This article attempts to examine the relationship between history and anthropology, viewed from the anthropological perspective. It defines the conditions governing the development of historical anthropology in Poland, locating them in their philosophical and methodological background. Consequently, it also shows the way in which every historical examination has its anthropological counterpart. Every historical document is a subject to interpretation, is not “neutral”, the researcher always makes a subjective interpretation. In this area historical anthropology proposed a new language (hermeneutics), criticism and the regard of cultural practice.
The article considers the aesthetics of the People’s Republic of Poland and proposes certain interpretations from the perspective of the anthropology of culture. Accepting that the code of culture at the time included two functioning “circulations”: official and unofficial, there must have occurred a certain duality of thinking. Assorted artistic undertakings were granted a suitable framework (i.e. a convention making it possible to distinguish certain contents, associated with daily reality). Folklore qualities and the grotesque, comprehended as sui generis cultural categories (not solely aesthetic), modelled ways of thinking, behaviour and artistic expression in both circulations.
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