Wednesday, May 30, 2018

Fusbal, Ruch, postmodernizm

Nie jest to dobry czas dla Ruchu Chorzów. Drużyna ma kłopoty; napisał o tym. m.in. Dziennik Zachodni. Nie śledzę rozgrywek ligowych i nie jestem zagorzałym kibicem żadnego klubu. Czyli może nie powinienem się wypowiadać, skoro się nie znam. Nie będzie więc o piłce, ale o kwestiach językowych.
Okazuje się, że Ruch, jego kibice, pozycja klubu, treści wywieszanych transparentów itd. to obiekty badań socjologów. Poważnie. Poważnych. To zaskakujące dla laika, wiem. Proszę, w publikacji
The Palgrave International Handbook of Football and Politics 
(red. Jean-Michel De Waele, Suzan Gibril, Ekaterina Gloriozova, Ramón Spaaij; Google Books) znalazł się artykuł doktora Wojciecha Woźniaka, socjologa pracującego na Uniwersytecie Łódzkim, o Polsce z podrozdziałem pt. Upper Silesia: The Very Dense Net of Derby Games and the Rivalry Against the Rest of Poland.
Allegiance towards Upper Silesia and the affirmation of regional identity and local identities is a common characteristic for fans of all clubs in the region. As mentioned above, every single town from the densely populated area has its own football team. Many of them enjoyed certain successes on a national and international level. This refers in the first place to Ruch Chorzów and Górnik Zabrze, both teams hold the record of 14 championships of Poland. The latter club, established in 1948 and closely affiliated with the mining branch of the socialist economy, was the most successful under communism, winning all their 14 titles throughout this period and becoming the only Polish club to ever enter the final of a European Cup (losing 1-2 to Manchester City in the Cup Winners Cup final in 1970). In the 1960s and 1970s, derby games between these two teams was attended by more than 100 thousands spectators. They were played at the Silesian Stadium in Chorzów, which as a recognition of the growing significanceof the region in the same period became an official stadium of the Polish national team. The decline in the significance of the region since the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe went in parallel with the decline in the quality of Silesian football. The last Silesian club to win a championship was Ruch Chorzów in the symbolic year of 1989, just a couple of weeks after the first semi-free parliamentary elections were held in Poland bringing success to the anti-Communist Solidarity movement. This year in the winning squad of Ruch, just one player was born outside of Upper Silesia in the title-win-ning squad of Ruch Chorzów. In 2010, when Ruch made it to third place in the League, only one footballer in the team was born in the region (Woźniak 2015b).
Krzysztof Łęcki, writing about contemporary Upper Silesian identity, uses the label of postmodernism. He points at the heterogeneity of the contemporary Silesian fan-base claiming that the identity manifested by thousands of Silesian fans is in fact very loosely connected to their real ethno-cultural background (Łęcki 2009, 139). At the same time, the supporters constitute a group with a very strong rhetoric of separation, and antagonism towards the majority of the Polish population and particularly the Central Polish authorities.
The post-Communist period marked the demise of traditional mining monoculture, but strengthened regional identities. The results of the Polish National Census from 2002 shocked the mainstream media as 173 thousand Upper Silesian inhabitants declared Silesian nationality. This became a harbinger of the process which reinforced the political revival of the regional and ethnic movements in Upper Silesia and boosted the resurgence of the Silesian Movement Autonomy. In the next census of 2011 as many as 817,000 people declared Silesian nationality and more than half a million declared that Silesian dialect is their native language. The Polish Supreme Court in 2011 refused to recognise Silesians as a national minority in Poland, but the support for the autonomy movement is very much supported on the terraces [podkreśl. AC]. In almost fully homogenous Poland where the majority of football supporters embrace the right wing, conservative and nationalist sets of values, this stands out as a quite unique phenomenon. The main reference for the present-day fans of Ruch Chorzow is the German cultural heritage which seems paradoxical when considered that before the Second World War, Ruch was perceived as a depositary of Polish culture and values in Upper Silesia and the name of the club (Ruch means Movement) being a direct reference to the Polish uprising movements against German domination. The “imagined identity” is manifested via the emblems and choreographies prepared by the Ultras. Frequendy they use gothic fonts and German vocabulary, slogans “we the Silesian nation” OberSchlesien is on banners and tags. In questioning their allegiance towards Poland, Ruchs fans apply symbols, which would probably be unthinkable in any football-related iconography anywhere outside of Upper Silesia. The majority of Polish fans refer frequently to the significant patriotic episodes of Polish history, particularly from the period of the Second World War and the post-war guerrilla struggle against the Communist rulers of the country. At the same time, on the T-shirts of the fan clubs of Ruch, one can see iconography referring to the Third Reich, for instance the Nazi Germany emblem with a black eagle holding the oak wreath with Ruchs crest (instead of a swastika) and a stylised emblem of one of the deadliest Nazi formations with the runic letters: SS. Others depict the German black eagle holding the Celtic cross next to Ruchs crest and the golden eagle (the Upper Silesian coat of arms) undersigned Schlesische Banditen (Silesian bandits). The stylised Silesian eagle is also the official mascot of the club. The allegiance towards the Polish Republic is frequently questioned by fans of clubs from Silesia, with the most symbolic and unprecedented example being before the final game of the Polish Cup in 2010 in Kielce when Ruchs fans were booing the Polish anthem.
Postmodernizm w tytule wpisu związany jest z przywoływanym tekstem K. Łęckiego:

Łęcki, Krzysztof. 2009. Śląski „Ruch” — ponowoczesne meandry regionalnej tożsamości (na przykładzie klubu piłkarskiego i jego społecznego otoczenia) Studia Socjologiczne 195 (4): 129-147.
Kto zainteresowany, z pewnością się odniesie do zawartych w tekście treści.

No comments: