Temporal layers in the attic : the anthropological essay about domestic 'other' spaces, things and family memories

This paper is an anthropological essay about domestic space, things as the 'kaleidoscope' of the family past, but also an attempt to describe chosen aspects of the memory mechanism. Particularly, its base was the author's question about ways of perceiving attics in old family houses by people involved in there, and about their view of the past in this context. Inspired by the ethnographic fieldwork done in Gąsawa (a village in Żnin County and Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship in north-central Poland) over the period 2013–2014, she decided to focus on the interpretative background of that research, and present a set of metaphors serving as guidance for the interpretation and some theoretical remarks. This can be necessary to make some universal meta-descriptions of the attic (as the 'other' place) and its practical and symbolical meaning, as well as to interpret any kind of narration (e.g. people's stories) about those extraordinary places and things inside. To demonstrate this, the author created an idea of 'the attic of memory', by making use of spatial metaphors (in particular Reinhart Kosseleck's conception of 'layers of time') and drawing inspiration from many different terms and categories offered by contemporary anthropology of memory and history. Specific attention, moreover, was paid to the objects in question (junks, revealed heirlooms and mementos) as so-called 'biographical things'