Abstract

The figure of the dissident has become one of the key symbols of political opposition to Communism in Poland, with former dissidents playing a significant role in shaping the post-socialist and liberal order. While highly visible political struggles in polarized Poland have been foregrounded in confronting the Communist and dissident past, the seemingly less spectacular and more modest attempts at rethinking and reinterpreting the figure of the dissident that has emerged in contemporary Polish theater have gone almost unnoticed. This article examines how two contemporary theatrical plays engage with the polarized political discourse in Poland by problematizing the complex and gendered experience of dissidence. The artistic and political significance of the plays is elucidated against the backdrop of conservative and right-wing tendencies in the contemporary public sphere and artistic world that redefine the broader context within which Polish cultural producers operate. Zooming in on how these performances generate new representations and meanings of the anti-Communist political opposition, the article shows how the plays offer an occasion for rethinking and reinterpreting the figure of the dissident and its troubled legacy. As they explore the fields of tension that open up between individual political commitment and the relational and collective experience of dissidence, the plays make visible how the figure of the dissident has become a tool in remaking a Communist and post-socialist past and shaping a polarized present.

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