Perspektywa postkolonialna na gruncie polskim – pytania sceptyka

Abstract

Grazyna BORKOWSKA The Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences (Warszawa) A Post-colonial Perspective on the Polish Soil: Some Questions of a Sceptic The author disputes with the statements whereby Polish culture can, or should, be examined using post-colonial criticism tools. The underlying assumption is that the foundation of post-colonialism is not violence as such but violence when combined with inability to selfrepresent (as per Said’s classical definition). Neither during the territorial partition nor under the communist rule did Poland lose the potential of expressing itself, although these possibilities were restricted then. Another question is whether Poland has ever acted as a coloniser; the answer is yes. Over the ages, Poland colonised its eastern borderland areas, applying violence and substitute representation. The author draws our attention to the works by Polish sociologist and ethnographer Jozef Obrebski (1930s), pioneering as they were in the matter concerned, and to a weak awareness of these works in today’s scholarship (this recognition clearly does not refer to his oeuvre’s editors).

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