press review
Patriots, Mothers and Football Players
Discussions on patriotism arise almost exclusively in pre-election time, when parliamentary candidates, senators or local government officials manifest love for their native land and attempt to denounce the so-called false patriots. Still it seems to me that, this year, related topics – national identity, Polishness or tradition – will be talked and written about much more widely. This is of course connected with the Polish accession to the European Union.
Readers expecting that Czas Kultury will include precise definitions of patriotism or reports about the state of partiotism in Poland will probably be disappointed. Editors of the Poznań magazine have concentrated mainly on how this idea functions in the area of culture.
Uniting for Diversity
The latest issue of Zadra (3-4/2003) illustrates the diversity of the Polish feminist community and states that claims of having come up with the ultimate truth, no matter who comes up with them, are always a dangerous thing. Plus, that any social or political standpoint meets its opponents.
This rule has been captured by Dorota Majka-Rostek in Bisexuals Marginalised: “All is happening within a simple ethnocentric pattern: Us = Better, Them = Worse.