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Cultural Production of the Real Through Picturing Difference in the Polish Media: 1940s—1960s
To sum up, on the one hand, recognition and presentation of difference change
basis of this difference (the axis of the division line, differentiating criterion), while
on the other hand, recognition and presentation redefine its points of reference
(change references and substitute the references with different ones, relativize the
references, dissociate itself from the reality of reference). Ethnic and social differ¬
ences forming the main axes of division and, moreover, constituting a significant
visual theme in the late nineteenth century became even more emphasized during
World War I. The to-date social order falls, the old values supporting the network
of relations lose their overtones under the new circumstances. The interwar period
brings a new order based on the ruins of the older social divisions and, politically,
on the ruins of old empires. The recognition of ethnic divisions still exists—they
have preserved their weight, but they are now perceived from many local points
of view (new nation-states). The social context and perspectives change according
to each other, and, consequently, we are dealing with new divisions whose exam¬
ples can be found in the visual material. The motif of modernity gains even more
significance, creates a new axis of division,’ and, as a result, constitutes a visible
subject of representations of difference and otherness. I will try to show this in the
visual material in the second part of this chapter.
And yet we usually disregard what stands between the represented sides and
constitutes a difference, the axis of division or, rather, its “material” aspect. The
difference indicates the presence of a boundary, a division from another reality. It
may be named the embodied presence of a boundary. What is happening there?
When we encounter a division, a question arises as to how we experience the dif¬
ference the division is based on—directly or via mediation of something tangible.
Is it as Derrida argued that “if a text always gives itself a certain representation of
its own roots, those roots live only by that representation, by never touching the
soil” (1997: 101)?
Here we come to the issue of strategies of immediacy, the act of severance from
the original reality—severance from the reference—and the significance of the hu¬
man factor. We will discuss that later on. To sum up the present part, however,
I would like to underline that the problem of difference understood as affiliation to
a separate ethnic, religious, social, or territorial community or group is in a visible
manner related to the issue of mediation/mediatization and immediate contact
with the represented object or reality. What is significant is not only what has sig¬
nificance for the authors, but also how it fits in with the sense of the real. Here we
enter the realm of representation, its politics, and what might be called the cultural
production of the real in the Polish media of the late 1940s—1960s.
° As Derrida put it, “difference is therefore the formation of form. But it is, on the other hand, the being
imprinted of the imprint” (1997: 63).
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