Between the Local and the Global: or, What Wrocław Has Given Us
Between the Local and the Global: or, What Wrocław Has Given Us

Summary/Abstract: This comment-piece reflects on cultural life and ‘performative democracy’ in Wrocław during the 1970s and 1980s, describing how the vibrant theatre culture contributed to the emergence of an embryonic, non-official realm for debate and action, ‘a place to meet people and ideas’. These recollections lead to a broader discussion about the conditions necessary for ‘furnishing’ a civic space in the contemporary 'globalised' world, including all of the attendant difficulties of meeting, listening, and attending to local knowledges and idioms that this implies. The article highlights that the goal in such exchanges is not necessarily one of consensus, but rather ‘an initial assumption of hospitality and generosity’, and a willingness to walk in the shoes of another.

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