W „mechanizmach swoich czasów”. O napięciach między perspektywą prywatną a ideologiczną w tekstach Jana Szczepańskiego, Jana Wantuły i Józefa Pilcha
“The Mechanisms of Their Times” – the Tensions Between Private and Ideological Perspectives in the Works of Jan Szczepański, Jan Wantuła and Józef Pilch

Summary/Abstract: The subject of this article is the dynamic relations between the private and ideological perspectives which appear in the works of sociologist Jan Szczepański, as well as book-lovers and historians Jan Wantuła and Józef Pilch. The figures were colligated by a background, namely evangelical peasant families in Ustroń in Cieszyn Silesia, and also family ties and friendship. The cultural patterns assimilated by them in childhood are manifested in their texts and influence the character of the perspectives mentioned. In this article an ideology is understood not only as a doctrine imposed, for example, by the Polish People’s Republic’s authorities, but as a combination of beliefs serving to orient collective activities. From this viewpoint the article explores the diaries, memoirs, letters, articles and essays of this study’s heroes to show the lack of an connective thread in the paradigm: personal notes – private perspective; publications – ideological perspective. Firstly, the article examines the question of diaries’ truth, the aims of journal writing, as well as the dependence of its content on planned uses, including in publications. Szczepański, Pilch and Wantuła not only offered visions of reality contained in official publications which were not completely in line with the official ideology, but above all as part of this ideology they promoted an ideology chosen by them. That is, they mobilized the society to care for the common good by means of solid work and thriftiness, what they associated with their Protestant and Cieszyn Silesia ethos. Then the article demonstrates how the texts of this article’s heroes and their symbolic biographies are being used to shape the local community in their homeland at the present time.

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