ROK 2015

The Tropics of Resistance:
Languages, Genres, Rhetoric

Research Center for Postcolonial and Post-totalitarian Studies at the Faculty of Philology, Wroclaw University,

May 27-28, 2015

Research Center for Postcolonial and Post-Totalitarian Studies invites you to the inaugural conference of our network.

We propose to explore the topic of resistance in communism/socialism, especially as discursive practice in cultural texts of literature, life-writing, political essays and manifestos, journalism, documentary writing, fine arts and film.

The focus on languages, genres and rhetoric in articulations and practices of anti-communist resistance (which also includes resistance against the oppressive totalitarian state) is of utmost importance in developing grounds for a comprehensive understanding of cultures of resistance in Central and Eastern European countries under communist rule. Resistance and language awareness was definitely a trademark (for want of a better word) of opposition in the communist bloc.
The phenomenon, however, still lacks a synoptic yet nuanced methodology for a critical comparative reading of its converging and diverging forms in the cultural and political geography of our region.

Interestingly, for the critical work dedicated to resistance effects of the very operations of language in countries under the communist rule, by comparison little attention to the issues of resistance can be observed in postcolonial studies. Veneration for the prophets of anti-colonial revolution like Amilcar Cabral or Franz Fanon does not translate into a systematic study of resistance as action, agency, and, concomitantly, discourse. This is for some reason that one of the major dictionary-type compilations of postcolonial terminology by classics of postcolonial studies: Ashcroft, Griffiths, Tiffin, Key Concepts in Post-Colonial Studies (Routledge, 2001) does not even have a separate entry for “resistance” (granted, it does have an entry “anti-colonialism”, which does acknowledge the role of anti-colonial struggle in freedom fighting, but also, symptomatically, limits it by and large to political action in one historical moment solely). Notably, Postcolonialism/Postcommunism – a Dictionary of Key Cultural Terms by Bottez, Alexandru, Radulescu, Stefanescu, Visan (Bucharest University Press, 2011), lists “resistance”. Barbara Harlow’s seminal study Resistance Literature (Methuen, 1987), focusing on Third World revolutionary literary writing, lacks, also symptomatically, even a scant reference to the then teeming revolutionary and resistance literatures in Central and Eastern Europe. However, resistance and opposition is written into postcolonial criticism since its inception and throughout.

Marxist critics accusing postcolonial critics of shunning the historical importance of resistance (Benita Parry. Neil Lazarus, Timothy Brennan); Eastern and Central European critics accusing postcolonial studies of lack of interest in dependence from European empires within Europe as a defining experience of modernity for the region; postcolonial critics, for a change, expanding their space of cultural interest globally in a gesture of all-inclusive limitlessness at the loss of analytical precision and accountability – we would like to encourage conference participants to consider these mutual omissions, and many others, in our attempt to develop and consolidate a new, connective methodology for a comparative study on resistance and its fascinating acts in language, culture and politics.

Some of the areas we might consider include, but are not limited to:

• The cultural specifics of Eastern/Central European resistance: irony, double-coding. Did it develop into a separate mode of encrypted and, often, transnational communication in the region?
• Traditions of resistance and resistance against traditions in launching new forms of resistance
• Performative resistance in acts of undoing the totalitarian state by laughter
• Genres carrying the load of oppositionality in respective national literatures
• National resistance and civic resistance – similarities, differences, locations
• Historiographies of resistance and their contemporary evaluations, especially in postdependence studies
• Agency sites in resistance acts – how was resistance possible in a totalitarian state?
• The role of literature, arts and public intellectuals in anti-totalitarian revolutions
• Resistance and gender – the gender of resistance?
• Inter-class consolidation in resistance movements
• Transnational connections – comparing resistance histories and practices
• Nostalgic and/or conservative revolts in post-communist transition
• How do national/regional histories of resistance translate into or relate to an opposition (structured and regular or only occasional) against the capitalist world order? What rhetoric of resistance has survived or emerged?

Organizing Committee:

Prof. dr. habil. Hana Cervinkova, Educational Anthropology and Cultural Studies, Lower Silesian University, the Czech Academy of Science

Dr. Dorota Kołodziejczyk, Postcolonial Studies Center, Institute of English Studies, Wrocław University

Prof. dr. habil. Agnieszka Matusiak, Center for Studies on Post-Totalitarianisms, Chair of Ukrainian Studies, Institute of Slavic Studies, Wrocław University

Conference secretaries: Mateusz Świetlicki, MA and Aniela Radecka, MA

Paper titles and abstracts due: 25 March 2015 (please submit your 300-word abstract for a 20-minute presentation along with your title, affiliation, audio-visual requirements and a brief biographical at resistance.wroclaw2015@gmail.com

ROK 2016

Research Center for Postcolonial and Posttotalitarian Studies,

Faculty of Philology, Wrocław University,

Trauma as cultural palimpsests:
(post)communism against the background of comparative modernities, totalitarianisms, and (post)coloniality,

2-3 June 2016

The trauma inflicted on societies under communist regimes and post-traumatic symptoms manifesting themselves across the whole spectrum of public discourses remains one of the most painfully under-researched problems in the study of Central and East European (CEE) cultures. The conference aims to investigate the multiple forms of totalitarian trauma and of the (post-)traumatic transition period in the region. The assessment of the totalitarian pasts has been the object of divisive and partial political debates, themselves, at times, no more than post-traumatic symptoms at the discursive level. The conference aims to investigate the seriality of trauma in the recent history of CEE (from ghettos to gulags to globalization, from Holocaust to communist and postcommunist mass killings, from concentration camps to immigration camps etc.), as well as the palimpsestic interplay between the different historical and experiential layers of cultural distress.

We encourage potential participants to propose inter-/trans-disciplinary approaches and to devise comparative frameworks which may accommodate trauma studies, transition studies, postdependence studies, postcommunist studies, and postcolonial studies. We welcome transhistorical and transregional accounts of massive traumas of the 20th century in CEE and elsewhere, such as the extermination of the Armenians in the Ottoman Turkey in 1915, the Holocaust and Nazi extermination policies in WW2, the Indian Partition, the Balkan War, or the Rwandan genocide, to name but a few. Attention may be given to the ideological foundation of the breakthroughs of 1989/1991, including the role, contribution and importance of oppositional socio-cultural movements and the emigration (for instance, the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, the Polish October of 1956, the intellectual movements of the 1960s generation in USSR, the Prague Spring, 1968 in Poland (with the ensuing mass eviction of the Polish citizens of Jewish nationality under the umbrella slogan of purging the Party from the Zionist element), the strikes of Polish workers in December of 1970 and June of 1976, Helsinki Accords of 1975, “Solidarity” [“Solidarność”], the announcement of glasnost and perestroika in the USSR in 1985, the Polish Round Table Talks in 1989, the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and so on).

Suggested Themes:

• Hidden/forgotten/silenced discourses: topics prohibited or manipulated by the communist regime of /in the official political-social-cultural space including the colonization of Eastern Borderlands (Kresy Wschodnie) by the Second Polish Republic; the politically designed famine in the Ukrainian SSR; the extermination of intelligentsia in the Soviet Union in the 1930s; the Gulags; 1939 and the Second World War confronted with Nazism and Stalinism; collaboration with the Nazis; Stalinist and Nazi crimes; the UPA (The Ukrainian Insurgent Army) from the Ukrainian and Polish perspectives; the post-war massive repatriations/resettlements/expulsions of local populations of diverse ethnicities in the name of mono-national state (and the especially traumatic eviction of the German minorities); the Operation “Vistula”; the Hungarian Revolution of 1956; the Berlin Wall and the political division of Germany; the post-war collaboration of intellectuals with the communist regime; repressions of the Church and religious organizations;
• Mass-media vs. the simulacral totalitarian reality;
• Post-memory: spectral returns of the past in inter-generational transfer;
• Geopolitics of memory and trauma;
• Postcommunist remembrance between reenactment and recovery of cultural trauma;
• Psychological/Psychoanalytical accounts of postcommunist PTS – Pros and Cons;
• Traumarbeit;
• The role of empathy, solidarity, identification, projection in postcommunist trauma cultures;
• Complications of cultural trauma: anachronism, anatopism, and multidirectional memory [Rothberg], triangular suffering, traumatized perpetrators;
• Eastern Europe as a site for double/multiple colonization;
• Layers of historical and structural trauma, traumatic loss (event-generated) vs. traumatic absence (environment-conditioned);
• Everyday affections and experience in (post-)traumatic societies;
• Epistemological violence and the colonization of critical discourse in Postcommunism/postcommunist studies;
• Cultural interference, interpolation, crossways in post-traumatic communities;
• Postcommunist hollow (wo)men;
• Silence and verbosity in posttraumatic discourse;
• The cultural language(s)/discourse(s) of trauma;
• Trauma storying and the narratology of trauma recounting;
• Victim and perpetrator cultural profiles;
• Trauma deviance: trauma queens, the melotraumatic, victimization and conspiracy fixations.

Application: Submit a 250-300 word proposal with keywords for an unpublished paper and a bio-note by 31 January 2016. You will be notified by 15 February 2016.

Conference language: English and Polish

Conference fee: 250 PLN/50 EUR (does not include the hotel accommodation, information on the bank account and accommodation will follow)

E-mail for abstract submissions: cspp.uwr@gmail.com

Organizing Committee:

Prof. Bogdan Stefanescu (English Studies, Bucharest University)

Prof. dr. hab. Agnieszka Matusiak (Ukrainian Studies, Wrocław University)

Dr. Dorota Kołodziejczyk (English Studies, Wrocław University)

Dr. Dorota Żygadło-Czopnik (Bohemia Studies, Wrocław University)

Conference Secretary:

Aniela Radecka (PhD Student, Wrocław University),

Jędrzej Olejniczak (PhD Student, Wrocław University).

ROK 2017

The Research Center for Postcolonial and Posttotalitarian Studies

in cooperation with

The Institute of Journalism and Social Communication

and

The Institute of Slavic Studies

invite scholars to take part in the international conference

FROM “THE RECORD”… TO RECORDED HISTORY.

UNDERGROUND CULTURE IN CENTRAL

AND EASTERN EUROPE BETWEEN 1977 AND 1991

to be held in Wrocław

at The Faculty of Philology, University of Wrocław

on 1-2 June 2017

In January 1977 the first issue of “Zapis” (“Record”) – a Polish literary and cultural magazine independent from the communist censorship – was published. It was created by some of the most eminent Polish writers who were not allowed to publish by the communist and authoritarian government. The appearance of “Zapis” in Poland resulted in an emergence of similar initiatives which revived the system, the spirit of culture, and gave young intelligentsia courage. “Zapis” opened a new era in the history of Polish thought and free literature. It was co-created by Jerzy Andrzejewski, Stanislaw Barańczak, Jacek Bochenski, Kazimierz Brandys, Tomasz Burek, Marek Nowakowski, Barbara Toruńczyk, Wikror Woroszylski, and many other writers, as well as intellectuals associated with the Workers’ Defence Committee (KOR), which was formed in the summer of 1976 in order to save people persecuted by the communist authorities. Aside from KOR, Poland had other groups of intellectuals and workers proposing new political, social, and cultural solutions; thus breaking the monopoly of the communist state. These events coincided with the creation of Charter 77 in Prague, since the invasion of Czechoslovakia the first free initiative demanding the freedom of Czechs and Slovaks. In Hungary similar initiatives and groups of openly protesting people had already worked officially, though persecuted, since 1976, fitting in the development of The Helsinki Committees for Human Rights, also signed by the communist state. In the countries of the Soviet Union, in Russia, Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia the Helsinki movement grew slowly, brutally throttled by the authorities by sending activists to prisons and labor camps. Many artists and intellectuals paid with their lives for the courage to speak up the truth, hundreds of others were persecuted. Despite the repressions, new and louder groups of artists, intellectuals, and workers manifesting disapproval of authoritarianism and a thirst for freedom and self-determination were formed, and noticed in the democratic world. Representatives of the national emigrations, some of whom tried to work together, gave important contribution to the support of the resistance movements against the political violence. They also supported antiauthoritarian movements identified with the pro-independence movements – politically, organizationally, and materially.

The rise of the Polish “Solidarity” in 1980 brought changes which cause the collapse of the totalitarian communist system. However, after almost 10 years of the uncertain consequences of the social resistance, authoritarianism in Central and Eastern Europe officially surrendered. In 1991 the Soviet Union was dissolved. It is known, however, that the effects of communism are still being felt in Central and Eastern Europe and in the world. They have had an impact not only on the economy of the past quarter-century, but are also still linked to the mentality, law, education, and political programs. Literature (both fiction and nonfiction) and art, as areas that quickly managed to free themselves from the poisonous influence of the Soviet colonialism having experienced the development of national identities in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, are still debating on this phenomenon. It has been forty years since the time when Polish writers openly signed the works published in “Zapis”, it has been the same period of time since Czech writers and intellectuals published under their own names the program of reconstruction of the world of values, ruined by the “fraternal” invasion. In 1985 Ukrainian poet Vasyl Stus died in a concentration camp because he disagreed with the Soviet lie, Czech dissident and writer Vaclav Havel was in prison, many Russian writers were expelled from the country, as were the writers in Romania, Hungary, and East Germany. After the proclamation of martial law in Poland, hundreds of writers and intellectuals were interned. A lot of this is already known, but not all. Moreover, the fate and work of independent writers in authoritarian Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, the former Yugoslavia and in many countries belonging to the Soviet Union have not yet been discussed in Poland and abroad. Historians still reveal new facts, but there are also fabrications and manipulations in their research. Image of the dissident past became the subject of dispute.

The aim of the conference is to familiarize and, if possible, show this historical matter not only for anniversary reasons. It seems that our times make us repeat questions that had been asked by the founding fathers of the dissident movement in Central and Eastern Europe, writers and intellectuals opposing the organized system of violence. As organizers we do not intend to specify the exact programming framework or methodological scope of the debate. We would like to invite not only researchers, but also those associated with the dissident past of Central and Eastern Europe. We encourage you to take part in a discussion over what has happened with the legacy of the anti-communist resistance.

The program committee would like you to focus on the following issues:

1. The state of knowledge on the underground literary and journalistic activity between 1976 and 1991 in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. History of independent literature and culture as an integral part of the national history.

2. The fate of underground writers and intellectuals; the reception of their work since 1989 in CEE.

3. Disputes about the importance of underground literature between 1977 and 2016.

4. Assessment of the dissident past from the point of view of contemporary literature. Changes in the dissident iconography over the years. Legal, cultural, and moral aspects of vetting in CEE.

5. Differences in functioning; value of the dissident literature between 1977 and 1991 in CEE.

6. Literary and cultural journals in CEE. Publishing movement and its significance.

7. Emigration as an alternative space of independent culture.

8. School and civic education versus native dissidentism in CEE.

9. Independent media in the fight against the state monopoly: Radio “Solidarity”, TV “Solidarity”, underground music and art. Alternative forms of independent movements in CEE.

10. Cultural and political diversity; Geopolitics and geopoetics of the phenomena of the dissident culture in CEE.

11. Postcolonial perspective in the historical understanding of underground culture between 1977 and1991.

Registration:

Presenters are required to submit abstracts of unpublished papers in Polish and English (max. 250 words) with key words (5 in Polish in English) and a short biographical note by January, 15 2017.

All applicants will be notified about the selection of participants by February, 15 2017.

Conference languages: English, Polish, Czech, Russian, Slovak, Ukrainian.

Conference fee: 250 PLN/ 60 EUR (does not include hotel accommodation; information about the possible accommodation and the bank account number for payment of the conference fee will be sent together with notification about the selection of participants).

All correspondence, including submission of proposals, must be addressed to: cspp.zapis2017@gmail.com

Scientific and organizing committee:

prof. dr. habil. Bogusław Bakuła

dr. habil. Agnieszka Matusiak, prof. UWr

dr. habil. Elżbieta Tyszkowska-Kasprzak

Dr. Roman Wróblewski

Dr. Dorota Żygadło-Czopnik

Secretaries: Mgr. Aniela Radecka, Mgr. Marcin Gaczkowski

ROK 2018

THE RESEARCH CENTER FOR POSTCOLONIAL AND POSTTOTALITARIAN STUDIES
FACULTY OF LETTERS, UNIVERSITY OF WROCŁAW

is pleased to invite you to the conference

NEOIMPERIALISM, NEOCOLONIALISM AND (NEO)COLONIAL DISCOURSE IN THE POST-COMMUNIST CULTURES

AND SOCIETIES OF THE 21ST CENTURY

CENTRAL, EASTERN AND SOUTH-EASTERN EUROPE

HONORARY PATRON

RECTOR OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WROCŁAW

HIS MAGNIFICENCE PROF. DR HAB. ADAM JEZIERSKI

The conference will be held in Wrocław and Wojnowice

on 7-8 June 2018

at the University of Wrocław
and in Jan Nowak-Jeziorański College of Eastern Europe

It might seem that when the empires fall all that remains is dust and void. As the old hegemonies wither away, however, new imperial entanglements contrive their neocolonial networks both globally and glocally.

Neocolonialism, or the colonialism of the 21st century, is typically understood as a neocolonial political strategy used by the old metropoles to control their emancipated territories. Besides political influence, effective neocolonial domination comprises military, economic, financial, technological, socio-cultural and academic involvement.

From the territorial point of view, neocolonialism is associated with processes, mechanisms and strategies implemented by the Western countries to control their lost overseas colonies. Literature on the subject pays far less attention to the neocolonial practices used against the former Eastern Bloc; as Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia dissolved, the Bloc countries faced not only a difficult and gruelling process of reclaiming their autonomy after the years of Soviet control but also the time of re-establishing of the balance of power and the new division of imperial influence, including new global economy, new global financial order, new military order etc. These processes reached far: from the Baltic Sea to the Caspian Sea, from Tajikistan and destabilised Balkan regions all the way to Georgia, Azerbaijan, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan; and from the United Germany to the borders of China.

Politological and economic studies in this research area are evolving and include vast literature resources on the subject both in English and in local languages. However, much research can be done within the scope of neocolonial studies on societies and cultures of the post-communist domain. Certain aspects of colonialism have received very little consideration; one might want to examine the status of decolonialised countries after they have regained independence, approaching identity, both collective and personal, as a field of neoimperial domination. The discourse of (neo)coloniality may be used as a conceptual tool to diagnose, critically analyse and describe the phenomenon: this discourse discloses the way in which the (neo)coloniality of knowledge and power generates the existential (neo)coloniality in individuals and societies who struggle with their imperial, often traumatic pasts under new postcolonial conditions. The discourse of (neo)coloniality is thus encoded mainly in multifaceted and multilayered power structures which take different shapes and define the reality of socio-political and cultural life, interpersonal relations, attitude towards life, work sphere and the processes and mechanisms that govern distribution of knowledge. The consequences of this discourse become apparent in the cultural choices and in their components: language, literature, human minds, and thus in the ways in which humans perceive one another, act, and determine their view on community within which they operate (family, social group, society, nation) as well as in the academia, which is responsible for producing the discourse of knowledge.

Neoimperialism, neocolonialism and the discourse of neocoloniality in the post-communist countries all have become particularly enticing research areas due to the current socio-political situation in the post-communist countries. This situation, as it startlingly and rapidly evolves, asks the ineluctably fundamental question that governs the development of human identity, and, which we believe can be worded as follows:

1. what is the core and what are the distinctive features of the processes, phenomena and mechanisms of emancipation of the countries, societies and cultures of the former Eastern Bloc that freed themselves from Soviet domination and Soviet legacy;
2. what freedom means for us, how we understand it from the perspective of more than a quarter of a century of systemic transformation – the discourse of auto(neo)colonization.

That this particular main conference theme is adopted just a year after the hundredth anniversary of the Soviet Revolution is not coincidental: this very revolution had paved the way for the decades of totalitarian hegemony of the USSR that stretched over more than a half of Europe (or Eurasia). The theme is just as relevant to the unending military conflict between Ukraine and Russia, resulting from the neoimperial Russian politics that aim to recreate the sphere of socialist influence across the region and around the world; and to the exodus of immigrants to Europe from Africa and West Asian countries that are consumed by wars; and to the reawakening of nationalisms, a phenomenon very dominant not only in the West but also in the East, which constitutes a glocal response (?) to the universalism of globalisation.

The conference is addressed to cultural scientists, philologists, philosophers, historians, historians of ideas, sociologists, social psychologists, media experts, and political scientists.

The conference will also accommodate a panel discussion on the following topic: „Academic study in Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe in the context of (neo)colonial discourse.”

Conference fee: 300 PLN/70 EUR, does not include accommodation. All booking recommendations as well as the bank account number for the conference fee payments will be included in the conference acceptance notice. The conference fee payments should be made before 10 May 2018.

To register, please send your proposals via e-mail to cspp.neokolonializm2018@gmail.com. A complete proposal includes your abstract in both Polish and in English (150 word at most), five keywords in both languages and a short bio note (which outlines your affiliation, academic degree, position, academic interests and your current addresses – both e-mail and physical ones – 80 words at most). Registration ends on 15 April 2018.

The organizers reserve the right to select proposals as they see fit.

You will be notified of our acceptance of your proposal on 20 April 2018.

The organizers aim to publish the materials presented at the conference in a reviewed monograph. The deadline for submissions of the papers presented at the conference is 30 June 2018.

Conference Programme Committee:

prof. dr hab. Bogusław Bakuła (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań)

prof. dr hab. Krzysztof Brzechczyn (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań)

prof. dr hab. Piotr Fast (University of Silesia, Katowice)

prof. dr hab. Jan Kieniewicz (University of Warsaw)

prof. UAM dr hab. Magdalena Koch (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań)

prof. UWr dr hab. Łarysa Leszczenko (University of Wrocław)

prof. UWr dr hab. Agnieszka Matusiak (University of Wrocław)

dr Katarzyna Taczyńska (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań)

Conference secretary:

mgr Jędrzej Olejniczak, mgr Aniela Radecka

Conference co-organisers:

• Balkan Gender and Transcultural Studies Centre of Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań
• Institute of International Studies, University of Wrocław

Organizing partner:

JanNowak-Jeziorański College of Eastern Europe, Wrocław

Media Partner:

„New Eastern Europe”

ROK 2020

CENTER FOR POSTCOLONIAL

AND POST-TOTALITARIAN STUDIES

and

INSTITUTE OF SLAVIC STUDIES, INSTITUTE OF GERMAN PHILOLOGY, DEPARTMENT OF JEWISH STUDIES

OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WROCŁAW

invites to an

international academic conference

Escape from freedom?

Post-totalitarian Europe 75 years after the end of World War II

Literature – Culture – Society – History”

The conference will take place on

17-18 SEPTEMBER 2020
at the Faculty of Letters of the University of Wrocław

Strategic partners:

Historical Institute and Institute of International Studies of the University of Wrocław, Wroclaw City Office

It is difficult not to agree with the view that “we live in times in which two kinds of dangers are present: the fear of freedom and an absolutisation of freedom. On the one hand, we fear freedom as it demands courage, facing the truth, independent thought, creative effort and responsibility. On the other hand, it is in fact an absolutisation of freedom. Freedom is not the aim in itself. It is not an absolute, a freedom to do whatever, to sever ties, as in the democracy described by Plato. In a «democratic country the notion of freedom reverberates everywhere. Fathers fear sons, while the sons want freedom and don’t fear the parents. Teachers fear students and try to please them, and young people mirror the older and take no notice of the teachers». Plato adds: «in general wherever you go you see a lot of freedom of this kind» [Republic VIII, Warszawa 1990]. In order to have freedom you need to be mature. Democracy in thoughtless, indiscriminate societies devoid of civic virtue can turn into its own antithesis. It is important to be free. But it is the content of the freedom that is crucial” (Tadeusz Gadacz).

The year 2020 marks the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II and is a good opportunity to reflect upon the issue of freedom in post-totalitarian countries of the European continent; we’d like to track the evolutionary paths and try to answer key identity-creative questions for our geo-region, which include the notion and specificity of the processes, phenomena and mechanisms of emancipation of European culture(s) and societies from the legacy of World War II and especially its post-Jalta consequences which left the countries and nations of Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe under the Soviet control. This is why the conference organisers would like to focus on the past 30 years of systemic transformation which has reoriented the countries of the former eastern bloc towards immanently democratic values in terms of politics, economy, culture and not the least identity. Due to the transformation process that have been taking place, the inhabitants of the post-communist part of Europe have redefined their attitude towards culture, both their own and their neighbours. However, the scale and intensity of the redefinition has been different in each country of the former USSR. Importantly, redefinitions have been applied to contemporary culture but also to the legacy of the past including the tragic history of World War II. As part of the latter process, not only the praiseworthy elements have been explored but also those which the communist regimes sealed in confidential archives and the official non-memory of them wrecked the society of these nations leading to the destruction of its contemporary life – individually and as a collective. Pro-democratic breakthroughs in 1989-1991 indubitably opened up the path towards leaving communism but not the memory of it, with its totalitarian experience whose legacy lurks in the (individual and collective) biographies of the generations in Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe.

In the light of the above, the question is whether the freedom regained in 1989 (marked by such events as the Solidarność movement in Poland, the fall of the Berlin wall, colour revolutions in USSR satellite countries or even the fall of USSR itself and the war in former Yugoslavia) have contributed to a deepening of the awareness of post-communist Europe on the issues of the complex truth about their identity and a necessity to cautiously formulate definitive solutions in terms of values constituting the truth. In this vein of thought, another key question is whether and how the mechanisms and processes of the “great change” influenced the understanding of the mere category of freedom by the inhabitants of post-communist regions. It would also be interesting to analyse how the transformation period of former real socialism countries shaped the awareness of western societies and their reaction to the cultural changes.

The search for the answers to these issues should include global tendencies and phenomena which entered the societies and cultures of the former Eastern bloc as the iron curtain fell. Also the hitherto unseen acceleration of global changes at the turn of the 21st century had a significant impact on the issue at hand; the changes marked by three civilisational revolutions: political, economic and communicative, and the aftermath of these revolutions in a form of a series of events that have led to a situation in which the issue of freedom has again become a central and global topic – similarly as 75 years ago when the world began a new era of modern history after World War II, in which hopes and ideas of “freedom” were born. The 21st century events include the terrorist attack of 9.11.2001 on Word Trade Center, the expansion of the European Union by including countries of the former communist block, the economic crisis of 2007, war in the Middle East and refugees in Europe, an increase of cultural polarisation, military conflicts on the borders of the western world, the fall of the liberal democracy hegemony or the climate crisis. The destructive nature of these events unleashed worldwide frustration and fears about the future whose vision, perceived more and more apocalyptically, has been the basis of authoritarian, populist and nationalist tendencieswhich are still on the rise. Is it a sign of the fact that instead of an individual evolution towards being free, the post-totalitarian human chooses an escape from freedom in the Frommian sense?

An unmistaken turning point in thinking about freedom and the symbiotically connected safety and threats, prosperity and poverty, was the attack on WTC which dramatically changed the understanding of the notions of friend – enemy. Global military conflicts have gained daily coverage in the news ever since. Also literature which (similarly to other texts on culture) has developed a new kind of poetics that is adapted to the new character of war, asymmetric forms of military conflicts, post-heroic societies of post-totalitarian Europe and emigration waves. An important element of the topic of the conference is the novel attitude towards the engagement in political affairs of writers and other artists of the 21st century culture in global problems and the intellectual post- and decolonial debate, in defining the line between “the other” and “our”, victim and aggressor. In this context, it is important to pose a question about the future and the present identity debate that is held inside the post-communist countries and their societies. How much do the dominant historiographic and identity discourses, political projects and forms of collective memory (or those fighting for dominance) reproduce the discourse forms that were also present before 1989 or 1991 independently of the anticommunist declarations and how much do they actually break with these forms? To what extent are they continued, to what extent do they dominate, to what extent is the change or deconstruction applied to great national quantifiers in the debates on history and contemporaneity, to what extent is history still treated as a tool for national (or national-ethnic) defenceof identity? Are historical discourses and the collective memory still ethnocentric, colonising, defined by internal and external collective enemies and “others”, and how much have they evolved towards greater pluralism and inclusion?

One of the main aims of the conference is the attempt to show how literature and cultures, which serve i.a. self-observation of societies, influence the impact social areas and the reality of the experienced irritation.We assume that Niklas Luhmann was right when he claimed that social systems are constantly renewed, they evolve also in the context of confrontation with cultural irritation and disturbances. It is the use of the category of “disturbance” (precursors: Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver, 1949; Erhard Schüttpelz, 2002; then: Lars Koch, Christer Petersen, Joseph Vogl, 2011; Carsten Gansel, Paweł Zimniak 2012) for intellectual studies of discourse in literary studies, cultures studies, media studies and film studies that can turn out to be particularly productive when applied to the category of freedom. Thus, it is worth investigating whether texts of culture can be ascribed both an aesthetic value and a political and social value due to which they become spokesmen for people’s affairs, issues of humanism, owing to which the voice of engaged artists and intellectuals can have a considerable impact on the development of societies. It is known that crucial breakthroughs such as wars, exiles, displacements, poverty and violence or other crises in which the issue of freedom becomes a priority conveyed through intellectual, social and political debates provoke collective normalising processes and introduce strategies that allow to adapt to current conditions (Jürgen Link). Hence, the conference organisers would like to assume a comprehensive attitude towards the topicso they recommend that the texts for analyses be approached on two levels, that is a level of the aesthetic and symbolic value – characters, topics, motifs – and the level of influence in societies that is based on the debates that the text generate, the opinions of the authors themselves and their political stand. By applying this strategy it will be easier to decide on the kind of traces that are left in texts from the past 75 years (especially focusing on the 30 year transformation period), what is the poetics, narrations and discourses in this period and what means do the writers use to express their political and social engagement revolving around the notion of freedom.

The conference organisers are aware of the fact that the description of these issues is incomplete. However, it is not meant as a comprehensive analysis of such a multifaceted phenomenon as the notion of freedom in post-totalitarian countries of post-war Europe definitely is. We do hope that the areas of research mentioned in this description may become a source of inspiration for a fruitful debate and exchange of viewpoints in the areas of literary studies, culture studies, media studies, film studies, history, philosophy, sociology and anthropology of culture or social psychology.

We are also planning to host a discussion panel entitled „Action is a responsibility to one’s own freedom”.

Languages of conference: Polish, English, and German.

Conference fee: PLN 400/EUR 75 (does not include hotel accommodation; information on available accommodation and on the number of bank account for payment of conference fee will be sent along with the information on accepted entry).

Entries: please sent topics and abstracts (200-300 words) of previously unpublished papers, with keywords and a biographical note (maximum 80 words) until 25 April 2020.

Information on accepted papers will be announced on 5 May 2020.

Please send entries to the following email address: freedom.uwr2020@gmail.com

Following the conference, we plan the publication of the presented essays in a well-rated publishing house from the list of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education.

Scientific heads of conference:

prof. UWr dr hab. Agnieszka Matusiak and prof. UWr dr hab. Monika Wolting

Members of the conference organising committee:

prof. UWr dr hab. Joanna Wojdon, prof. UWr dr hab. Grzegorz Hryciuk, prof. UWr dr hab. Łarysa Leszczenko, dr Gordana Đurđev-Małkiewicz, dr Kamil Kijek

Conference secretary:

dr Joanna Banachowicz, mgr Olga Kowalczyk, mgr Kamila Sroślak