DISCUSSION | In Somebody’s Eastern Borderland. Memory, Nostalgia and Resentment in Central-Eastern Europe
Guests: Andrzej Leder, Jan Sowa, Magdalena Saryusz-Wolska
Chair: Claudia Snochowska-Gonzalez
Excerpt from Jan Sowa’s introduction to Svetlana Boym’s text “Restorative Nostalgia: Conspiracies and Return to Origins”:
“According to Boym, the two segments that form the concept of nostalgia (nostos – home and algia – longing) may provide the basis for two different types of nostalgia: reflective nostalgia, which turns to pure longing in an attempt to work through this feeling in full awareness; and nostalgia founded on acting out, interested above all in restoring the phantasmal lost home. The latter kind is dangerous as a potential driving force behind various efforts to reclaim and recreate a paradise lost. It cannot come to terms with the fact that today our home – our lost territories, expropriated palaces, confiscated estates – is inhabited by others and performs different roles. (...) Restoring the past state of affairs is possible but requires destroying what we have now. Nostalgia based on acting out can be easily harnessed to serve ad hoc interests, often far from laudable. Thus, it can become dangerous in political terms. It is necessary to overcome this nostalgia to be able to develop a perspective on history and its ruins that will not entail a destruction of everything good that came later in history.”
A major source of inspiration both for the exhibition “The Estate” and the accompanying publication concerns the question of “Kresy”, the Eastern Borderlands – former Polish territories east of the current border. But in this story, “Kresy” belong to someone else: the Germans. However, the essays in the book – Rafał Żytyniec’s article about the German memory of the lost territories and an excerpt from Tadeusz Chrzanowski’s book “Kresy, czyli obszary tęsknot” [Kresy. The Territory of Longing] – show that emotional attachment to territories that were once precious to culture is quite similar in both nations. In both cases, we witness an explicit idealisation of the land of bygone happiness, coupled with a kind of historical-political ignorance. Nostalgia for the lost Eastern Borderlands, a feeling experienced today by many Poles and Germans alike, is delusive and dangerous. Our debate will focus on an analytical deconstruction of this state of mind.
The event accompanies the exhibition “The Estate. Sculptures from the Collection of von Rose Family with Films and Photographs from the Archives of Zofia Chomętowska”
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