Pytanie o pamięć. Relacje autobiograficzne więźniów obozów koncentracyjnych

This book consists of two main parts. The first part offers a basic methodological introduction, presenting a concise but multifaceted overview of current problems of collective memory. The second part contains a set of interviews with former prisoners of concentration camps carried out by the authors. The research was conducted by Paweł Greń and Łukasz Posłuszny and focuses on issues of collective and cultural memory illustrated by individual life experiences of concentration camps prisoners. The field of oral history serves as the framework of analysis and narrative inquiry as its research tool. Interviews and additional research materials were collected by the authors and are not available in previous publications, making this work a precious supplement to the current scholarly body of knowledge and achievements in the discipline of memory studies. According to the authors, current historical and literary publications provide an incomplete picture of the WWII and its aftermaths for survivors, because descriptions of the war and imprisonment in the camp play still a dominate role in narratives. The importance of these issues in autobiographies is unquestionable and highly needed to create a common identity among generation of prisoners, though authors often wanted to perceive the fate of individuals in a broader perspective – including the periods before and after the war. Hence, interviews stressed personal experiences and their understanding over time by former prisoners. The interviews covered many topics on life before, during and after the camp – among them daily and neutral routines, but also difficult matters. The latter were connected on the one hand with traumatic events or harsh memories and emotions, and on the other hand with less extensively highlighted threads of prisoners’ lives - such as issues of the body and sexuality – and their dependence on particular representation or narrative. The authors are convinced that the book serves not only as a record of past remembered by eyewitnesses, but it also depicts their accounts in wider contexts and discourses, which expose specific dimensions of told and written stories. In the book Questions for Memory one examine the approach proposed by young scholars. Interviews were conducted from 2009-2011, seventy years after the end of the second world war, and this initiative was the result of questions and doubts of the authors from the existing literature. They also wanted to use the unique opportunity to meet with eyewitnesses and record their stories, because when they pass away we will irretrievably lose the possibility to listen to them and to pose sensitive questions. The majority of the interviewees were prisoners of KL Auschwitz-Birkenau, and their experiences differed greatly from each other based on social background and specific experience in the camps as well as their post-camp and postwar life. Aside from persons whose stories are already well known and open, readers will hear the stories of those who spoke only reluctantly and very rarely, or who had remained silent until the present author’s research. Qualitative differences between interviews occurred on the level of established relationship and atmosphere of trust, which varied according to circumstances and individual character and personality. For P. Greń and Ł. Posłuszny, each interviewed person is equally and highly valued due to the collected material and the personal experience of the meetings. Among the ten interviews placed in the book, seven of them are the stories told by women. Their testimonies exemplify realities of everyday prisoners’ existence and gravitate towards mirroring specifically feminine perspectives of imprisonment. For women, crucial problems stemmed from experiences of body that intertwine with suffering, feeling of shame and humiliation. Early discussions on holocaust literature and issues of representation that shaped the Polish narrative and collective memory imposed imperatives of silence on certain topics. A solution for reconciling heroic and inhuman deeds in stories with completely human physiology was impossible and improper for many years. There were also questions about life after, ways of dealing with a trauma or reflections on the present time. During conversations the authors attempted to come closer to something distant and incomprehensible for their generation and for people who did not experience the camps. Despite the fact that there have been seventy years of dealing with these events in literature, art, drama, film, memoirs and scientific works, the past still breeds more questions than answers. The book Questions for Memory serves as an example of this phenomenon.

Radio i jego miejsce w życiu codziennym. Studium odbioru stacji radiowych w Polsce po 1989 roku. Analiza i interpretacja badań jakościowych

Wydział Historyczny: Instytut Etnologii i Antropologii Kulturowej

Japonia w życiu i w twórczości Amélie Nothomb

Wydział Neofilologii: Instytut Filologii Romańskiej

Holocaust w powieści Wasilija Grossmana "Życie i los"

Tematem artykułu jest książka bezpośrednio nie zaliczana do literatury Holocaustu, wybitna powieść Życie i los, rosyjskiego pisarza i dziennikarza Wasilija Grossmana, który dziś uznawany jest za jednego z najważniejszych twórców rosyjskich XX wieku. Życie i los okazuje się przykładem ujęcia dramatu Shoah na tle wojny jako części wielkiej Historii poddanej szaleństwom ideologii i polityki nazistów oraz terroru i rosnącego z drugiej strony antysemityzmu w państwie bolszewickim. Jednocześnie Zagłada pozostaje w tym utworze przede wszystkim tragedią konkretnych osób, widziana w porządku pojedynczej ludzkiej egzystencji, która nie daje się nigdy całkowicie sprowadzić do tego, co bezosobowe i masowe. Indywidualna perspektywa humanizuje obraz historii, ale też i go podważa w jego ogólnych strukturach i narracjach. Artykuł opisuje elementy, które składają się na żydowski wątek utworu. Dla jego odczytania ważny okazuje się szerszy kontekst biografii Grossmana i historia powstania oraz wydania powieści Życie i los. Jak widać – rosyjski pisarz dokonał dwóch znaczących gestów w odniesieniu do problemu reprezentacji Zagłady: z jednej strony zwrócił się ku konwencjom literackim, wykorzystał epicki rozmach, kompozycję wielowątkową i panoramiczne ujęcia wraz z ich koncepcją realizmu, wehikularności słowa, a jednocześnie wyszedł poza estetyczne ramy tekstu literackiego, wprowadził elementy lirycznych opisów i autobiograficzne akcenty oraz podkreślił etyczny wymiar całości – jako formy pamięci o tych niezliczonych ofiarach nie tylko Zagłady, ale i każdego XX wiecznego totalitaryzmu.

Det individuella möter det kollektiva. Självbiografiskt stoff i barndomsskildringar från det svenska folkhemmet

The subject of the article are autobiographical threads present in Swedish stories about childhood and adolescence published after 1986 that form part of the narrative pertaining to the origins, evolution and decline of the Swedish welfare state (folkhemmet). With reference to such concepts as autobiographical pact, autobiographical novel and auto-fiction, the author discusses the various ways six contemporary Swedish writers (PC Jersild, Kjell Johansson, Susanna Alakoski, Jonas Gardell and Lena Andersson) use their biographies. Special focus is given to the notion of how a cogitation upon individual fate becomes universal when placed in a social context. Another problem analysed by the author is the significance of autobiographical threads for building relationships between the writer and the reader and for the reception of a literary text.

Les tribulations parisiennes de l’officier écrivain : l’oeuvre autobiographique de Yasmina Khadra et son accueil en France

This article describes Yasmina Khadra’s autobiographical work composed of two books: "L’écrivain" and "L’imposture des mots" and its reception in France. The main purpose of this study was to establish the literary genre of these books, which implies determining whether Khandra’s work represents an autobiography or an autofiction with reference to P. Lejeune’s and V. Colonna’s theoretical studies. The dividing line between two genres in Khandra’s works refl ects his inner split between being either a solder or a writer. The presentation will also help to understand the controversy resulting from Khandra’s participation in Algerian civil war. Moreover the analysis is related to modern Algerian history.

Nouvelles approches de la ville dans la littérature française contemporaine : Thomas Clerc et Philippe Vasset

On the basis of two indecidable texts (Thomas Clerc, “Paris, musée du XXIe siècle. Le dixième arrondissement”, Gallimard 2007 and Philippe Vasset, “Un livre blanc”, Fayard 2007), we will reflect on new approaches to the city in contemporary French litterature. Clerc and Vasset, in their respective texts, suggest considering litterature as a series of practices connected with the exploration of the city (Clerc) and of the urban area (Vasset) according to the idea of an arbitrary itinerary. The image of the city whose space, subject to a permanent process of museifi cation, is constantly considered to be a work of art (Clerc) contrasts with a project of viewing the deserted areas of the city and of its surroundings as an infinite collection of “artistic installations” created in daily life (Vasset). Clerc’s and Vasset’s artistic mentality leads them to the fascination with “works of involuntary art”, both concrete signs and tangible proof of the transitional period which they try to describe systematically, following, at the same time, the principles of an axonometric city map.

Zrození autobiografického subjektu. Máchův intimní deník a moderní básnické deníky ve vztahu k romantické ideji subjektivismu

My text is an attempt to apply Charles Taylor’s theory, dealing with the origins of the modern self, to Czech autobiographical literature originating in Romanticism. Taking a cue from Jean Starobinski and Philippe Lejeune’s concepts of modern autobiography, I analyse Karel Hynek Mácha’s personal diary from 1835 and try to find and emphasize its narrative and compositional aspects, which anticipate the poetics of modern poetic diaries.

Luctus est istic tuus,/ crimen novercae. Boskie i ludzkie szaleństwo Heraklesa na podstawie tragedii Eurypidesa i Seneki

One of the main, initial thesis of the article is that in the tragedies `Hρακλής μαινόμενος by Euripides and Hercules Furens by Seneca the main character falls into the madness twice. The first madness is sent by Hera/ Juno and is here defined, because of its origin, as a divine madness. The second one is so called human madness and Heracles/ Hercules is most probably overcome by it, after he has recognised, that he, driven by the involuntary fury, killed his own wife and sons. This state of the psyche of the hero is already independent from the deity and originates in such deeply human feelings like despair, anger, pain, shame. The strongly stirred hero plans to commit a suicide. According to the contemporary psychology this situation can be, because of some reasons analysed in the article, recognised as a symptom of irrationality. In the drama by Seneca Amfithryon, the father of the hero also defines the state of Hercules, who has become aware of the truth about his deeds, outright as furor. There is in the drama by Euripides, however, no reference to this second madness, which is connected with the somewhat different mentality that the drama originated in (the still kept in memory Homeric ethos and the attitudes towards the issues of honour, suicide etc. determined by it). Seneca as a stoic noticed and emphasized – although he generally also accepted the suicide – that Hercules, because of the anger, acts irrationally and, as a result, is in fact mentally unable to decide about his life and death. In the article is also presented in what an interesting way the above mentioned differences in the mentality of Euripides and Seneca manifest themselves in the case of the divine madness (among other things, the difference between Greek Lyssa and Roman Furor).

Płynna tożsamość? Identyfikacje Francuzów algierskiego pochodzenia w powieściach autobiograficznych

Wydział Nauk Społecznych