We kindly inform you that, as long as the subject affiliation of our 300.000+ articles is in progress, you might get unsufficient or no results on your third level or second level search. In this case, please broaden your search criteria.
The interview was conducted by Elżbieta Janicka and Joanna Tokarska-Bakir. Hanna Krall told the story of the issues related to the publication of Sublokatorka, which finally appeared in the Paris-based printing house Libella, owned by Zofia and Kazimierz Romanowicz, in 1985. Hanna Krall also spoke about how the book was received by the public in the unofficial underground discourse in the Communist Poland. Moreover, the author of Sublokatorka told the interviewers about the construction of stories about the Holocaust, as well as about the people who inspired the protagonists of Sublokatorka: Luba Bielicka-Blum, Rywka Urman, Krystyna Krahelska, Krzysztof Kieślowski and Jerzy Stuhr.
More...
The present paper constitutes the first part of the analysis of Sander L. Gilman’s famous book Jewish Self-Hatred, and the pioneering interpretation of the concept of stereotype. According to Gilman, a stereotype emerges as a result of an active collaboration of the person who stereotypises and the outsider. The latter opposes the image imposed by the stereotype, and thus splits the stereotype into a positive and a negative part. By identifying himself with the positive part, the outsider delegates the purity of classification not only to the subgroup he does not feel any attachment to, but also involuntarily legitimises the stereotype, because without his authorisation, the stereotype would merely remain a racist insult. The article is based on the narrations of Jewish converts to Christianity from the Middle Ages to the 15th century.
More...
The idea of Jewish self-hatred has been present in the humanities since the 1930s. The research on this subject has usually focused on Western Europe, especially German-speaking countries. The paper analyses Jewish self-hatred using examples from contemporary official discourse in Poland. Sander Gilman’s approach to Jewish self-hatred (1986) is used to interpret the examples. It seems that it is the alleged communism of the Jewish Poles which causes them being perceived as alien and different. If one condemns their communism, one can feel entitled to be a member of the Polish community; for the condemners, the communism appears “objective” and corresponding to their world-view. In fact, it seems to be more of a ritual act of subordination, yet another cover term to define Jewish guilt and their alienness. Previously, other issues performed this function: “Talmudicness”, ritual murder, host desecration, taking over the printed media, Bolshevism, capitalism, etc.
More...
The article provides a multifaceted analysis of the Keret House as an artistic installation and a cultural event. The construction is placed in the analytical context of Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon, Le Corbusier’s machine for living, Krzysztof Wodiczko’s Pojazd dla bezdomnych (Vehicle for the Homeless), Big Brother and XTube. Other interpretative contexts are: the history of the Warsaw ghetto, the Aktion Reinhardt as well as the ensemble of issues connected with the third phase of the Holocaust (i.e. “the margins of the Holocaust”): the history of Jewish hideouts, the hunt for the Jews (Judenjagd), the plunder of Jewish mobile and immobile property, the Polish part of the biography of Etgar Keret’s parents. From such a perspective, the Keret House takes the form of a macabre historical re-enactment. The analytical framework comprises Erving Goffman’s stigma theory as well as the history of the attitude of the Polish majority towards the Jewish minority. With increasing frequency, anti-Semitic symbolic violence assumes the form of philosemitic symbolic violence. The poetics of gift and the category of “a Jewish writer with a sense of humour” function as an instrument of blackmail that place the individual subjected to it in a situation with no way-out. In Polish majority culture, the image of Jews as guests, which corresponds to the representation of Poland as home and Poles as hospitable hosts, heirs of the myth of King Casimir the Great, plays the same role. The Keret House proves to be a machine for the reproduction of the Polish majority narrative about the majority attitude of Poles towards Jews, also during the Holocaust. What is at stake within this narrative is the image of Poland and the Poles. [The project was prepared with a financial support of the National Science Centre; decision no DEC-2011/03/B/HS2/05594
More...
The paper offers a critical analysis of a prevalently used contemporary Polish design strategy of alteration and modification, practiced on the former Jewish districts in Poland. A majority of these districts’ urban substance consists of property once belonging to Polish Jews, and appropriated by non-Jewish Poles during the Holocaust and after 1945. Such property and its urban space are described in Polish language as a ‘post-Jewish’ ones (mienie pożydowskie). The article analyses two parallel cultural processes of contemporary adaptation of this urban space. First of these processes is focused on the concept of Jewish Space, a social idea proposed in 1999 by Diana Pinto. The Jewish Space, envisaged as a cultural and material space of an encounter between European Jews and non-Jews, in its Polish interpretation becomes free from any requirement of a Jewish presence. A social practice resulting from such interpretation differs radically from Pinto’s original idea. The second reviewed process concerns the physical construction of thus defined ‘space of encounter’. Its practice is analysed on an example of Oxygenator, an urban intervention by Joanna Rajkowska, installed in Warsaw in 2007. This work, one of first Polish attempts to create a physical space of encounter, despite of its altruistic principles could not fully go beyond the boundaries of the Polish discourse on the exclusivist ‘dialogue’. Consequently, a cultural vocabulary it allowed remains limited to meanings more likely to result with exclusion than with a possibility of participation.
More...
This article is an excerpt of the author's MA thesis: Litotes in the anthropological theatre’s grand narrative. The case of Teatr Węgajty/ Projekt Terenowy. It analyses the attitude of the anthropological theatre towards principles that constituted its foundation, such as the fascination with the traditional culture and work in the local community. The anthropological theatre’s grand narrative is replaced by the small narrative of teatr potrzebny (‘theatre of necessity’), which originates from the excluded, forgotten litotes. The paper provides documentation and an analysis of teatr potrzebny, taking the example of the work of Teatr Węgajty/Projekt Terenowy in a Social Welfare Home in Jonkowo.
More...
The article was inspired by the introduction to the Polish translation of Toledot Yeshu (by Jan Iluk). The translator suggests that Toledot Yeshu might have been the cause of the Christian anti-Judaism. This is an unjustified opinion, and this paper provides a review of the current state of research on the Christian-Jewish relations in the ancient times and the causes of the negative opinions on Jews being taught in Christian tradition. The author suggests that Toledot Yeshu should be read as a chronicle of the Jewish perspective of the mutual relations between Jews and Christians.
More...
Aftermath was released in the late 2012. Its director, Władysław Pasikowski, had previously been famous for his violent action films with strong male protagonists. He has also written some of the most sexist dialogues in the history of Polish cinema, as well as a number of lines, often obscene, which have become catchphrases and slogans present every day in the pop culture. His latest film, however, tackles a completely different issue – this thriller-cum-western tells a story that is decidedly contemporary, but nevertheless inspired by the events that took place in Jedwabne (described by Jan Tomasz Gross in his book Neighbors). Aftermath does not attempt to provide a reconstruction of the events that took place “on the margins of the Holocaust” (including Jedwabne). However, it clearly hints at the issue of the Polish contribution to the extermination of Jews and the impact of the conspiracy of silence having been broken. The film gave rise to a heated debate, which rippled through the Polish media for as long as two months after its release. This article is an attempt to analyse and interpret the words and ideas that appeared in the debate.
More...
The paper presents an analysis of the contemporary Polish debate on Jewish communists. The analysis was performed in the framework of colonialist theories. I deconstructed narrations about Jewish communists, which belong in the Polish political mainstream, and are regarded as moderate, objective and devoid of any ideology. The tropes shared by the colonialist discourse and the debate on Jewish communists are: orientalisation, eroticisation, infantilisation, presenting the object of research outside the historical context, abolishing the context of social and political inequalities, and declaring the victims guilty of the violence they experience.
More...
The present article is an analysis of various types of indifference of non-Jewish inhabitants of Warsaw to the plight of Jewish Poles. The words of Krzysztof Dunin-Wąsowicz, a historian and “Żegota” activist, provide the vantage point for the analysis: Dunin-Wąsowicz claimed that around 75 per cent of the inhabitants of Warsaw “were indifferent to what was taking place behind the Ghetto wall”. Thomas Kuhne hypothesised that it was Germans’ indifference to the Jewish – not hatred – that legitimised the Nazi racial policies of the 1930s. This statement might also apply to the “75 per cent of the inhabitants of Warsaw”. The article is mainly based on articles published by ZWZ-AK, in particular Biuletyn Informacyjny.
More...
The paper offers an analysis of sub-renting relations in J. S. Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, which are put in the context of the author’s debut novel Everything Is Illuminated. I suggest that the two novels shed light on, or “illuminate”, each other. The writer, a descendant of Polish Jews, precisely stratifies the novels and intertwines two planes: the explicit and the implicit (encoding signs of the Jewish plight), which are also the two planes of the protagonists’ identities.
More...
Błoński’s article Biedni Polacy patrzą na getto (1987) is regarded as a milestone for the Polish awareness of the Holocaust. Błoński tried to tackle the issue of the Polish complicity, and his narration updated an important model in the Polish culture. It contained some facts about the wartime reality, but at the same time it overturned much of the knowledge about those times and rendered it mostly transparent. The analysis of Błoński’s article allowed me to elucidate the relation between the catharsis effect and the denial, which appeared as the effect of the article. The paper attempts at answering some important questions: What is the Polish complicity according to Błoński? What are the different perceptions of the relations between Poles and Jews? What is the perception of the majority? How the different opinions on the Polish complicity in the Holocaust are legitimised by the majority? How are they removed and delegitimised at the same time? [The article was prepared with financial support of the NPRH.]
More...
The paper offers an analysis of the cultural meanings of the bodily attributes and practices related to virginity and defloration; the most important are “bloodstains” (a sign of the loss of virginity) and “penetration” (regarded as the only “true” form of sexual intercourse). The obligation to present the defloration and the shame that accompanies it are the vantage point to the analysis of the forms of stigmatizing femininity. A deconstruction of the meanings acquired by penetration led me to a conclusion that the cause-effect relation between gender and culturally defined sexual practices (including sexual orientation) is not only inseparable, but also different than it has usually been thought. It is not the gender that determines an individual’s sexuality, but the culturally imposed sexual practices build the gender.
More...