HOW DO YOU FEEL IN POLISH? ON MEN’S EMOTIONS, THE REFUSAL OF COMPASSION AND THE POLITICS OF FEELINGS OF THE NATIONAL DEMOCRATS
HOW DO YOU FEEL IN POLISH? ON MEN’S EMOTIONS, THE REFUSAL OF COMPASSION AND THE POLITICS OF FEELINGS OF THE NATIONAL DEMOCRATS

Summary/Abstract: What does it mean to feel Polish? If Polishness is to be not only an ethnic andcultural feature, but also a way of expressing and realising the Polish spirit, itinevitably entails a particular set of desired feelings, attitudes, and ways of react-ing. In my article, I focus on the emotional profi le of a Pole, as postulated byNational Democracy, a radical nationalist movement, in its beginnings at the turnof the twentieth century in partitioned Poland. The new Pole was to break awayfrom the previous patterns of a conciliatory, helpless, weak, feminine nation. Basedon selected journalistic texts, as well as a previously unknown short story by RomanDmowski, the fi rst published text, I demonstrate the type of “masculine” emo-tionality that was shaped and postulated by the early National Democrats. I discussthe politics of feelings promoted by the National Democracy and the emotionalcommunity it sought to build. The basis of this policy and the community it createdwas the refusal of compassion in all its forms: as a basis for anti-authoritarian andemancipatory efforts, as a template for relationships between individuals, societiesor nations, and as a form of self-refl ection. All of these, according to NationalDemocrats, had to be rejected to create the nation of “masters of civilisation, notits lackeys”.

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