Against the Nudity in Art: Eliasian Reading of National Conservative Catholic Habitus

Abstract

The Cleaner Marina Abramović Retrospective Exhibition in the Centre of Contemporary Art in Toruń, Poland, sparked much protest. This article analyses the protesters’ attitudes to capture their habitus. The analysis employs Norbert Elias’ sociological theory on national habitus. Demonstrations of protest invite interpretations of the peculiar national conservative Catholic habitus that – in the light of my study – stems in Poland from selective post-Tridentine pre-Vatican II Catholic magisterial thought and a sociopolitical historiography of traditional Polish culture. I recognise that the aim of the national conservative Catholics is to preserve a specific kind of Polish culture based on its early-modern image: strong state influenced by the Catholic Church in both policy and culture, with the accompanying theology of art taken from the Tridentine Council and the post-Tridentine debate. As a result, the national conservative Catholics invest much energy in remembrance politics and historical politics. I conclude that this habitus requires theological and religious reworking of national conservative Catholics’ understanding of the term “catholic.”