Paper long abstract:

This paper addresses the issue of how Poland's accession to the European Union in 2004 is reflected in the re-evaluation of landscape and 'heritage' in different locales. Drawing on research conducted in the city of Gdańsk, the birthplace of the workers' movement (Solidarity) that questioned the legitimacy of the Socialist government in the 1980s, the paper examines the discourses surrounding the proposed redevelopment of the shipyard that was Solidarity's cradle. It shows that while the redevelopment seeks to buttress notions of Gdańsk as the cradle of a revolution that brought freedom to other Socialist countries, it also involves turning the shipyard into a location for the consumption of national history and for the commercialization of 'freedom'. The paper suggests that while the project serves to cast Gdańsk as a 'European city of freedom', it also produces a new 'landscape of power' from which a politics that is class-based is removed.