The Bad Child: A Maria Janion Reader

Collected writings from a visionary thinker about the perilous edge between patriotism and fascism

How do nationalism and patriotism shape our understanding of identity, and when do they drift into dangerous territory? Marta Figlerowicz gathers a selection of writings from Maria Janion, one of Eastern Europe’s most profound and original intellectuals, to explore this fine line. Between her birth in Vilnius in 1926 and her death in Warsaw in 2020, Janion witnessed some of the most consequential events of the turbulent twentieth century: the rise of authoritarian nationalism in Poland, German occupation during World War II, Soviet control, and Poland’s uneasy integration into the West. As Western countries face their own nationalist resurgences, Janion’s writing holds tools to help move through this historical condition.

The Bad Child offers sharp insights into how societies develop and assert their identities and histories--often at the cost of the people. Janion’s reflections on fascism, popular culture, and national self-fashioning presciently name and critique regional dynamics that have most recently resulted in the war between Russia and Ukraine, and they broadly expose the illusions that cultures can promote and the dangerous slide from national pride to exclusionary right-wing politics. A queer woman and survivor of World War II, a leftist who resisted Soviet orthodoxy, Janion lends a uniquely disruptive voice to contemporary discussions of fascism, and her insights resonate far beyond her Eastern European roots.

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Maria Janion (1926-2020) was the greatest Polish leftist intellectual of her generation. The author of twenty-three books and hundreds of articles and essays, she mentored and inspired several generations of Eastern European scholars and political activists. During her life, Janion held appointments at several Polish academic institutions, including the University of Gdańsk and the Institute of Literary Studies in Warsaw.

Marta Figlerowicz is professor of comparative literature at Yale University. She is a Guggenheim Fellow and author of Flat Protagonists and Spaces of Feeling as well as more than a hundred articles, reviews, and essays. Her translations from Polish have appeared in PMLA and The Paris Review.