I wonder if these people realize that joining the Biden camp they'll be closing the door on independent politics. You sheepdog once you usually herd the sheep forever. They all keep saying that Biden can be pushed left. Where's the evidence?

maybe here?:
Joe Biden Torpedoes Bernie Sanders: 'I Beat the Socialist'
https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/1830

Ewa Wampuszyc.  Mapping Warsaw: The Spatial Poetics of a Postwar
City.  Chicago  Northwestern University Press, 2018.  240 pp.  $34.95
(paper), ISBN 978-0-8101-3789-9.

Reviewed by Matthew D. Mingus (University of New Mexico-Gallup)
Published on H-Maps (September, 2020)
Commissioned by Katherine Parker

Mapping Warsaw: The Spatial Poetics of a Postwar City

In recent months, the contentiousness of space--and the ideological
narratives reflected in our spaces/places--has come to the forefront
of our contemporary political discussions. In the wake of the murders
of George Floyd and Jacob Blake, and the subsequent waves of Black
Lives Matter demonstrations throughout the United States (and much of
the world), serious and important questions have been raised about to
whom society should build its monuments and after whom society should
name its streets and buildings. These, of course, are not new
questions. And while Ewa Wampuszyc's _Mapping Warsaw: The Spatial
Poetics of a Postwar City_ could have never anticipated the political
moment in which we currently find ourselves, her book's excellent
treatment of Warsaw's spatial reconstruction after the Second World
War can certainly remind of us that the "spatiality of place is
ever-changing" (p. 173), as well as offer us a fantastic historical
example of how ideology constantly informs the creation and evolution
of a city's topography.

After a brief prologue and theory-heavy introduction, Wampuszyc's
_Mapping Warsaw_ is presented in four chapters. Each chapter deals
with a particular medium through which the space and geography of
Warsaw was presented and represented to its residents. Chapter 1
focuses on the portrayal of Warsaw in photobooks after the Second
World War with special emphasis on the 1949 publication of _Warsaw,
the Capital of Poland--_the first photobook published under Poland's
communist government. Wampuszyc convincingly argues that Warsaw's
postwar space was reimagined through the production of selective
photo-imagery that emphasized communist activism and resistance
during World War II, and then also used that historical legacy to
promote an idealized communist future for the city. For decades after
the war, photobooks of Warsaw, in both image and text, followed the
same standard narrative: from Soviet liberation to the triumphant
return of Varsovians to the reconstruction and rebuilding of Poland's
capital city.

This transition from bombed-out city to a thriving urban center,
rejuvenated by the ideological power of communism, is maybe made most
clear in Wampuszyc's treatment of newsreels, the subject of _Mapping
Warsaw_'s second chapter. In it, she focuses primarily on the Polish
Film Chronicle's (PKF) treatment of Warsaw's physical transformation
during the first postwar decade. Informed by socialist realism, and
clearly understanding their role as propagandists and ideologues, the
filmmakers of the PKF worked to legitimize both Poland's communist
leadership and Warsaw as Poland's communist capital. News reports
featured important events and building projects in Warsaw (filmed to
make it clear that that space--being _in Warsaw--_made the projects
and events all the more important). The PKF's cinematography worked
to often ignore images of postwar rubble, or use that rubble as a
symbol of a past that had been overcome by Polish workers in tandem
with the communist government. Only after the 1956 "thaw," when the
Polish government became less interested in perpetuating direct
propaganda, did the "carefully controlled language" of Varsovian
newsreel narratives evolve out of its postwar "rhythmic
predictability" and "socialist realist aesthetic" (p. 95).

As with the rubble and building projects presented in newsreels
featuring Warsaw, Wampuszyc argues that movies, too, built a kind of
"spatial iconography" (p. 97) that helped map out a collective
identity for postwar Varsovians. In her third chapter, the author
highlights four Polish films that take Warsaw as their setting:
_Treasure_ (1948), _Adventure in Mariensztat_ (1953), _A Matter to
Settle _(1953), and _Irene, Go Home!_ (1955). All of these films took
seriously the many challenges of rebuilding a Warsaw committed to
communism (e.g., lack of adequate housing, women's equality,
traditional vs. progressive values, etc.), but all four also couched
the tension that arose from these challenges in humor. Moreover,
Wampuszyc gives detailed explanations as to how each movie worked
Warsaw's topography into its respective storyline, explicitly
assisting in the creation of the city's socialist spatiality.

The final--and, arguably, best--chapter of _Mapping Warsaw_ examines
Warsaw's Palace of Culture as a palimpsest of competing narratives
"superimposed on one another" (p. 139). From its origins as a
glorified gift from Stalin to its later presentation (through the
short film _Warsaw 1956_) as an out-of-touch juxtaposition to the
everyday life of typical Varsovians, the Palace of Culture has come
to represent many different ideas to many different Poles. This final
chapter ends with a fascinating discussion of author and film
director Tadeusz Konwicki's influential attempts to shift discourses
centered on the Palace of Culture toward broader critiques of
"communism, messianism, and ideology (in general)" (p. 169). Through
the examples of his films _Ascension _(1967) and _Lava_ (1989), as
well as his literary work _A Minor Apocalypse _(1979), Wampuszyc
brilliantly exhibits how the meaning of a space--and the buildings
meant to occupy and shape that space--can be coopted and redefined.

While many images are incorporated into the text of _Mapping
Warsaw--_including some very helpful original visual aids created by
the data services librarian Lorin Bruckner--at times I could not help
but wish for more, particularly when a photograph or painting was
discussed in detail. I realize, of course, that the negotiations
between an author and publisher regarding the use of and permissions
related to imagery are fraught with many considerations. But the
discussions of Aleksander Kobzdej's painting _Pass the Brick_ (p. 27)
and the photospread from _Warsaw 1945-1970_ (p. 42) could have
perhaps been more effective had those images been allowed to
accompany the text.

In her fterword, Wampuszyc acknowledges that, still today, Warsaw
struggles with the "de-socialization of [its] landscape" (p. 171). As
I alluded to at the beginning of this review, it was impossible for
me to read this book without being constantly reminded of the current
effort by antiracist and anti-imperialist activists to remove
statues, flags, and other icons meant to glorify the American
Confederacy, slave owners, and purveyors of genocide. _Mapping
Warsaw_ makes clear the importance of spatial narratives in shaping
collective identity and the enormous effort required, in Poland and
elsewhere, to reclaim and reorient those narratives. In this sense,
then, while Wampuszyc's work is a welcome contribution to the
interdisciplinary "spatial turn," it also offers broadly applicable
historical lessons for our current political moment.

Citation: Matthew D. Mingus. Review of Wampuszyc, Ewa, _Mapping
Warsaw: The Spatial Poetics of a Postwar City_. H-Maps, H-Net
Reviews. September, 2020.
URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=55378

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States
License.