Politics of memory in Upper Silesian schools: Between Polish homogeneous nationalism and its Silesian discontents

Abstract

The article discusses the connections between nationalism and history teaching in the context of dominant structures of collective memory in Poland. Drawing on qualitative research in Upper Silesian schools, the article analyses in detail how the state-sponsored history is enacted and resisted by the teachers in school practice. The article also demonstrates the advantages of processual conceptualisation of collective memory. It provides further theoretical insight by bringing together three strands of literature: memory studies, nationalism studies and critical media analysis.

Regional Politics and Ethnic Identity: How Silesian Identity Has Become Politicized

“…Collective memory is understood as a narration about the past, a process of reproduction and interpretation (Kansteiner 2002, 188). In recent years, the differences between Polish narration about the history of the Upper Silesian region and the narration stemming from the Silesian community itself have gained more scholarly attention (Jaskułowski and Majewski 2020). The scholarship speaks about "Silesian harm" (also called "Silesian injustice"), which is described as a feeling of harm, injustice, disappointment, believing to be misunderstood, humiliated and judged due to different cultural and collective memory of the Silesian community (Gerlich 1994, 5;Wanatowicz 2004, 150;Smolorz 2012, 118) and can be categorized as a grievance typical for ethnic mobilization.…”

The Contested Symbolism of the "Cursed Soldiers": Hegemony, Memory and the Politics of Fear in Poland

“…3 The dynamic approach to memory as a structurally bounded process prevents us from reifying collective memory while allowing us to conceptualize it as a space of negotiation and contestation and therefore also a struggle over hegemony, which is of particular interest to us here. 4 We define the concept of hegemony in a nonessentialist and nonreductionist way, without assuming a priori that some factors are decisive. 5 We assume that some social actors have more power to define social reality than others and are able to impose their ideological construction of social reality.…”