Monika Baer

New Idioms of Opole Silesia? Social Activities of Women as Problematisations

By the use of critical anthropological perspective, in this paper I unsettle specific theoretical and methodological premises of studies on Opole Silesia, which have in many ways determined resultant images of the region in scholarly literature. In this context, I find particularly problematic essentialised approaches toward “(Silesian) women,” and the more recent discourses of “disintegration,” which dwell on depopulation, migration, and collapsing social and family relations, or Silesian culture. To this end, I discuss social activities of women in the Dobrzeń Wielki commune, exemplified by an educational group focused on family issues, an association acting for a local community, a vocal ensemble, and a sporting team. Variously embedded in the late industrial condition, these activities are conceived as problematisations. Seen through this prism, they become significant contexts for emerging “norms and forms” of gender, Silesianity, and/or locality. At the same time, they encourage critical insights into such “norms and forms,” and their contribution to various idioms of Opole Silesia. Such problematisations allow therefore for revealing “discursive gaps” and “risks” (re)produced in the aforementioned literature on the region. By unsettling subjects and discursive forms with which it deals, the proposed ethnographic analysis turns into a tool for “generating surprises.”

“It Was our Live.” The Division of the Dobrzeń Wielki Commune in Narratives of Its Inhabitants

In this paper I analyze the dynamics of narratives related to a planned takeover of a couple of villages of the Dobrzeń Wielki commune together with the Opole Power Station by the city of Opole (PL). In this context I focus on politics and ethics of emotions, feelings and affects which marked the discursive space and brought varied types of affective togetherness in the field of “political.” Because discursive practices of commune’s inhabitants were shaped by anticipations of uncertain  future, they evoked the “ethics of probability” and the “ethics of possibility.” While the former embodied fears connected to the planned division, the latter expressed hope for “good life.” They both inspired various forms of social protest. However, because concepts of “good life” usually relate to discernable ends and strategies, changing circumstances result in different politics and ethics of emotions, feelings and affects. Consequently, when the anticipated takeover became the daily present, the discourses of “authorities” and of “ordinary people” started to diverge. Th is, in turn, brought reconfi gurations of affective togetherness, shift ed poles of the field of “political,” and redefined the local scene of “politics.” The leaders who stuck on ideas defining the pre-partition period lost the latest municipal election to a faction who did not dwell on the past, but promised to work collectively for the better future.