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Paper short abstract

In my paper, I will focus on processes through which personal histories are transformed into self-expanding social systems. I will discuss a case of an amateur painter, a witness to life in a shtetl in prewar Poland, and a narrative of a former village councillor in postwar, socialist Poland.

Paper long abstract

In my presentation, I will focus on some processes through which personal histories are transformed into self-expanding social systems. I will discuss two such cases.

The first concerns the amateur painter Mayer Kirshenblatt, a witness to Jewish life in a prewar shtetl in Poland. In his later years, he was encouraged by his daughter, the anthropologist Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, to paint scenes from his memory. He also produced a memoir based on interviews conducted by Barbara. Together, these sources reveal his recollections of the intensive, informal economy of the shtetl, developed under conditions of material scarcity. At the same time, Kirshenblatt’s narrative demonstrates a form of cognitive oversensitivity, through which he articulates rich para-anthropological insights into thrift, an issue recently re-explored by economic anthropologists.

The second case is based on interviews I conducted with Elżbieta Szewczyk, an agricultural pensioner, former cow breeder, and long-time local councilor from the village of Broniów in central Poland. I will show how she provides a sort of sociohistorical theory in her personal history, which she develops and updates daily, circling back to the start, and then expanding it. I will argue this transforms into a sort of 'necessary literature', like writing passionate letters for official purposes, usually applications, or complaints, that was deeply embedded in the affective atmosphere of socialist developments in rural Poland.

In conclusion, I will show how in both cases the personal has been transformed into memorial, imaginative, and ultimately social systems of thought, thereby reaching an advanced individual historical genre.