Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena

Adam Puchejda

PhD Student

funded by the German-Polish Academic Foundation

Mail adam.puchejda(at)gmail(dot)com

Adam Puchejda is a Bronisław Geremek scholar at the Imre Kertész Kolleg. From October 2013 to March 2014, he was a visiting doctoral student at the Institut des sciences sociales du politique at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Paris, where he worked with Professor Jean-Charles Szurek. At the same time, he also studied at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) under the supervision of Professor Nilufer Göle. From 2011 to 2013 he worked as a teaching assistant to Prof. Daniel Dayan at the Paris Institute of Political Science (Sciences Po). Adam Puchejda holds an MA from the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland, where he completed a programme of interfaculty studies in the humanities (literature, philosophy, history) and studied sociology. He has been working on his PhD at the same university since 2010. His interests range from the sociology of intellectuals and the history of the intelligentsia to public sphere studies and political philosophy. 

Research project

The Uncaptive Mind: Intellectuals of the Kraków Group of Critics (Jan Błoński, Andrzej Kijowski, Ludwik Flaszen, Konstanty Puzyna) and the Public Sphere in the People's Republic of Poland (1945-1989)

The goal of this project is to describe historical and cultural accounts of the role and position (prestige) of intellectuals in the relatively closed society of post-war Poland, and to trace, using the tools of modern research on the public sphere, the historical process of transforming the public sphere under Polish communism. In analysing the works and biographies of the members of the Kraków Group of Critics, four eminent Polish intellectuals, I assess the role of intellectuals and literature (media in more general terms) in the new communicative geography of a public sphere constrained by censorship and permeated by propaganda. I also describe the mechanisms of change in the Polish public sphere, which were informed by literary discourse before the Second World War and extended into new media (TV and radio) after the war.

Ongoing Research Projects

  • The Warsaw School of the History of Ideas (Bronisław Baczko, Leszek Kołakowski, Andrzej Walicki, Jerzy Szacki, Krzysztof Pomian) (Research Grant)
  • Genealogy of the Polish History of Ideas 1815-1939 (Research Grant)
  • Intelligentsia of the Yiddishland Research Group, Jewish Historical Institute (Warsaw)
     

Main Areas of Research

  • Sociology and the history of intellectuals and the intelligentsia
  • Public opinion and the transformation of the public sphere
  • Intellectual history, history of ideas and political philosophy
  • History of democracy

 

Positions and memberships (selected)

  • Since 2012: American Political Science Association
  • Since 2012: Polish Society of Oral History
  • Since 2013: Columnist and permanent collaborator at Kultura Liberalna (www.kulturaliberalna.pl)
  • 2010 -2013: Editor of  the journal Znak (www.miesiecznik.znak.com.pl)
  • Since 2010: Editor of the journal Cwiszn (www.cwiszn.pl)
  • 2007-2008: Editor, translator and member of the editorial board of the journal Res Publica Nowa (www.res.publica.pl)

Articles (selected)

Brak rozmowy, czyli przemoc [No Conversation Equals Violence], in: Znak 2013, no. 5.
Taki naród, jaka demokracja [Such a Nation, what a Democracy], in: Znak 2013, no. 2.
Chwiejna równowaga [Shaky Balance], in: Znak 2012, no. 11.
Co dalej z demokracją? [What Next with Democracy?], in: Znak 2012, no. 6.
Życie jest gdzie indziej [Life is Elsewhere. A Critique of the Contemporary Polish Intelligentsia], in: Znak 2011, no. 6.
Kłopot z Brzozowskim [The Trouble with Stanisław Brzozowski], in: Dekada Literacka 2008, no. 4.
 

Interviews (selected)

Przyszłość lewicy? [Future for the Left?] (Interview with Zygmunt Bauman) in: Kultura Liberalna, 20.8.2013
Odnowa lewicy! [Revival of the left!] (Interview with Marcel Gauchet), in: Kultura Liberalna, 20.8.2013.
Nonviolence szansą pojednania [Nonviolence as a Chance for Reconciliation] (Interview with Ramin Jahanbegloo) in: Znak 2013, no. 1.
W pogoni za językiem [In Search of a Language] (Interview with Leonidas Donskis), in: Tygodnik Powszechny, 29.6.2011.
Nigdy nie idealizowałem inteligencji [I have never idealized intelligentsia] (Interview with Jerzy Jedlicki), in Znak 2011, no. 6.
Koniec polskiej cywilizacji [The End of Polish Civilization] (Interview with Agata Bielik-Robson), in Znak 2011, no. 4.


Translations

Deyan Sudjic: Język rzeczy [The Language of Things]. Kraków 2013.
Charles Taylor: Nowoczesne imaginaria społeczne [Modern Social Imaginaries]. Kraków 2010 (with Karolina Szymaniak).
John Gray: Czarna msza [Black Mass]. Kraków 2009 (with Karolina Szymaniak); an excerpt was published in Res Publica Nowa (2008, no. 1).
 

Articles (selected) 

John C. Sommerville: Uniwersytet i religia [University and Religion], in: Znak 2013, no. 2.
Timothy Garton Ash: Kryzys Europy [Crisis of Europe], in: Znak 2012, no. 12 (part I) and Znak 2013, no. 1 (part II).
Martha Nussbaum: Fantazja [Fancy], in: Teresa Walas/Henryk Markiewicz (eds.), Sztuka interpretacji [abbreviated as SI], Kraków 2011 (with Iwona Szymaniak).
Frederic Jameson: Realizm a pragnienie. Problem podmiotu u Balzaka [Realism and Desire. Balzac and the Problem of the Subject], in: SI (with Iwona Szymaniak).
Arne Ruth: Zrywając pęta narodowej mitologii. Szwecja i Szwajcaria wobec Zagłady [Breaking the bonds of national mythology], in: Res Publica Nowa 2009, no. 7.
Paul Starr: Dlaczego liberalizm działa? [Why Liberalism Works?] in: Res Publica Nowa 2008, no. 4.