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Marxism and Medieval Studies
This volume is a unique publication as it examines the Marxist attitudes in East Central European historiography and archaeology for the first time, with an emphasis on the co-existence of Marxist and other methodologies between the 1950s and 1970s in the local historiographies in question. Its approach is to distinguish between pseudo-Marxism as an ideological tool on the one hand, and Marxism in the form of historical materialism as a way to interpret the medieval world on the other. Contributors are: Florin Curta, Piotr Guzowski, Adam Hudek, Tereza Johanidesová, Jitka Komendová, Jiří Macháček, Andrzej Marzec, Martin Nodl, Attila Pók, David Radek, Tadeusz Paweł Rutkowski, Iurie Stamati, Rafał Stobiecki, Gábor Thoroczkay, Przemysław Wiszewski, Piotr Węcowski, Martin Wihoda, and Dušan Zupka.
Postcolonial Europe? Essays on Post-Communist Literatures and Cultures
This collective monograph analyzes post-1989 Central and Eastern Europe through the paradigm of postcoloniality. Based on the assumption that both Western and Soviet imperialism emerged from European modernity, the book is a contribution to the development of a global postcolonial discourse based on a more extensive and nuanced geohistorical comparativism. It suggests that the inclusion of East-Central Europe in European identity might help resolve postcolonialism’s difficulties in coming to terms with both postcolonial and neo-colonial dimensions of contemporary Europe. Analyzing post-communist identity reconstructions under the impact of transformative political, economic and cultural experiences such as changes in perception of time and space (landscapes, cityscapes), migration and displacement, collective memory and trauma, objectifying gaze, cultural self-colonization, and language as a form of power, the book facilitates a mutually productive dialogue between postcolonialism and post-communism. Together the studies map the rich terrain of contemporary East-Central European creative writing and visual art, the latter highlighted through accompanying illustrations.
The Process of Politicization
The problem signalled in the title of this volume is of utmost importance today. While envisioning a completely depoliticised society requires a big leap of imagination, there can still be doubts as to the degree to which modern societies may or should be politicised in different dimensions. This book gives a range of answers to this question using selected examples from modern history and the present time, and it outlines the process of politicising the society, together with the tools and means used for that. It does not attempt an exhaustive coverage of the topic of politicisation but serves as a reference for persons interested in the discussed issues, including students of political and social sciences.
Ideologies of Eastness in Central and Eastern Europe
This book explores how the countries of Eastern Europe, which were formerly part of the Soviet bloc have, since the end of communist rule, developed a new ideology of their place in the world. Drawing on post-colonial theory and on identity discourses in the writings of local intelligentsia figures, the book shows how people in these countries no longer think of themselves as part of the "east", and how they have invented new stereotypes of the countries to the east of them, such as Ukraine and Belarus, to which they see themselves as superior. The book demonstrates how there are a whole range of ideologies of "eastness", how these have changed over time, and how such ideologies impact, in a practical way, relations with countries further east.
Being Poland
Being Poland offers a unique analysis of the cultural developments that took place in Poland after World War One, a period marked by Poland's return to independence. Conceived to address the lack of critical scholarship on Poland's cultural restoration, Being Poland illuminates the continuities, paradoxes, and contradictions of Poland's modern and contemporary cultural practices, and challenges the narrative typically prescribed to Polish literature and film. Reflecting the radical changes, rifts, and restorations that swept through Poland in this period, Polish literature and film reveal a multitude of perspectives. Addressing romantic perceptions of the Polish immigrant, the politics of post-war cinema, poetry, and mass media, Being Poland is a comprehensive reference work written with the intention of exposing an international audience to the explosion of Polish literature and film that emerged in the twentieth century.
Voicing Memories, Unearthing Identities: Studies in the Twenty-First-Century Literatures of Eastern and East-Central Europe
In the region known as Eastern and East-Central Europe, the framework provided by memory studies became highly valuable for understanding the overload of interpretations and conflicting perspectives on events during the twentieth century. The trauma of two world wars, the development of collective consciousness according to national and ethnic categories, stories of the trampled lands and lives of people, and resistance to the rule of authoritarian and totalitarian terrors—these trajectories left complex layers of identities to unfold. The following volume addresses the issue of identity as a pivot in studies of memory and literature. In this context, it addresses the question of cultural negotiation as it took shape between memory and literature, history and literature, and memory and history, with the help of contemporary authors and their works. The authors take the literature of countries such as Estonia, Poland, Serbia, Ukraine, and Russia as the point of departure, and explain its significance in terms of geographical, theoretical, and thematic perspectives.
Political Postmodernisms
Political Postmodernisms shows how sites outside of Western Europe and North America undermine an established narrative of architecture theory and history. It focuses specifically on postmodern architecture, which is traditionally understood as embodying the flippant and apolitical aesthetics of capitalist affluence. By investigating postmodern architecture’s manifestations in the unlikely settings of Chile during the neoliberal dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet and Poland during the late socialist Polish People’s Republic, the book argues for a new account that incorporates the political roles it plays when seen in a global perspective. Political Postmodernisms has three goals. First, it...
The Society of the Selfie
This book explores how the Internet is connected to the global crisis of liberal democracy. Today, self-promotion is at the heart of many human relationships. The selfie is not just a social media gesture people love to hate. It is also a symbol of social reality in the age of the Internet. Through social media people have new ways of rating and judging themselves and one another, via metrics such as likes, shares, followers and friends. There are new thirsts for authenticity, outlets for verbal aggression, and social problems. Social media culture and neoliberalism dovetail and amplify one another, feeding social estrangement. With neoliberalism, psychosocial wounds are agitated and authori...
Precarious Places
The book offers a cross-disciplinary perspective on various aspects of precariousness in contemporary culture and society, concentrating on the topographical aspects of sources and causes of uncertainty and anxiety. Precariousness and precarity are themselves provisional and uncertain categories, though ones inviting to rethinking the scopes of precarity and precariousness from the perspective of locality and of places involved in their otherwise global range. The recent years have shown some ways in which precarity has changed its status and has become a strongly debated area not only in economic and political disputes, but also in philosophical debates and various fields of research related to cultural studies. The articles included in the volume address the spatial scope of anxieties and uncertainties involving numerous men and women affected by the several decades of the neoliberal insistence on various kinds of flexibility which, in turn, has put in motion numerous new mechanisms of exclusion and marginalization. Apart from this, a historical view on the making of precarious places is also offered in the pages of the book.
Feminist Antifascism
In this exciting, innovative work, Polish feminist philosopher Ewa Majewska maps the creation of feminist counterpublics around the world-spaces of protest and ideas, community and common struggle, that can challenge the emergence of fascist states as well as Western democratic "public spheres" populated by atomized, individual subjects. Drawing from Eastern Europe and the Global South, Majewska describes the mass labor movement of Poland's Solidarnosc in 1980 and contemporary feminist movements across Poland and South America, arguing that it is outside of the West that we can see the most promising left futures. Majewska argues for the creation of a feminist public-a politics and a world held in common-and outlines the tactics this political goal demands, arguing for a feminist political theory that does not reproduce the same forms of domination it seeks to overcome.
