ABSTRACT
Political disturbance, invasion, repression, deportation and war are the occasions for interrupted life trajectories in which the experience of separation from family, friends and homeland are common. In looking at the lives of a segment of the Polish intelligentsia interviewed by the author in 1994, one sees that exile appears as a frequent component of the experience over three generations. The interviews with this group of people, most of whom reached adulthood during or shortly after the Second World War, explore their grandparents’ and parents’ experiences and the effect these had in shaping the lives of the respondents, who were all now moving towards the end of their own lives. The life-history analysis reveals the significance of exile and separation in the lives of those Poles who were interviewed, and also the burden of family history relating to the experiences of their forebears carried by the succeeding generations. The chapter explores the sense of exile in relation to nationalism and the maintenance of national identity, and the relationship to an image of the nation that may contrast with the particular situation of the state at any particular time. Drawing on some of the ideas developed by Benedict Anderson in his book Imagined Communities, the chapter develops the theme of identity as a social construct and elaborates its significance for an understanding of ethnicity and nationalism.
