How Do You Feel in Polish? On Men’s Emotions, the Refusal of Compassion and the Politics of Feelings of the National Democrats

Abstract

What does it mean to feel Polish? If Polishness is to be not only an ethnic and cultural feature, but also a way of expressing and realising the Polish spirit, it inevitably entails a particular set of desired feelings, attitudes, and ways of reacting. In my article, I focus on the emotional profile of a Pole, as postulated by National Democracy, a radical nationalist movement, in its beginnings at the turn of the twentieth century in partitioned Poland. The new Pole was to break away from the previous patterns of a conciliatory, helpless, weak, feminine nation. Based on selected journalistic texts, as well as a previously unknown short story by Roman Dmowski, the first published text, I demonstrate the type of “masculine” emotionality that was shaped and postulated by the early National Democrats. I discuss the politics of feelings promoted by the National Democracy and the emotional community it sought to build. The basis of this policy and the community it created was the refusal of compassion in all its forms: as a basis for anti-authoritarian and emancipatory efforts, as a template for relationships between individuals, societies or nations, and as a form of self-reflection. All of these, according to National Democrats, had to be rejected to create the nation of “masters of civilisation, not its lackeys”.