Tradycja jako przedmiot rywalizacji, negocjacji i władzy

Abstract

It is the aim of the paper to point to the essential conditionings of symbolic systems which determine forms of the objectified tradition (of the tradition image) and of the not objectified tradition (of the tacit or invisible tradition). Such conditionings are on one side universal with respect to the fact that all images of the past and the images of the Own and the Other are to consider as a result of cognitive processes which consist in making simple of what is complicated and making constant of what is mutable. On the other side they are particular since they are determined by local circumstances related to different forms of domination and power. Such circumstances can gradually or suddenly change and they can be the cause of corresponding tradition changes which are not always identified so that the tradition can be still recognised by its agents as ancestral and durable. The fact that tradition images and images of the past can be extremely mutable can be observed in borderlands which often changed their State dependence. Such a borderland is Teschen Silesia where boundary changes caused tacit transmutations of identities. The author focuses on mental consequences of the emergence of the Austro-Prussian frontier (1740) as well as the Polish-Czechoslovakian frontier (1920) which divided the territory of the former Duchy of Teschen.