Heterotopias of Nationalist Youth Organisations in Poland: Communitarisation and Entry/Exit System

Abstract

The article presents the results of an analysis of the discourse of nationalist youth organisations in Poland. The authors have attempted to reconstruct the common “us” of two youth organisations based on the materials made available by them as well as articles in the press published in 2018 in selected journals and weeklies. This was the year when Poland celebrated its 100th anniversary of regaining independence, which made this an exceptional time in the context of discourse about the community. The article focuses on two youth organisations – the All-Polish Youth (APY) and the National Radical Camp (NRC). The study answers the question of how the “us” community is construed within the organisation, what are its dimensions, and are they places where the two heterotopic principles are implemented: (1) The principles of openness and closedness of a community or communities, and (2) the rules for compiling several different heterogenous spaces within one organisation. This article was prepared within a research project which is in line with the so-called topographical turn in discursive research and refers particularly to the concept of heterotopia of Michel Foucault. The research showed that the discursive constructions of youth communities reflected these two heterotopic principles.