Der polnische Streit um Jan Tomasz Gross’ Strach aus ‚vermittelnder‛ diskursanalytischer Perspektive

Abstract

The Polish debate around Jan Tomasz Gross’s "Fear" took place at the beginning of 2008. The book relates to the question of Polish anti-semitism after Word War II, and by the same token, it identifies the Polish self-image of a nation of victims to be a problem. The presented analysis of the debate around Fear concentrates on: analogies with the German debate on Daniel Goldhagen’s "Hitler’s Willing Executioners" from 1996; meta-discursive aspects of the Polish debate (the debate concerned the book and the debate itself rather than historical events); some features of debate’s politicization and medialization; the problematic “ethnization” of the debate; polarization of the standpoints and the lack of “intermediary work” aiming at an intermediation between standpoints. The conclusions lead to the postulation of an “intermediary” discourse analysis.