Self-opening

I don’t know which time it is that I’m starting and I feel such a familiar mixture of feelings: there is the joy of getting a grip and facing the new adventure that links with the fear that I’m going to get bored soon with that delightful affair; it’s going to be a flash in the pan and another online diary is going to fall into oblivion. Also add the guilt and regret of not writing for all these weeks and months. So many impressions, thoughts, reflections and memories became non-existent; and along come more new ones attacking me from everywhere and… they’ve already gone too. Anyway, I have to write something in the end. What’s more, to make my writing even more exciting for myself, I’m going to translate all my notes into English. Thanks to that they are going to be available to my friends who are not lucky enough to know Polish. However, most of all I want to practice my developing translating abilities. I encourage all my English speaking readers to comment on the English version. Be kind to me though- I’m still studying!

I have had an idea for a bilingual blog for a long while. It was fostered by making non-Polish friends and by my tediously developing career as an interpreter. Apparently, it’s best to learn from one’s mistakes. The direct impulse to start this website was inaugural meeting of the Political Critique club in London. I had once a pleasure of attending extremely interesting meetings and lectures in Gdansk organized by PC, so I welcomed the appearance of the new branch on the British Isles with a lot of enthusiasm. Even before going there, I knew I would have something to write about, so I decided I would give everybody the report of the great event.

The title of the event was: Critique of European Reason which was supposed to be smart, because of the reference to Kant, but I don’t know how it was connected to the subject of the debate, namely the situation of the European Left. Was it about leftism being reasonable or the contrary? Nobody referred to that though.

First to speak was professor Zygmunt Bauman- a charming man addressing the public as “dear friends”. In his lecture he talked about the beginnings of the workers’ parties in Europe. He said the Left has lost its reason to exist along with the disappearance of the working class and now it must find its new place, but it’s not clear how it is going to happen. Bauman was quite pessimistic on that matter: in principle the Left represented the poor and the excluded. However, today there is no such class of people; there are just groups of outcasts, people living at the edges of society, but there is no unity which could become a political power.

Sławomir Sierakowski was much more optimistic; he claimed CP managed to attract a lot of people and is very active in many areas. Unfortunately, the two didn’t manage to discuss much because suddenly quite a hilarious thing happened - Professor Bauman suddenly got up and left the hall in a hurry to everybody’s consternation. It turned out that he had to catch a train to Leeds.

The later part of the debate was mostly about Jews. We watched a video by Yael Bartana, in which Sierakowski performed and calling for the expelled Polish Jews to come back to Poland. That emotional, passionate appeal to that irretrievably lost minority won my heart. However, I took it as something poetic, maybe symbolic, as an expression of an openness to the others. Sierakowski believes Poland is Hitler’s dream coming true: one nation, one race, one religion. It seemed to me that he had on his mind the lack of diversity in Poland, which has hindered its development and intellectual ferment, but I didn’t take it literally. People in the audience asked him, however, if he had asked Jews to come back to Poland to which Sierakowski confirmed he had, but admitted they had thanked him politely for the offer. Later on the discussion became even more intense, because Joanna Rajkowska who has been active in Middle East affairs started shouting that the Jews coming back from Poland should give back their Israeli passports. I’m not surprised she was so emotional, because she was in The West Bank and she saw the crimes of the Israeli soldiers at close range. On the other hand she also seemed to have taken Sierakowski's idea too literally.

All that was perhaps a bit chaotic and I don’t know what it was all about, but it was really inspiring. I started wondering what would be that Left like that I could identify myself with. I established that it would have to be modern, flexible and understand the need of constant change, but such change that would take into account the wellbeing of everyone and wouldn’t exclude anyone. That would be a political power that would attract the sensitive and open-minded people- as Bauman put it: dreamers. Such is to a great extent the PC movement, but I can’t imagine it would stay the same, if it’s representatives reached for power. I strongly believe every power corrupts. Therefore Political Critique- yes, politics- no!