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Object

Title: How Do You Feel in Polish? On Men’s Emotions, the Refusal of Compassion and the Politics of Feelings of the National Democrats

Creator:

Snochowska-Gonzalez, Claudia ORCID

Date issued/created:

2025

Resource type:

Text

Subtitle:

Acta Poloniae Historica T. 131 (2025), Gender, Emotions, and Historical Process ; Gender, Emotions, and Historical Process

Institutional creator:

Polska Akademia Nauk. Komitet Nauk Historycznych ; Polska Akademia Nauk, Instytut Historii im. Tadeusza Manteuffla ISNI ; Fundacja Instytutu Historii im. Tadeusza Manteuffla Polskiej Akademii Nauk ISNI

Contributor:

Instytut Historii Polskiej Akademii Nauk ; Heymer, Krzysztof : Translator

Publisher:

Fundacja Instytutu Historii im. Tadeusza Manteuffla Polskiej Akademii Nauk ; Instytut Historii im. Tadeusza Manteuffla Polskiej Akademii Nauk

Place of publishing:

Warszawa

Description:

p. 105-128

Abstract:

What does it mean to feel Polish? If Polishness is to be not only an ethnic and cultural feature, but also a way of expressing and realising the Polish spirit, it inevitably entails a particular set of desired feelings, attitudes, and ways of reacting. In my article, I focus on the emotional profile of a Pole, as postulated by National Democracy, a radical nationalist movement, in its beginnings at the turn of the twentieth century in partitioned Poland. The new Pole was to break away from the previous patterns of a conciliatory, helpless, weak, feminine nation. Based on selected journalistic texts, as well as a previously unknown short story by Roman Dmowski, the first published text, I demonstrate the type of “masculine” emotionality that was shaped and postulated by the early National Democrats. I discuss the politics of feelings promoted by the National Democracy and the emotional community it sought to build. The basis of this policy and the community it created was the refusal of compassion in all its forms: as a basis for anti-authoritarian and emancipatory efforts, as a template for relationships between individuals, societies or nations, and as a form of self-reflection. All of these, according to National Democrats, had to be rejected to create the nation of “masters of civilisation, not its lackeys”.

References:

Cywiński Bohdan, ‘Edukacja niepokornych’, Znak, 173–4 (1968), 1421–51.
Jedlicki Jerzy, The Vicious Circle 1832–1864: A History of the Polish Intelligentsia – Part 2 (Frankfurt am Main, 2014–5).
Krzywiec Grzegorz, Chauvinism, Polish Style. The Case of Roman Dmowski (Beginnings: 1886–1905), (Peter Lang, 2016).
Kułakowski Mariusz, Roman Dmowski w świetle listów i wspomnień, i (Londyn, 1968).
Lydon Jane, Imperial Emotions. The Politics of Empathy across the British Empire (Cambridge, 2020).
Marzec Wiktor, Rebelia i reakcja: rewolucja 1905 roku i plebejskie doświadczenie polityczne (Kraków, 2016).
Miller Nancy K., Subject to Change. Reading Feminist Writing (New York, 1988).
Porter-Szűcs Brian, When Nationalism Began to Hate: Imagining Modern Politics in Nineteenth-Century Poland (Oxford, 2000).
Rosenwein Barbara, ‘Worrying about Emotions in History’, American Historical Review, cvii, 3 (2002), 821–45.
Snochowska-Gonzalez Claudia, ‘Male Poland, global ambitions and turn toward discipline. Polish nationalism at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries in the context of Central and Eastern Europe’, in Marta Cieślak and Anna Muller (eds), Gender and Nation in East-Central Europe. An Uneasy History (Lanham, MD, 2025), 217–43.
Snochowska-Gonzalez Claudia, ‘Exercises in expansion. Colonial threads in the Endecja’s turn toward discipline’, Praktyka Teoretyczna, xxxvi, 2 (2020), 105–35.
Turda Marius, The Idea of National Superiority in Central Europe 1880–1918 (Lewiston, NY, 2004).
Wapiński Roman, Roman Dmowski (Lublin, 1988).
Żarnowska Anna, Arkadiusz Kołodziejczyk, Andrzej Stawarz, and Piotr Tusiński, Dziedzictwo rewolucji 1905–1907 (Radom–Warszawa 2007).
Żurawicka Janina, ‘Lud w ideologii Głosu’, Kwartalnik Historyczny, lxiii, 4–5 (1956), 316–40.

Relation:

Acta Poloniae Historica

Volume:

131

Issue:

105

Start page:

128

Detailed Resource Type:

Article : original article

Format:

application/octet-stream

Resource Identifier:

oai:rcin.org.pl:246302 ; 2450-8462 ; 0001-6829 ; 10.12775/APH.2025.131.05

Source:

IH PAN, sygn. A.295/131 Podr. ; click here to follow the link

Language:

eng

Rights:

Creative Commons Attribution BY 4.0 license

Terms of use:

Copyright-protected material. [CC BY 4.0] May be used within the scope specified in Creative Commons Attribution BY 4.0 license, full text available at: ; -

Digitizing institution:

Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences

Original in:

Library of the Institute of History PAS

Projects co-financed by:

-

Access:

Open

Object collections:

Last modified:

Oct 6, 2025

In our library since:

Oct 6, 2025

Number of object content downloads / hits:

22

All available object's versions:

https://rcin.org.pl/ihpan/publication/283033

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