Prewar and postwar. The divided world of modernisation visions in the daily press (Łódź 1945–1948)

Abstract

_{The first years after WWII were a time to create the world anew. I t was a moment of redefinition and settling on a new meaning for old words. My examination of postwar press reveals its organisation around two opposite categories: the prewar and the postwar reality. A nalysing four dailies published in the Polish industrial centre of Łódź between 1945 and 1949, I trace a binary logic of discourse. I reconstruct how meanings were settled anew as was the role of the industrial city in postwar Poland. W hat was a reference point for the modernisation visions described by the press? W here were the described social changes taking place? W as there any reason to reconstruct elements of the prewar period? T his paper also examines the postwar press from a slightly different angle than is usually done. Firstly, it opposes the newspeak perspective. Secondly, it underlines not the political mobilisation but rather the cooling-down of political emotions and the coalition-building for the country’s reconstruction. From this perspective, the binary logic of discourse is just a universal feature of any hegemonic language and it aims at inclusion, not mobilisation.}