Evoking Polish Memory: State, Self and the Communist Past in Transition

ISBN-13: 9783631641637 / Angielski / Twarda / 2014 / 253 str.

Anna Witeska-Mlynarczyk

Opis

The book offers an interdisciplinary but very grounded look at the question of memory politics in contemporary Poland. It describes the conflicting ways in which two groups of people the former anti-communist activists and the former officers of the repressive regime have actively engaged in representations and claims about the communist past in the contemporary reality of one Polish town. The material is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted during the years 2006-2008. The author focuses on the processes of reconstruction of memories and subjectivities taking place at the intersection of individuals, civic society, state bureaucracy and politics. The book focuses on the beliefs, hopes and fears of people who became the subjects of historical policy during their lifetimes."

Recenzje

«Insgesamt hat Anna Witeska-Mlynarczyk ein dichtes, sehr anregendes und höchst lesenswertes Buch geschrieben, in dem persönliche Schicksale exemplarisch mit ihren Erinnerungsstrategien in Nahaufnahme präsentiert werden, gleichzeitig aber auch zur abstrakteren Reflexion über Kanäle und Wege der Erinnerung sowie eigene Denkmuster anregen.» (Dorothea Traupe, Zentrum für Interdisziplinäre Polenstudien)

Spis treści

Contents: Historical Policy - Narrative - Commemoration - Memory Politics - Social Memory - Individual Memory - Poland - Communism - Embodied Memory - Memory Of Political Violence - Political Identities - Transition - Historicity - Perpetrators, Heroes, Victims - Anthropology - Ethnography - The Processes of Reconstructing the Self - Subjectivity.

O autorze

Anna Witeska-Mlynarczyk is a lecturer at the Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan (Poland). She received a PhD in Social Anthropology at the University College London in 2010. Her research interests focus on memory, subjectivity, medical anthropology and anthropology of space.