Syndrom kulturowej straty. Lizbońska konferencja pisarzy 1988 w postkolonialnej retrospektywie
A Syndrome of Kultural Loss. The 1988 Lisbon Conference in a Postcolonial Retrospective

Summary/Abstract: The paper reflects on the missing cultural and political implications of the once-prominent and now forgotten 1988 Lisbon Conference for East Central European societies, taking Poland as a case study. The Conference debates between East Central European, East South European, and Russian writers were virtually absent at that time from Polish public discourse for political reasons, and its potential importance was soon overshadowed by the events of 1989. After the demise of communism the Lisbon Conference was ignored and forgotten, while its intellectual vigor and rhetorical appeal seemed to have been raised in vain. Thus, the Conference was never given a chance to generate a cross-fertilization of ideas, whether in Poland or elsewhere in the post-communist world, so as to transform the mutual perceptions and understanding of the two contending sides: East Central European societies as the subalterns and the Russians as the ex-hegemon. Consequently, the Conference, along with the arguments raised by its participants, has remained yet another “blank spot” in these countries’ intellectual history. It has not influenced the relations between East Central European and Russian intellectual and cultural elites, thus postponing the possibility of bringing the discussion onto a postcolonial track and in effect delaying postcolonial reconciliation.

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