”: Bicultural Families as aSpace for Discursive Identity Creation

Summary/Abstract: The goal of the article is to identify the conditions of identity construction (child/adult) in Kashubian–Polish bicultural families. The argument is based on Michel Foucault’s theory of discourse, reinforced by the thinking of Antonio Gramsci, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. The empirical material was obtained by means of biographical research carried out between June and August 2022. In total, eight interviews were conducted with adults who were born and raised in Kashubian–Polish families. For the purpose of the article, one interview was chosen, which the author believes is representative of the others. Discourse analysis made it possible to reconstruct the Polish (represented in this family by the father) and the Kashubian (represented by the mother) discourses, which “compete(d)” for the interviewee’s identity. The material leads to several important conclusions, the most relevant of which are (1) the Communist narrative about Kashubian Poles and the Kashubian region as a folk/peripheral variety of Polish culture is still alive in the social awareness; (2) viewing the Kashubian language as a folk/peripheral variety of Polish is not conducive to creating an intercultural space in Polish–Kashubian relations; (3) viewing it as such may lead to situations in which some people who come from Kashubian–Polish families need to making radical choices: to be Kashubian or to be Polish?

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