Negotiating national identity against right-wing nationalism

This article discusses a set of approaches to national identity that subverted dominant nationalist discourse in Poland during the rule of Law and Justice (2015–2023). Based on a sonic, lyrical, and visual analysis of three popular music case studies, it explores how the populist-enabled mainstreaming of “turbopatriotism” (Napiórkowski 2019) has been criticized and what alternative visions of Polishness have been put forward. I argue that cultural narrations of Polishness as [1] plural, diverse, and cosmopolitan, [2] peripheral, flawed, and complicated, and [3] bygone and mourned, all have unique affective strengths for the continued negotiations of collectivity in post-communist and populist contexts

Aesthetics · Art · Literature · Media studies · Narrative · National identity · Nationalism · Negotiation · Political science · Politics · Right wing · Sociology · Eastern European Communism and Reforms · European Cultural and National Identity · Gender Studies · Law