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Polak Mały i fantazja impotencji
The Little Pole and the Fantasy of Impotence

Author(s): Adam Lipszyc
Subject(s): Politics / Political Sciences, Politics, History, Philosophy, Social Sciences, Psychology, Political Philosophy, Sociology, Recent History (1900 till today), Social psychology and group interaction, Psychoanalysis, Politics of History/Memory, Identity of Collectives
Published by: Instytut Badań Literackich Polskiej Akademii Nauk
Keywords: paranoid-schizoid position; fantasy of impotence; myth; demonism; memory

Summary/Abstract: Lipszyc analyses Polish collective memory from a psychoanalytical perspective. Building on the work of Melanie Klein and its application to international relations as proposed by Hanna Segal, he tries to show that the Polish collective subject and the memory that defines it exist in a particular form of the paranoid-schizoid position. The defining characteristic of this position is a fantasy of one’s own impotence, which allows the subject to disregard his or her own agency and to eschew responsibility for his or her own actions. Lipszyc enhances his analysis by drawing on Walter Benjamin’s notions on myth and the demonic.

  • Issue Year: 2016
  • Issue No: 6
  • Page Range: 79-89
  • Page Count: 11
  • Language: Polish