About the Author

Agnieszka Balcerzak

E-Mail: agnieszka.balcerzak@ekwee.uni-muenchen.de

Agnieszka Balcerzak, PhD, is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Cultural Analysis and European Ethnology at LMU Munich, Germany. Her main research areas focus on transformation processes in Eastern Europe, social movements and protest culture, women’s and gender studies, and aesthetic studies. Since 2023, she has been working on two international research projects, Push*Back*Lash: Anti-Gender Backlash and Democratic Pushback (University of Salzburg) and Travelling to Seek Abortion Care: Abortion Travel and Support Networks for Pregnant People Seeking Abortion Care in Europe, North-Africa, and Latin America (University of Barcelona). In the academic year 2023–2024, she served as a visiting professor of Gender Studies at the Maria Grzegorzewska University in Warsaw, Poland, and as a visiting researcher at the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University, USA.

Contributions by Author: Agnieszka Balcerzak

Issue 18
argumentative frames
(anti)feminism
Poland
abortion
political aesthetics

Grotesque, Absurdity, Cuteness

On the Intertwining of Argumentative Frames, Aesthetics, and Emotions in the Polish 'War on Abortion'

Over recent decades, right-wing parties and populist movements in Poland and other European countries have effectively framed their agendas around the Catholic Church, presenting themselves as defenders of “traditional” values and a “natural” social order. This strategy has produced a populist blend of anti-feminist, anti-progressive, and anti-abortion rhetoric and symbolism.