O niebyciu Żydów, gruźlików, biednych w pięknym świecie pod Tatrami
On the Non-existence of the Jews, the Tubercular, and the Poor in the Beautiful World at the Foot of the Tatra Mts.

Summary/Abstract: Who is the Other in Zakopane and what is his place in the Zakopane myth? The poor and the “lowlanders”, alongside the tubercular and the Jews, created the life of Zakopane on par with local residents or artists. Astonishingly, this mass-scale existence is devoid of representation, image, and story; it only occurs but never actually is. It exists apophatically via non-significance, non-essentiality, non-memory, non-shape, somewhere in the background and the backyard, far from the centre, and even if it should come into being in the latter its characteristic features are alien, non- native. This is why understood as an event Zakopane does not contain a prospect of a life of poverty, a Jewish plight, or existence marked with disease. It is overshadowed by a monumental and petrified holiday spirit or a vacation aura - the latter’s laicised form - and an accompanying carnivalisation of existence that suspends the order of daily life. This is the way in which Zakopane has been recorded and continues to create itself by making use of ever-new media.

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