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Violent Inclusion: Disability and the Nation in Polish 1950s and 1960s Young Adult Literature

This article belongs to the special cluster, “Family, Gender and (dis)Abled Bodies after 1953”, guest-edited by Maike Lehmann and Alexandra Oberländer. My article “Violent Inclusion: Disability and the Nation in Polish 1950s and 1960s Young Adult Literature” analyzes representations of physical and sensory disability in some of the most popular young adult novels published in 1950s and 1960s Poland written by Krystyna Siesicka, Jadwiga Korczakowska, Irena Krzywicka, Jadwiga Ruth-Charlewska, and Hanna Mortkowicz-Olczakowa. It argues that the recurring trope that connects the novels—the overcoming of disability—serves as a synecdoche for the Polish nation overcoming the catastrophe of World War II. Moreover, it shows that compulsory rehabilitation functions as a way of including disabled subjects into a Polish post-war society. At the same time, participation in the “rehabilitative regime” constitutes a patriotic duty for a disabled Polish child or teenager and paves a way to a socialist citizenship. Rehabilitation is always successful and culminates with a child or teenager transforming into an able-bodied socialist citizen reminding of a successful, yet sacrificial, reconstruction process of Poland. My article focuses on the sites of the overcoming of disability showing that Polish nature, whether it is a sea or woods, is crucial to the healing of a disabled subject. This way, the writers accentuate the connection between Polish nature and land and a “healthy” body, thus reconsolidating their fantasy of “Polishness.” What the novels ultimately testify to is the emergence of an embodied socialist subjectivity constructed through the corporeal rehabilitative practices and internalization of socialist values.