In this article I argue that the developments of countries going through transition from authoritarian to democratic rule are always stamped by numerous references to formerly sanctioned and fully operational institutionalized violence. A perfect exemplification of this phenomenon is [post-] apartheid South Africa and its writing. In the context of the above, both the social and the literary realm of the 1990s might be perceived as resonant with Giorgio Agamben’s ‘concentrationary’, deeply divisive imaginary. Escaping from, and concurrently remembering, past fears, anxieties, yet seeking hope and consolation, the innocent but also the formerly outlawed and victimized along [interestingly enough] with [ex]perpetrators exemplify, as discussed in J. M. Coetzee’s and Z. Mda’s novels, the necessity of an exposure of the mechanism of South African ‘biopoliticization’ of life. Their stories prove how difficult the uprooting of the mentality of segregation, hatred and the policy of bracketing the other’s life as insubstantial, thus vulnerable to instrumental violence, in [post-] apartheid society was. In view of the above what is to be highlighted here is the authorial perception of various attempts at disavowing past and present violence as detrimental to South African habitat. In the end, coming to terms with the past, with the belligerent nature of local mental maps, must inevitably lead to the acknowledgement of guilt and traumatic suffering. Individual and collective amnesia conditioned by deeply-entrenched personal culpability or personal anguish is then construed as damaging, and as such is subject do deconstructive analysis.
Polish Postcommunist Cinema and the Neoliberal Order This essay discusses three Polish films from the last 10 years: Bailiff (Komornik, 2005), directed by Feliks Falk, Edi (2002), directed by Piotr Trzaskalski, and Silesia, directed by Anna Kazejak-Dawid, which is the first part in the omnibus film Ode to Joy (Oda do radości, 2005) of which the two remaining parts were directed by Jan Komasa and Maciej Migas. The main methodological tools are the concepts of neoliberalism and bare life. The article argues that the fall of communism led to the neoliberalisation of Polish society and the production of bare life. The aforementioned films attest to these changes and offer an assessment of them which conveys a specific ideology. By focusing on the construction of their narratives and characters, the article attempts to establish its main features and offer its explanation.
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