Summary: When Bruno Latour says that “we have never been modern,” he means only to recognize that the ‘actually living’ of modernity (or the temporal duration we’ve often categorized as ‘modernity’) is something altogether different (and far more complicated) than the theoretical apparatus by which academic intellectuals use to describe and categorize it. The modern condition, then, involves a separation between the socio-economic creation of ‘hybrid objects’ and theoretical reflection on society. This reflection takes the form of ‘purification,’ or a clear distinction between nature and culture, science and politics. Drawing upon Charles Dickens’ last completed novel, Our Mutual Friend, as well as Marx, I will argue that already in Victorian England we can find coherent representations of modernity that defy Latour’s high standard of actualized purification (or a visible ‘reality’ that conforms to our purified categorizations). That is, in Dickens and Marx we can find a literary-economic discourse of ‘modernity’ (which may also be Victorian post-humanism) that already recognized the failure of ‘purification’ as the result of expansive capitalism.

Keywords: Latour, Dickens, Marx, modernity, Victorian

Summary: The tension inherent in the desire to be modern appeared with all its strength in the discourses surrounding an alien, rapidly developing industrial center in the middle of the rural Kingdom of Poland – the city of Łódź,. In this article, I attempt to reconstruct the logic of press and reportage discourses dealing with this new experience. The press, reportage, and literary discourses concerning the newly established locus of modernity – the city of Łódź – reveal the work of ideological fantasy, a logic of discourse in reportages, essays and novels describing an imaginary diagnosis of reality and a fantasy about its utopian version, as well as the obstacles which always prevent the fulfillment of utopia and even threaten it with a more horrific dystopian vision. Still, the clue lies in the obstacle itself, which is at one and the same time the foundation allowing any utopian project to appear at all, as well a vision of reality.

Keywords: modernization, industrial city, Łódź, discourse, fantasmatic logic, local press

Summary:The main argument of this paper states that the Revolution of 1905, which established the era of modern politics in Central and Eastern Europe, was also an important landmark for the cities in the Kingdom of Poland. The rapid urbanisation and industrialisation of the Kingdom of Poland after the January Uprising brought irreversible change to the country's social structure. New agents like the proletariat and the intelligentsia appeared in the urban space. As a result, urban contexts during the Revolution of 1905 were much more important in Russian Poland than in the Interior of the Russian Empire. A conflict arose between groups supporting different visions for the cities: traditional, moderately progressive and radical. Actually, the urban discourse of 1905 was a dispute about the scope of urban democracy. With reference to manifestos or projects for legal acts, as well as articles or reports from Warsaw's national journals and the local press from Lodz, I examine changes in the Kingdom's urban discourse—from criticism of the existing administration (the so-called Magistrats) to demands for introducing the modern system of self-governance. Urban discourse tells us a lot about the Polish middle-class and its ideological attitudes. During the Revolution, the initial democratic enthusiasm was soon replaced by the logic of exclusion. Established by the bourgeoisie as a consequence of the revolutionary exposure of class antagonism, it took measures to limit the influence of the working class and its political position in the future urban self-governance.

Keywords: the 1905 Revolution, discourse, urbanism, self-governance, Kingdom of Poland

Abstrakt: Artykuł rozważa zmianę w endeckim dyskursie politycznym w okresie rewolucji 1905–1907. Podejmuję w nim analizę zmiany stosunku do „mas”. Wizję modernizacji mas traktuję jako specyficzną formę dyskursu nowoczesności – reakcję na niezdeterminowanie, nieadekwatność politycznych instytucji i języków i gwałtowne rozszerzenie realnego uczestnictwa politycznego. Argumentuję, że określona koniunktura czy splot zdarzeń, zarówno z dziedziny myślenia politycznego, jak i procesów społecznych, wytworzyła specyficzną sytuację kryzysu, pewien moment polityczny. Określona reakcja na ten moment – w tym przypadku organicystyczny, hierarchiczny dyskurs wspólnoty i wizja zdyscyplinowanych mas pod endecką kontrolą, zadecydowała o kształcie całości endeckiego myślenia politycznego. Ów efekt ma swoje długofalowe konsekwencje i określa późniejszy kształt ideowy formacji endeckiej.

Słowa kluczowe: Endecja, Narodowa Demokracja, rewolucja 1905, masy, dyskurs nowoczesności, koniunktura, moment polityczny

Abstrakt: Artykuł przedstawia swoiste studium przypadku: Łodzi jako miasta robotniczego oraz biografii włókniarki pracującej w jednej z łódzkich fabryk włókienniczych w latach 1975–1998. Korzystając również z innych materiałów – opracowań na temat historii społecznej Łodzi oraz badań socjologicznych Hanny Świdy-Ziemby, umieszczam analizowaną biografię w chronologicznym i społecznym kontekście tak, aby zrekonstruować możliwie kompletny obraz Łodzi jako niezniszczonego przez wojnę miasta przemysłowego, w którym (z punktu widzenia ówczesnych władz) mogły być z sukcesem realizowane założenia nowego systemu, co (z perspektywy analitycznej) doskonale ujawniło jego paradoksy.

Słowa kluczowe: biografia, praca, łódzkie włókniarki, realny socjalizm, modernizacja

Summary: This article aims to present the discursive processes that were used to justify the path chosen to implement the social and economic transformation to capitalism in Poland. Special attention is paid to the role of elites in shaping a public discourse which legitimized the significant pauperization in society and growth of income inequalities as being conditioned on individual defects and the “civilizational incompetence” of those at the bottom of the social structure. These citizens of Poland were presented as a constraint and obstacle to achieving a faster pace of modernization processes. This has influenced the thinking of politicians involved in policy-making at the national level, as well as the attitudes of those involved in the implementation of welfare measures at the local level. Furthermore, it has contributed to the unspoken consensus of all mainstream political parties over the neoliberal reforms in the economy and social policy.

Keywords: Homo sovieticus, elites, Poland, postcommunism, socio-economic transformation, discourse, modernization

Summary: From the time of its introduction, the concept of 'transition' has effected a tectonic shift in our understanding of post-socialism. In the process which has taken place during the last couple of decades after the collapse of East European socialist regimes, it has become transformed from one of the signifiers of the political and social change which occurred into a cornerstone for thinking, analyzing and predicting the future of post-socialism. Furthermore, in this article it is posited that all the political and social processes occurring in the ex-socialist countries are defined in relation to transition as an all-encompassing form of post-socialist experience. Relying on the discursive theory of Ernesto Laclau, this article attempts to consider together the usually separated questions of epistemology and ontology, and to ask what is the connection between scientific origins of the concept of transition and its political legitimacy. We claim that transition is a “sutured“ structure composed of various social experiences and political strategies, which naturalizes and universalizes the contingent power struggles that are taking place and will take place in the future of post-socialist countries. Therefore, severing the existing bonds between transition and the actually existing post-socialism is a necessary precondition for creating a more complex and productive understanding of the societies of East and South East Europe.

contingency, discourse analysis, Eastern Europe, Ernesto Laclau, post-socialism, transition, transitology

Summary: This article focuses on the question of the involvement of contemporary artists in the public debate concerning boundary issues relating to migration and the treatment of immigrants. The aim of this essay is to take a closer look at some of their strategies for making the boundary issue more visible and their ability to draw our attention to the situation of excluded minorities, such as “clandestines” and refugees. The object of the study is, in particular, the way in which these artists address the question of the international migration process in the modern “open”, “ostensibly borderless” world, and the socio-political problems it generates. The effect of the border-crossing experience on the life of an immigrant, the image attached to him or her by the “host” society, as well as the artistic reflections on EU institutions and the hospitality of contemporary European societies are also included in the author’s analysis.

Keywords: migration, border studies, visual culture, contemporary art, European Union

Abstrakt: Poniższy tekst jest tłumaczeniem fragmentu książki Jonathana Flatley’a Affective Mapping Melancholia and the Politics of Modernism. Zaskakujące twierdzenie, na którym autor opiera swój wywód, dotyczy melancholii i związanej z nią utraty. Okazuje się bowiem, iż nie wszystkie melancholie są przygnębiające. Obrazując szlaki modernizacji, Flatley wskazuje na rolę i znaczenie utraty, która nie tylko miała wpływ, ale często kreśliła twórczą mapę pisarzy oraz wyznaczała tor zachodzących zmian społeczno-kulturowych.

Słowa kluczowe: nowoczesność, modernizm, utrata, industrializacja, modernizacja