Authors

Claudia Snochowska-Gonzalez¹;  ¹ Instytut Slawistyki PAN, Poland

Discussion

Women were active members of the National Democratic Party (the Polish version of integral/Volkist nationalism, developed at the end of the 19th century) from its very beginning, providing the movement with financial, organizational and activist support. In my speech, I want to focus on a specific form of political subjectivity that was available to them: limited agency within the framework set by gender order. This framework was defined by women's duties postulated by the national democrats: feeding the body of the nation. This feeding consisted not only of giving birth, raising children, and taking care of their national education and cultural "purity", but also of caring for the national economy through practices of keeping the household’s budget as well as economic boycotts of German and Jewish stores. In other words, it implied preventing the bodies of other nations from growing. This required a paradoxical relationship with women who fed these other bodies. In my speech, I would like to describe this relationship with an example of the NDP’s female activists from Poznań who published a journal "Głos Wielkopolanek" in which they referred to the activities of their counterparts, German women fighting with the danger of "polonization" of their national body. Since Poland was under partitions at that time, this rivalry took place under unequal conditions, but it was lined with similar demographic, biopolitical, and economic concerns, as well as similar colonial fantasies.