POST-DEPENDENCE STUDIES CENTRE siedziba:

Wydział
Polonistyki
Uniwersytet
Warszawski
Krakowskie Przedmiście 26/28
00-927 Warszawa

Peasantry and its legacy in Polish Literature and Culture

The Literary Research Institute and Postdependence Studies Center conference

10-11 April 2017

IBL PAN Warsaw, ul. Nowy Świat 72

Adam Mickiewicz Room (144)

Choosing the conference topic of the Postdependence Studies network annual meeting, the organizers decided to tackle a major shift that has occurred in Poland recently in the way the peasantry question was approached. Most contemporary references to peasantry as tradition, ethos and legacy combine a conviction of the crucial role peasant experience has had for shaping Polish mentality (the peasant condition often functions as the basis for social imaginings, common attitudes and preferred lifestyles, tastes, habits and likings) with the need to reconsider this legacy and its contemporary traces. The critical insight into the matter is marked by the tendency to frame traces of peasant legacy in terms of suppression, trauma, symptom or ressentiment.

Conference presentations will open up a debate on following issues:

  • The characteristic “farm-worker - landowner relation”, considered to be an effect of serfdom, inscribed within the generalized structure of the Polish habitus – hierarchy instead of contract culture, patriarchal management model, lack of grassroots structures of representation, strategies of silence and sabotage as a habitual reaction of the dominated to the situation of naturalized oppression;
  • The dominant formula of religiosity: celebratory, institutionalized, collective; the “pastoral” authority and hierarchical structure of the Church relation with the faithful; contemporary forms of religious cult emerging from popular religiosity;
  • Manifestations of peasant mentality in public space;
  • Lack of native urban bourgeois class, effecting in stereotyping the burgher as the other; cognitive matrices (the opposition of the master, later, the intelligentsia, and peasant; occasionally the parallel relation projected onto the Jew);
  • Nobility fads as a symptom of suppressing the peasant legacy/roots;
  • The plebeian tradition as a source of inspiration in literature and culture.

Histories, societies, spaces of dialogue.
Post-dependence studies in a comparative perspective.

First circular

27-28.05.2013 Wrocław, Poland

PROGRAM

9.00 Opening address

PANEL I: ANTHROPOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON POSTSOCIALISM

9.15-10.45

Room 208

Moderator prof. Dirk Uffelmann
  • 9.15 Monika Baer, Wroclaw University
    Other Europe, other discipline? Anthropological identities in postsocialist settings
  • 9.30 Hana Cervinkova, Lower Silesian University and the Czech Academy of Science
    Postsocialism, postcolonialism and educational anthropology of engagement
  • 9.45 Petr Skalnik, Wroclaw University
    Postcommunism is there forever. An optimistic anthropologist's view
  • 10.00 Marta Songin-Mokrzan
    Applying the concept of neoliberalization to postsocialist contexts
  • 10.15 Marek Pawlak, Centre for Migration Studies, Adam Mickiewicz University
    The regimes of mobility. Challenging the concept of social class
  • DISCUSSION 10.30-10.45
  • COFFEE BREAK (15 MIN.) 10.45-11.00

PANEL II: EASTERN-CENTRAL EUROPE BETWEEN EAST AND WEST – RECIPROCAL DISCOURSES, POSTCOLONIAL DILEMMAS

11.00-13.00

Room 208

Moderator dr Wojciech Małecki
  • 11.00 Anca Baicoianu, University of Bucharest
    Is the "colonial" in "postcolonial" the "Soviet" in "post-Soviet"? The boundaries of postcolonial studies
  • 11.20 Dariusz Skórczewski, JP2 Catholic University of Lublin
    Troublesome postcolonies of Europe
  • 11.40 Bogusław Bakuła, School of Comparative Literaturę and Culture, Adam Mickiewicz University
    National debates in Central Europe after 1989
    [Debaty narodowe w Europie Środkowej po roku 1989]
  • 12.00 Marta Skwara, Polish and Comparative Literature, Szczecin University
    Can Polish literature be European literature? Moving beyond concepts and (post)dependencies
  • DISCUSSION 12.20-13.00
  • PRZERWA NA OBIAD 13.00-14.30
Panel III and IV in PARALEL SESSIONS

PANEL III: EMANCIPATORY METHODOLOGIES

14.30-17.15

Room 208

Moderator dr Agata Lisiak
  • 14.30 Irene Sywenky, Modern Languages and Cultural Studies, University of Alberta
    Theoretical perspectives on border studies in postdependent Central and Eastern Europe
  • 14.50 Jan Sowa, Management and Social Communication, Jagiellonian University
    Colonialism - postcolonialism - self-colonization. A dependency approach to Eastern and Western Europe
  • 15.10 Dirk Uffelmann, Slavic Languages and Cultures, University of Passau
    Theory as memory: the divided discourse on Poland's postcoloniality
  • DISCUSSION 15.30-16.00
  • COFFEE BREAK (15 MIN.) 16.00-16.15
17.20-18.20

  • 16.15 Marcin Brocki,Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, Jagiellonian University
    Postdependence in an anthropological perspective: on the limits of applicability of the scientific framework
    [Postzależność w optyce antropologicznej. O granicach stosowalności ramy naukowej]
  • 16.35 Wojciech Małecki,Institute of Polish Studies, Wrocław University
    Toward "green" post-dependence studies, or on uranium in Miedzianka and related matters
  • DISCUSSION 16.55-17.15

PANEL IV: POSTDEPENDENCE ASPECTS OF POLITICAL AND ACADEMIC DISCOURSES

14.30-17.15

Room 207

Moderator prof. Bożena Karwowska
  • 14.30 Tatiana Kostadinova, Rebecca Salokar, Department of Politics and International Relations, Florida International University
    The challenge of dealing with the totalitarian past: justice, conflict, and lustration laws in postcommunist countries
  • 14.50 Łukasz Ponikiewski, College of Liberal Arts, Warsaw University
    Imaginary geography of Poland - political discourse analysis
  • 15.10 Dorota Gołuch, University College London
    Polish reviews of postcolonial literature (1970-2010): signals of post-dependence solidarities?
  • DISCUSSION 15.30-16.00
  • COFFEE BREAK (15 MIN.) 16.00-16.15
  • 16.15 Agata Lisiak, Humboldt University / ECLA of Bard
    Disposable pasts, usable pasts, and commemoration practices in post-1989 Warsaw and Berlin
  • 16.35 Lena Magnone, Faculty of Polish Studies, Warsaw University
    The first generation of Polish Freudians – a study in geopsychoanalysis
  • DISCUSSION 16.55-17.15

PANEL V: COMPARATIVE DISCOURSE

17.15-18.45

Room 207

Moderator dr Hana Cervinkova
  • 17.15 Grant Aubrey Farred, Africana Studies, Cornell University
    Inestimable translatability
  • 17.35 Dorota Kołodziejczyk,Institute of English Studies, Wroclaw University
    The world republic of letters or the gaudy supermarket? Peripheral posts and global vending routes in comparative literature today
  • 17.55 Tomasz Bilczewski, Faculty of Polish Studies, Jagiellonian University
    Postcolonial comparativism, perishing languages, imagined communities. On a certain locus of the Central European multiculturality
    [Komparatystyka postkolonialna, ginące języki, wspólnoty wyobrażone. O pewnym locus środkowoeuropejskiej wielokulturowości]
  • DISCUSSION 18.15-18.45
19.00 Conference dinner

DAY TWO (28.05.2013)

PANEL VI: THE COLONIAL AND POSTCOLONIAL POLAND – SELF-REFLECTION IN PUBLIC AND ARTISTIC DISCOURSE

9.00-12.35

Room 208

Moderator dr Dariusz Skórczewski
  • 9.00 Krzysztof Zajas, Faculty of Polish Studies, Jagiellonian University
    Lithuania, my Fatherland! Colonial perspectives in Polish literature
  • 9.20 Hanna Gosk , Faculty of Polish Studies, Warsaw University
    Postdependent features of the time of postdependence: the case of contemporary Polish prose
    [Postzależnościowe cechy czasu postzależności. Przypadek współczesnej prozy polskiej]
  • 9.40 Bożena Karwowska, Polish and Slavic Studies Department, University of British Columbia
    “A Short dictionary of words misunderstood”. Contemporary Polish literature read in a transcultural context.
    [Mały słowniczek niezrozumiałych słów współczesnej literatury polskiej czytanej w transkulturowym kontekście]
  • 10.00 Wojciech Browarny, Instytut Filologii Polskiej, Uniwersytet Wrocławski
    Going West. Tadeusz Różewicz’s reportage on „regained territories”
    [Na Zachód. Tadeusza Różewicza reportaże z „ziem odzyskanych”]
  • DISCUSSION 10.20-10.50
  • COFFEE BREAK (15.MIN) 10.50-11.05
  • 11.05 Izabela Kalinowska-Blackwood, Department of Cultural Analysis and Theory, Stony Brook University
    Melodramatic Postcoloniality: Polish Cinema After 1990
  • 11.25 Tomasz Rawski, Institute of Sociology, Warsaw University
    On marginalization of memory. biography of Polish People’s Army colonel
    [O marginalizacji pamięci. Narracja pułkownika Ludowego Wojska Polskiego]
  • 11.45 Magdalena Szcześniak, Faculty of Polish Studies, Warsaw University
    From Uma to Puma: The counterfeit as a visual figure of the Polish transformation
  • DISCUSSION 12.05-12.35
  • COFFEE BREAK (15.MIN) 12.35-12.50
Panel VII and VIII in PARALEL SESSIONS with PANEL IX

PANEL VII: ON THE SUBALTERN

12.50-14.20

Room 207

Moderator prof. Bogusław Bakuła
  • 12.50 Helena Duć Fajfer, Institute of East-Slavic Languages, Jagiellonian University
    “I belong here”: textual opposition to the symbolic uprooting in minority literatures in Poland
    „Jestem u siebie” – tekstualna opozycja przeciw symbolicznemu wykorzenianiu w literaturach mniejszościowych w Polsce
  • 13.10 Emilia Kledzik, Faculty of Polish Studies, Adam Mickiewicz University
    In praise of imagology: considering the relations between literature and stereotypes on the basis of the representation of the Roma community in the Polish literature of the twentieth century
    [Pochwała imagologii. Rozważania o powinowactwach między literaturą i stereotypami na przykładzie obrazu Romów w literaturze polskiej XX wieku]
  • 13.30 Huseyin Oylupinar, Department of History and Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies, University of Alberta
    Cossack collective memory in contemporary Southern Ukraine: an analysis of Cossacks as a factor in Ukrainian-Russian relations (1991-2012)
  • DISCUSSION 13.50-14.20
  • PRZERWA NA OBIAD 14.20-15.45

PANEL VIII:TRAVEL WRITING - DISCOURSES OF RECIPROCAL REFLECTION

15.45-17.15

Room 207

Moderator prof. Izabela Kalinowska-Blackwood
  • 15.45 Małgorzata Zduniak-Wiktorowicz, Polish-German Research Institute, Adam Mickiewicz University
    How does it feel when an old German woman seeks her long-lost brother in the ‘German east’? Polish dependencies and circum-colonial discourse in German fiction
    [Co czuć, kiedy stara Niemka szuka zaginionego na „niemieckim wschodzie” brata? Polskie zależności a lektura prozy zachodnich sąsiadów i ich okołokolonialnego dyskursu]
  • 16.05 Agnieszka Sadecka, Erasmus Mundus Joint Doctorate Programme University of Bergamo
    A socialist reporter in the decolonized world – Polish travel writing and colonial discourse
  • 16.25 Dorota Wojda, Faculty of Polish Studies, Jagiellonian University
    Others about us: accounts of travels to Poland in the period of transformation
    [Inni o nas. Relacje z podróży do Polski w dobie transformacji]
  • DISCUSSION16.45-17.15

PANEL IX: SPACE AND MEMORY

12.50-17.15

Room 208

Moderator dr Dorota Wojda
  • 12.50 Andrzej Zieniewicz, Faculty of Polish Studies, Warsaw University
    A topographical biography: local myths in Artur Sandauer, Adolf Rudnicki and Adam Ważyk (and others) as a means of (not) coping with the past
    [Topograficzna orientacja biografii. Mity terenowe jako sposoby radzenia sobie (i nie radzenia sobie) z przeszłością: Artur Sandauer, Adolf Rudnicki, Adam Ważyk (i inni)]
  • 13.10 Joanna Gubała, Institute of Sociology, Łódź University
    Spatial frames of remembrance – transformation of Jewish community memory sites in Lódź as an example of collective memory expression in public space
    [Przestrzenne ramy pamięci – przeobrażenia łódzkich miejsc pamięci o społeczności żydowskiej jako przykład ekspresji pamięci zbiorowej w przestrzeni publicznej]
  • 13.30 Jagoda Wierzejska, Faculty of Polish Studies, Warsaw University
    Toward a hermeneutics of post-Soviet space: an attempt at an outline
    [Hermeneutyka przestrzeni postsowieckiej – próba zarysu]
  • DISCUSSION 13.50-14.20
  • PRZERWA NA OBIAD 14.20-15.45
  • 15.45 Tatiana Czerska, Institute of Polish and Cultural Studies, Szczecin University
    The boundaries in memory. women’s autobiographical writing as a form of neocolonial discourse
    [Granice w pamięci. Pisarstwo autobiograficzne kobiet jako forma dyskursu neokolonialnego]
  • 16.05 Cristina Şandru, Cardiff Metropolitan University
    The past and its (dis)contents: cultural memory and political amnesia(s) in Post-Cold War East-Central Europe
  • 16.25 Bogdan Ştefănescu, Uniwersytet w Bukareszcie
    The stylistics of postcommunist memory: a tropological approach to memoirs of communist incarceration
  • DISCUSSION 16.45-17.15
17.15 Closing address

Download abstracts and bionotes. [PDF]

Histories, societies, spaces of dialogue.
Post-dependence studies in a comparative perspective.

First circular

27-28.05.2013 Wrocław, Poland

Almost twenty five years after the fall of communism, the debates on the past and present of and in East-Central Europe are entering a properly comparative stage, in the disciplinary, geographical, and political sense. The fourth conference of the Center of Post-dependence Studies is dedicated to the comparative potential of bringing Central and Eastern Europe into a range of discourses situating the so-far national or regional perspectives within larger global flows.

Even a cursory look at how Eastern and Central Europe has positioned itself in modern thought reveals a telling ambivalence - a strong affinity to the western intellectual tradition and, concurrently, a sense of being othered, excluded, made different or even betrayed. This is a story of troubled, subdued, or denied belonging, of functioning within European or western thought as a space of difference. The phrase "New Europe" used in reference to the new EU members from Central and Eastern Europe testifies to the tenacity of this ambivalence.

"Post-dependence", the foundational term to our studies, marks a specific problematic of the Polish culture of the last two decades and, in a broader historical perspective - of the Polish realities of modernity. The goal of the Wrocław conference is to enrich Polish post-dependence studies with voices from other Central and Eastern European countries, as well as those from scholars interested in responses from the perspective of postcolonial studies. We wish to investigate the validity of using terms from postcolonial and area studies, or other related fields, to Central and Eastern European countries, societies and histories, vis-?-vis postcommunism and post-dependence, and transformation periods in the region in general. Our project introduces discourses on the social and cultural situation of Central and Eastern European countries into the global academic debates on postcoloniality, social inequalities of late capitalism, and new social identities emerging from these phenomena. It is important to do so with an adequate academic language capable of grasping these realities through theoretical categories comprising a comparative perspective both in disciplinary and in cultural terms.

We invite papers from across the humanities and social sciences, as well as transdisciplinary approaches responding to the questions listed below:

  • strategies of dealing with, codifying, and (re-)interpreting the past (both recent and more distant) - nostalgia, sentimentality, willed and/or unconscious amnesia; post-1989 sites of commemoration/remembering/ forgetting;
  • the center-periphery relation as diagnostic of the transforming format and function of the state; the resurgence of the local and the discovery/recreation of multiple histories of the place;
  • narratives of historical breakthrough; instances of "epistemic violence" connected with these breakthroughs or takeovers;
  • contemporary marginalized groups emerging as a result of social stratification and the phenomenon of non-normative identities, privileged and underprivileged groups in social narratives;
  • cultural and political complexities of the post-communist transition process;
  • the border status of Central and Eastern Europe as inscribed within the project of European modernity; Western discourses on Eastern and Central Europe after communism and ambivalent attitudes toward the "new" Europe;
  • the effects of the mutual intersecting and overlaying of these phenomena and processes.

We propose to ground the inquiry into the above-listed areas into some larger theoretical categories, such as:

  • Post-dependence studies - evaluation of the term, its theoretical apparatus, its comparative potential for diagnosing the socio-cultural situation of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe; Post-dependence studies vis-?-vis postcolonialism and studies on postcommunism.
  • The Other Europe - what singnificance has Philip Roth's label today? The past and present mechanisms of constructing the European "Other". Self-othering at work in post-communist/post-socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe vis-?-vis the west?
  • The Postcolonial/ Postcommunist connection - Categories from postcolonial studies in historical discourse and historiographic thought in Central and Eastern Europe; ideological uses of postcolonial categories, especially as a new language for the national(ist) paradigm; theorizing postcommunist/postsocialist transformation beyond the patronizing/didactic bias of development and other theories of modernization; the legacies of Marxism, intellectual responsibility/accountability.
  • The affect of post-dependence - emotional aspects and the affective charge of postcommunist/post-dependence transformation, social phenomena of nostalgia, melancholia, anger and frustration, ressentiment.
  • (Un)translatability of cultural difference - difficulties in communicating cultural uniqueness/difference. Where does the object of inquiry resist translation into theoretical/received paradigms? Effective translational strategies for dealing with cultural difference in the target language.
  • Activating cultural memory - any study of the "post" situation becomes necessarily an adventure in spectrology - a knowledge of how the past lags in the present. What haunts current studies in post-dependence, post-Soviet, post-socialism and so on? Re-membering the forgotten/falsified past; strategies of cultural survival, remembering and reconstructing memory in cultures of Central and Eastern Europe. (Non-)antagonistic relation between such social/cultural/political phenomena as commemorating, memory, remembering.
  • Challenges of transnationality and globalization - how do we bring the multiple "posts" studied at the moment in the contexts of Central and Eastern Europe into the force field of globalization? Revising methodologies of critical thinking within the area of history, culture, literary canons to build new viable comparative models of investigation.
  • Localism and globality - reflections in culture, politics and literature of Central and Eastern European countries, vis-?-vis the increasing mobility and émigré population of the E-C European countries. The histories of local migrations, transregional communities and contacts, of Eastern European borderlands and their multicultural social tissue active long before the contemporary post-colonial, late-modern multiculturalism; local and translocal cosmopolitanisms of "provincial Europe"; new migrations.
  • Commonality of feelings and sensitivities - is there an Eastern European regional, transnational sensibility/solidarity that allows us to see this category in terms of a subject of critical thinking, which would correspond with Arjun Apadurai's idea of "community of sentiment" creating a new locality in global flows?

Download application form

Conference languages are English and Polish. Selected papers will be published in two books in respective languages, which means that at least some of the texts will come out both in the original language and in translation.
Please send paper abstracts of ca. 300 - 500 words with keywords and a short bio note by 30 November 2012 to: d_kolodziejczyk@hotmail.com ; h.gosk@uw.edu.pl

The organizing committee:
Dr. Dorota Kołodziejczyk, University of Wrocław, Poland;
Prof. Hanna Gosk, Warsaw University, Poland;
Prof. Ewa Kraskowska, Poznań University, Poland;
Dr. Cristina Sandru, Literary Encyclopedia, UK.
Prof. Bożena Karwowska, University of British Columbia, Canada.



Polish post-dependence discourse - contexts and research perspectives.

Kraków, 27-29 May 2010
Venue: ul. Grodzka 64, the Hall

Human ways of dealing with oppressive, deprecating and critical experience pose a universal problem. However, in each culture the problem develops a unique form and gains a different rank of importance. It can be observed on the basis of solid evidence that for the Polish culture this problem retains the utmost significance and unceasing urgency, while the ways of solving it - in various historical periods, spheres of life, situations and socio-cultural dimensions - have determined choices pertaining to identity strategies, the politics of memory and features of the symbolic imaginary, as well as preferred styles of life and acting, consequently influencing the Polish mentality, habits and culture as a whole.

This inaugural conference of the Post-Dependence Studies Center aims at opening up the space for a systematic reflection on this vast complex of issues, which, without denying or neglecting either the universal-comparative dimension or theoretical and methodological inspirations, purports the following objectives:
(a) an identification of symptomatic "responses" to key instances of oppressive experience in Polish history, social life and culture;
(b) an analysis of the complex character of these practices in the concrete, empirical conditions in which they occur;
(c) drafting the overall topography of Polish post-dependence discourse (PPD).

We propose to understand the term provisionally as a comprehensive category denoting a conglomerate of signifying practices organizing human experience, projects pertaining to identity, social relations, and forms of perceiving reality, all of which have been undertaken after the situation of dependence came to an end, and, at the same time, have almost always betrayed traces of its lingering presence.

We invite 30-minute papers engaging topics grouped in the following sessions:

  1. Theory and methodology. Theory and research methodology of the oppressed. Key concepts and categories for PPD. Related concepts functioning in critical discourse (inferiority, derivativeness, mimicry etc.) and their potential usefulness. Status of literature and other cultural texts and practices in PPD research.
  2. Politics and history. Polish post-dependence discourse: (a) after Partitions, (b) after the German occupation in WW2, (c) after the demise of the socialist Polish People's Republic, (d) after emigration. Struggle, resistance and symbolic violence. Suffering as the object of rivalry between the oppressed; reproduction of dominated/dominating relations within and among oppressed groups.
  3. Society and culture. Sex and gender. Cultural and ethnic minorities. The problematic of double and heterogeneous identity. Identity and place: locations and dislocations. New identity projects, invented traditions, imagined communities.
  4. Typology and anthropology. Culture of domination (culture of power) and culture of the dominated (the cult of victim). Culture of guilt and culture of shame. Comparative analysis of post-dependence identity formations in neighboring cultures. Politics of memory vs. politics of identity.
Please send abstracts with title and summary by March, 30th, 2010 to:
kulturapoprzejsciach@gmail.com