Strategies of silence: Representations of Jewish Poles in Polish literature since the 1980s

In this project, I examine the uses and implications of silence in Polish cultural texts of the last forty years that deal with Poland’s Jewish history. Specifically, I examine why, during a period when discourse regarding Jewish history and culture in Poland became increasingly more popular, various writers (including Paweł Huelle, Stefan Chwin, Hanna Krall, Piotr Szewc, Marek Bieńczyk, and Magdalena Tulli) chose more oblique methods of representation, using silence, both thematically and structurally, to engage with the topic. I argue that these writers actively utilize various strategies of silence—allusion and reference, pointedly erased, missing, and elided words, mute(d) objects, places, and people—to engage with longstanding myths and stereotypes regarding the “Jew” and to articulate new modes of understanding Polish and Jewish, and Polish-Jewish, identities. I work against interpretations that frame silence as a circumvention of difficult historical realities or as an articulation of cultural trauma. Instead, combining a conceptual framework built around the theories of Lévinas, Derrida, Butler, among others, as well as critical tools of memory studies, I demonstrate that silence can work as an ethico-political strategy that, while not unproblematic, deconstructs and expands traditional paradigms of identity, community, and belonging.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Slavic Languages & Literature

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2021

Author dc:creator

• Sacilowski, Diana

Contributors dc:contributor

• Gasyna, George Z
• Kaplan, Brett Ashley
• Murav, Harriet
• Tempest, Richard

• Literature

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2021 Diana Sacilowski

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/113865

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F113865