"Mnóstwo Kainów jest pośród nas”. Szlacheckie dyskursy o rabacji galicyjskiej i narodzie
“There Are Many Cains in Our Midst”: Discourses on the Peasant Uprising and the Nation among the Polish Nobility

Summary/Abstract: Exploring the Peasant Uprising of 1846 (also known as the Galician Slaughter or the Szela uprising), Pfeifer examines the Polish nobility’s narratives and the different phases of the hegemonic production of knowledge on the subject. The focus is on the ways in which literary texts produced by the nobility explain and arrange a system of power. Pfeifer presents them as factors that create history. The article also addresses the Polish nobility’s appropriation of the discourse on the Galician Slaughter, practices of creating meaning through literature by the dominant class, and the ways in which they presented this literature as an objective source of historical facts to solidify both the feudal social machine and Polish national ideology. Pfeifer’s main methodological inspirations are Walter Benjamin’s work on the notion of history as well as scholarship in new historicism.

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