Vice President-Designated Panel: Poland: Cultural Mechanisms of (Right-wing) Political Upheaval

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

The intensification of right-wing politics in Central Europe, particularly in Poland, a country of considerable economic and political successes is puzzling. Economic explanations do not seem to be adequate; cultural mechanisms driving the change need to be reconstructed and interpreted. Right-wing politics, including right-wing populism, are associated with intense symbolic production of discourses, images and performances that are designed to define the central “object” of populism: “the people.” To illuminate this phenomenon, the panel will examine the changes in public culture and the redefinition of public sphere (Kubik and Kotwas), the stories, the dialogic or discursive symbolic artifacts, or collective remembering done by politico-cultural elites (Korycki);" and the mediating role of collective narcissism - defined as emotional investment in a belief in the exaggerated greatness of one’s own group contingent upon recognition and confirmation by others - in explaining negative attitudes towards homosexuals in Poland (Mole and Golec).

Sub Unit

• Anthropology/Cultural Studies

Chair

• Genevieve Zubrzycki, U of Michigan

Papers

• A Culture War Over the Shape of Public Sphere in Poland - Jan Kubik, Rutgers, The State U of New Jersey / U College London (UK)

• Homophobia and Collective Narcissism in Contemporary Poland, Richard C.M. Mole and Agnieszka Golec de Zavala - Richard Mole, U College London (UK)

• Memory and Right-Populist Appeals - Kate Korycki, Queen's U (Canada)

Discussant

• Genevieve Zubrzycki, U of Michigan