Polish Stereotypes of the East: Old and New Mechanisms of Orientalisation in the Regional and Transnational Dimensions

Abstract

AbstractThe chapter sets out to delineate a synthesising picture of the fundamental types and features of stereotypical images of “the East” in contemporary Polish identity discourses. They are analysed from a critical perspective in relation to postcolonial theory and the cultural/discursive problem of Orientalisation. The chapter also attempts to link the development mechanisms of stereotypical imaginaries of “the East” in contemporary Poland with so-called structural conditions, meaning dependencies of an economic and geopolitical kind. The Orientalism they engender, as the text sets out to prove, relates both to the countries neighbouring Poland, and to regions of eastern Poland which can be called the “internal Orient.” The author differentiates between two basic types of Orientalism, which he subsequently links with two ideological orientations: the conservative and the liberal. Conservative Orientalism is often branded as “classical,” and features the traditional Polish Eastern Borderlands (Kresy)as its dominant rhetorical figure. Liberal Orientalism characterised has less overt and less distinctive forms, and its manifestations are analysed using examples of new Borderlands discourses, which are often built in opposition to the traditional Eastern Borderlands stereotypes. The chapter also offers a comparative survey of reactions to Polish discourses of the East and analogical discursive mechanisms in the countries neighbouring Poland to the east.