Krajobraz, portret, maska : studia o górnośląskim imaginarium przemysłowym - IZABELA KACZMARZYK (Autor) (Akademia Ignatianum w Krakowie, 2019)
https://wydawnictwo.ignatianum.edu.pl/krajobraz-portret-maska.htm
Publikacja recenzowana
The volume Landscape, Portrait, Mask. Studies on the Upper Silesian Industrial Imaginary includes an introductory part entitled “Prolegomena” and two analytical parts divided into two thematic groups: “Space Marked by Industry” and “Portraits Written by Industry”. In their thematic variety, the individual studies constitute a coherent whole. This whole is governed by the chronological and problembased structure which mainly illustrates the synthesizing reflection on the sources of the shaping of the Upper Silesian industrial imaginary, and thus on the culture-forming role of industrialisation processes in Upper Silesia from the end of the 18th century until the turn of the 19th and 20th century. Non-fictional culture texts constitute the analytical basis of the individual studies. These texts include: press, travel and letter reports, chronicles, guides, geographical and local history literature containing descriptions of the Upper Silesian cultural landscape and artefacts directly connected with industry. Another reference point is the biographical narration of paraenetic inclination on the representative individuals who shaped (and were themselves shaped) by industrial processes. The introductory part, “Prolegomena”, mainly consists of an explanation of the theoretical and methodological issues. It was entitled “The Upper Silesian Industrial Imaginary”, since it is a key term for the entire volume. Imaginary means a collection of conceptions describing and at the same time characterising the cultural reality of Upper Silesia. These conceptions combine images and ideas, creating a semantic whole which builds a kind of internalised understanding of the world. Such conceptions in reference to social issues were discussed by Charles Taylor in his work “Modern Social Imaginaries”. From the point of view of the Upper Silesian cultural reality, the increasingly widespread ideas of what the broadly understood industrialism is, together with its characteristics, have become the horizon of meanings which were used to give significance to the Upper Silesian world. In this book, industrialism is viewed as a semantic whole made up of three semantic ranges, characteristic subsets whose individual elements condition and complement one another. The dimension of the first range is predominantly spatial, emphasising material aspect since it is made up of artefacts typical of industry and directly connected with it. The second range is of a biographical character. It contains the descriptions of persons who, thanks to their bold economic and social ideas, transformed the cultural landscape of Upper Silesia and had a direct impact on the way of life and mentality of its residents. The essence of the third is processuality, being a consequence of the idea of change which is key to industrial transformations and which affected the way of life of Upper Silesian residents and subjected the landscape of this region to the processes of dynamic transformation of an innovative nature. The subsequent two parts of the book constitute the fundamental and at the same time exemplificatory core of the deliberations. The first one, “Space Marked by Industry”, includes four thematic studies and the second one, “Portraits Written by Industry”, includes three such studies. The first study, entitled “On the Verge of Industrial Distinctness. The Determinants of the Shaping of the Upper Silesian Image at the Turn of the 18th and 19th Century”, is a historical outline indicating the sources of the differences between the descriptions of Upper and Lower Silesia, indicating the emancipation of the Upper Silesian image due to the specific distinctness of the space which was being industrialised, involving characteristic masks being placed on the portrayal of this region – the first one being “wild Canada” and later that of “Prussian England”. The second study, “New, Industrial World and Attempts to Conceptualise It in the Texts of Culture from the Period of Industriali
Keywords: nauki o kulturze i religii; górnośląskie dziedzictwo przemysłowe; Górny Śląsk; imaginarium przemysłowe; industrializacja; urbanizacja; Ewa von Tiele-Winckler; Karol Godula; przedsiębiorczość