“Corpus Christi, Corpus Delicti”: A New Narrative Contract: Władysław Pasikowski’s “Aftermath” (2012) and the Invalidation of the Category of the Polish Witness to the Holocaust

Abstract

Władysław Pasikowski’s 2012 feature film Aftermath recapitulates and works through the existing resources in documentary cinema that deals with the Polish context of the Holocaust (Claude Lanzmann, Paweł Łoziński, Marian Marzyński, Agnieszka Arnold). It is also founded on the knowledge amassed in the wake of the countrywide debate about the 1941 Jedwabne massacre (2000–1). As such, it rejects the majority narrative of the Holocaust, one told under the banners of the Righteous Among the Nations (the paradigm of innocence), the Polish witness to the Holocaust (triggering an unjustified identification of the Jaspersian paradigm of unimputable, metaphysical guilt with unwarranted guilt), and the alleged collective Polish trauma of the Holocaust. Aftermath is analyzed as a treatise on antisemitism which problematizes and narrativizes phantasms that are central to this socio-cultural pathology, visualizing the mechanism whereby the phantasm of the Jew is constructed and imposed on actual individuals. It also touches upon the Christian roots and identitarian dimension of antisemitism, alongside its central figure: the Crucifixion. Antisemitism is a matter of religion as a doctrine but also religion as an institution. By displaying a plexus of discourses and practices, attitudes and behaviors, Pasikowski defends the great quantifier as a legitimate category to describe the Polish context of the Holocaust. He debunks the essential differentiation between pre-modern and modern antisemitism (including notions about the secondary nature of Polish antisemitism in relation to the German Nazi exterminatory projects targeted at the Jews). The film convincingly portrays antisemitism as dominating the experience and its representation to such an extent that antisemitic culture loses the ability to reflect on the human condition. Where a non-antisemite sees the irreducible strangeness that is inherent to individual existence, the antisemite sees a Jew, etc. The long duration of violence and exclusion has turned the phantasmic and alternative reality of antisemitism into reality tout court, as it produces a materiality of its own, up to and including the materiality of the atrocity (stolen property, looted corpses, etc.). The text offers an extensive discussion of the essential conflict between Aftermath and the system of Polish culture. The aesthetic is political. The juxtaposition of two genre films (the thriller and the Western) and a plebeian protagonist with a domain that is perceived as proper to the intelligentsia provoked widespread shock and rejection. Accusations of kitsch, exaggeration, improbability, and a colonial gaze enabled critics to sidestep, if not invalidate, the director’s argument. A study of the reception of Aftermath is a study of class distinction in action. Pasikowski’s film portrays antisemitism as a problem of an antisemitic culture and an antisemitic society. This entails a radical invalidation of the notion of antisemitism as an inter-group conflict, thus exposing the fiction and falsehood of such constructs as “dialogue” and “reconciliation.” Despite its pessimistic diagnosis, Aftermath raises the possibility of change and the emancipatory potential of self-empowerment. By considering the cultural and social implications of our knowledge about antisemitism and the Polish context of the Holocaust, the film reveala systemic challenge posed by the imperative to revise culture and reject its toxic models. From this perspective, a new narrative becomes possible as a critique of narratives.