Open AccessMarch minusivity: Strategies of immunising and counter-immunising in the atmosphere of the Polish 1968
Author(s) -
Nina Seiler
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
praktyka teoretyczna
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2081-8130
DOI - 10.14746/prt2020.4.4
Subject(s) - cognitive dissonance , sociology , context (archaeology) , spectacle , sociality , atmosphere (unit) , media studies , environmental ethics , political science , social psychology , psychology , law , history , philosophy , archaeology , ecology , physics , biology , thermodynamics
The article discusses mechanisms of social immunisation in the context of the Polish ‘March 1968’. Whereas immunising strategies are a normal part of sociality, I argue that around 1968 a growing anxiety about the mechanisms of being-in-common led to an autoimmunitarian dissociation of the Polish society, which I conceptualise as an atmosphere of minusivity. Strategies to counter exclusions and discriminations were trapped in this immunitarian paradigm as well. A crisis of communication arose from the dissonance between the reality created by the official language surrounding March 1968, and the reality experienced by many people, as this latter reality was silenced and repressed. Mistrust in language resulted in an immunitarian retreat from affective communication, which was replaced by impersonal communicative scripts. This communicative crisis widely prevented the March experiences from being conveyed in the cultural production of the time; nonetheless, I will try to retrace some of the immunitarian and counter-immunitarian strategies in literature, film, and retrospective accounts.