Sarmatyzm, czyli tradycja wynaleziona
Sarmatism – An Invented Tradition

Summary/Abstract: In this article Niedźwiedź examines Sarmatism as a national “invented tradition”. Seen from this perspective, Sarmatism does not represent the culture of pre-partition Poland’s gentry but a nineteenth and twentieth-century narrative about Poland’s past. Thus Sarmatism is defined in terms of a nineteenth-century Polish identity discourse transposed into the past. Niedźwiedź discusses five main characteristics: Polonocentrism, totality, homogenization, orientalism and exclusivity. In his conclusion he remarks on the legacy of Sarmatism and the fundamental role it plays today in identity discourses of the Polish political left and right.

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