Politics of Innocence: Holocaust Memory in Poland by Kornelia Kończal ISBN 101080/1462352820211968147 instant download

Politics of Innocence: Holocaust Memory in Poland by Kornelia Kończal ISBN 101080/1462352820211968147 instant download

In post-1989 Poland, the primary struggle over the state-sponsored politics of memory revolved around the concept of “critical patriotism” (patriotyzm krytyczny). Advanced in the early 1980s by the dissident intellectual Jan Józef Lipski, and taken up in the 1990s by the left and liberal historians and journalists, this approach to collective memory calls for a critical inquiry into the darkest chapters of Polish xenophobia – including the history of anti-Jewish, anti-Ukrainian, and anti-German violence.1 In more general terms, the advocates of critical patriotism argue that the state-sponsored politics of memory should promote critical reflection about the past as necessary to build a pluralistic and tolerant polity.2 In contrast, the conservative milieu rejects this approach as a “pedagogy of shame” (pedagogika wstydu) and an attempt at “extinguishing Poland” (wygaszanie Polski).3 Instead, the state-sponsored politics of memory should strengthen the national pride of the continuous fight for Poland’s freedom and resistance against foreign oppression during the long nineteenth and the short twentieth centuries.