Book Description

La 4e de couverture indique : "Dorota Sajewska proposes an innovative perspective for looking back at the formative process of Polish modernity, and delves into repressed areas of experience connected with World War I and the ensuing emancipatory movements. The book shows that underpinning modern Polish nationhood, is both a romantic myth of independence and a horror of fratricidal war. Searching for traces of memory in precarious bodies inflicted with the violence of war, Necroperformance asks us to acknowledge the fragility of life as it actively reinforces an attitude of respect for the right to live. Sajewska's chief objective is to understand the social impact of remains - of the abject body (dead, wounded, disfigured, despoiled by violence) - its place in culture and its agency. These are remains like the body of Rosa Luxemburg, which opens the book's narrative - a woman, a Jew, a Polish-German communist activist who was imprisoned, persecuted, murdered, and desecrated after death. This alternative archive becomes a basis for thought on a new anthropology rooted in the experience of the Great War and recorded in the formule of modern theatre."