Slawomir Kapralski

Pedagogical University of Cracow · Institute of Philosophy and Sociology

The article argues that what is usually called ‘Roma memory of the Holocaust’ needs to be differentiated into four types, depending on the combination of two modes (mneme and anamnesis) and two genealogies of memory (bottom-up and top-down). The first type is memory unconsciously encoded in culture; the second emerges due to the unblocking of memor...

This article puts forward a broad interpretive scheme to understand the deep causes of the Nazi persecution of Roma. It is argued that a reference to the interplay of modernity and colonialism is required to understand how Roma were constructed as different, how this difference became racialized, and how projects to eliminate this difference were d...

The authors present their experience of revisiting the in-depth interviews collected in 1988–1993 in the context of new research on Poland’s memories of Jews and the Holocaust conducted by them in 2013–2017. The revisit, carried out in a radically different intellectual and socio-political context, helped the authors: (1) to change their focus from...

In this chapter, Kapralski offers a sociological analysis of collective memory questions regarding Jewish-Gentile relations in present-day Poland. How are Poles marking, not marking, or resisting marking the Holocaust history in its changing landscapes? After describing the memory confrontations in post-1989 Poland generally, Kapralski zeroes in on...

Przedmiotem artykułu jest romska pamięć niedyskursywna, czyli niewyrażana w mowie czy w piśmie obecność przeszłości w praktykach, relacjach, strukturach społecznych i hierarchiach kulturowych. Ta forma pamięci odgrywa szczególnie istotną rolę w wypadku Romów, a więc sieci zbiorowości, które w przeszłości miały utrudniony dostęp do środków wytwarzan...

In this article, I criticise two main approaches to Roma identity: cultural essentialism and social relationism. As a result of this criticism, I argue for a multidimensional concept of identity which would incorporate the cultural and social perspectives supplemented by an historical approach. I develop this concept in relation to empirical data c...

This special issue brings together reflections that mark the thirtieth anniversary of the Revolutions of 1989 and their consequences for understanding European and global society. What seemed for some at least the surprising and rapid collapse of Eastern European state socialism prompted rethinking in social theory about the potential for emancipat...

W latach 1988−1993 autorzy artykułu uczestniczyli w projekcie badawczym „Pamięć kultury żydowskiej wśród mieszkańców Podkarpacia”, w ramach którego zebrano około 400 pogłębionych wywiadów z mieszkańcami Polski południowej. Materiał ten, z różnych powodów, nie został wówczas opracowany. W 2013 roku postanowiliśmy do niego powrócić w ramach nowego pr...

In this chapter, the analysis by Sławomir Kapralski of the summary executions of Roma carried out in 1942–1943 in southern Poland is evidence for making a distinction between three forms of collaboration: complicity, cooperation, and involvement. It is argued that different levels of collaboration can be accounted for by different degrees of social...

The argument focuses on the reception of the globalized narrative of the Holocaust in the regional memories of East-Central Europe, in particular Poland. It is argued that this narrative has not been successfully integrated into the regional memory, partly because of the narrative's own deficiencies and partly due to the specific nature of the way...

Building my argument on the analysis of two cases of anti-Roma violence (Oświęcim 1981 and Mława 1991), I would like to search for a pattern of evolution of anti-gypsyism in Poland. In the 1980s, the ambiguous stereotype of Roma, has been giving way to the picture of Roma as a convenient scapegoat to be blamed for the insecurity and economic hardsh...

25 years ago, Polish gentiles were interviewed on the disappearance of their Jewish neighbours. Kapralski re-examines those interviews in order to revise current attitudes to this kind of memory. He presents memory as a product of current constellations of the remembering subject's interests, whereby the subject is embroiled in existential efforts...

Artykuł prezentuje pewną metodę interpretacji pogłębionych wywiadów dotyczących sposobów, w jakie nieżydowscy Polacy pamiętają Żydów. Intencją proponowanej metody jest znalezienie nowej perspektywy, która uzupełniałaby dwie najważniejsze tradycje badawcze obecne w polskich badaniach tego tematu: podejście etnograficzne i podejście oparte na inspira...

In this chapter the author presents two intertwined lines of argument. First, it is argued that the thesis that the 'special nature' of social memory and frames of remembrance in Eastern Europe is based on a false generalization of the fact that 'Western' and 'Eastern' memories have been 'desynchronized': that the same motifs appear in both types o...

This article analyses recent attempts of Roma/Gypsy organisations to construct a pan-Romani ethnic-national identity. It is argued that although Roma do not fit the classical picture of a nation, in the globalised world such a project of transnational or diasporic identity may be viable in spite of the fragmentation of Romani communities. The artic...

The author studies the reception of the theory of recognition, represented by Axel Honneth and Nancy Fraser, in Polish sociology. Even if this reception is at present not very wide, one can still identify at least three problem areas in which Polish sociologists work on similar issues and with similar approaches as those present in the theory of re...

The author divides the existing standpoints regarding Romani identities into substantive, relational and those referring to historical process. According to the first standpoint Roma are a people who possess a particular cultural essence which defines its identity. According to the second approach, Romani identities are constructed in relation to t...

In contemporary culture and society, space is privileged over time as the main frame by which we orient ourselves in our lifeworlds. Even if this claim exaggerates a trend, the trend nevertheless exists: the growing role of space in late modernity marks this period as different from classical modernity with its emphasis on linear time and narrative...

The article presents the attitudes of the Roma minority towards the postcommunist transformation in Poland in the broader context of Romani ethnic/political mobilization and transformations of Romani identities. The text outlines main differences between the present situation of the Roma in Poland and the way they were treated in the communist peri...

The Roma (as many of those called Gypsies in the English-speaking world prefer to call themselves) were among the main victims in the time of the Holocaust. Although historians argue whether they were targeted on the same racial grounds as the Jews were and whether their suffering may be compared with the tragedy of the Shoah, it is beyond question...

This article is a critical response to the views presented in Ewa Wolentarska-Ochman's article, "Collective Remembrance in Jedwabne: Unsettled Memory of World War II in Postcommunist Poland." In particular, it argues that mythological narratives are very far from being a genuine remembrance of what happened in Jedwabne and that it is an oversimplif...

This chapter examines memory understood as a public discourse that helps to build group identity; memory that is entangled in a relationship of mutual dependence with other identity-building processes. Here, memory cannot be interpreted as a fixed, unchangeable entity. Rather, it is a representation of past reality, constantly revised according to...

History & Memory 13.2 (2001) 35-58 Landscape as a cultural construction of a group serves generally the purpose of creating and/or maintaining the group's identity. To put it more precisely, the construction of a landscape and the construction of identity are inseparable parts of one process, as a result of which landscape becomes incorporated into...

It is significant that, at a time in which violent nationalisms are re-entering the European political stage, one of the basic aims of Romani elites in the area of human rights is to be recognized as a nation, a fact marked symbolically by the attention being paid to national emblems. Of course, other issues (equal civil rights, minority rights, po...