ISSN 2084–1418
The paper edition of the Anthropology of History Yearbook is the definitive version
2015, No. (8), Anthropology and History
Anna Witeska-Młynarczyk
On ambivalence and the processes of structurisation of memory in contemporary Poland: fragments of ethnography
PDF version
Keywords: memory, identity, historical policy, communism
Abstract: The article comments on the experiences of the former anti-communist activists conditioned by their engagement in the contemporary memory politics in Poland. Theoretically, the article presents the notion of memory understood as a social emobodied practice performed in specific material surroundings in a given historical time, structured by larger institutional forms and actions. Ethnographically, the author reflects on the efficacy of the contemporary historical policy for her informants whose sense of closure of the problematic past seems fragile. Her argument is that the complexity of the past violent experiences as lived by her informants cannot be contained in the conventionalized, bureacratized and rigid forms of contemporary memory projects.
About Author:
WITESKA-MŁYNARCZYK ANNA - cultural anthropologist, Assistant Professor in the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology of the Adam Mickiewicz University. Email: anna.witeska[at]gmail.com.
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