Desert and Wilderness Revisited: Sienkiewicz's Africa in the Polish National Imagination

Klobucka, Anna

doi:10.2307/3086327

Cited by 8 publications

(7 citation statements)

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“…In the light of these definitions, it can be said that Tutuola made errors and, possibly, unintentional mistakes, although in this chapter I use the term 'mistake' in a non-specialized sense, without registering the above distinctions. 8 The question of language politics in Sienkiewicz's novel and its film adaptations has been analysed by Anna Kłobucka (2001). 9 These observations echo Tymoczko's (1999b) finding that translators committed to the Irish cultural revival assimilated Irish texts to the domestic convention of English epics partly because if they had (re-)created the peculiarity of the Irish epics they could have played into the hands of colonial stereotyping against the Irish.…”

Section: ) the German Translation By Waltermentioning

confidence: 89%

Literary Translation

2014

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Section: ) the German Translation By Waltermentioning

confidence: 89%

Literary Translation

2014

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“…Of course, Polish identity was formed under the influence of many factors, but what we are interested in here is not so much the actual formation of this identity as the ideas about it. What is interesting in this context is that Sienkiewicz's historical books, such as The Teutonic Knights or Trilogy (which were written to comfort the heart, because they showed that, despite defeats, medieval and early modern Poland eventually persisted) are considered to be key to shaping the understanding of Polishness (Klobucka, 2001). Yet, completely overlooked is the impact on the politics of national identity of the equally popular In Desert and Wilderness (Klobucka, 2001).…”

Section: Antisemitism Racialisation and Polish National Identitymentioning

confidence: 99%

The memory politics of Cursed Soldiers, antisemitism and racialisation

Jaskułowski

Majewski

2023

Nations and Nationalism

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This paper examines the relationship between racism and the memory politics of the anti‐communist underground in Poland. It explores a covert antisemitism behind the conservative nationalist hegemonic project of transforming the anti‐communist underground into the ideologically charged symbol of the Cursed Soldiers. It demonstrates that under the conditions of the condemnation of antisemitism, the symbolism of the Cursed Soldiers has become a covert way of expressing anti‐Jewish prejudice in hegemonic memory politics. The paper argues that this covert antisemitism must be seen in the broader context of historical racialised antisemitism and racialised structures of Polish national identity. The paper challenges the notion of Poland as a country free from racism, by unpacking the role of racialisation in the dominant understanding of Polishness. It demonstrates how the memory politics of the Cursed Soldiers fit into the racialised logic of the dominant ideology of Polish national identity.

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“…For example, one of the characters explained the alleged nature of Black people: “Among the Blacks there are honest souls, though as a rule you cannot depend upon their gratitude; they are children who forget what happened the day before” (Sienkiewicz 1917, 316). Although Sienkiewicz’s historical novels are considered to be key to shaping the understanding of Polishness, there is a consensus regarding his Africa novel’s “irrelevance to the politics of Polish identity” (Klobucka 2001, 249), and the racism of this novel is ignored—for example, the main centre of literature studies in Poland published a monograph devoted to Sienkiewicz in 2019 in which the word racism is not mentioned at all (Szleszyński and Rudkowska 2019). Further, new studies show that Black or darker skinned people experience racist prejudice in Poland (Balogun 2019).…”

Section: Racism Without Racismmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Politics of a National Identity Survey: Polishness, Whiteness, and Racial Exclusion

Jaskułowski

2020

Nationalities Papers

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This article analyses a popular survey on national identity in Poland. However, the analysis of the survey is a pretext to remind one of the limitations of crude quantitative methods and to look at the Polish national identity itself. The article shows that the survey questions are far from unambiguous, and respondents might attribute different meanings to them. The survey does not “measure” national identity existing in the world, rather it serves to maintain the hegemonic concept of Polishness. It diminishes the significance of Catholicism and the perceived biological dimension of Polishness. It ignores public sentiment linking Whiteness and Polishness, contributing to maintaining the dominant image of Polishness as free of racism. Under the guise of objective research, the survey is one of the elements sustaining the image of a relatively open and inclusive Polishness. Referring to my own qualitative research and recent literature on the topic, I argue that Polish identity must be seen in terms of selective racism without racism—that is, it is an identity based on racial premises but which at the same time neglects its racial character.

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Desert and Wilderness Revisited: Sienkiewicz's Africa in the Polish National Imagination

Cited by 8 publications

References 0 publications

Literary Translation

Literary Translation

The memory politics of Cursed Soldiers, antisemitism and racialisation

The Politics of a National Identity Survey: Polishness, Whiteness, and Racial Exclusion

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