How the European Solidarity Center Makes Time Out of Space

Abstract

The European Solidarity Center (ECS) makes time out of space. Public memory, essential to the birth of Solidarność, and as created anew here, is a constellation of recursively moving time points. ECS’s rhetorical arrangement of rooms and passageways allow for a recursive invention of time. Expanding rhetorical scholarship on public memory with Polish memory concepts, this essay shows how the ECS cultivates a sense of the movement that allows for reinscription of Solidarity’s memory. This temporal solidarity can offer opportunities to develop civic action and layers of identity constituting a sense of Europe, Poland, and Solidarity.

Keywords:

• constellation
• public memory
• Solidarity
• Space
• Time

Background

Ideas in this paper were first shared as part of a roundtable discussion at the 50th Annual Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies Convention in 2018. A draft of the essay was selected for the Top Paper Panel of the Communication Association of Eurasian Researchers Division of the 2019 National Communication Annual Convention.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Geolocation Information

pl. Solidarności 1, Gdańsk, Poland (9J6X+GQ Gdańsk, Poland)

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the J. Holden Camp Faculty Fellowship 2018-2019 of Hillyer College, University of Hartford; and Clark University.