The Reef of the Region. On Memory's Transformations in the Literature of Polish- Belarussian Borderlands

The article is devoted to the interweaving of Polish and Belarussian memory in post-war literature of the Podlasie region and the witness accounts of hybrid identities (ex. "localness", Esperanto). The author briefly outlines the conditions in which the Polish language discourse has functioned within regional memory since the 18th century till the present time. Against this background he analyses the work of bilingual writers: Sokrat Janowicz (b. 1936) and Michał Androsiuk (b. 1959), following the changes of metaphor and form in Belarussian memory in its relation to Polish memory. Polish Belarussians' literary identity discourse assigns highest importance to an archeological language, the sense of being colonised, and the need to find one's own memory; only later does it voice praise of memory as created and of a "nomadic" type of subject identity.Uniwersytet w Białymstoku315717