The Story of a Certain Illusion. The Influence of Collective Categories on Perception of Reality

The text deals with the way collective perception patterns work in connection with the memory and moral history of societies. The author provides examples of persons excluded from various communities after they exposed the crimes committed in those communities. In each instance, the reason for the exclusion is the inability of the community to accept their communal guilt. A further part of the text deals with political history pursued in Poland in the years 2005-07, characterized, among other things, by a search for external culprits who could be blamed for all of Poland's failures. To support her hypothesis, the author refers to field studies showing that to this day many Poles cherish the conviction that the Jews actually rule Poland.