Open access
BODY PRACTICES IN A CRISIS PERIOD. SOME REMARKS ABOUT THE SMELLS OF PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF POLAND
Aleksandra RZEPKOWSKA1
Transformations of Culture
Publication language: Polish
Journal article
Transformations No. 1-2 (80-81) 2014, Publication date: 23 May 2014
Abstract The presented article is based on commentaries that have appeared in the Internet forum – an online discussion site where people can hold conversation in the form of posted messages. The discussion forum contains a great numbers of subforums, each of which have several topics. The author of the article explores a subforum where people talk about smells associated with the period of People’s Republic of Poland. The inquiry reveals that people still keep in their minds various smells of that period. There are mainly o-dours of perfumes, toilet waters, soaps, shampoos, creams etc. The smells influence their moods, trigger memories, stimulate imagination and raise strong emotions such as: nostalga, melancholy or yearning for sweet childhood and youth. Some of inter-nauts evaluate favourably the smells of the past, the others disagree with them. They claim that odours of the People’s Republic of Poland were trashy, shoddy and stinking.
Katedra Etnologii i Antropologii Kulturowej, Wydział Nauk Historycznych, Uniwersytet Mikołaja Kopernika w Toruniu
E-mail: aarz@o2.pl