Articles & Book Chapters by Natalia Pamula
Rethinking Disability and Human Rights: Participation, Equality and Citizenship, ed. Inger Marie Lid, Edward Steinfeld, and Michael Rembis, 2023
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Aspasia: The International Yearbook of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern European Women's and Gender History, 2022
This article analyzes the Polish disability memoirs in Cierpieniem pisane: Pamiętniki kobiet niep... more This article analyzes the Polish disability memoirs in Cierpieniem pisane: Pamiętniki kobiet niepełnosprawnych (Written through Suff ering: Disabled Women's Memoirs), published in 1991. Written through Suff ering consists of twenty-one short memoirs submitted as a response to a memoir competition organized around the theme "I am a Disabled Woman" in 1990. Published two years after the fi rst democratic elections, which took place in Poland in June 1989, this anthology shows that contrary to the mainstream narrative in Poland, Western Europe, and the US, 1989 did not bring about a revolution or any dramatic change for disabled women. Women's memoirs included in this collection question the teleological narrative of linear progression from state socialism to democracy and capitalism and point to the uneven distribution of newly acquired rights.
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Teksty Drugie, 2022
The article foregrounds the category of visibility to examine the relation between disability stu... more The article foregrounds the category of visibility to examine the relation between disability studies and queer theory. The text posits that changing social conditions of visibility is crucial for non-heteronormative people and people with disabilities. The analysis takes from “foundational” books for both disciplines: Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s Epistemology of the Closet and Rosemarie Garland-Thomson’s Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature, along with other texts by leading queer and disability studies scholars, such as Lauren Berlant, Tobin Siebers, or Susan Schweik.
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Przegląd Kulturoznawczy, 2021
Author uses the category of Robert McRuer's "crip resistance" to think of two waves of disability... more Author uses the category of Robert McRuer's "crip resistance" to think of two waves of disability related protests, which took place in Poland. In 2018 disabled people and their caregivers occupied the Parliament for 40 days to demand higher social security benefits and many people, including those without disabilities, took to the streets to support the protest. In 2020, the Polish Constitutional Tribunal prohibited abortion based on disability status, which caused anger among huge parts of Polish population, including women with disabilities. This article looks at disabled people's statements made in 2018 in support of the interabled group occupying the Parliament and compares them with disabled women's voices regarding recent introduction of the ban on abortion based on disability status. I call these five statements made by disabled people "crip testimonies" and analyze how Polish experiences of disability do not fit neatly within Western conceptions of disability developed within disability studies, most prominently, the social and the medical model of disability. In other words, this article pays attention to what is unique about Polish experiences of disability and makes a case for thinking about disability through people's testimonies, not theories.
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Re/Imaginations of Disability in State Socialism: Visions, Promises, Frustrations, ed. Katerina Kolarova, Martina Winkler, Campus Verlag Frankfurt/New York, 2021
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Teksty Drugie, 2020
Artykuł analizuje w jaki sposób ruch pro-choice w Polsce przy okazji organizacji Czarnych Protest... more Artykuł analizuje w jaki sposób ruch pro-choice w Polsce przy okazji organizacji Czarnych Protestów w latach 2016 i 2018 wykorzystuje niepełnosprawność w jako chwyt retoryczny służący obronie prawa do aborcji bez odniesienia się do podmiotowości i praw osób z niepełnosprawnościami. W tekście przyglądam się krytycznie wyrażeniom takim jak „chazaniątka” i „potworki” z wykorzystaniem perspektywy studiów o niepełnosprawności i feministycznych studiów o niepełnosprawności. Omawiam czym jest model społeczny niepełnosprawności oraz medyczny model niepełnosprawności i zastanawiam się, na ile skuteczne byłoby zastąpienie debaty o aborcji debatą o sprawiedliwości reprodukcyjnej w kontekście niepełnosprawności.
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East European Politics and Societies, 2020
My article “Violent Inclusion: Disability and the Nation in Polish 1950s and 1960s Young Adult Li... more My article “Violent Inclusion: Disability and the Nation in Polish 1950s and 1960s Young Adult Literature” analyzes representations of physical and sensory disability in some of the most popular young adult novels published in 1950s and 1960s Poland written by Krystyna Siesicka, Jadwiga Korczakowska, Irena Krzywicka, Jadwiga Ruth-Charlewska, and Hanna Mortkowicz-Olczakowa. It argues that the recurring trope that connects the novels—the overcoming of disability—serves as a synecdoche for the Polish nation overcoming the catastrophe of World War II. Moreover, it shows that compulsory rehabilitation functions as a way of including disabled subjects into a Polish post-war society. At the same time, participation in the “rehabilitative regime” constitutes a patriotic duty for a disabled Polish child or teenager and paves a way to a socialist citizenship. Rehabilitation is always successful and culminates with a child or teenager transforming into an able-bodied socialist citizen reminding of a successful, yet sacrificial, reconstruction process of Poland. My article focuses on the sites of the overcoming of disability showing that Polish nature, whether it is a sea or woods, is crucial to the healing of a disabled subject. This way, the writers accentuate the connection between Polish nature and land and a “healthy” body, thus reconsolidating their fantasy of “Polishness.” What the novels ultimately testify to is the emergence of an embodied socialist subjectivity constructed through the corporeal rehabilitative practices and internalization of socialist values.
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Przegląd Kulturoznawczy, 2019
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Aspasia: The International Yearbook of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern European Women's and Gender History, 2019
This article discusses disability memoirs written by mothers of disabled sons during state social... more This article discusses disability memoirs written by mothers of disabled sons during state socialism in Poland. It recovers an often forgotten experience of living socialism as a mother of a disabled child and analyzes disability as a category of difference that, unlike gender or class, was not reordered by the socialist state. It argues that disability reconfigured motherhood as a political institution under state socialism and shows that a child’s disability permitted women to become politically disobedient subjects. Disability allowed women who were responsible for their children’s overcoming disability to make demands on the state and criticize it for the lack of sufficient accommodations and resources. At the same time, the article highlights the violence embedded in the relationship between a disabled son and his mother.
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Canadian Slavonic Papers, 2019
This article explores the relationship between disability, identity, and productivity in two Poli... more This article explores the relationship between disability, identity, and productivity in two Polish young adult novels published under state socialism: Jak trudno kochać (How difficult it is to love) and Spotkania (The meetings). How Difficult it is to Love by Jerzy Szczygieł (1976) tells the story of a young blind man who, after living many years “unproductively” with his mother, decides to study and work. Published in 1986, Klementyna Sołonowicz-Olbrychska’s novel The Meetings also focuses on a blind male teenager who leaves his hometown to live with other blind students at a residential school where he plans a future profession. The two works are concerned with the processes of becoming disabled and becoming a part of the blind community. Crucially, it is productivity – the main value in a socialist state – that participates in the formation of disability identity and enables disabled men to form separate communities and workshops for disabled people.
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Kultura i Historia, 2017
The article „Representations of Blindness in Polish Young Adult Literature under State Socialism ... more The article „Representations of Blindness in Polish Young Adult Literature under State Socialism in Poland as shown in Jerzy Szczygieł’s Jak trudno kochać [How Difficult It Is to Love] analyzes representations of blindness in several young adult novels published under state socialism in Poland and, in particular, in 1976 Jerzy Szczygieł’s text. Szczygieł’s narrative tells a story of a young man who became blind during the Warsaw uprising in 1944. The article focuses on the intersection of gender studies and disability studies and shows how the failure of women’s emancipation under state socialism in Poland enables the emancipation of a disabled man. In other words, the article argues that disability and gender remain in competition here and that Szczygieł’s novel while invested in disabled masculinity and productivity criticizes Stalinist attempt to emancipate women.
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Man - Disability – Society, 2016
In this essay, Rembis and Pamuła explore the state of the field of disability studies, making spe... more In this essay, Rembis and Pamuła explore the state of the field of disability studies, making special note of its relevance to the study of disability in Poland. Special consideration is given to the critical importance of the dialectical relationship between disability activism and lived experiences and the growth of disability studies as an academic field. Disability and disability rights have become global concerns. Since the 1970s, disabled activists and their allies in countries around the world have been working to redefine disability and secure the rights of disabled people. The disability rights movement has consisted of direct action protests, legal challenges, advocacy, and education. An outgrowth of this diverse movement has been the rise of the interdisciplinary field of disability studies. In this essay, we will offer a brief overview of disability studies, highlighting the importance of the “social model” of disability and the critiques it has engendered. We will then turn to a discussion of “global disability studies,” focusing specifically on Poland, revealing the fruitful ways in which insights from the humanities can be brought to bear on the lived experiences and filmic and literary representations of disability and disabled people.
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Edited Journals by Natalia Pamula
In recent years, the value of critical theory has been questioned by various thinkers for reasons... more In recent years, the value of critical theory has been questioned by various thinkers for reasons that may seem contradictory. On the one hand, it has been subject to criticism for its excess, for being redundant in the face of actual facts. On the other, it has been seen as lacking, impoverishing the object of analysis by forcing upon it a limiting framework. In response to this, humanities scholars have sought out new analytic tools, for example in the fields of neuroscience, cognitive science, and biology. This 20th anniversary issue of theory@buffalo speaks to this “existential crisis” being experienced in the humanities. Is it time to move on from theory and cultivate other ways of thinking? Or is it time to rethink the way we do theory and clarify its importance as a mode of engaging with the world—one that is just as indispensable as the scientific?
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Papers by Natalia Pamula
Aspasia
This article discusses disability memoirs written by mothers of disabled sons during state social... more This article discusses disability memoirs written by mothers of disabled sons during state socialism in Poland. It recovers an often forgotten experience of living socialism as a mother of a disabled child and analyzes disability as a category of difference that, unlike gender or class, was not reordered by the socialist state. It argues that disability reconfigured motherhood as a political institution under state socialism and shows that a child’s disability permitted women to become politically disobedient subjects. Disability allowed women who were responsible for their children’s overcoming disability to make demands on the state and criticize it for the lack of sufficient accommodations and resources. At the same time, the article highlights the violence embedded in the relationship between a disabled son and his mother.
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Articles & Book Chapters by Natalia Pamula
Edited Journals by Natalia Pamula
Papers by Natalia Pamula