Xenophobia and anti-Semitism in the Concept of Polish Literature

Tomasz Kamusella

doi:10.31261/SSP.2021.17.06

Published: 2021-04-19

Vol. 17 No. 1 (2021)

Xenophobia and anti-Semitism in the Concept of Polish Literature

Tomasz Kamusella

Section: Essays and Articles

https://doi.org/10.31261/SSP.2021.17.06

Abstract

In today’s Central Europe ethnolinguistic nationalism is the region’s standard normative ideology of statehood creation, legitimation and maintenance. This ideology proposes that in spatial terms, the area of the use of national language X should overlap with the territory of nation-state X, in which all members of nation X should reside. In terms of cultural policy, this means that only works written by “indubitable” members of nation X in language X can be seen as belonging to culture X. This self-limiting pattern of ethnolinguistic “purity” (homogeneity) excluded from 20th century Polish literature much of traditional Polish-Lithuanian culture and numerous authors writing in other post-Polish-Lithuanian languages than Polish. Democratization that followed the fall of communism in 1989 partly transcended this ethnolinguistic exclusion, but the old national policy has been back since 2015.

Keywords:

anti-Romism (anti-Tsiganism) , anti-Semitism , Polish literature , xenophobia

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Kamusella, T. (2021). Xenophobia and anti-Semitism in the Concept of Polish Literature. Śląskie Studia Polonistyczne [Silesian Journal of Polish Studies], 17(1), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.31261/SSP.2021.17.06

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Vol. 17 No. 1 (2021)
Published: 2021-04-19

ISSN: 2084-0772

eISSN: 2353-0928

Publisher

Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego | University of Silesia Press

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