Silence is Golden. Lessons from a Traumatized Field
Silence is Golden. Lessons from a Traumatized Field

Summary/Abstract: Relying on the experiences of my fieldwork carried out in the town of Jedwabne in Poland, my article investigates the way in which a deeply traumatized field potentially makes anthropological inquiry impossible, and the methodological and ethical problems researchers face both in the course of fieldwork and while processing, analyzing, and making the knowledge gained through research public. The first part briefly introduces the small town of Jedwabne, the conflict that drew me to this place, and the research project, which I believed I was never going to be able to write about. In the second part, I discuss the complex system of taboos that I termed ‘the culture of seclusion’, which, in my view, is the most typical aspect of the society of Jedwabne, as well as the greatest challenge of my research. As a sort of synthesis of the first two parts, in the third part I consider some practical issues and concerns related to the fieldwork.

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