Liberalism and the construction of the democratic subject in postcommunism: The case of Poland

Slavic Review

Volumn 56, Issue 3, 1997, Pages 402-427

  Holc, Janine P ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 53249117768     PISSN: 00376779     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/2500923     Document Type: Article

References (96)

1. Barbara Kasinska, Michal Kasinski, and Andrzej Woznicki, "The Constitution of the Republic of Poland: A Comparison of Drafts Prepared by NSZZ Solidarity, the Presidency, Democratic Left Alliance, and Freedom Union," Tygodnik Małopolska, 4 August 1994, 3,
2. cited in Foreign Broadcast Information Service, "Solidarity's Draft Constitution, Others Compared," Daily Report East Europe, 20 September 1994, 13, emphasis added. The "other parties" referred to are the Social Democrats and Unia Wolności.
3. Of these approaches the most prominent are Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe (Baltimore, 1996);
4. Samuel Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman, Okla., 1992);
5. Arend Lijphart, "Constitutional Choices for New Democracies," Journal of Democracy 2 (Winter 1991): 72-79;
6. Giuseppe di Palma, To Craft Democracies (Berkeley, 1990);
7. and Luiz Carlos Bresser Pereira, Jose Maria Maravall, and Adam Przeworski, Economic Reforms in New Democracies (Cambridge, Mass., 1993).
8. For a review essay, see Don Chull Shin, "On the Third Wave of Democratizations," World Politics 47 (October 1994): 135-70.
9. For recent applications, see the special issue of Comparative Politics 29, no. 3 (April 1997) on democratic transitions.
10. See Philippe C. Schmitter with Terry Lynn Karl, "The Conceptual Travels of Transitologists and Consolidologists: How Far to the East Should They Attempt to Go," Slavic Review 53, no. 1 (Spring 1994): 173-85.
11. Schmitter and Karl, "Conceptual Travels."
12. For example, Valerie Bunce situates herself as a critic of transitologists because of their assumption that "democracy" is the inevitable outcome of postcommunist transitions. She shares with them, however, a focus on the processes of the "transition" and institutional change as the object of analysis concerning state-subject relations. Bunce, "Should Transitologists Be Grounded?" Slavic Review 54, no. 1 (Spring 1995): 111-27.
13. Shin, "On the Third Wave of Democratizations," 161.
14. See, for example, Linz and Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation, xii,
15. and Lisa Anderson, "Introduction," Comparative Politics 29, no. 3 (April 1997): 253-56, special issue on transitions to democracy.
16. I use a male-gendered pronoun here because the subject assumed by the arguments at hand is constructed as male. As Wendy Brown has succinctly put it, "While men are regarded as autarkic . . . women are regarded as always already attached to men and obligated to children." The ideal subject in liberalism is never female. Brown, States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity (Princeton, 1995), 148.
17. Linz and Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation, 27, emphasis added. These authors spend a considerable number of pages discussing citizenship, yet they never escape the logic in which fragmented or "overly" pluralized citizens undermine the democratic state. They also take quite seriously public opinion fluctuations regarding the acceptance of various aspects of political and economic reform in the countries they study, but again load the dice in favor of the state when they seek somewhat ad hoc explanations for these ostensibly temporary incongruities in support. In short, the citizens are the problem.
18. Linz and Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation, 28. They write: "Our contention, however, is that there can be no complex modern democracy without voting, no voting without citizenship, and no official membership in the community of citizens without a state to certify membership."
19. Linz and Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation, Ibid., 29. The implication here is that the subject is a member of a possibly fractious subculture within a state and thus not yet a democratic citizen; the task, then, is to create democracy by focusing on institution building.
20. Ulrich K. Preuss, "Constitutional Powermaking of the New Polity: Some Deliberations on the Relations between Constituent Power and the Constitution," in Michael Rosenfeld, ed., Constitutionalism, Identity, Difference, and Legitimacy (Durham, 1994), 143.
21. This view of the citizen can appear incontestable and neutral because of the assumption that the "social contract" legitimating the new governments in central and eastern Europe has already been made, through the "revolutions" of 1989 and 1990. After the collapse of the states ruled by the communist parties and the elections that followed, the major question guiding scholarly inquiry shifted to the particular institutional shape of the (ostensibly new) state; both observers and participants in these governments behaved as though state authority had already been "founded." The prevalence of public opinion polls and their treatment as legitimating tools in central and eastern Europe since 1990 highlight Foucault's observation that the concept of "public opinion" has been viewed as a "spontaneous re-actualization of the social contract." Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977 (New York, 1980), 161.
22. As Robert Dahl notes in Polyarchy, "In order for a government to continue over a period of time to be responsive to the preferences of its citizens . . . all full citizens must have unimpaired opportunities . . . to formulate their preferences . . . to signify their preferences to their fellow citizens and the government . . . and to have their preferences weighed equally in the conduct of the government." Dahl, Polyarchy (New Haven, 1971), 2. Note that in this definition of democracy, the "full citizen" already exists, as do the preferences that constitute that citizen's "interests" that are to be acted upon.
23. See Linz and Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation, 6.
24. Pereira, Maravall, and Przeworski, Economic Reforms in New Democracies, 163, emphasis added.
25. Pereira, Maravall, and Przeworski, Economic Reforms in New Democracies, Ibid., 185.
26. Carole Pateman, The Sexual Contract (Stanford, 1988), 225.
27. It is important to note that liberal citizenship here is not historically, contingently exclusive of women, but structurally so. Thus, the subject position of citizen is always male. For a review of the feminist literature on liberalism's construction of the subject, see Brown, States of Injury, chap. 6.
28. Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, "Dis-Covering the Subject of the 'Great Constitutional Discussion,' 1786-1789," Journal of American History 79, no. 3 (December 1992): 843.
29. Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (London, 1985).
30. Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (Ibid., 96, emphasis in the original.
31. The idea of misreading comes from my interpretation of the work of Laclau, Slavoj Zizek, and Jacques Lacan. Language and identity can never completely capture meaning; our attempts to signify and categorize reality will always leave behind an "excess of meaning." When ideologies or discourses do attempt to capture meaning fully, the best they can do is misread or misrecognize their subject. See Ernesto Laclau, "Reflections on Identity," in John Rajchman, ed., The Identity in Question (London, 1995);
32. Jacques Lacan, "The Mirror Phase as Formative of the Function of the I," in Slavoj Zizek, ed., Mapping Ideology (London, 1994);
33. Slavoj Zizek, Tarrying with the Negative: Kant, Hegel, and the Critique of Ideology (Durham, 1993).
34. Many works by Foucault and others address this issue, but a particularly clear statement can be found in Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. 1 (New York, 1978).
35. Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley, 1984), xii-xiii.
36. J. G. A. Pocock, Virtue, Commerce and History (Cambridge, Mass., 1985), 6.
37. employ a view of discourse that draws on theories of politics that examine the relationship between language and relations among people in communities, the latter defined both socially and historically. In addition to Pocock, who finds that historical interpretation results in "paradigmatic structures" of argument that are themselves authoritative, I have drawn on Ludwig Wittgenstein's concept of "language games," which are not just verbal expressions but a coherent set of meaning-producing practices necessarily shared. Wittgenstein talks about how we come to apprehend shared meaning at all; Laclau and Mouffe, as well as Zizek to some extent, talk about what happens to this shared (or perhaps not shared) meaning once it enters the realm of the political. See Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1961; reprint, London, 1974), which he ends with, "What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence."
38. Given the size of the literature, this list can only be partial. Examples include, for gender, Denise Riley, I Am That Name: Feminism and the Category of 'Women' in History (Minneapolis, 1988);
39. for sexual identity, Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York, 1990);
40. for ethnicity, Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, Real and Imagined Women: Gender, Culture and Postcolonialism (New York, 1993);
41. for nationalism, Homi K. Babha, ed., Nation and Narration (London, 1990),
42. and Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments (Princeton, 1993);
43. and for technology, Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York, 1991).
44. The methodological emphasis on discourse and how subjectivity is produced by it draws on a variety of sources in addition to those already cited. Historiographical work focuses on public narrations and renarrations of historical experiences, pointing to the importance of discursive traditions but somewhat overstating the stability and unity of such narratives. See Hayden White, Tropics of Discourse (Baltimore, 1978);
45. Keith Michael Baker, Inventing the French Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1990);
46. John E. Toews, "Intellectual History after the Linguistic Turn: The Autonomy of Meaning and the Irreducibility of Experience," American Historical Review 92 (October 1987): 879-907;
47. and Antony Easthope, "Romancing the Stone: History-Writing and Rhetoric," Social History 18 (May 1993), 235-49.
48. Recent studies on discourse in central and eastern Europe have relied on Pierre Bourdieu's conceptualization of language as the cultural production and circulation of symbols, rather than the re-narration of history. See, for example, Katherine Verdery, National Ideology under Socialism: Identity and Cultural Politics in Ceausescu's Romania (Berkeley, 1991),
49. and Jan Kubik, The Power of Symbols against the Symbols of Power: The Rise of Solidarity and the Fall of State Socialism in Poland (University Park, Pa., 1994). Neither historiography nor cultural studies succeeds in illustrating the manner in which discursive structures fail to capture all meaning and therefore inevitably misread the subject, even while ensnaring it in a grid of categories.
50. Mazowiecki used the term odkreślamy gruba linia in his speech, meaning "we mark off the past with a thick line." The concept was shortened to gruba kreska and the speech soon became known as the "gruba kreska" (rather than the "gruba linia") speech. Mazowiecki, "Przemówienie Tadeusza Mazowieckiego w Sejmie," Gazeta Wyborcza, 26-28 August 1989.
51. Mazowiecki, "Przemówienie."
52. "Przemówienie Tadeusza Mazowieckiego w Sejmie," Gazeta Wyborcza, 14 September 1989.
53. Interview with Lech Wałȩsa in Gazeta Wyborcza, 15 May 1990.
54. Leszek Balcerowicz, 800 Dni: Szok kontrolowany (Warsaw, 1992).
55. The Kongres Liberalno-Demokratyczny (KLD) ceased to exist as a formal political party when it joined with Unia Demokratyczna to form Unia Wolności in 1994. The argument presented here treats the period prior to the creation of Unia Wolności, when the KLD was a separate organization.
56. See Peter Cowan, "Neo-Liberal Theory and Practice for Eastern Europe," New Left Review 213 (September-October 1995): 3-60.
57. It is telling that one of the most comprehensive and influential writers on liberalism in Poland, Jerzy Szacki, spends several pages of his book debating just how "collectivist" Solidarity really was. See Szacki, Liberalizm po komunizmie (Warsaw, 1994), 147-53.
58. The primary text that I rely on for this section is the official publication of the Kongres Liberalno-Demokratyczny, Przegla̧d Polityczny. The evidence for this section of the paper will also draw on the writings of prominent members of the Liberals or those sympathetic to the KLD, such as Donald Tusk, Jan Krzystof Bielecki, Janusz Lewandowski, and Ewa Graczyk.
59. "Deklaracja programowa," Przegla̧d Polityczny 1 (June 1991), inside cover. The exact words are, "Uznajemy wolnośc za wartośc nadrzȩdna i pierwsza zasadȩ ładu społecznego."
60. "Deklaracja programowa," Przegla̧d Polityczny 1 (1991), inside cover. The exact words are, "Uznajemy wolnośc za wartośc nadrzȩdna i pierwsza zasadȩ ładu społecznego." Ibid.
61. Ibid. This view of private property characterized many Liberal texts, both scholarly and "popular." See, for example, Justyna Miklaszewska, "Neoliberałówie w polskiej rzeczywistości," Tygodnik Powszechny 24 (12 June 1994): 15.
62. "Deklaracja programowa."
63. Deklaracja programowa." Ibid.
64. Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, 105.
65. See "Ubywa zwolenników prywatyzacji," Rzeczpospolita, 2 October 1992, 2.
66. Leszek Balcerowicz, "Szanse Niezadowolonych," Wprost, 27 July 1993, 23.
67. Leszek Balcerowicz, "Szanse Niezadowolonych," Wprost, 1993, 23. Ibid.
68. Examples of policies pursued by the church that reflect this vision of the community include the institutionalization of Catholic teaching in public schools and the issue of the "Konkordat," a legal agreement on par with the constitution, codifying relations between the Vatican and the state and guaranteeing specific prerogatives for the church in public life. As of this writing, it has not yet been finalized.
69. Paweł Kaczorowski, "Ethos Demokracji," Znak 443 (April 1992): 89.
70. Małgorzata Fuszara, "Legal Regulation of Abortion in Poland," Signs 17 (August 1991): 124. Thousands demonstrated both for and against abortion rights in 1989.
71. "Biskupi o aborcji, antykoncepcji i fundamentach demokracji," Gazeta Wyborcza, 31 December 1991-1 January 1992, 2. The bishops also condemned contraception on these grounds.
72. See, for example, "Zamieszane wokoł aborcji," Rzeczpospolita, 21 December 1992;
73. "Niezadowolenie z ustawy aborcyjnej," Rzeczpospolita, 9-10 January 1993.
74. Scholars have written about the fetus as person in the context of the United States, but almost all of this work links fetal personhood to ways the fetus is culturally, politically, and technologically represented and focuses on practices specific to the United States rather than to the discursive structures described here. For example, Rosalind Pollack Petchesky writes about the way that sonograms and pro-life films create images of the autonomous, free-floating fetus that merely extend to gestation the Hobbesian view of human beings as disconnected, solitary "individuals." Petchesky, "Fetal Images: The Power of Visual Culture in the Politics of Reproduction," Feminist Studies 13, no. 2 (Summer 1987): 270.
75. See also Barbara Katz Rothman, The Tentative Pregnancy: Prenatal Diagnosis and the Future of Motherhood (New York, 1987),
76. and Lauren Berlant, "America, 'Fat,' the Fetus," boundary 2 21 (Fall 1994): 145-95, which offers an extensive bibliography on the issue. The Polish experience illustrates the effect of (nontechnological, nonfilmic) cultural practices organized by discourses in not only transferring present-time rights back to an embryo, fetus, or unborn person, but also projecting the fetus through future time out into the public space of citizenship.
77. Relevant here is the psychoanalytic impulse to designate "a fragmented body-image to a form of its totality," discussed in Lacan, "The Mirror Phase as Formative of the Function of the I," 96.
78. "Lekarze zakazuje aborcji," Gazeta Wyborcza, 16 December 1991, 1.
79. Agata Nowakowska, commentary on "Lekarze zakazuje aborcji," Gazeta Wyborcza, 16 December 1991, 1.
80. A typical poll asked respondents whether they agreed with such statements as, "Abortion should be banned by law when the life of the mother is threatened," "when the health of the mother is threatened," "when the pregnancy is the result of a rape," "when the mother is in a difficult material situation." "Ustawa antyaborcyjna," Gazeta Wyborcza, 15 May 1991, 1, 3.
81. Fuszara, "Legal Regulation of Abortion in Poland," 126.
82. "Pro Femina via Lȩtowska," Gazeta Wyborcza, 31 December 1991-1 January 1992, 2.
83. Fuszara, "Legal Regulation of Abortion in Poland," 128. Fuszara argues that the proposed ban on abortion in 1989 actually caused this new conceptualization of women's rights to be voiced for the first time since 1939.
84. For the details, see Wanda Nowicka, "Two Steps Back: Poland's New Abortion Law," Journal of Women's History 5 (Winter 1994): 151-55.
85. As the public prosecutor's quote above indicates, supporters of legal abortion in 1989 constructed women as potential victims of illegal, and therefore life-threatening, abortions. Thus, "women" as a category was allowed, but only as people who were dead or dying. See Fuszara, "Legal Regulation of Abortion in Poland," 126.
86. The history of Poland as a unified, nationalist tradition had been an important narrative in the opposition to Communist Party rule and, just as the colorful shops stabilized Liberal discourse on the cultural level, the status of nationalist history as authentic reality that enables Poles to maintain a collective identity in the face of occupation, war, and censorship was constantly reinforced by cultural production, particularly poetry and theater. For a critically informed analysis, see Lisa Bernd, "The Dramatic (Imagi)Nation: Representations of Nationalism and Identity in Polish Drama," (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin - Madison, 1997).
87. The language of "fatherland" is loaded with an immense variety of historical and cultural meanings. One extreme nationalist grouping in Poland called itself "Fatherland" and explicitly painted the economic hardships of the postcommunist period as a Liberal-Jewish conspiracy. This view is held by a small minority in Poland, but the coded references linking the categories "economic self-interest," "treason," and "Jew" are equivalencies that make "cultural sense" in the nationalist context in Poland. In 1995 a more moderate right-wing party adopted the name.
88. Walȩsa surely had a variety of motivations for this choice, including distancing himself from what by that time was an unpopular set of Liberal and Unia politicians. What is important here is not Wałȩ sa's intentions, but the effects of his practices.
89. This excerpt is taken from the exposé of the Olszewski government to parliament, as published in the press. Jan Olszewski, "Pocza̧tek końca komunizmu," Gazeta Wyborcza, 23 December 1991, 5. Note the appropriation of the Liberals' conception of "Europe."
90. Benedict Anderson points out the manner in which the Russian and other empires naturalized their rule by "stretching the short, tight, skin of the nation over the gigantic body of the empire." Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London, 1983), 82. If we take seriously the idea that all subjects have access to an ensemble of identities, it seems that Anderson's taut skin applies to nations as well as empires.
91. Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, 95-96.
92. See Renata Salecl, "The Crisis of Identity and the Struggle for New Hegemony in the Former Yugoslavia," in Ernest Laclau, ed., The Making of Political Identities (London, 1994), 211.
93. Several Liberals passed muster for Suchocka's cabinet, but the portfolio for labor went to a member of Unia Demokratyczna and for industry to a Christian-nationalist.
94. Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, 152.
95. Prasenjit Duara, "Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern China," in Geoff Eley and Ronald Grigor Suny, eds., Becoming National (New York, 1996), 164.
96. Slavoj Zizek, Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture (Cambridge, Mass., 1991), 156. Zizek goes on to note that "we can acquire a sense of the dignity of another's fantasy only by assuming a kind of distance toward our own, by experiencing the ultimate contingency of fantasy as such" (157). Although Zizek does not align himself (or Lacan) with theorists who emphasize the fluidity of identity, I find certain aspects of his approach quite compatible.