The main aim of the presented paper is to analyze the Independence March as a heterotopia according to the approach introduced by Michel Foucault.

The Independence March is an annual event celebrating the regaining of independence by Poland on 11th of November in 1918. The initiators and organizers of the March are nationalist youth organizations - the All-Polish Youth (in Polish: Młodzież Wszechpolska) and the National Radical Camp (in Polish: Obóz Narodowo-Radykalny) - who formed together the Independence March Association. Though organized by civil society rather than being an official state event, the March became over the years the leading public event on Poland’s Independence Day. The March as an event and as a social phenomenon has already been discussed by many researchers (Malendowicz, 2016; Wiącek, 2019, Wiśniewski, 2019, Rukat, 2020, Witkowski, Woroncow, Puchała, 2023), but wasn’t so far studied as a space of heterotopia, which allows to understand the complexity of the event, the social role it plays, and the involvement of organizers in defining concepts of citizenship and national identity in Poland.

The main research question this paper attempts to answer is the following: is the Independence March a heterotopia? Michel Foucault set six rules of heteropia, four of which are analyzed to answer the research question and understand the role that the March plays within the Polish society in defining and marking categories of citizenship and national identity (see more detailed information below under „Research Methods”).

The key point of reference is the 2018 March of Independence, which celebrated the cententary of regaining independence by Poland. The collected materials include: documents of theese organizations, information posted on the official website of this event, posts on Facebook and press articles published in 2018. In total 232 documents were analyzed.
The paper presents the results of author’s own research carried out within the scientific project titled ‘Heterotopias of Citizenship. Educational Discourse and Pedagogies of Militarization in the Spaces of Youth Organizations. A Critical-Analytical and Comparative Approach’ (no. 2019/35/B/HS6/01365), financed by the National Science Centre in Poland.

The research was embedded in the constructivist paradigm, because of the role of the researcher in the process of collecting and analyzing data, which Denzin and Lincoln define as a “mediator of multi-vocal reconstruction” (2005, p. 196). The research was conducted as part of a qualitative strategy. The central analytical category is ‘heterotopia’ introduced by Michel Foucault. Heterotopias are ”spaces that provide an alternative space of ordering while paradoxically remaining both separate from and connected to all other spaces” (Topinka, 2010, p. 55) Foucault indetified six principles of heterotopia, and the author analyses four of them: 1) heterotopias arrange multiple spaces, 2) heterotopias arrange multiple times, 3) heterotopias manage entrances and exclusions and 4) heterotopias expose real spaces. A total of 232 documents were analyzed and coded using Atlas.ti. The collected research material includes: official documents of the organizations behind the Independence March Association (i.e. statutes, statements); content about the event provided by the Independence March Association on its website (and specifically any information related to the history of the March and volunteer work within the March); All-Polish Youth posts on Facebook from 2018; and press articles published in the same year.

Two main conclusions arise from the heterotopic nature of the Independence March, which go beyond the space of this event and influence the entire society. Firstly, the March reveals the struggle for power between different actors in Polish society, and became a symbolic tool by itself in this fight. Secondly, due to its complexity, the Independence March affects the Polish society with varying intensity and its scale is really broadly spread, i.e. from people who did not participate in the March, through random participants, then physically and emotionally involved people and/or groups that have in purpose participated in this March, up to the organizers, for whom it is the most important event of the year.

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