“Memory is a Bitch.” Taboo and False Memory in Czech Reportages by Mariusz Szczygieł

This paper concerns works by the Polish contemporary author and journalist Mariusz Szczygieł (*1966). I analyze Szczygieł’s Czech reportages (Gottland [2006], Zrób sobie raj [2010] and to some extent Nie ma [2018]) from the perspective of memory studies, focusing particularly on the question of taboo in collective memory and the issue of false memory (the products of the minds of individual persons or groups of people that make them sure that a certain event took place despite the fact that it never occurred), which are meant to show the untrustworthiness of memories and reminiscences. I argue that Szczygieł’s Czech reportages are to be read in the context of questions that have been vividly discussed in the Polish public sphere in recent decades: the dilemma of how to deal with the communist past after 1989 (lustration; Polish: lustracja); and how to proceed with the referential pact when writing and reading literary nonfiction.