The Sacred as censorship

Grzegorz Niziołek pokazuje znaczącą obecność Kościoła katolickiego w polskiej przestrzeni publicznej i oddziaływanie tego zjawiska na teatr. Na przykładzie trzech przedstawień - "Mszy" Artura Żmijewskiego, "Golgota Picnic" Rodrigo Garcii oraz "Klątwy" Olivera Frljicia - dowodzi, w jaki sposób obrona wartości religijnych stała się narzędziem cenzury.

Taking his cue from Marcin Kula’s article “Let’s Speak Like a Non-believer with a Believer,” Grzegorz Niziołek analyzes the agency of the sacred and other categories tied to the Catholic Church in Poland’s value system in shaping its public sphere. Using “symbolic violence” in Pierre Bourdieu’s sense of the term, the author shows the real impact of accepting an immanent link between the Catholic faith and the Polish identity. Niziołek discusses the abuse of the criminal code article that prohibits offending religious sensibility, the politicians’ involvement in Church affairs, and the saturation of the public space with signs pertaining to the sacred. Niziołek analyzes some articles by Father Andrzej Draguła on Artur Żmijewski’s Mass, Rodrigo Garcia’s Golgotha Picnic, and Oliver Frljić’s The Curse, demonstrating how Draguła manipulates the sacred to build a hierarchy of artistic phenomena and their significance in the public space.