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Representation of "the Other" in Poznań Narratives

This research project explores how changes in the urban landscape of Poznań influence collective memory and collective identity narratives. Data is gathered through questionnaires, interviews, and focus groups with different generations of Poznań inhabitants. The project aims to analyze the dynamics of cultural memory and provide insights into the narratives surrounding the German and Jewish past of the city.

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Representation of "the Other" in Poznań Narratives

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  1. Neighbour, stranger, citizen of Poznań – representation of the other in the narratives of four generations of Poznań inhabitants Małgorzata Fabiszak Anna Weronika Brzezińska

  2. “Collective memory, collective identity and urban landscape: A case study of Poznan” Grant number 2013/09/B/HS6/00374 financed by the National Science Centre The project is conducted in a collaboration between Faculty of English, AMU and Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, AMU

  3. Collective memory and collective identity • imagined communities (Anderson) • invented tradition (Hobsbawm) • collective memory vs. history (Halbwachs) • official vs. vernacular memory (Bodnar)

  4. Research question How do the changes in the urban landscape influence the collective memory and the collective identity narratives?

  5. Data • a questionnaire conducted in Poznan grammar schools (students aged 16-19); • individual interviews with the city elites (city administration officials, priests, school teachers, NGO activists) • focus groups conducted with the four generations of Poznanians: war generation (born in the 1930s), post-war generation (b. 1950s), transformation generation (b. 1970s) and post-transformation generation (b. 1990s).

  6. Enumerate 5 main sights in Poznań:

  7. Places connected with… German Culture Jewish Culture 7/16 the synagogue 7/16 Jewish Street 2 Corpus Christi Church 1 • Imperial Castle 7/9/16 • the Citadel 3/7/16 • Plac Wolności • Railway Station • Statue of a Bambergian Woman • swimming pool in the former synagogue

  8. The dynamics of cultural memory • the Synagogue: partial destruction and its preservation (active and passive forgetting – A. Assmann 2008) • the Castle – reapropriation, territorialization of memory (Smith 2000)

  9. From analysis to interpretation… Senior focus group Youth focus group nominalizations: Jews, people of Jewish origin predications: to commemorate Jews like all other inhabitants, all famous people who did sth for Poznan, not because they are Jews to move (…) [the symbolic grave of Akiva Egger] to the Citadel just to think that I live here, and a couple of metres some Jews rest the insignificant other or integration and inclusion? • nominalizations: • cacique < tzadik (kacyk <- cadyk), Jews (Żydzi), Jews-dim, derog ~ Yids (żydki) • predications • want something for themselves • our neighbour, he got money from the diaspora (topos of richness) • as Jews were persecuted before the war, after the war (…) there was a Yid in the the voievodship and he took revenge • the close other, exclusion • habitual use vs. ideological deployment

  10. Framing and the question of generalization Seniors Youth no references to family members in the focus interviews, but… 14/16 questionnaires mention family as “people you talk to about the past” • my father said then… • my brother he was older, so he told me

  11. Speech and gesture in discourse “Speech and gesture [are] viewed as aspects of the same process” [Ishino and Stam 2013: 3]

  12. Classification of gestures gesture types: gesture dimensions iconicity metaphoricity temporal highlighting deixis social interactivity [McNeill 2005: 43] • representational (iconic and metaphoric) • beats • deixis [Kendon 2004: 160]

  13. Two hand, palms up gesture – similar form, similar or different meaning?

  14. people, you know, died, fighting … I think, it doesn’t matter if they were on this side or that, but these were young boys, 18 year old boys died, were fighting…

  15. S1: yes S2: they died after all S1: yes, that’s right S2: they died after all

  16. one culture the other culture, only it wasn’t like now, you are from this I am from that and we fight each other, right? they could somehow with each other (unclear)

  17. What are the inhabitants of Poznań like? They, those Posnanians stuck together completely, as a group only, there were only few of them there and they couldn’t all together organize [with the other Poles]

  18. As a way of conclusion different patterns in nominalizations and topoi were observed in the the senior and youth groups the German past of the city is incorporated and present in the identity narratives the Jewish past is less well known and is presented as a separate narrative For future consideration: how to generalize gestures how to compare focus interviews

  19. Visit our website http://wa.amu.edu.pl/PaToPoz/index_en.html

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