Understanding Silesia: a cultural difference and the limits of theory Cover Image

Zrozumieć Śląsk. Różnica kulturowa i granice teorii
Understanding Silesia: a cultural difference and the limits of theory

Author(s): Jan P. Hudzik
Subject(s): Literary Texts
Published by: Instytut Badań Literackich Polskiej Akademii Nauk
Keywords: Silesia; Identity; Ethnicity; Contemporary Polish Culture

Summary/Abstract: This article is heterogeneous as to genre, containing elements of philosophical tale, with certain autobiographical elements, and a study in cultural science. Taking the example of Silesia, described here as a Czech-Austrian-German-Polish entity, a fluid textual-material substance, the author makes an attempt at showing the heterogeneous and thereby, truly aporetic sources of cultural difference, making the entity in question a historically-variable phenomenon, an outcome of never-ending work on determining it, rather than discovering. To this end, the essayist uses and tests some languages of philosophical, scholarly and literary discourses, revealing at the same time their contributions to the effort of social construction of the sought-for difference.

  • Issue Year: 2011
  • Issue No: 5
  • Page Range: 231-243
  • Page Count: 13
  • Language: Polish