In addition to three texts published in June 2019 on the cultural and political situation in Poland, Switch (on Paper) is making available a programme by *DUUU Radio, broadcast live on 17 May 2019. It is the first podcast posted online by Switch (on Paper); there will be more in the coming weeks and months.
Broadcast live from the *DUUU Radio / Folie N4 studio on 17 May 2019
The panel discussion, in French only, was moderated by Loraine Baud of *DUUU Radio, Eric Mangion and Luc Clément, co-founders of Switch (on Paper), and Agnieszka Żuk (author of Hourras et désarrois. Scènes d’une guerre culturelle en Pologne, teacher and literary translator), Isabelle Jannes-Kalinowski (literary translator), Agnieszka Kawczak (feminist militante, co-founder of the collective Nous d’abord) and Mateusz Chmurski (teacher and researcher at Université Paris-Sorbonne).
This texts are the result of from the book Hourras et désarrois. [Hurrahs and Turmoils] Scenes of a Cultural War in Poland published on 16 May 2019 by Éditions Noir sur Blanc (Lausanne) edited by Agnieszka Żuk.
What is the root of the political events which are today shaking Polish society and echoing across Europe: refusal to accept migrants, a proposed historical memory law on the Shoah, introduction of laws which affect the independence of the judiciary or the attempt to totally ban IVF, to name but the most widely publicised issues? And finally, how does one explain the causes of the anti-European volte-face which the “European Union’s best student” has performed?
The aim of this collective work is to bring an in-depth, nuanced and intimate view of contemporary Poland, through its culture, understood here to mean the entirety of ways of thinking, feeling and acting specific to a given society. Current events of recent years appear here within a complex network of narratives and historical omissions, traumas and pressures; they are confronted with existing cultural models, immersed in the collective imagination, defused by humour or distorted by stereotypes.
The authors include: Agata Adamiecka, Przemysław Czapliński, Olga Drenda, Agnieszka Graff, Mikołaj Grynberg, Maciej Jakubowiak, Dariusz Kosiński, Iwona Kurz, Andrzej Leder, Jan Sowa, Aleksandra Małecka, Piotr Marecki, Karol Sienkiewicz, Kaja Puto, Maja Staśko, Stach Szabłowski, Ziemowit Szczerek and Oksana Zabuzko.
Cover: Daniel Rycharski’s winter garden
