Abstract
The paper is a critical attempt at an alternative to the dominant narrative of reflecting on the heritage of the so-called first Solidarity movement – the Polish workers' movement from 1980–1981. In dialogue with claims expressed by Jan Sowa in his book Inna Rzeczpospolita jest możliwa! and Paweł Wodziński's productions about the first Solidarity, Łucja Iwanczewska reconstructs its programme, and raise questions about issues related to self-governance in contemporary Polish society. Above all, the author asks questions about strategies and practices of managing history and the memory of the first Solidarity in the Polish social and cultural imaginarium. Iwanczewska problematises the issue of inheriting postulates, ideas and attitudes related to August 1980, reflecting on the intellectual and cultural reworking of this historical event by Polish society. Using the considerations of Jan Sowa, Boris Buden and Cezary Rudnicki, she offers alternative scenarios for the memory of the history of the first Solidarity movement. She also recalls the first alternative heirs: the Alternative Society Movement.
Keywords
Alternative Society Movement; First Solidarity; heritage; reconstruction; self-government; Paweł Wodziński.
Łucja Iwanczewska
Ph.D. lectures in Performatics at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. She holds a degree in Theatre Studies from the Jagiellonian University and a postgraduate degree in Gender Studies from the Institute of Audiovisual Arts at the same university. Her books include Musisz się odrodzić. Inne spotkania z dramatami Stanisława Ignacego Witkiewicza (Księgarnia Akademicka 2007) and Samoprezentacje. Sade i Witkacy (Księgarnia Akademicka 2010). Her interests include performatics and the performative nature of contemporary cultural phenomena (with an emphasis on Polish counterculture). Her work has been published in journals including Didaskalia, Dialog, Perfomer and a number of anthologies. She has published academic texts and has organised a conference as part of the Dramatic Poland research grant. She collaborates with Cricoteka, the Centre for the Documentation of the Art of Tadeusz Kantor, where she has worked on the project Biographies in Theatre, and with the Theatre Institute in Warsaw, where she organised the conference It Can’t Stay This Way! Polish Punk. She is currently working on a monograph titled Partycypacje, emancypacje, transformacje – teatr intelektualnej wspólnoty.
