The Staszic Palace as Affective Heterotopia : New Category of Spatial Description: 46

The book proposes a new category – heterotopia of affect – which builds upon Michel Foucault’s typology. The Staszic Palace is a symbolic historical place in Warsaw, Poland, which the author foregrounds as an intersection of meanings that arise from the identity of the cultural space and its ideologically charged interpretations. The book proposes a new category – heterotopia of affect – which builds upon Michel Foucault’s typology. The category refers to changes of the places that accumulate contents of ideological, historical, religious, and national character. The book tells the history of a very Polish edifice as well as its surrounding cultural milieu and the history-creating role of the scientific community. The author focuses on the Staszic Palace whose fate reveals how – at different times in history – it catalyzed activities in search of radical changes in the mental landscape of the Polish community.