Kathleen Cioffi-review of "Toward Xenopolis", The Polish Review, November 2024 (original) (raw)
Related papers
Poland's Eastern Cultural Boundary and the Difficulties in Crossing It
Obieg, 2017
Should Polishness have defined boundaries, or should it, rather, be an open cultural plateau, unrestricted by any demarcation lines? Liberal circles –and I use the term very broadly here as opposed to equally broadly understood conservative circles – will usually answer the question by advocating openness and the interaction of Polish culture with that of neighboring and other countries. If we take a closer look at the reality, and especially on the eastern borderland of Polish culture it transpires, however, that matters are not as simple as many idealists might wish. I would, therefore, like first of all to point out certain paradoxes that emerge from the juxtaposition of what can in a simplified manner be called the liberal and conservative answers to the question of the possibility of the interaction of Polish culture with neighboring cultures. From the radically liberal point of view, which – in a theoretical dimension – is usually close to a constructivist approach, clear-cut differences in identity are often considered " artificial. " They usually appear to be distinctions that have been arbitrarily introduced and that needlessly divide people who are equal. From such a perspective, conservatives are frequently critically perceived as those who, for no good reason, dwell on the primordial nature of national groups and the differences between them along the so-called essentialist conception of the nation, that is to say – they treat them as something that exists in reality. In the liberal stance, there are recurrent declarations of openness, and a recognition of fluid identity and the fusion of cultures. Among conservatives, pronouncements are more common on the differences between one's own identity from that of significant others, as well as on canons and imponderables. In the liberal approach, especially with a clear pro-European and left-wing stance, identity transgression should thus, in theory, be accepted in a positive way – as distinct from the conservative approach, where it would be viewed negatively, since the assumption there is of a normative attitude to the boundaries of national identity. Even more frequently, this approach endeavors to define unequivocally universal criteria of national identity, setting out clear demarcation lines between identities, nations, and cultures. When, however, we consider that a contemporary nation can be understood primarily as a political entity, it turns out that if such a community does have clear-cut boundaries; these are both spatial and cultural and, significantly, these dimensions are usually connected. For this reason, political – that is to say, civic – identity is restricted by certain clearly delineated
Invitation to Krosno, Poland. Across Borders VI. The West Looks East. 27-28 April 2015
The organizers of the conference (Stanisław Pigoń State College in Krosno, Poland, Masaryk University of Brno, Czech Republic, University of Presov, Slovakia, Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, Ukraine) wish to invite scholars in humanities, especially literature, linguistics, communication, media, cultural studies, humour studies, translation and interpreting, as well as teaching methodology, to a discussion on the broad subject of cultural neighbourhood. We believe the Across Borders International Conference will be an important and meaningful event, bringing scholars together and contributing to a better understanding of changes and challenges faced by the modern world and our disciplines.
Xenology and Identity in Critical Public Art: Krzysztof Wodiczko's Immigrant Instruments
Krzysztof Wodiczko says that the immigrant is an "unintentional prophet," someone who has a vision of a better world. Immigrants, like the homeless, are agents who spread the visibility of the condition of democracy. In an attempt to delineate and interrogate the concept of citizenship, Wodiczko's recent works on xenology (the science of the stranger) create situations that allow viewers to consider identity from the perspective of the immigrant. Xenology, as defined in a gallery press release, "is an ongoing multimedia research performance design project for which Wodiczko has developed speech equipment for immigrants." (Galerie Lelong, March 1996). The artist's latest interventions in the sphere of critical public art include Alien Staff (1992) and Mouthpiece (1994). These Immigrant Instruments function as "public speech devices" which produce conditions for the symbolic conferment of citizenship while simultaneously disturbing the fixity of this form of political identity.
2019
The Polish psyche is affected by the tragic conflict between what is ours and not ours. This huge dissonance stems from the fact that the outsider is a native: both come from the same country, share a nationality, live among their own people and, at times, inhabit the same person. Hence, Poles’ attitude towards others, defined as newcomers, immigrants or other ‘guests’, to a great extent, arises from their inner struggle with ‘the outsider within’. It is not hard to imagine how tempting it is for political populists, religious demagogues and cultural conformists to take advantage of that.
Review of Kathryn Ciancia’s "On Civilization’s Edge A Polish Borderland in the Interwar World"
George L. Mosse Program in History Blog, 2022
As a country made up of “three unequal halves,” to quote Stefan Żeromski’s famous statement from his novel The Spring to Come (Pol. Przedwiośnie), interwar Poland was a place where regional differences were the foundation of its statehood, rather than a curious fact worthy of attention in tourist guides. With different currencies, divergent railroad networks, and distinct imperial legacies, the Second Polish Republic (1918–1939) had diversity inscribed into its very identity, forcing its political and bureaucratic elites to become diversity managers of their time. Diverse was also the country’s population, especially the one-third that wasn’t Roman Catholic and did not speak Polish as their first language. Volhynia (Ukr. Волинь, Pol. Wołyń, Yidd. װאָהלין), the setting of Kathryn Ciancia’s On Civilization’s Edge: A Polish Borderland in the Interwar World (Oxford University Press, 2020), is a case in point here. Nestled between present-day Belarus, Poland, and Ukraine, Volhynia was one of the linguistically, nationally, and religiously diverse regions in interwar Poland. https://mosseprogram.wisc.edu/2022/06/13/borowski/
Cinergie n.14, Special-peer reviewed, 2018
The article considers how the public art of Krzysztof Wodiczko's acts as part of the discourse of political intervention in the urban space of marginalized people through technological and artistic media. The analysis of his "Xenological Instruments" designed in the 1990s-and in particular their last version, the Mouthpiece (1995)-focuses on Wodiczko's "maieutic" work about immigrants in several international cities, and on his efforts to give them a voice and visibility in public space. Brought to different urban locations by "stranger's" bodies, these "instruments", which are technological prostheses with a portable screen, are able to stimulate the dialogue with local people opening the possibility of creating new democratic spaces of confrontation. Wodiczko audience interactivity outside the exhibition space of the museum, hoping to test the actual dynamics of our democracies and to charge his art with a "scandalous functionalism".
In a trilogy of internationally acclaimed art videos featured at the Venice Biennale's Polish Pavilion in 2011, the Israeli artist Yael Bartana illustrates a utopian political movement based on an eclectic pairing of visual and historical texts, including European settler colonialism, diaspora nationalism, political Zionism and Socialist Realism. The movement as described by its leader Sławomir Sierakowski calls for three million Jews to return to Poland, and for an end to all forms of ethnic violence. Within this framework, Bartana manages to raise important questions for the politics of cohabitation within a divided Europe. However, by making a conscious departure from the ongoing dynamics of intergenerational violence and reparation that are rooted in the genocidal crimes of the 20 th century, Bartana's completed work offers a way out from the specific narrative closures that appear to serve as its inspiration. In effect, Bartana manages to transform what would otherwise be a jumble of political, historical and academic discourses into a strongly aspirational and post-national vision in which Europe is finally able to overcome the traumas of its past. Though I provide a critical and detailed analysis of each video to provide a context for this vision, the purpose of my article is to situate Bartana's work in relation to theoretical debates surrounding contemporary European politics, focusing specifically on issues of citizenship, nationalism and migration. I use this theoretical framework as a way to highlight the affective content of Bartana's story as it unfolds on the screen, and to assess Bartana's attempt at linking expressions of utopian affect to the historical imagination. Broadly speaking, then, the article draws a line between the methods and approaches of European area studies, artistic practice and the popular domain of affect theory. I conclude the article by suggesting that Bartana's trilogy is successful because it manages to raise profound methodological questions while simultaneously offering a provocative engagement with contemporary politics.
American Anthropologist, 1997
One of the most striking outcomes of a three-day symposium on ethnicity, held at the 1998 International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, was the contrast in the proposals respectively advanced by the American and Russian delegations. While the American contributors voiced a strong recommendation for eliminating the term "race" from the social science discourse on ethnicity, the Russians expressed an equally strong belief in the need to eliminate the concept of nationality! The ironic symmetry of these statements illustrates particularly well the "cultural embeddedness" of our analytical procedures, and it highlights how certain terms and concepts acquire symbolic meanings that are very context-specific. The collection of articles put together by Lazlo Kurti and Juliet Langman in Beyond Borders, is a helpful introduction to this issue, and the fact that the volume's focus is the ethnocultural dynamics of post-1989 East and Central Europe gives it special immediacy. In spite of the fashionable ring of the title, this book does not introduce-in one of the contributors' felicitous phrase-"another post-modern, globalized concerto" (p. 95). On the contrary, the various case studies it presents solidly document not only the persistence of ethnic identity in populations that have long been presumed "homogenized," but also the inevitability of separatist movements catalyzed by such identities whenever the political circumstances are favorable. The fact that the volume's goals seem to derive from quintessentially postmodern premises makes its conclusions all the more relevant. As the editors point out in their introduction, the book was designed to address the question: "Does globalization really result in an unprecedented integration of the life-ways of ordinary citizens in East and Central European cities and regions?" (p. 4). Furthermore, the overall focus of the contributions is squarely centered on the issue of identity-that most postmodern of preoccupations. The case studies presented in the volume, however, answer the thematic question with a resounding "no" and consistently point out the remarkable strength, stability, and persistence of ethnic self-ascription in geographical settings and historical circumstances that could be expected to have obliterated it. This paradoxical situation is described most cogently in one of the strongest pieces of the collection, Jonathan Schwartz's "Listening for Macedonian Identity" (pp. 95-110). In a chapter that effectively integrates ethnographic detail and complex historical information, the author sets out to describe the characteristics of a group of people whose sense of self is specifically correlated to experiences of "border crossing" and diasporic existence. In the words of Pecho, the Macedonian emigrant whose life history introduces the chapter: "In today's world you need two faces. ... I have four passports" (p. 95). The passports turn out to be Australian, Swedish, Yugoslavian, and Macedonian, and Pecho's life history is a veritable emblem of postmodern transnationalism. Nevertheless, as the author points out: "At no point in the narration is there any Reviews
The Republic of Poland at the Crossroads of Two Cultures
Politeja, 2021
The Polish community suffers from weakening national bonds and therefore it has difficulties with defining its identity. Grandiose declarations are an embarrassing confirmation of this fact. No great idea capable of raising a future project for Poland is apparent. Is the Jagiellonian Idea capable of strengthening bonds, perhaps of giving impulse to a metamorphosis? Can it offer a project for tomorrow? Only what will be accepted by collective recognition as a project designed to ensure the existence of the national community has future. And by 'existence' I mean not only a verbalized identity, but also the capacity to carry out necessary changes independently. The article presents the view that the Jagiellonian Idea does not rest on facts, but on an imagined picture of the one-time Rzeczpospolita. It presents a thesis about the connection between the flourishing of that state and the acceleration of transformations tied to the dialogic vortex generated by the Baltic-Black Sea axis of concentration. The failure of that project is ascribed to the changed circumstances, and perhaps to the insufficient energy elicited by this dialogic vortex. The experience of the Rzeczpospolita as a European project, in turn, indicates the road we may take today toward the completion of the transformation begun in 1989.