Somewhere In Between: Poland Within the Discourse of Secularism

• • 
  • Presentation speakers
    • Marek Susdorf, Utrecht University, The Netherlands
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    • Marek Susdorf - Somewhere In Between - Poland Within the Discourse of Secularism.pdf

  Abstract:

  In this essay, I attempt to describe the past and current situation of Poland as regards its relationship between the state and religion. My core claim here is that many countries in Europe, although lastingly interwoven in the general history of the continent, cannot be inscribed in some of its allegedly common rhetorics, especially these concerning the terms of ‘modernity’, ‘secularism’, and so-called ‘development’. I would like to focus particularly on the case of Poland and prove that Polish experience of the ‘secular’ cannot be equated with its Western European version. I argue that the difficulties, which our continent encounters nowadays, should not be explained through the monolithic universalism of the ‘(post-)secularist’ vocabulary, but ought to be described from more individual and bifurcated perspectives.

 

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