The Staszic Palace as Affective Heterotopia: New Category of Spatial Description

The book proposes a new category - heterotopia of affect - which builds upon Michel Foucault’s typology. The category refers to changes of the places that accumulate contents of ideological, historical, religious, and national character. The book tells the history of a very Polish edifice as well as its surrounding cultural milieu and the history-creating role of the scientific community. The author focuses on the Staszic Palace whose fate reveals how - at different times in history - it catalyzed activities in search of radical changes in the mental landscape of the Polish community.

Aleksandra Wójtowicz is an assistant professor in the Department of the Anthropology of the Present Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Coordinator of the agreement of IBL PAN and the National Institute of Architecture and Town Planning, leader of the team established under the agreement of the Polish Academy of Sciences and the Warsaw Scientific Society, member of the Municipal Naming Team of the capital city of Warsaw. Author of a few books.