SOCIETY VERSUS ART: REFLECTIONS ON FEMINISM IN POLAND
SOCIETY VERSUS ART: REFLECTIONS ON FEMINISM IN POLAND

Summary/Abstract: In Poland, the response to feminism is connected with two different outlooks on life: Christian or postmodern. While the Christian model seems to stabilize the traditional image of a woman, the postmodern model connects feminist issues with questions of identity and the category of ‘womanhood’. The article considers the way in which the postmodern model is realized in art—the sphere in which sex can be treated as a kind of dynamic structure. The work of Polish women artists often playfully polemicize religious dogmas referring to the paradoxes of Christianity. The article also gives a short outline of the national-catholic paradigm, which still dominates Polish social consciousness and casts women in shadowy social roles. In Poland, feminism seems to be perceived as an attack on a national ideology which promotes traditional family values and maintains that religious symbols are fundamental to Polish culture and its specificity.

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