Retoryka deratyzacji w PRL: od czystki etnicznej i politycznej do czystki gatunkowej
The Rhetoric of Rat Extermination in the Polish People’s Republic: From Ethnic and Political Cleansing to Species Cleansing

Summary/Abstract: Jarzębowska examines the rhetoric used to legitimize the extermination of rats in the era of Socialist Realism. Propaganda materials on rat extermination from 1945 until 1989 reveal analogies with the ‘sanitary’ metaphors that appeared in the context of (anti- Semitic) ethnic cleansing as well as with the phraseology of political cleansing campaigns, which drew on military and civil discourses. Jarzębowska proposes the concept of species cleansing to describe the programme of this methodical extermination of animals. This programme was based on the criterion of the species; it clearly employed the phraseology of annihilation, and it was accompanied by a remarkable collective mobilization.

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