Marian Rawicz: 'Weak Identity' vis-à-vis Epistemic Injustice

• In Event: Art, Liberation, and the Emigration Experience

Abstract

The paper examines the biography of Marian Rawicz as an artist. Born in Lviv and educated in Leipzig’s prestigious school of design, Rawicz was a Polish graphic artist and designer of propagandist posters and advertisements who worked in Spain during the Second Republic and the Civil War. His experiences dramatically exemplify epistemic injustice faced by members of Eastern European ethnic and religious minorities. While meant to liberate him from the self-reproducing grip of prejudice and bias, his migrations emphatically showed that, in the 1930s, a “weak” national or political identity and the voluntarily adopted non-belonger status provoked violent responses from the dominant “strong” identities, determined to guard their hegemonic position in modern society.

Author

• Justyna Ziarkowska, U of Wrocław (Poland)