Savoir-vivre. Ironiczne strategie w "Spowiedzi" Calka Perechodnika
Savoir-vivre: Ironic Strategies in Calek’s Perechodnik’s "Confession"

Summary/Abstract: Spowiedź (Confession) by Calek [Calel] Perechodnik has primarily been read in the context of the victims’ contribution in delivering the Shoah. The text’s layer comprising the author’s descriptions of his relationships with ‘Aryan-side’ Poles and formulation of his diagnoses of Polish culture have tended to be neglected. Discursive games to which the Polish Jew is made subject is his major field of interest. These may be described as rituals of subjection – with the Jew being incessantly pushed out to a position of alien and simultaneously constantly subject to examination. He is supposed to speak in a manner reaffirming the majority’s opinions and images of itself. The stake is, apparently, to set the limits for what may be said on the Polish community’s behaviour. Perechodnik analyses and discloses the discourse mechanisms enabling the Poles to preserve their sense of innocence and get situated as ‘witnesses’. At the same time, he expresses the experience of a Jew being subject to those apparently innocent games.

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