The main objectives of the research are to: to expose the processes of remembering and forgetting in the field of art; to trace changing discourses around and approaches toward Socialist Realism; to advance theory, methodology, and empirical base for studying the Polish art field and its genealogy. I shift the perspective of research on Socialist Realism from the turn of the 1940s and 1950s to the long duration of processes up to the present. In order to analyse these processes, I combine both qualitative and quantitative methods, drawing on sociology, memory studies, cultural studies, and art history to provide a comprehensive account of the changing perceptions about Socialist Realism over time.
Research combines interdisciplinary tools, providing means to describe and analyze the processes of remembering and forgetting in the field of art. It consists of two main streams, which intersect with each other at various points: discourse analysis, which allows to trace the changes in the discourse on socialist realism from the Thaw in cultural politics until today; and historical analysis of the field of art, which allows to recognize the socio-political background which influenced the changing paradigms. Combined, the two parts of research account for exposing the mechanisms of discourse production and processes of remembering and forgetting in the field of art.
Research on Socialist Realism developed so far along disciplinary lines and focused on that historical period. Contrary to this approach, I propose a perspective, which, in its core, is an interdisciplinary one: the aim of research is not so much to examine Socialist Realism itself as it is to examine how the field of art constructs its approaches toward the doctrine. To that end, it is crucial to employ methods from different disciplines. Therefore, the project valorizes the approach developed currently within the field of the new humanities, but at the same time offers an innovation in the field. The project includes theoretical, empirical, and methodological contribution into three areas of studies: art history; memory studies; and sociology. The project will contribute to those areas by exposing broader mechanisms: of shaping the memory and forgetting; mechanisms of discourse production; the political stakes of the memory of art.
Project funded by National Science Centre within the program Preludium under grant agreement 2022/45/N/HS6/02415.
