Object structure
Title:

A Demonic Chrysalis: the Concept of Bourgeoisie in Poland

Subtitle:

Acta Poloniae Historica T. 122 (2020) ; History of Socio-Political Concepts in Poland From the Eighteenth to the Mid-Twentieth Century

Creator:

Kożuchowski, Adam (1979– ) ORCID

Institutional creator:

Polska Akademia Nauk. Komitet Nauk Historycznych ; Polska Akademia Nauk, Instytut Historii im. Tadeusza Manteuffla ISNI

Contributor:

Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences

Publisher:

Instytut Historii PAN

Place of publishing:

Warszawa

Date issued/created:

2020

Description:

p. 79-107

Subject and Keywords:

bourgeoisie ; mieszczaństwo ; philistinism ; patriciate ; plutocracy ; middle class ; Marxism ; avant-garde ; middle class - Poland - history

Abstract:

This paper investigates the history of the concept of bourgeoisie in Poland, emphasising troubles with its assimilation into the Polish language, and its special entanglement with the socialist and modernist discourse. The concept, it is argued, was borrowed in the late nineteenth century from France, where it concerned the urban upper-middle class; it arrived in Poland as part of the socialist discourse of the time, which gave it strong negative and derogatory connotations. The ambiguity that arose was further complicated by a number of other factors as well. First, the understanding of the term ‘bourgeoisie’ within the leftist discourse was itself ambivalent, combining the strictly theoretical definition encompassing the class of capitalist owners of the means of production, and the practical and emotional label attached to the urban classes. Second, also for the reasons indicated above, the concept of bourgeoisie was not able to replace the older Polish concepts regarding the urban population [mieszczaństwo], and the differences between them remained vague, and occasionally disputable. Third, not only did the term ‘bourgeoisie’ never fully emancipate itself from the domination of the indigenous concepts, but it also suffered from its translation into Polish, where it was regularly omitted when regarding Western European realities, but where it was a permanent fixture in the case of Russian and Soviet literature. Finally, the paper searches for the reasons behind the relative elimination of the concept from the Polish discourse, or at least large segments thereof, in the last half-century.

References:

Bürgertum im 19. Jahrhundert. Deutschland im europäischen Vergleich, ed. by Jürgen Kocka (München, 1988).
Doumard Adeline, Les bourgeois et la bourgeoisie en France depuis 1815 (Paris, 1987).
Gay Peter, The Bourgeois Experience. Victoria to Freud, i: Education of the Senses (New York–Oxford, 1984); ii: The Tender Passion (1986); iii: The Cultivation of Hatred (1993); iv: The Naked Heart (1995).
Ihnatowicz Ireneusz, Obyczaj wielkiej burżuazji warszawskiej w XIX wieku (Warszawa, 1971).
Kołodziejczyk Ryszard, Burżuazja polska w XIX i XX wieku. Szkice historyczne (Warszawa, 1979).
Kożuchowski Adam, ‘Zmierzch patrycjatu i narodziny burżuazji w literaturze niemieckiej epoki wilhelmińskiej’, Kultura i Społeczeństwo, xlvii, 4 (2003), 159–77.
Mieszczaństwo i mieszczańskość w literaturze polskiej drugiej połowy XIX wieku, ed. By Ewa Ihnatowicz (Warszawa, 2000).
Ossowska Maria, Moralność mieszczańska (Warszawa, 1985), in English: Bourgeois Morality (London, 1986).
Pytlas Sławomir, Łódzka burżuazja przemysłowa w latach 1864–1914 (Łódź, 1994).
Siennicka Mariola, Rodzina burżuazji warszawskiej i jej obyczaj (Warszawa, 1998).

Relation:

Acta Poloniae Historica ; Acta Poloniae Historica

Volume:

122

Start page:

79

End page:

107

Resource type:

Text

Detailed Resource Type:

Article : original article

Format:

application/octet-stream

Resource Identifier:

0001-6829 ; 2450-8462 ; 10.12775/APH.2020.122.04

Source:

IH PAN, sygn. A.295/122 Podr. ; IH PAN, sygn. A.296/122 ; click here to follow the link

Language:

eng

Rights:

Creative Commons Attribution BY-ND 4.0 license

Terms of use:

Copyright-protected material. [CC BY-ND 4.0] May be used within the scope specified in Creative Commons Attribution BY-ND 4.0 license, full text available at: ; -

Digitizing institution:

Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences

Original in:

Library of the Institute of History PAS

Projects co-financed by:

National Programme for the Development of the Humanities

Access:

Open

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