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. This, in my opinion, was an accurate choice, allowing to evade entangling oneself in ideological or political games. Furthermore, the editors did not reduce the new issue to texts by local writers only; the magazine includes texts such as Banners and Demons by Jurij Andruchowycz, presenting the writers’ private struggle with the problem of Ukrainian patriotism or No Man’s Land by Blanka Brzozowska, who has made Danis Tanovic's picture No Man’s Land about the war in former Yugoslavia the starting point of her ponderings. Another non-local example is the article Bloody Countess by Katarzyna Hordejuk, a story of the aristocrat Elżbieta Batory, notorious for cruelty.
What is the connection between the Bloody Countess with the problem of patriotism? In the final paragraphs of the essay Hordejuk writes: “Why isn’t Elżbieta Batory widely known? (…) Andrei Codrescu believes that over three centuries ago, Hungarian authorities have started to hide documents concerning Elżbieta Batory in order to protect their reputation. One Dracula was enough.” It turns out that the patriots – or – according to the dictionary definition – those "loving their motherland and their nation” take special care to protect and inspire a positive image of their native country not only in the realm of high culture, but also in the vast area of popular culture.
Anyway, reflections on patriotism versus popular culture constitute one of the main topical threads of the magazine. In the article Patriotism in the Penalty Area Waldemar Kuligowski, anthropologlist of culture, argues: “A general European support for tradition, meant to give the citizens a feeling of lasting solidarity, isn't reduced to the branches of public life which are described as belonging to high culture. It is usually being overlooked how great the importance of popular culture is for popularising patriotism”. Kuligowski is interested mainly in sport, more precisely – football, as an element of popular culture, and its impact on patriotic feelings.
Let me cite the article’s author again: “Football is still a vivid example of emotional identification with national culture; what is more, it exerts a serious influence on the creation of national identities”. I have to make just one reservation to the scholar’s argument. I am neither an anthropologist of culture nor a sociologist, but I sometimes attend football matches and am interested in this sport. In my opinion Kuligowski generalizes too much when he speaks of an immense influence of football on patriotic feelings. This influence can be observed chiefly in countries, where – as it is usually believed – football is almost a religion: in the south of Europe or Latin America. In Poland, it seems, other disciplines of sport have recently proven to serve the cause of national integration better. Just compare a match of the Polish national football team with the ski jump World Cup festivities in Zakopane. Before the former, the national anthem is sung - rather feebly - but afterwards the cheering features songs on the advantage of Legia Warszawa over Wisła Kraków or the other way round. In the Tatra mountains, on the other hand, a complete unity is manifested; the tribunes are occupied by the festive crowd with white-and-red flags and a plethora of gadgets in national colours.
Andruchowycz too chooses popular culture as a starting point for discussing patriotism – here the case is Madonna's American Life video, featuring several national banners. The Ukrainian writer and essayist states frankly: “I do not like the word ‘patriotism’ or any other related terms. I prefer to use them only occassionally – in a sarcastic or comic vein”. The writer subsequently depicts his ”adventures” with Ukrainian patriotism. Finally he concludes: “This Ukrainian patriotism is a strange sum and mixture of mutually contradictory technologies and mythologies. Sometimes I have an impression that we haven’t even formed our answers to challenges so hopelessly outdated that they should not be called challenges any longer. But are we the only ones in this situation?”
Surely not only Ukrainians have got a problem with defining patriotism - the situation in Poland is similar. The definition of patriotism seems to remain as it has always been, but is now understood in many diverse ways. I am inclined to risk a statement that at present we have got in fact several different patriotisms, as the partiotism of the Radio Maryja and its listeners is quite different from the patriotism of – say – Gazeta Wyborcza and its readers; the patriotism shaped by the People’s Republic of Poland different from the patriotism of the Third Republic of Poland. Is this situation bad? No. Such a status quo confirms that no one posesses a monopoly for the truth.
However, in the turmoil of multiple opinions and views the idea of patriotism is getting slightly diffused, superficialised. As I have mentioned in the earlier paragraphs, after 1989 there haven't been any serious attempts at discussing the role and place of patriotism in the new socio-political conditions. But, perhaps, this discussion is still ahead.
Finally I would like to draw the readers’ attention to two other very interesting texts included in this issue of Czas Kultury: Germanomania on the traps of German patriotism and Izabela Kowalczyk's essay on the heroic figure of the Matka Polka ('Polish Mother').
Robert Ostaszewski
Translated by Marta Malina Moraczewska
Discussed journals: Czas Kultury