The Need for Subversiveness in Studies on Borderlands

The word „pogranicze” (in rough translation: borderland) gets more and more popular in Polish humanities as the equivalent of untranslatable and inconvenient „Kresy”, the first being free of polonocentric, colonial conotations of the latter. The article: presents the logic of a map as fundamental to the notion „pogranicze”, discusses its discoursive consequences and points to the need of deconstructive, subversive uses of the term.
 

The Need for Subversiveness in Studies on Borderlands

The word „pogranicze” (in rough translation: borderland) gets more and more popular in Polish humanities as the equivalent of untranslatable and inconvenient „Kresy”, the first being free of polonocentric, colonial conotations of the latter. The article: presents the logic of a map as fundamental to the notion „pogranicze”, discusses its discoursive consequences and points to the need of deconstructive, subversive uses of the term.