A Late Guest in a Foreign World: Contexts of Difficult Heritage

Abstract

In this article, the author discusses Monika Sznajderman’s reportage Pusty las [The Empty Forest] in the context of Geertz’s blurred genres. The author mainly addresses the condition of a person (a researcher, an anthropologist) who does not explore the Other but is the Other. In Sznajderman’s book, hospitality is a basic category; the researcher studying a difficult heritage — here, the Lemko region — is a guest who must choose either to look at or to ignore the history of his or her hosts. He or she can feel at home or erase all trace of the hosts’ presence. Perhaps in the end, as Maria Stepanova writes, the researcher can “breathe the air of post-memory.” The author treats Sznajderman’s book as an example of anthropological reportage and postulates the emergence of a new genre, on the border between the social sciences and literature.