Speaker
Description
In my presentation, I would like to focus on the great transformation that began—first in Poland, and later in other socialist countries of Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe—in June 1989. This transformation led to political, economic, social, and infrastructural changes.
Today, we know that new entrepreneurship was accompanied by new poverty, that great opportunities went hand in hand with great trauma. There was no single, universal, and unidirectional transformation, but rather a constellation of local changes. Through ethnographic research on the effects of building the A2 highway from Warsaw to the German border, I came to understand various dimensions of infrastructural transformation. On the one hand, it was a massive investment, with record financial resources, a narrative about the "end" of Poland's modernization, preparations for hosting a major sporting event, the fulfillment of the American Dream of freedom of movement, and the naming of the new road as the "Highway of Freedom." On the other hand, it was the trauma of big change, a sense of alienation and exclusion, and a deep crisis of local economies.
Revisiting the research results invites reflections that go beyond the petrified discourse of transformation. "Self-colonization" and the "doxa of dependency" on the West are already recognized themes. What can "modernization through the highway" teach us today? How can we view the practice of mobile and transnational "karaoke" differently? Should we not recognize here a fundamental ideological conflict between the need for freedom and the need for security.
