Anna Krakus - Profile on Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Anna Krakus
I Hereby Find You Guilty of Cheating: How Television Judges Give Personal Problems Legal Dimensions
Intersections of Law and Culture, 2012
In this chapter, I explore how legal consciousness may be influenced by television court shows. I... more In this chapter, I explore how legal consciousness may be influenced by television court shows. I try to bridge a gap between studies in the humanities and socio-legal studies as I account for some theories about why people go to court, and attempt to answer the question of whether television courts work as motivating factors for people to turn to address specific problems.
Compulsive collectors
Journal of the History of Collections, 2020
Oscar-winning film director Andrzej Wajda (1929–2016) was an avid collector of all information re... more Oscar-winning film director Andrzej Wajda (1929–2016) was an avid collector of all information relating to himself and his film-making. In 1978 he made a documentary film about a fellow collector, Ludwig Zimmerer (1924–1987), who accumulated thousands of paintings and objects of Polish folk art. This article tells the stories of these two men and their collections. I suggest that an investigation into the lives and times of Wajda and Zimmerer can shed new light on the psychological processes that inform collecting. Rather than dismissing the compulsion to collect as a product of neurosis, as some previous interpretations have done, I argue here that we should read it as a productive and compensatory method for curing addictions.
Law & Literature, 2017
This article describes how, in contemporary Poland, the questionable nature of the materials in t... more This article describes how, in contemporary Poland, the questionable nature of the materials in the formerly secret police files is sometimes forgotten, most significantly in the process of lustration. It attempts to explain why the public would support lustration laws and/or engage in gossip stemming from the files, despite knowing their shortcomings. After briefly summarizing the long process by which agreement was reached concerning the Polish lustration bill, and describing some of the unique qualities of Polish lustration, the article presents arguments for why the formerly secret police files might be popularly accepted as the foundation used for the judicial process. The main justification discussed is found in literary and scholarly attempts to read the files biographically and to use them as inspiration for new biographies. The article shows that scholarly queries into secret police files as historically useful sources coincide with Polish popular interest in non-fiction literature and memoirs. I propose that fitting the police files within the already popular genre of biography offers entertainment value, while at the same time offering the documents legitimacy. This article shows that whereas scholars and authors of popular memoirs treat the files within a range of possibilities, the lustration process has room only for a straight forward reading of a file as a truthful story about an individual.
Crime Stories: The Polish Secret Police File and the Conflation of the Legal and the Literary
Law and Humanities, 2011
A discussion on the relationship between the secret police file and literature in the People'... more A discussion on the relationship between the secret police file and literature in the People's Republic of Poland is presented. The article highlights the secret police file that spreads its message implicitly like literature it tells stories, but in secret. The papers reveals legal writing and literary genres, but a unique instance of fiction, biography, and novelistic additions having the authority of law.
Foucault in Poland: A Silent Archive
Diacritics
This article describes how, in contemporary Poland, the questionable nature of the materials in t... more This article describes how, in contemporary Poland, the questionable nature of the materials in the formerly secret police files is sometimes forgotten, most significantly in the process of lustration. It attempts to explain why the public would support lustration laws and/or engage in gossip stemming from the files, despite knowing their shortcomings. After briefly summarizing the long process by which agreement was reached concerning the Polish lustration bill, and describing some of the unique qualities of Polish lustration, the article presents arguments for why the formerly secret police files might be popularly accepted as the foundation used for the judicial process. The main justification discussed is found in literary and scholarly attempts to read the files biographically and to use them as inspiration for new biographies. The article shows that scholarly queries into secret police files as historically useful sources coincide with Polish popular interest in non-fiction literature and memoirs. I propose that fitting the police files within the already popular genre of biography offers entertainment value, while at the same time offering the documents legitimacy. This article shows that whereas scholars and authors of popular memoirs treat the files within a range of possibilities, the lustration process has room only for a straight forward reading of a file as a truthful story about an individual.
I Hereby Find You Guilty of Cheating: How Television Judges Give Personal Problems Legal Dimensions
Intersections of Law and Culture, 2012
In this chapter, I explore how legal consciousness may be influenced by television court shows. I... more In this chapter, I explore how legal consciousness may be influenced by television court shows. I try to bridge a gap between studies in the humanities and socio-legal studies as I account for some theories about why people go to court, and attempt to answer the question of whether television courts work as motivating factors for people to turn to address specific problems.
Compulsive collectors
Journal of the History of Collections, 2020
Oscar-winning film director Andrzej Wajda (1929–2016) was an avid collector of all information re... more Oscar-winning film director Andrzej Wajda (1929–2016) was an avid collector of all information relating to himself and his film-making. In 1978 he made a documentary film about a fellow collector, Ludwig Zimmerer (1924–1987), who accumulated thousands of paintings and objects of Polish folk art. This article tells the stories of these two men and their collections. I suggest that an investigation into the lives and times of Wajda and Zimmerer can shed new light on the psychological processes that inform collecting. Rather than dismissing the compulsion to collect as a product of neurosis, as some previous interpretations have done, I argue here that we should read it as a productive and compensatory method for curing addictions.
Law & Literature, 2017
This article describes how, in contemporary Poland, the questionable nature of the materials in t... more This article describes how, in contemporary Poland, the questionable nature of the materials in the formerly secret police files is sometimes forgotten, most significantly in the process of lustration. It attempts to explain why the public would support lustration laws and/or engage in gossip stemming from the files, despite knowing their shortcomings. After briefly summarizing the long process by which agreement was reached concerning the Polish lustration bill, and describing some of the unique qualities of Polish lustration, the article presents arguments for why the formerly secret police files might be popularly accepted as the foundation used for the judicial process. The main justification discussed is found in literary and scholarly attempts to read the files biographically and to use them as inspiration for new biographies. The article shows that scholarly queries into secret police files as historically useful sources coincide with Polish popular interest in non-fiction literature and memoirs. I propose that fitting the police files within the already popular genre of biography offers entertainment value, while at the same time offering the documents legitimacy. This article shows that whereas scholars and authors of popular memoirs treat the files within a range of possibilities, the lustration process has room only for a straight forward reading of a file as a truthful story about an individual.
Crime Stories: The Polish Secret Police File and the Conflation of the Legal and the Literary
Law and Humanities, 2011
A discussion on the relationship between the secret police file and literature in the People'... more A discussion on the relationship between the secret police file and literature in the People's Republic of Poland is presented. The article highlights the secret police file that spreads its message implicitly like literature it tells stories, but in secret. The papers reveals legal writing and literary genres, but a unique instance of fiction, biography, and novelistic additions having the authority of law.
Foucault in Poland: A Silent Archive
Diacritics
This article describes how, in contemporary Poland, the questionable nature of the materials in t... more This article describes how, in contemporary Poland, the questionable nature of the materials in the formerly secret police files is sometimes forgotten, most significantly in the process of lustration. It attempts to explain why the public would support lustration laws and/or engage in gossip stemming from the files, despite knowing their shortcomings. After briefly summarizing the long process by which agreement was reached concerning the Polish lustration bill, and describing some of the unique qualities of Polish lustration, the article presents arguments for why the formerly secret police files might be popularly accepted as the foundation used for the judicial process. The main justification discussed is found in literary and scholarly attempts to read the files biographically and to use them as inspiration for new biographies. The article shows that scholarly queries into secret police files as historically useful sources coincide with Polish popular interest in non-fiction literature and memoirs. I propose that fitting the police files within the already popular genre of biography offers entertainment value, while at the same time offering the documents legitimacy. This article shows that whereas scholars and authors of popular memoirs treat the files within a range of possibilities, the lustration process has room only for a straight forward reading of a file as a truthful story about an individual.