Abstract
This article rethinks critically a landmark work of the twentieth century—The Captive Mind, by Nobel laureate Czesław Miłosz. Published in 1953, the book sought to understand human subjectivity, or, as it put it, “how the human mind functions,” in Cold-War Eastern Europe. I argue that, while probing what Western intellectuals of that time saw as the historical novelty of totalitarianism, Miłosz formulates an analysis that is rather retro. He represents Eastern Europe in terms of colonialism and imperialism—as a colonized realm and a colonized mind. What is more, he casts his representation in the terms of what Edward Said famously called “Orientalism”—producing a distorted, Orientalist work. Finally, while intimating hope for overcoming Eastern Europe’s domination, Miłosz shows that hope as illusory.
Highlights
The Captive Mind, by Nobel laureate Czesław Miłosz, is a landmark work of the twentieth century
Published in 1953, it is an analysis of the thinking and psychology of its contemporary Eastern Europe (Miłosz 2001, xv)
Miłosz describes his main goal as follows: “I try to explain how the human mind functions in the people’s democracies” (xv). He defines the concept of “mind” holistically. He understands it as including both thinking and human psychology — as the equivalent of the entire inner life of humans
Summary
The Captive Mind, by Nobel laureate Czesław Miłosz, is a landmark work of the twentieth century. Scholars have assessed The Captive Mind praisefully — as a perspicacious and valid analysis of Eastern Europe’s imprisoned subjectivity (Jaspers 1953, 13; Możeiko 1988, 15–16; Kurzweil 1999, 55; Walicki 1999; Judt 2010; Franaszek 2017, 304–306) Despite this serious interest, scholars have not, to my knowledge, examined what I think is a highly significant aspect of The Captive Mind: the mode of Miłosz’s representation of Eastern Europe. Scholars have not, to my knowledge, examined what I think is a highly significant aspect of The Captive Mind: the mode of Miłosz’s representation of Eastern Europe It consists of a set of distinct, characteristic terms in which Miłosz systematically paints the mentally and politically imprisoned region of his birth.
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