Kotwas, Marta;
Kubik, Jan;
(2022)
Beyond “Making Poland Great Again.” Nostalgia in Polish Populist and Non-populist Discourses.
Sociological Forum
10.1111/socf.12842.
(In press).
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Abstract
Nostalgia can be triggered not only by personal recollections but also by exposure to narratives or images evoking desirable pasts, more or less fictional, and inducing feelings of longing for them. We analyze the institutional and semiotic machinery involved in the cultural construction of nostalgia in Poland and its role in generating sentiments that predispose people to support populist—particularly right-wing populist—ideology. While various political options use semiotic vehicles of nostalgia designed to engender nostalgic sentiments, we argue that there are systematic differences of content and form between politically useful invocations of nostalgia, related to the ideology of their proponents. We further posit that right-wing populist nostalgia invokes not only national greatness but also national innocence. We also identify specific features of such nostalgic discourses. The empirical material for our four cases ranges from textual and film narratives, through images and performances, to large-scale exhibitions and museal projects. To analyze their content and determine the form of politicization we build upon the conceptual apparatus developed by Svetlana Boym (reflective versus restorative nostalgia), Jan Assmann (communicative versus cultural memory), and Northrop Frye (low mimetic versus high mimetic narrative forms). The analysis relies on Geertzian “thick description” and the extended case study method.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Beyond “Making Poland Great Again.” Nostalgia in Polish Populist and Non-populist Discourses |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1111/socf.12842 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1111/socf.12842 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © 2022 The Authors. Sociological Forum published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Eastern Sociological Society. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > SSEES UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10152978 |
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