Typing beyond tradition: Women’s writing practices and the challenge to heteronormative domesticity in socialist Poland

Abstract

This article delves into the nuanced interplay between the domestication of women’s labor and writing practices in 1970s Poland, focusing on the literary community of Obory near Warsaw and the typewriter as a symbolic tool. Set against the backdrop of patriarchal norms, communist promises of emancipation, and late socialist consumption aspirations, Obory’s house of creative work melds women’s writing with both waged and unwaged feminized roles. Drawing on Alva Gotby’s notion of emotional reproduction, this investigation highlights enduring societal frameworks, particularly the structures of the heterosexual family, domestic roles, and genderspecific labor. Using oral histories, interviews with 1960s-70s translators, and 1978-1979 applications to the Polish Writers’ Union, the study incorporates Diana Taylor’s concepts of archive and repertoire. This approach captures the distinct practices of Obory’s women writers while reviving the embodied memory of their typing and the venue’s unique legacy.