Nowoczesność: opowieść o rodzinie bezimiennej [Modernity: the story of an unnamed family]

In this article, a specific phenomenon of “family story” is being considered on the background of the achievements of modern cognitive anthropology (Dan Sperber, Alvin Ira Goldman), as well as political theory (or political theology) by Aryeh Botwinick, Kenneth Reinhard, and Slavoj Žižek. Referred theoretical considerations serve here as arguments in favour of the thesis that modernity victimizes family and its proper discourse, based on a widely understood concept of kinship, not so much because of the supposedly objective, sociological processes, but within the ideology of the period (authoritarian, totalitarian, or liberal-individualist). The thesis placed in the text about an oppressive relation of modernity and postmodernity toward “family story” was initially explicated on the basis of Franz Kafka's works in the interpretation of Michael Wood and, preeminently, in the context of Holocaust testimonies (Imre Kertész, Primo Levi, Calek Perechodnik), serving as a source of “dark light”, shining on the totalitarian elements of modernity