Between Appropriation and Aporia: Cultural Activism in Post-east Prussian Poland
Between Appropriation and Aporia: Cultural Activism in Post-east Prussian Poland

Summary/Abstract: Following the process of creating a cultural festival around a castle post-East Prussian Poland, this article explores the moral complexities and political pulls within which cultural activism and engaged anthropology take place in this contested area. At the heart of the discussion stands problematising the tendencies of the gradual appropriation of the festival initiative for political trajectories and the transformation of value. The article tells a story that can be read as part of an anthropology of post-WWII and post-Cold War Europe and its lasting traumas and inequalities; it can also be seen within the (engaged) anthropology of future making. Adopting the concepts of aporia and haunting, the author reflects on her position as the founder of the festival and the evolving internal dialogue between resisting appropriation and facilitating it. In form of an autoethnographic, textual montage she presents her positionality, and participation in this process as anthropologist-cum-activist and German citizen living and working in Poland, proposing the notion of “entangled anthropology” to engage with the dimensions of the moral dilemma.

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