Deconstruction and Self-reflection – Polish Ethnographic Atlas in the Perspective of Selected Memory Theories: An Attempt at Theoretical Approach

The purpose of this text is to critically discuss the method of collecting source materials as part of the Polish Ethnographic Atlas project and the ways to interpret them and to develop innovative interpretation strategies for these data, which until now are stored in the archives of this Atlas. These strategies will allow to use messages that have been rejected in ethnogeographical analyses and interpretations so far. These are primarily the records of spontaneous representations of narratives and the memory of the inhabitants of the village. What determined their significance and the role they played in learning about the reality examined was the fact that they constituted an individualized form of narrative. They were not triggered by a question in any way, so they were unique. These features made comparative studies impossible. Nevertheless, thanks to them, the interpretation of reality contained in the performances gained a context. Understanding the significance of these performances during the research was almost impossible, it took place at the level of the researcher’s intuition. The change of the paradigm allowed to extract a new cognitive value from them and gave the possibility of their redefinition and re-evaluation