The Art of Commemoration: Fifty years after the Warsaw Uprising: 7 (Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 9027226970 ISBN 13: 9789027226976

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Co, 2003

Synopsis

The Art of Commemoration focuses on a particular historical event that illustrates how nations define their own identities and establish mutual relations in their discourse: the Warsaw Uprising of August 1944 and its Commemoration in 1994. This Commemoration was an innovative and unique form of transnational communication because it brought together representative speakers from all parties involved. They considered the commemorated event from different perspectives: the victim (Poland), the former enemy (Germany) and the former allies (England, USA, France and other countries, as well as Russia which liberated Poland but had not supported the Uprising). A letter from the Pope added a Catholic perspective.
The ‘art of commemoration’ consists in invoking the past events from one’s own perspective while simultaneously considering the other perspectives, as well as in making sense of the past and present at the same time. This volume analyses the artful way in which the speakers coped with these complexities in a full discourse analytic reconstruction of each address.

About this title

Product Description

ENSINK, T. / C. SAUER, EDS. THE ART OF COMMEMORATION. FIFTY YEARS AFTER THE WARSAW UPRISING[HARDBACK]. AMSTERDAM, 2003, xii 246 p.,. Encuadernacion original. Nuevo.

Synopsis

Fifty years after the beginning of the Warsaw Uprising, on the evening of the 1st of August 1994, a Commemorative Ceremony took place in Warsaw. Polish president Lech Walesa, who had organized the ceremony, wanted it to be a farewell to the period in history when the world had been divided along the lines drawn at the Yalta conference. Furthermore, he intended the commemoration to be an occasion for reconciliation and an occasion for establishing new relationships. For that reason, not only the former allies and liberators, but also the former enemy (Germany) was invited, as well as the ally (Russia) which became the "official" liberator of Poland, but had - according to a majority of the Poles - betrayed the Poles during the Warsaw Uprising, and, moreover, had become the new oppressor of Poland from 1945 onwards. At the ceremony, representative speakers from all these involved nations addressed the audience. In this volume, a discourse analysis of each of these addresses is presented.

Edition details

• Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Co
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 9027226970
• ISBN 13: 9789027226976
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 257
• Editor: Ensink Titus, Sauer Christoph