Tomasz Wicherkiewicz – författare

This experimental volume explores how intersections between different knowledge systems affect identity formation through names and naming, bringing together anthropologists, community scholars, artists, linguists, scientists, poets, specialists in science and technology, as well as legal and Indigenous studies. This interdisciplinary approach values naming practices as creative and political acts that generate and continuously shape our world(s), as well as our relations with others—both human and non-human. By embracing diverse ways of knowing and creative modes through which naming, re-naming, or un-naming unfolds via language, art, and place-making, the authors and artists bring to the forefront implicit and explicit conflicts over the right to self-definition, as well as impositions and contestations of dominant narratives via naming. The goal is to inspire meaningful exchanges between essays, art, poetry, and ethnographic fiction, with each perspective and imaginative methodology treated as equally robust analytic tools. Political entities and top-down structures often use processes of naming to assert power. While recognizing these mechanisms of oppression are important, by bringing openness toward other positionalities regarding the complex problematics of naming and being in the world, this volume invites a wide range of scholars and practitioners to also engage with and consider the empowering and liberatory potential of names and naming in their own work.The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

The Kashubs, a regional autochthonous group inhabiting northern Poland, represent one of the most dynamic ethnic groups in Europe. As a community, they have undergone significant political, social, economic and cultural change over the last hundred years. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Kashubs were citizens of Germany. In the period between the two World Wars they were divided between three political entities: the Republic of Poland, the Free City of Danzig and Germany. During the Second World War, many Kashubs were murdered, and communist Poland subsequently tried to destroy the social ties that bound the community together. The year 1989 finally brought about a democratic breakthrough, at which point the Kashubs became actively engaged in the construction of their regional identity, with the Kashubian language performing a particularly important role.This volume is the first scholarly monograph on the history, culture and language of the Kashubs to be published in English since 1935. The book systematically explores the most important aspects of Kashubian identity – national, regional, linguistic, cultural and religious – from both historical and contemporary perspectives.

The book presents unique literature in a minority ethnolect – the Germanic dialect of Wilamowice in Southern Poland. The manuscripts, written in the ethnolect at the beginning of the 20th century, were discovered in 1989. The book contains full versions of several texts of various length written by Florian Biesik, who decided to create a literary standard for Wilamowicean in order to prove its non-German, but possibly Anglo-Saxon, Dutch, Flemish or Frisian origin. Thus it presents both the dialectal literature and the most important elements of the local culture during the final stages of its extinction.