Rejtan jako totem narodu. Amnezja gestu

The article encourages treating an image of a gesture as a complex cultural event – a communication process, where following interpretations of an image reconfigure the initial gesture. This requires treating a presented gesture in terms of an argument, that is – as a political issue. As we embrace this approach by analysing Reytan’s gesture known from the Matejko’s famous painting, the article calls for a methodology of observing gesture while emphasising not its memory, but rather its amnesia, meaning the alternatives forgotten (psychologically repressed) in the process of gesture’s development.