Weak Artefacts, Fierce Resistance
The Materiality of the All-Poland Women’s Strike
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jca.30202Keywords:
activist archaeology, All-Poland Women's Strike, covid-19 archaeology, materiality, Poland, weak artefacts, women rightsAbstract
This paper discusses the musealised material remains of the All-Poland Women’s Strike, an activity that mobilised around 430,000 protestors against a new restrictive abortion law introduced by the Polish government in 2020. These remains, comprising banners and posters made of cardboard and paper bearing images and slogans, can be understood as “weak artefacts”: ephemeral, flammable, easily damaged, but also resilient and persistent. Following feminist philosophers, the paper argues that weak artefacts are manifestations of a fierce and long-lasting resistance that at the same time embodies the postulates of activist archaeology. The paper points to the emancipatory potential of weak artefacts and discusses how an archaeological approach to things and materiality as well as archaeological activism may support research on contemporary feminist heritage in Poland. The protests took place during the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, in autumn 2020, and so the study is also partly situated within the growing field of covid archaeology.
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