Polish Literature and National Identity: A Postcolonial Perspective

Description

For nearly half a century East Central Europe was part of the Soviet empire and was subject to its "civilizing" mission. Despite its colonial status, this part of the world has escaped the attention of most postcolonial critics and remains a blank spot in global studies of postcolonialism. Dariusz Skorczewski is the first Polish scholar to apply postcolonial thought to Polish realities, at the same time modifying the theoretical framework developed by other scholars of postcolonialism. Polish Literature and National Identity reveals how the experiences of foreign domination and the history of empire have shaped contemporary Polish culture and society. The book, newly translated from the Polish, introduces Anglophone audiences to the potential implications of postcolonial studies on an understanding of Poland's unique historical position within Europe. Skorczewski explores transformations of national identity as reflected in Polish literature and critical discourse from Romanticism to the twenty-first century. The narrative thus tackles questions surrounding Poland's postcolonial status in contemporary East Central Europe, a region where globalization and cosmopolitanism clash with resurgent national sentiments and where predictions about a speedy transition to a postnational era now seem premature. DARIUSZ SKORCZEWSKI is associate professor of Polish literature at the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin. Contents Acknowledgments Prologue: How It All Began 1 Through the Lens of Humanism, with a View to Transcendence 2 Postcolonialism in Poland 3 National Identity in a Postcolonial Framework: Necessary Clarifications and Opening Suggestions 4 Literature as Compensation: Comprador Intelligentsia vis-.-vis the Hegemonic Discourse—Preliminary Theoretical Remarks 5 Confronting the Romantic Legacy 6 The Natives’ Exclusion by the Empire’s Poet? (Adam Mickiewicz, The Crimean Sonnets) 7 Identity as an Object of Inquiry (Paweł Huelle’s Castorp) 8 The (East-)Central European Complex (Andrzej Stasiuk, On the Road to Babadag and Fado) 9 Colonized Poland, Orientalized Poland: Postcolonial Theory and the “Other Europe” 10 Slavic Issues with Identity: Marginal Notes to Maria Janion’s Uncanny Slavdom 11 The Melancholia of Borderlands Discourse Afterword: Three Warnings Notes Bibliography Index