Around collective images on the past. A few reflections in connection with the studies on the Silesian native population
Abstract
Collective memory, the issue visibly raised recently, is particularly important, and perhaps, especially with reference to the reality of the Silesian native population; regional collectiveness of a special history. Analysing the very phenomenon in the context of ethnology/anthropology and also basing on the arrangements (and terminology) within the scope of history and sociology, the very problem has its clear conditions and regional features in Upper-Silesian reality as well as processes taking place on the scale of the postcommunist Europe. In the space in question — as a result of the process of system transformation two different phenomena such as economic (transformations of the economic policy), trade (industry restructuring), social (structure, relation and bond transformation, lowering of life standard, and change of life style), ethnic-national (divisions within native population, a fully non-cristallised national process, erosion of Polish national attitudes, the phenomenon of the so called Silesian nationality, preceded by the growth of the so called Silesian option, and, finally, cultural ones (the predominance of the Silesian over Polish one, a weak relation with the Polish symbolic universe, revitalization of the Silesian identity) clashed here. The result has constituted a peculiar collective memory of the Polish People’s Republic being the expression of current dilemmas, questions, as well as trauma and hope. The very states are projected on and referred to the past. Moreover, in the perspective of our interest, the phenomenon of collective memory manifests in its different functions such as enculturation, information, explication, legitimization (of concrete events, messages, anniversaries, people), axiologisation (of processes, events or people), reproduction (“processing” of given facts or values) or redefinition — on the level of informality of given notions. It is this series of factors that decides on the importance of the research problem raised which is also connected with the phenomenon of identity in a special way.Uniwersytet Śląski w Katowicach Poland
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