Already during the war, the Polish culture reacted strongly and intensely to the extermination. On the one hand, some voices appeared revealing types of group behavior favorable for the realization of the final solution. Intellectuals and writers pointed to a certain understanding with the occupiers regarding Jews, a satisfaction with the extermination expressed out loud or a subconscious one, apparent only in group practices. On the other hand, this knowledge was processed within culture in order to create a positive self-image of the Polish majority and blur the difficult elements of the Polish-Jewish history.
We are interested in Polish narratives which deal with the Polish role in the extermination of Jews. Under the project “In face of the Holocaust – towards a demythologisation of descriptive categories. Category «indifferent witnesses»” financed by the National Program for the Development of Humanities (NPRH), we are looking at the role of the witness. We treat this role as a narrative construct. We attempt to describe how the position of a witness is created by rhetoric, accompanied by selection of facts and phenomena which are included in the story, building collective actors of the events and setting the boundaries of representation (distinguishing between representative and marginal phenomena, between important and insignificant groups), creating an image of group types of behavior and their motivations.
In this approach, one of the fundamental phenomena of the Polish discourse on the Shoah is the emergence of knowledge uncomfortable from the point of view of the group self-image and cultural neutralization of this knowledge.
Methodology
We investigate communication as a social phenomenon. We work both with works of individual authors (literature, films, artistic events) as well as with texts of culture with a collective authorship (e.g. uncoordinated, seemingly chaotic and half-anonymous instances of urban planning). In the material analyzed, we search for what is superindividual and inter-subjective.
To these purposes, we will be using the following terms as defined below:
1. Culture model. We understand culture in line with the classic definitions. Its manifestations are individual, but they contain elements of that which is objectified, transmitted and inherited (Stefan Czarnowski). Culture models shape the understanding of facts which are always “somebody's facts”. The culture model remains a characteristic feature of a group. When needed, we will make use of structural analysis in order to show modularity and sequentiality of culture models as well as to show how often they assume the form of social rituals.
2. Symbolic violence. Pierre Bourdieu's insights into discrimination mechanisms and how they are determined by language (language in the broad sense of the perception of the world) will be of importance to us. We shall use Bourdieu's tools when we encounter situations in which both the dominant and the dominated participate in the same culture model, affirming the domination and subordination, i.e. symbolic violence. The descriptions of the practices of the dominant majority will also be of significance in our work as will be the strategies adopted by the dominated and excluded (as per Bourdieu “The weapons of the weak are weak weapons”).
3. Defining practice. The categories of discourse are the subject of social plays. They do not have a constant meaning; also the meaning often stays beyond the limits of users' awareness to some extent, changing depending on who the user is and to what purpose they are using these categories.
4. Objectivity. Investigating social phenomena, we cannot escape from the problem of the objectivity of description. We want to stick to the tradition of Karl Mannheim and his concept of objectivity, while keeping in mind the conditions determining our own thinking. We will try to reveal his assumptions and subject them to a critical observation during our work.
5. Narrative perspective. In the analysis of specific texts of culture, we will have a look at the relations between the order of language and the order of reality. We will be looking at the way in which narrative and language strategies are marking the boundaries of possible mental representations and a possible reflection. We will be using the semiotic inspiration. The analysis of narrative of the history will be inspired by the approaches of e.g. James E. Young (Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust. Narrative and the Consequences of Interpretation, 1988) or Hayden White (Historical Emplotment and the Problem of Truth, 1992).