“I Felt That Two Cultures Were Competing For My Identity”: Bicultural Families as a Space for Discursive Identity Creation
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.12775/SPI.2023.1.002Keywords
identity, discourse, biculturalism, bicultural families, Kashubian culture, Polish cultureAbstract
The goal of the article is to identify the conditions of identity construction (a child/an adult) in Kashubian-Polish bicultural families. The argument is based on Michel Foucault’s theory of discourse which has been reinforced by the thinking of Antonio Gramsci, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. The empirical material was obtained by means of biographical research carried out in the period between June and August 2022. In total, eight interviews were conducted with adults who were born and raised in Kashubian-Polish families. For the purpose of the article, one interview was chosen, which the author believes is representative of the others. Discourse analysis made it possible to reconstruct the Polish (represented in the family by the father) and the Kashubian (represented by the mother) discourses which “competed”/“compete” for the interlocutor’s identity.
The presented material reveals several important conclusions, the most relevant of which are (1) the Communist narrative about Kashubians-Poles and the Kashubian region as a folk/peripheral variety of Polish culture is still alive in the social awareness; (2) viewing the Kashubian language as a folk/peripheral variety of Polish language is not conducive to creating an intercultural space in the area of Polish-Kashubian relations; (3) viewing the Kashubian language as a folk/peripheral variety of Polish language may lead to situations in which some people who come from Kashubian-Polish families need to making radical choices: to be Kashubian or to be Polish?
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