"You Will Never Walk Alone"

The paper explores the potential civil history of Polish culture and pop culture that differs from the traditionally implied paradigm, male-centered and heteronormative, based on militarism, martyrology, and a patriarchal model of family. Dwelling on the concepts of potential history by Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, potential history of literature by Ryszard Nycz, and alternative national canons by Maria Janion, the article seeks to trace a potential civil paradigm in Polish postwar literature and popular culture, that is based on empathy, dispersed protest, radical solidarity, and horizontal relations. Starting with the historical events of the 2020 protests against the ban on almost all abortions, which used “unspectacular” modes of social interaction, epitomized by the slogan “You will never walk alone,” and employed many cultural references, I reconstruct alternative canon of Polish contemporary civil culture that would entail both works of “high” and popular culture

Aesthetics · Art · Sociology · Central European Literary Studies · History · Language and Culture · Polish Historical and Cultural Studies