Deep Mapping the Vistula in Warsaw: The River’s Disturbed Memory after 1939

Location: Rachel Carson Center

Convener: Anna Barcz, PhD Institute of Literary Research, Polish Academy of Sciences

On behalf of the research team of ‘aquacritical Vistula’ namely Anna Barcz (PI; former RCC Fellow), Monika Gromala & Paulina Waclawik from the Institute of Literary Research (Polish Academy of Sciences) in Warsaw we cordially invite you to their presentation (see details below), discussion and short brainstorming on a possible CFP on comparative river-related studies and environmental humanities.

Our central hypothesis is that combining the ecocritical study of the Vistula in literature (hereinafter called ‘the aquacritical study’) with deep mapping can refurnish and ecologise the memory of one of the most traumatic moments in Polish history, i.e. Warsaw occupation during WWII. Considering the enormous impact of the Vistula River on narrating and imagining 1939, and re-reading the events which irreversibly changed the topography and perception of this city and the Vistula – the Jewish ghetto (1940-1943) and the Warsaw Uprising (1944) – deepens and complicates the interaction between humans and the river. Communicating and reconstructing these events by looking centrally at the river leads to a rediscovery of the Vistula as an alternative source of cultural memory which we would like to sediment by using a deep map as a visual signature of the river’s memory.

Deep mapping brings us closer to a better understanding of the complexity of the environmental crisis from the perspective of the disturbed river and vulnerable entity not only to droughts and prone to flooding in the rapid climate change time but also to human history and traumatic memories. By mapping the literary fragments (from the collected corpus of texts) where we found the river’s particular role for memorising the 1939-events and beyond, we respond to another important research gap which considers the methodology of ecocritical studies in representing the material environments when reconstructing the historical events. Due to serving as military sides, these environments are still trapped in the anthropocentric fallacy of rather anti-environmental symbols. For us, the Vistula as the case study of a symbol inscribed into a patriotic and national discourse (representative for the anthropocentric approach), is challenged by a complimentary approach which presents the river as a component of the natural and historical environment, and also of the more-than-human memory of the WWII’s dramas in Warsaw (the aquacentric approach). The tension and interaction between these two oppositional approaches in reading the Vistula River hybridize and negotiate new meanings of overlapping categories, namely the river and memory, and can contribute to further ecocritical studies on ecologies of war.

During our presentation in RCC we would like to share with some results of an in-depth textual literary analysis of the selected corpus of texts paired and supplemented with the interpretative maps. We think this meeting can be particularly interesting for environmental historians, digital and blue humanities scholars and all people who work with hybrid sources (i.e. textual, visual or topographical) to represent environments.