Published Papers by Piotr Wcislik
The article presents the story of the underground Solidarity radio, a less known chapter of dissi... more The article presents the story of the underground Solidarity radio, a less known chapter of dissident media activism, whose emblematic form was the " extra-Gutenberg " phenomenon of underground print culture, or samizdat. It proposes an approach, infl uenced by media archeology, in which both can be studied as part and parcel of the same communication environment in order to better understand the particular articulation of dissent, media and modernity which both represented. It proposes that in addition to being a certain media form, samizdat was a " social media fantasy " – a shared cultural matrix which embodied political expectations and passions about liberating effects on horizontal communication, attainable here and now through means at disposal of an average person. Underground broadcasting developed in the shadow of the samizdat materialization of this emancipatory media fantasy, despite the fact that radio activists mastered a unique craft of intrusion into the public airwaves, which gave broadcasting an aura of spectacularity that underground publishing had lost as it expanded.
Digital humanities 2016: Conference Abstracts. Jagiellonian University & Pedagogical University, pp. 621-623. , 2016
"Polish Literary Bibliography – a knowledge lab on contemporary Polish culture" (chc.ibl.waw.pl/p... more "Polish Literary Bibliography – a knowledge lab on contemporary Polish culture" (chc.ibl.waw.pl/pbl) is an ongoing research project and experiment in releasing knowledge from its media- and domain-specific constraints.
This paper describes the opportunities and pitfalls of remodeling a bibliographical database to make it accessible for the Semantic Web and to enable its creative reuse in Literary and Cultural Studies beyond the immediate context of the bibliographic domain.
We will discuss two remediations of the Polish Literary Bibliography (PBL): first, the transition from printed volumes to an Oracle database during the period that could be called the first wave of digital humanities in Poland (early 2000s) and the second, current phase of the project in which the metadata structure will be modelled using Web Ontology Language (OWL).
Rozbudowane sieci prasy niezależnej w demokracjach ludowych Europy Środkowej i w Związku Radzieck... more Rozbudowane sieci prasy niezależnej w demokracjach ludowych Europy Środkowej i w Związku Radzieckim były niewątpliwie jedną z najbardziej niezwykłych cech opozycyjnej kontrkultury w okresie późnego socjalizmu. W Polsce przez ponad dekadę tysiące, a później nawet dziesiątki tysięcy osób w różnym wieku działało wspólnie, aby tworzyć, drukować i rozpowszechniać książki i czasopisma na każdy temat i trafiające w przeróżne gusta, wymykając się służbom "tajnym, widnym i dwu-płciowym" 1 z pomocą pseudonimów i haseł, zakonspirowanych redakcji i tajnych skrzynek. Pomiędzy wprowadzeniem stanu wojennego a obradami Okrągłego Stołu to właśnie drugi obieg, a nie działalność związkowa, była dla "Solidarności" główną formą istnienia. Co więcej, mimo że tajne komisje zakładowe "Solidarności" stanowiły podstawę niezależnej działalności wydawniczej, podziemny ruch wydawniczy był dużo szerszy.
Interventions by Piotr Wcislik
Doctoral Dissertation by Piotr Wcislik
The phenomenon of dissident print culture in the People’s Democracies of Central Europe and in th... more The phenomenon of dissident print culture in the People’s Democracies of Central Europe and in the Soviet Union is arguably one of the most extraordinary chapters of the postwar cultural, intellectual and political history. In Poland, for more than a decade activists, in numbers increasing from hundreds to thousands, would meet, in secrecy, using codenames and passwords, to edit, print and distribute books and periodicals on every subject and catering to all tastes, building extensive networks of horizontal communication sustained by voluntary involvement and accessible technologies, the existence of which was of vital importance at critical turning points in history of the democratic opposition under late socialism.
An iconic manifestation of civic disobedience, dissident media activism as a cultural, intellectual and political phenomenon should not be reduced, however, to its instrumental purpose of overcoming state surveillance of ideas and their flow. Unlicensed publishing brought together actors, their practices and ideas, with technologies and things, to form a complex web, which was both a horizontal communication network that sustained the flow of dissident ideas, and the corresponding web of meanings. Within that broad web of meanings articulated around social media practices, this study explores the political instances of meaning-making beyond the conceptual polarities of the Cold War paradigm, representing an approach which fuses insights from the second wave of samizdat studies and intellectual history of dissident political thought.
Dissident social media gave shape and meaning to the prefigurative philosophy of political action, corresponding to the conviction that organizational forms a collective action employs to achieve social and political change predetermine, or ‘prefigure,’ the kind of polity it aims at instituting. The prefigurative principle provided the framework in which the unlicensed social media activists could makes sense of what they were doing as a form of practicing democracy. It was a way of asserting that small collective forms of democratic agency are possible even under repressive conditions and that their transformative effect on public life can escape the perennial dilemma between revolution and reform. But also conversely, for the oppositional political thinkers, the unlicensed print culture gave this idea a strong ground in the lived experience.
However, if the vision of prefigurative democracy permeated the imaginary of dissident social media activism, it was not always the guiding philosophy of action of the broader oppositional movement, and while a significant purpose of this work is to examine the distinctive features of the unlicensed social media politics, another, no less important aim is to understand its place and significance in the broader intellectual history of oppositional politics in Poland. From the perspective of that entanglement, history of underground print culture, that this study narrates, is the history of the rise and eclipse of the dissident prefigurative vision.
Books by Piotr Wcislik
by Piotr Wcislik, Michal Kopecek, Ferenc Laczó, Milan Znoj, Paul Blokker, Zoltán Gábor Szűcs, Agnes Gagyi, Zsofia Lorand, Muriel Blaive, Adam Hudek, Anna Saunders, Gabor Egry, Stevo Duraskovic, and Andras Bozoki Thinking through Transition is the first concentrated effort to explore the most recent chapter o... more Thinking through Transition is the first concentrated effort to explore the most recent chapter of East Central European past from the perspective of intellectual history. Post-socialism can be understood as a period of scarcity and preponderance of ideas, the dramatic eclipsing of the dissident legacy (aswell as the older political traditions), and the rise of technocratic and post-political governance. This book, grounded in empirical research sensitive to local contexts, proposes instead a history of adaptations, entanglements, and unintended consequences. In order to enable and invite comparison, the volume is structured around major domains of political thought, some of them generic (liberalism, conservatism, the Left), others (populism and politics of history) deemed typical for post-socialism. However, as shown by the authors, the generic often turns out to be heavily dependent on its immediate setting, and the typical resonates with processes that are anything but vernacular.
"It is impossible, after reading this volume, to still give any credit to those who claimed that 1989 was a revolution without ideas, or could not be a revolution because it offered no ideas. We should be grateful that a new generation of scholars—most of whom not burdened by the assumptions and affinities that have inhibited participants and contemporary observers—can look with a cool eye both at the thinking that accompanied radical change and at the sometimes bizarre amalgams that have furnished political language in the last quarter-century in East Central Europe." - Padraic Kenney, Professor of History and International Studies, Indiana University
"This is the most comprehensive and balanced intellectual history so far available of post-communist East Central Europe, and it is particularly instructive on the diversity of the field. The book is essential reading for those who want to know how the multiple transformations of the region were understood from within." - Jóhann P. Árnason, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, La Trobe University,Melbourne
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Published Papers by Piotr Wcislik
This paper describes the opportunities and pitfalls of remodeling a bibliographical database to make it accessible for the Semantic Web and to enable its creative reuse in Literary and Cultural Studies beyond the immediate context of the bibliographic domain.
We will discuss two remediations of the Polish Literary Bibliography (PBL): first, the transition from printed volumes to an Oracle database during the period that could be called the first wave of digital humanities in Poland (early 2000s) and the second, current phase of the project in which the metadata structure will be modelled using Web Ontology Language (OWL).
Interventions by Piotr Wcislik
Doctoral Dissertation by Piotr Wcislik
An iconic manifestation of civic disobedience, dissident media activism as a cultural, intellectual and political phenomenon should not be reduced, however, to its instrumental purpose of overcoming state surveillance of ideas and their flow. Unlicensed publishing brought together actors, their practices and ideas, with technologies and things, to form a complex web, which was both a horizontal communication network that sustained the flow of dissident ideas, and the corresponding web of meanings. Within that broad web of meanings articulated around social media practices, this study explores the political instances of meaning-making beyond the conceptual polarities of the Cold War paradigm, representing an approach which fuses insights from the second wave of samizdat studies and intellectual history of dissident political thought.
Dissident social media gave shape and meaning to the prefigurative philosophy of political action, corresponding to the conviction that organizational forms a collective action employs to achieve social and political change predetermine, or ‘prefigure,’ the kind of polity it aims at instituting. The prefigurative principle provided the framework in which the unlicensed social media activists could makes sense of what they were doing as a form of practicing democracy. It was a way of asserting that small collective forms of democratic agency are possible even under repressive conditions and that their transformative effect on public life can escape the perennial dilemma between revolution and reform. But also conversely, for the oppositional political thinkers, the unlicensed print culture gave this idea a strong ground in the lived experience.
However, if the vision of prefigurative democracy permeated the imaginary of dissident social media activism, it was not always the guiding philosophy of action of the broader oppositional movement, and while a significant purpose of this work is to examine the distinctive features of the unlicensed social media politics, another, no less important aim is to understand its place and significance in the broader intellectual history of oppositional politics in Poland. From the perspective of that entanglement, history of underground print culture, that this study narrates, is the history of the rise and eclipse of the dissident prefigurative vision.
Books by Piotr Wcislik
"It is impossible, after reading this volume, to still give any credit to those who claimed that 1989 was a revolution without ideas, or could not be a revolution because it offered no ideas. We should be grateful that a new generation of scholars—most of whom not burdened by the assumptions and affinities that have inhibited participants and contemporary observers—can look with a cool eye both at the thinking that accompanied radical change and at the sometimes bizarre amalgams that have furnished political language in the last quarter-century in East Central Europe." - Padraic Kenney, Professor of History and International Studies, Indiana University
"This is the most comprehensive and balanced intellectual history so far available of post-communist East Central Europe, and it is particularly instructive on the diversity of the field. The book is essential reading for those who want to know how the multiple transformations of the region were understood from within." - Jóhann P. Árnason, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, La Trobe University,Melbourne
This paper describes the opportunities and pitfalls of remodeling a bibliographical database to make it accessible for the Semantic Web and to enable its creative reuse in Literary and Cultural Studies beyond the immediate context of the bibliographic domain.
We will discuss two remediations of the Polish Literary Bibliography (PBL): first, the transition from printed volumes to an Oracle database during the period that could be called the first wave of digital humanities in Poland (early 2000s) and the second, current phase of the project in which the metadata structure will be modelled using Web Ontology Language (OWL).
An iconic manifestation of civic disobedience, dissident media activism as a cultural, intellectual and political phenomenon should not be reduced, however, to its instrumental purpose of overcoming state surveillance of ideas and their flow. Unlicensed publishing brought together actors, their practices and ideas, with technologies and things, to form a complex web, which was both a horizontal communication network that sustained the flow of dissident ideas, and the corresponding web of meanings. Within that broad web of meanings articulated around social media practices, this study explores the political instances of meaning-making beyond the conceptual polarities of the Cold War paradigm, representing an approach which fuses insights from the second wave of samizdat studies and intellectual history of dissident political thought.
Dissident social media gave shape and meaning to the prefigurative philosophy of political action, corresponding to the conviction that organizational forms a collective action employs to achieve social and political change predetermine, or ‘prefigure,’ the kind of polity it aims at instituting. The prefigurative principle provided the framework in which the unlicensed social media activists could makes sense of what they were doing as a form of practicing democracy. It was a way of asserting that small collective forms of democratic agency are possible even under repressive conditions and that their transformative effect on public life can escape the perennial dilemma between revolution and reform. But also conversely, for the oppositional political thinkers, the unlicensed print culture gave this idea a strong ground in the lived experience.
However, if the vision of prefigurative democracy permeated the imaginary of dissident social media activism, it was not always the guiding philosophy of action of the broader oppositional movement, and while a significant purpose of this work is to examine the distinctive features of the unlicensed social media politics, another, no less important aim is to understand its place and significance in the broader intellectual history of oppositional politics in Poland. From the perspective of that entanglement, history of underground print culture, that this study narrates, is the history of the rise and eclipse of the dissident prefigurative vision.
"It is impossible, after reading this volume, to still give any credit to those who claimed that 1989 was a revolution without ideas, or could not be a revolution because it offered no ideas. We should be grateful that a new generation of scholars—most of whom not burdened by the assumptions and affinities that have inhibited participants and contemporary observers—can look with a cool eye both at the thinking that accompanied radical change and at the sometimes bizarre amalgams that have furnished political language in the last quarter-century in East Central Europe." - Padraic Kenney, Professor of History and International Studies, Indiana University
"This is the most comprehensive and balanced intellectual history so far available of post-communist East Central Europe, and it is particularly instructive on the diversity of the field. The book is essential reading for those who want to know how the multiple transformations of the region were understood from within." - Jóhann P. Árnason, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, La Trobe University,Melbourne