Edited by Katarzyna Bojarska, Ewa Domańska, Piotr Filipkowski, Jacek Małczyński, and Luiza Nader, Knowledge in the Shadow of Catastrophe: Key Thinkers of Polish Humanities of the Post-War Era brings together seminal texts by Polish authors whose writings have shaped generations of readers, scholars, and public intellectuals. It fills an important gap not only in east European studies but also in the humanities as a whole.

The book presents eighteen carefully selected papers by Stefan Amsterdamski, Nina Assorodobraj-Kula, Bronisław Baczko, Jan Błoński, Jolanta Brach-Czaina, Michał Głowiński, Oskar Hansen, Maria Janion, Jerzy Jedlicki, Antonii Kępiński, Anna Pawełczyńska, Krzysztof Pomian, Mieczysław Porębski, Jan Strzelecki, Władysław Strzemiński, Jerzy Szacki, Jerzy Topolski, and Andrzej Turowski. As the editors emphasize, all the texts in the volume are “connected to an interest in the collective imaginarium and, within it, in particular, the ways of perceiving, creating, and drawing on the past” (xii). The “catastrophe” in the title refers to the Second World War—tellingly, and characteristically for central Europe, the term “post-war” in the subtitle denotes this war alone without further specification. Five articles in the anthology address questions of how the past is approached and transmitted (Assorodobraj-Kula, Jedlicki, Pomian, Topolski, Szacki), four deal with aesthetics and art theory (Hansen, Porębski, Strzemiński, Turowski), and four focus on the experience of the WWII, particularly the Shoah and the Nazi German camps (Strzelecki, Pawełczyńska, Błoński, Kępiński). The remaining contributions explore the social imagination (Baczko), the language of propaganda (Głowiński), literary and cultural analysis (Janion), metaphysics (Brach-Czaina), and the philosophy of science (Amsterdamski).

The editors have clearly reflected not only on what is historically significant for Polish intellectual history but also what remains intellectually and ethically stimulating today. In doing so, they have managed to achieve two aims that rarely coincide: to assemble a collection of historically important primary sources and to present texts offering ingenious and resourceful analytical tools. The volume introduces into Anglophone scholarship such influential concepts as semiophores (Pomian), phantasm (Janion), and ideosis (Turowski). The inclusion of texts already available in English translation further invites readers to revisit and reinterpret them. Jan Błoński’s seminal essay “Poor Poles Look at the Ghetto,” in which he reflects on Polish society’s entanglements with the Shoah from a Roman Catholic perspective (where sin encompasses not only deeds and words but also thoughts and omissions), acquires renewed resonance when read alongside Michael Rothberg’s concept of “implicated subjects.” In an increasingly globalized world, where complicity in wars, genocides, and exploitative systems can be observed in real time, Błoński’s moral reflection gains new urgency. Likewise, Jerzy Topolski’s essay on the paradox of historical truth—where every sentence in a historical or nonfiction narrative may be factually true while the text as a whole remains false (and vice versa)—together with Michał Głowiński’s meticulous analysis of propaganda newspeak (published here in English for the first time), feels strikingly relevant in an age of cynically manufactured “post-truths,” “alternative facts,” and algorithmically generated “content.”

One can easily notice how much effort was put into this volume, not only by providing extensive biographical notes on all the contributors, which will undoubtedly assist readers, but also by including an index, a general introduction, and additional editorial or translators’ footnotes where necessary. The system of marking these footnotes is not always applied consistently throughout the book, but as most readers—be they scholars or teachers—will probably turn to one or two texts relevant to their needs, this inconsistency is unlikely to cause any real difficulty. In the section Testimonial Experiences in the opening article, the editors present five authors twice (!) in two consecutive passages that restate the same introductory framework with only minor differences in tone and emphasis (xiv-xvii and then xvii-xxi). This repetition is unexpected, as if two overlapping drafts of the introduction had both been retained, and thus stands out in an otherwise carefully structured volume.

The only limitation of the anthology lies in its somewhat conservative scope. The editors have included exclusively “hard academic” texts—each written by authors affiliated, at least for a time, with universities or research institutions—thereby omitting voices from beyond the academic sphere. The same applies to genre: there are no texts that really experiment with form, such as attempts to hide theoretical reflection in pieces of prose or poetry, political manifesto, or even literary reportage. The thematic range remains traditional too—history, testimony, and art dominate—while perspectives from gender studies or media and technological humanities are absent. Even the contribution by the feminist Heideggerian philosopher Jolanta Brach-Czaina addresses ontological rather than gender-related questions (even if from a carnal perspective). The absence of Stanisław Lem is particularly striking, since his work meets all three of the editors’ declared selection criteria: innovativeness, topical relevance (particularly regarding transhumanism and artificial intelligence), as well as historical experience. Finally, the anthology conveys an unexpectedly narrow view of wartime history, focusing on the German occupation and the camps while overlooking other defining dimensions of Poland’s complex experience of WWII and its aftermath: Soviet terror and mass deportations, the gulag, shifting borders, and postwar violence against minorities that also profoundly shaped Polish intellectual sensibility in the decades that followed. This limitation is partly a consequence of the editors’ decision to exclude émigré authors (with the exception of Baczko and Pomian), who were not constrained by communist censorship and could therefore openly explore research areas such as Sovietology or address issues such as Polish–Ukrainian historical entanglements.

Knowledge in the Shadow of Catastrophe stands as a landmark contribution to the study of Polish intellectual history and demonstrates that Polish thought now speaks to a truly global humanities. Defining the volume modestly as “the opening of a discussion” (x) and an invitation to continue their work, the editors express a hope that one can only share: that this significant project will spur thoughtful continuation.