Polish culture after 1989 has been defined by conflicts surrounding the remnants of modernity, phenomena marginalised during communism. The book considers two such phenomena: the search for a common tradition and the disappearance of utopia. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, romanticism provided a common tradition. After 1989, its place was assumed by Sarmatism, an elite and xenophobic pre-modern cultural formation, into which contradictory values were introduced, creating an explosive mixture of emancipation and populism. The second remnant, the heritage of utopia, is addressed in works whose critical visions of change are not comprehensive projects, but rather rebellions. They begin with a questioning of authority, and lead to a posthuman definition of humanity and interspecies solidarity.

Being Poland offers a unique analysis of the cultural developments that took place in Poland after World War One, a period marked by Poland's return to independence. Conceived to address the lack of critical scholarship on Poland's cultural restoration, Being Poland illuminates the continuities, paradoxes, and contradictions of Poland's modern and contemporary cultural practices, and challenges the narrative typically prescribed to Polish literature and film. Reflecting the radical changes, rifts, and restorations that swept through Poland in this period, Polish literature and film reveal a multitude of perspectives. Addressing romantic perceptions of the Polish immigrant, the politics of post-war cinema, poetry, and mass media, Being Poland is a comprehensive reference work written with the intention of exposing an international audience to the explosion of Polish literature and film that emerged in the twentieth century.