https://doi.org/10.31261/Rana.2021.3.10
The author refers to the image deeply rooted in the European literature (Platon, Thomas Hobbes, Giorgio Agamben) of a social group pictured as an organism, with the head representing its leadership centre, and applies an anthropological
analysis to the group of the “Silesian native population” (Marian Gerlich). A metaphor of a decapitated body seems to be a proper way to describe this group’s well consolidated pursuit of distinctiveness or even its separatist tendencies. The concept emerges from a number of tragic historical experiences, such as the death of Henry II the Pious in the Battle of Legnica (1241), the execution of Andrzej Kochcicki, the leader of the Silesian protestant nobility (1634) or a mysterious death of the leader of the 3rd Silesian Uprising, Wojciech Korfanty (1939). The research revolves around the analysis of Wojsko św. Jadwigi (St. Hedwig’s Army), a “Young Poland” drama of 1920 by Jan Nikodem Jaroń, whose main characters are Prince Henry’s closest relatives and their subsequent incarnations (the most important being the final ones – those of a Silesian insurgent family members). The concept of Upper Silesia as a Decapitated Body, which, although deprived of a leader, wants to live its separate life, or picturing this group as a monstrum (a dragon in Szczepan Twardoch’s novel Drach) can be treated as a reflection of the region’s autonomous tendencies. Such a vision of Silesia, autonomous or at least clearly distinctive from the rest of Poland – by cultural memory (Jan Assmann) if nothing else – emerges also from the results of the research conducted by modern sociologists (Marian Gerlich, Maria Szmeja).
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No. 1 (3) (2021)
Published: 2021-05-18
10.31261/rana
Język Polski
English