The power of culture, the culture of power

The influence of most ministers does not extend beyond the boundaries of their departments. Power, understood as the ability to broadly shape reality, is fully present in only three ministries.

The prime minister, of course, has the greatest ability to set the course of action. The finance minister also wields considerable power. Directing fiscal and financial policy, he co-determines the allocation of resources for each ministry. As many as 6 of the 17 finance ministers before 2015 simultaneously held the post of deputy prime minister. The break with the Third Republic brought a marginalization of this function, degrading it to the role of tax collector.

The third office, involving real power beyond the ministry in question, is the Ministry of Culture. While the Minister of Finance decides on the short-term "here and now," the Minister of Culture is the only one dealing simultaneously with the past, present and future. As Orwell wrote: "He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past." The last eight years are an exemplification of this approach. The longest-serving deputy prime minister in the last 30 years, the only one so far to combine the post with that of minister of culture, has openly demonstrated the power of belief in Orwellian dictum. Restorative nostalgia has fueled the development of institutions dealing with the past in a selective manner. The stimulus was the hope of building future identities.

The response to just past manipulation cannot be a mirror-image of ideological reflection in the approach to heritage, nor a return to the marginalization of the Ministry of Culture within the government structure. Both of these responses are intellectually simple, requiring no effort. Both come to mind on their own, depending on the allocation of political sympathies. Both, however, would be a failure and a squandering of the opportunity presented by the need to build the Fifth Republic, which I wrote about in June this year.

An ambitious tackling of the modernity, combined with a rediscovery of the past, requires both high aspirations and a willingness to take on such a challenge. Meeting it, however, is much easier than it would have been, for example, 25 years ago. Several factors contribute to this. The greater affluence and natural Europeanness of the new generations; the blazing of a trail in elevating the position of culture to its rightful place; and the motivation that comes from looking into the abyss in which Polish democracy has almost been lost. All this makes it easier to take up such a challenge.

Giving up the ambition for change and state’s abdication from the sphere of culture would mean that the carriage of nationalism that has been unleashed in recent years would roll on by force of inertia. It would then be inevitable that the national camp would win again, since it is its ideas that will largely shape culture. Culture, on the other hand, is the area where life and dialogue take place; it is like the omnipresent ether - real even if imperceptible on a daily basis.

First and foremost, the cultural institutions, pushed out in recent years by nationalism, should be recovered for Poland and the Polish state. Recovered not only in the organizational sphere, but also symbolically. The PiS government, contrary to its rhetoric, has been a government ashamed of Polishness, or at least part of it. For Polishness is inherently diverse and European, difficult to classify one-dimensionally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is a reductionism, appealing to the general idea of a nation without regard for which nation it is. Hence the disappearance of Polish and state and the proliferation of "national" institutes, foundations and organizations. It is necessary to transform them in form, content and name.

It is also necessary to restore Art. After almost a decade of the Fourth Republic, one can forget that the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage was previously the Ministry of Culture and Art. Art, as seen in many "national" galleries and museums, has been relegated to the past, replaced by kitsch and simplicity. Beauty is the inseparable sibling of Truth. Reclaiming one will help us find the other. First we must however appreciate the importance of the omnipresent ether that is Culture.