Papers by Radmila Svarickova Slabakova
Cesky casopis historicky/Czech Historical Review, 2024
The interviewer was keen to learn more about the ways in which the world association of historian... more The interviewer was keen to learn more about the ways in which the world association of historians, founded in 1926, works. She was intrigued by the relevance of this traditional organisation in today’s digital world and by the ways in which it stimulates the development of world historiography
K. Barndt – S. Jaeger (eds.), Museums, Narratives, and Critical Histories: Narrating the Past for Present and Future. Museums and Narratives 1, Berlin: De Gruyter, 115–128, 2024
The chapter ponders upon the use of sounds in a new multimedia exhibition in the Museum of the Sl... more The chapter ponders upon the use of sounds in a new multimedia exhibition in the Museum of the Slovak National Uprising in Banská Bystrica, Slovakia. Considering the theoretical concept of audionarratology, the chapter argues that sounds can be analyzed as narratives themselves. The goal of the multimedia exhibition is to elicit emotions in visitors and sounds are an important part of this museum´s intention. They orient the story told, mark shifts in its evolution, diffuse micronarratives and even disrupt, though unintentionally, the one-sided narrative of sacrifice and heroism of the Slovak National Uprising. Fiction films created for this exhibition - with the aim to bring visitors closer to historical experience – show how museums can become actively engaged in creating new representations of the past realities.
Historical Demography/Historická demografie 47, no. 2, 2023
Czech historians have been only exceptionally interested in one of the world’s most widespread ho... more Czech historians have been only exceptionally interested in one of the world’s most widespread hobbies, family history and genealogy. The growing interest of the public in the past of their own family, generated by the digitization and accessibility of the necessary data, has been however noticed also in the Czech Republic. The decision to organize a panel on the topic of genealogy and family history during the 12th Congress of Czech Historians in Ústí nad Labem was a logical consequence of the current situation. On 20 September 2022, the session entitled Poverty of History?! Genealogy, DNA and Family History took place. Nine presentations were delivered to an unexpectedly large audience, which consisted mostly of academics but also of practicing professionals such as private genealogists and archivists. A full room has convinced us that public genealogy and family history is the topic that deserves our interest.
Historical Demography/Historická demografie 47, no. 2, 2023
The aim of this study is twofold. On the one hand, the article provides an overview of current re... more The aim of this study is twofold. On the one hand, the article provides an overview of current research in the field of family memory, amateur family history and (genetic) genealogy, emphasizing a few areas that are of interest for professional historians. These include the close links between the stories transmitted in families and family identity, its functioning and family resilience; the potential of family history to reveal alternative versions of the national past; and finally, genetic (DNA) genealogy, which has won the favour of tens of millions of adherents worldwide and which is able to redefine historically traditional social structures such as family or kinship. Investigative genetic genealogy is a fresh and burgeoning field that gives amateur family history new dimensions by including it into the investigative leads of law enforcement authorities. In the second line, the article provides examples of research done in the Czech Republic that allow for contextualizing the place and status of genealogy and genetic genealogy in the given country. The article contrasts the optimistic views of researchers about amateur family history, based on its position in countries such as the US, Australia, New Zealand and the UK, with the far less favourable situation in the Czech Republic.
The Divided, Yet Together: Borders in Oral History Perspective, 2023
The brutal invasion of Ukraine by Russia on 24 February 2022 has changed the lives of many Czechs... more The brutal invasion of Ukraine by Russia on 24 February 2022 has changed the lives of many Czechs. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian war refugees have crossed the Czech borders and sought a shelter in this country. The Czechs showed an unprecedented willingness to help, feed and house the war refugees. This contribution is a personal confession of one of those many Czechs and could have been written by many of them – if they were oral historians. Many Czechs have had opportunity to talk to war refugees and to find out their personal stories. It is a privilege of oral historians to think about the ethical constraints and limits of doing oral history with war refugees.
Český časopis historický (Czech Historical Review), 2022
The article explores the beginnings and growth of sensory history, a relatively new and innovativ... more The article explores the beginnings and growth of sensory history, a relatively new and innovative field of historical inquiry. It argues that sensory history has contributed to challenge the belief in universal and natural character of the senses as well as to oppose a traditional hierarchy of the senses.
In the introduction, the article demonstrates the explosion of sensory history by enumerating book series, academic journals and centres of sensory history. They are included into a larger field of sensory studies that have developed after a turn towards the sensuous. Observed in humanities and social sciences since the 1990s, the sensory turn can be compared to other important epistemological turns, such as the linguistic turn. Although the field has been flourishing for more than two decades, sensory history has not yet been conceptualized in the Czech study of history. Not only there are no Czech contributions to the field, there is also a lack of translations of foundational studies of the field.
The presentation of the topic starts with the description of the birth of sensory studies, as a reaction to the constructivist and linguistic theories of culture and history of the 1960s and 1970s. A reevaluation of the Cartesian paradigm of mind and body was another important factor in challenging a traditional predominance of the eye over the other senses of hearing, taste, smell and touch.
The critique of ocularcentrism, a bias ranking vision over other senses in Western culture, is one of the premises of sensory history. Media theorists Marshall McLuhan and Walter Ong were among the first to illustrate how the senses are connected to the cultural changes in Western societies, such as a transmission from orality to literacy.
Alain Corbin, a French historian „du sensible“, is considered a founding father of sensory history. His foundational studies are described as well as the works of his predecessors, Lucien Febvre and Robert Mandrou, both historians of the French Annales school.
The next section reflects upon sensory anthropology and its significance for conceptualizing the aims of sensory history. Constance Classen, a Canadian anthropologist, defined the field of the anthropology and history of the senses, pointing to a sociocultural dimension of the senses.
In his already over thirty years old article, Alain Corbin pondered about the challenges of sensory history for historians, advancing the knowledge of the „habitus“ as a precondition of any sensory explorations of the past.
In the final section, the article highlights the attraction of sensory history for the public and considers a fusion of sensory history and the history of emotions as a possible future of the field.
Dobrodružství historické interpretace/The Adventure of Historical Interpretation , 2021
The chapter explores how an academic history book on nobility is created. It tackles methodologic... more The chapter explores how an academic history book on nobility is created. It tackles methodological and technical steps, as well se theoretical problems and connects them to the postmodern historiography field. It shows how historians work.
Dějiny-Teorie-Kritika/History-Theory-Critique, 2021
The article explores the development of the oral history field in the second decade of the 21st c... more The article explores the development of the oral history field in the second decade of the 21st century. The author shows that the postmodern focus on narrative and ethnographic practice is still present in works of oral history, where it coexists with oral history’s more traditional documentary mission. Recently, oral historians conducted various community projects and tested the possibilities of sharing authority between researchers and communities. Attention is paid to the new, fast expanding field of crisis oral history, which focuses on documenting witnesses’ stories of mass atrocities and various violent events. In the second part, the article briefly reflects upon the responses of oral historians to the Covid-19 pandemic, which accelerated the fourth, digital phase in the evolution of oral history. Finally, the article explores the reasons behind the invisibility of Czech oral history research in leading Anglo-American journals in this field despite the Czech scholars’ notable achievements such as the presidency of the International Oral History Association.
Slovenský národopis/Slovak Ethnology, 2021
The article explores how oral history and memory studies have been used in East Central Europe af... more The article explores how oral history and memory studies have been used in East Central Europe after the fall of the Iron Curtain. It focuses particularly on the question of whether Eastern European scholars only reproduce what was invented in the West, or whether they advance their original concepts and ideas. Both disciplines have been involved in reassessing the history of communism and the communist version of history itself and both contributed to revealing memoires obscured by the communist regime, even if the role of oral history may be considered as pivotal in this process. Although oral history had been practiced in the region at least since the 1970s, it was introduced as a new discipline according to the Western criteria after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Memory studies and their most successful concept, the "lieux de mémoire", were implemented into to the region later and the promoters of the concept were predominantly Western scholars. Drawing on the uses of the term "historical consciousness" in Czech and Polish research, the article argues that various strategies associated with the "return to Europe" can be found in the region when promoting native traditions and equalizing them with the Western ones.
MEMO, 2021
In spring 2020, the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic changed the world as it used to be. Simultane... more In spring 2020, the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic changed the world as it used to be. Simultaneously, various initiatives have emerged intending to preserve this historical moment for future generations. In the Anglo‑American world, the initiatives have predominantly focused on collecting personal stories from the public through Internet. In the article, this need to collect and share stories is analyzed, I explore who were the initiators, why they wanted to collect the experiences of COVID-19 and analyze the aspects of stories. I argue that within a short period of time, oral history has been transformed through this experience: most initiatives didn’t need oral history to come into existence, yet
their results are surprisingly comparable to the oral history projects. Oral history has become quicker, shorter, organized through digitized forms, even without oral historians. The future will show which features of this crisis form of oral history will remain
Memo 2, 2020
Oral history is a well-established field in the Czech Republic, similarly to the history of women... more Oral history is a well-established field in the Czech Republic, similarly to the history of women and gender history. However, feminist oral history is totally unknown. The goal of this article is to depict Anglo-American feminist oral history but also to seek the causes of this void. The article describes three stages of the development of Anglo-American feminist oral history, the main protagonists, their approaches and theories. Feminist oral history is considered by the author as an important contribution to the oral history field in the domains of the oral history process and reflexivity. At the end, the article invites Czech oral historians to learn about the practices of feminist oral history and believes this could contribute to a shift of Czech oral history from its predominantly documentary nature to its more democratic and reflexive character.
SLOVANSKÝ PŘEHLED / SLAVONIC REVIEW Journal for the History of Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe., 2020
The paper examines the ways in which Russians and Germans have been depicted in the recollections... more The paper examines the ways in which Russians and Germans have been depicted in the recollections on the German occupation of Bohemia and Moravia. It is based on a set of 22 interviews with the participants recalling their own wartime experiences or the stories told in their family. Using content analysis, the paper establishes a negative image of Russians and a rather positive image of Germans across the generations of participants. The study further explores the possible reasons for this “reversal of poles” in contrast to the interpretations of Russians and Germans before the fall of Communism in 1989. The reasons are sought in three areas: the sympathy of Czechs towards the Germans and their antipathy towards the Russians (constantly revealed in public surveys ever since 1989); heavily anti-Communist interpretation of history (or the official memory); and the influence of collective European memory that no longer understands the Germans as the enemy. The study ponders over the mutual influence of individual, family and official memory as a complex process of continuous negotiation about history under the influence of contemporary needs.
Ceský lid/Czech Ethnological Journal, 2020
The aim of the article is to gain a more comprehensive insight into the
Czech collective memory o... more The aim of the article is to gain a more comprehensive insight into the
Czech collective memory of the Second World War. The article suggests
that vivid collective representations of the Second World War are formed
by family memory as well as by generational memory. On the example of
four generations, the article shows the transformation of a national narrative of persecution and resistance of the oldest generation into an abstracted and generalized narrative of the youngest generation. Attention is paid to family recollections, their importance for the creation of the war memory by older generations, and their gradual disappearance from younger generations. The article documents the change of the perspective with which the youngest generation remembers the Second World War and stresses the
emotional engagement of remembering. It argues that holocaust memory is well included into the Czech collective memory but in a new form shaped by the new culture of remembering.
Cesky casopis historicky/Czech HIstorical Review, 2019
The article adds to Second World War memory research by presenting the outcomes of a recent empir... more The article adds to Second World War memory research by presenting the outcomes of a recent empirical survey conducted with two generations in the present‑day Czech Republic. One generation lived the majority of their lives under Communism while the second generation was born after the fall of Communism. The analysis revealed an important generational gap in the way the Second World War is remembered and perceived. While the older generation preferred to construct the Second World War rather as a set of home events focused on the traditional „Communist“ narrative of persecution and resistance, the younger generation tended to perceive the Second World War in more abstract, globalized and „western“ terms with the Holocaust as a key element. The article emphasizes a fact important for the present‑day Czech collective identities; this means the tendency of the young generation to perceive the war in abstract terms, but incorporating a home narrative of suffering.
Journal of Family History, 2019
This article adds to recent intergenerational family memory research by presenting an empirical s... more This article adds to recent intergenerational family memory research by presenting an empirical study of three-generational stories recounted by thirteen families in the Czech Republic. By drawing on a detailed and rigorous methodological approach, this article focuses on the topic of stories, their emotionality, and the personal traits of the heroes. The majority of families told their family stories in a prototypical, perhaps archetypal fashion, depicting their ancestors as heroes under circumstances of danger, fear, and threat. A tendency to valorize ancestors is observed in the stories framed by important historical events while private family stories tend to have more of an amusing character. Why a family shares that or another type of stories depends on many circumstances, particularly on a long-lived and generative ancestor, intergenerational relations, and family values.
Gendering Postsocialism. Old Hierarchies and New Legacies, edited by Yulia Gradskova and Ildikó Asztalos Morell, 2018
This chapter seeks to understand the reasons of a rather conservative distribution of gender role... more This chapter seeks to understand the reasons of a rather conservative distribution of gender roles in the present day Czech Republic by examining the oral recollections of ten older women. The chapter argues that three themes that emerged in the course of the recollections (obedience and silent suffering, care and self-sacrifice and ability to endure hard work) can be understood as the guiding norms for the different roles the women have had through their lives and shows that regardless a strong emancipatory rhetoric of state socialism, the identities of the older women continue to be shaped by pre-war patriarchal discourses.
Dějiny-teorie-kritika, 2018
Gender Studies, 2017
This article explores the ways in which older Czech men construct their masculine identities. Pro... more This article explores the ways in which older Czech men construct their masculine identities. Profiting from the personal memories of individuals who witnessed dramatic social changes in 20th century Czechoslovakia, the study draws on eight oral narratives that focus on the period of older men’s youth but also encompass their adult and later lives. The article identifies five recurrent themes through which older men construct their identities and discusses these outcomes in relation to the debate concerning the nature of gender order in the contemporary Czech Republic. It demonstrates the attachment of older men to the patriarchal masculine models of their youth, which are presented as masculine ideals, but also depicts their reservations towards such models. These reservations, however, do not cause older men to argue in favour of greater equality for women.
The aim of this article is to present the history of emotions as a thriving
and innovative field ... more The aim of this article is to present the history of emotions as a thriving
and innovative field of historical inquiry. Although the history of emotions has gained momentum only relatively recently, it has been considered as a “star” of contemporary historiography, mainly in its capacity to reconcile poststructuralist approaches with individual agencies of real people. The article focuses on the development of the field, starting with its “father”, the Annales’s historian Lucien Febvre, going through the “emotionology” of American social historians Peter and Carol Stearns to finish with the
works of Barbara Rosenwein and William Reddy whose contribution
challenged historians’ thinking about emotions in history most considerably.
On the other hand, the article emphasizes the interdisciplinary
implications of the history of emotions and seeks to explain the motives
for “paradigmatic changes” advanced by the history of emotions in broadly shared beliefs in universal and natural character of emotions.
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Papers by Radmila Svarickova Slabakova
In the introduction, the article demonstrates the explosion of sensory history by enumerating book series, academic journals and centres of sensory history. They are included into a larger field of sensory studies that have developed after a turn towards the sensuous. Observed in humanities and social sciences since the 1990s, the sensory turn can be compared to other important epistemological turns, such as the linguistic turn. Although the field has been flourishing for more than two decades, sensory history has not yet been conceptualized in the Czech study of history. Not only there are no Czech contributions to the field, there is also a lack of translations of foundational studies of the field.
The presentation of the topic starts with the description of the birth of sensory studies, as a reaction to the constructivist and linguistic theories of culture and history of the 1960s and 1970s. A reevaluation of the Cartesian paradigm of mind and body was another important factor in challenging a traditional predominance of the eye over the other senses of hearing, taste, smell and touch.
The critique of ocularcentrism, a bias ranking vision over other senses in Western culture, is one of the premises of sensory history. Media theorists Marshall McLuhan and Walter Ong were among the first to illustrate how the senses are connected to the cultural changes in Western societies, such as a transmission from orality to literacy.
Alain Corbin, a French historian „du sensible“, is considered a founding father of sensory history. His foundational studies are described as well as the works of his predecessors, Lucien Febvre and Robert Mandrou, both historians of the French Annales school.
The next section reflects upon sensory anthropology and its significance for conceptualizing the aims of sensory history. Constance Classen, a Canadian anthropologist, defined the field of the anthropology and history of the senses, pointing to a sociocultural dimension of the senses.
In his already over thirty years old article, Alain Corbin pondered about the challenges of sensory history for historians, advancing the knowledge of the „habitus“ as a precondition of any sensory explorations of the past.
In the final section, the article highlights the attraction of sensory history for the public and considers a fusion of sensory history and the history of emotions as a possible future of the field.
their results are surprisingly comparable to the oral history projects. Oral history has become quicker, shorter, organized through digitized forms, even without oral historians. The future will show which features of this crisis form of oral history will remain
Czech collective memory of the Second World War. The article suggests
that vivid collective representations of the Second World War are formed
by family memory as well as by generational memory. On the example of
four generations, the article shows the transformation of a national narrative of persecution and resistance of the oldest generation into an abstracted and generalized narrative of the youngest generation. Attention is paid to family recollections, their importance for the creation of the war memory by older generations, and their gradual disappearance from younger generations. The article documents the change of the perspective with which the youngest generation remembers the Second World War and stresses the
emotional engagement of remembering. It argues that holocaust memory is well included into the Czech collective memory but in a new form shaped by the new culture of remembering.
and innovative field of historical inquiry. Although the history of emotions has gained momentum only relatively recently, it has been considered as a “star” of contemporary historiography, mainly in its capacity to reconcile poststructuralist approaches with individual agencies of real people. The article focuses on the development of the field, starting with its “father”, the Annales’s historian Lucien Febvre, going through the “emotionology” of American social historians Peter and Carol Stearns to finish with the
works of Barbara Rosenwein and William Reddy whose contribution
challenged historians’ thinking about emotions in history most considerably.
On the other hand, the article emphasizes the interdisciplinary
implications of the history of emotions and seeks to explain the motives
for “paradigmatic changes” advanced by the history of emotions in broadly shared beliefs in universal and natural character of emotions.
In the introduction, the article demonstrates the explosion of sensory history by enumerating book series, academic journals and centres of sensory history. They are included into a larger field of sensory studies that have developed after a turn towards the sensuous. Observed in humanities and social sciences since the 1990s, the sensory turn can be compared to other important epistemological turns, such as the linguistic turn. Although the field has been flourishing for more than two decades, sensory history has not yet been conceptualized in the Czech study of history. Not only there are no Czech contributions to the field, there is also a lack of translations of foundational studies of the field.
The presentation of the topic starts with the description of the birth of sensory studies, as a reaction to the constructivist and linguistic theories of culture and history of the 1960s and 1970s. A reevaluation of the Cartesian paradigm of mind and body was another important factor in challenging a traditional predominance of the eye over the other senses of hearing, taste, smell and touch.
The critique of ocularcentrism, a bias ranking vision over other senses in Western culture, is one of the premises of sensory history. Media theorists Marshall McLuhan and Walter Ong were among the first to illustrate how the senses are connected to the cultural changes in Western societies, such as a transmission from orality to literacy.
Alain Corbin, a French historian „du sensible“, is considered a founding father of sensory history. His foundational studies are described as well as the works of his predecessors, Lucien Febvre and Robert Mandrou, both historians of the French Annales school.
The next section reflects upon sensory anthropology and its significance for conceptualizing the aims of sensory history. Constance Classen, a Canadian anthropologist, defined the field of the anthropology and history of the senses, pointing to a sociocultural dimension of the senses.
In his already over thirty years old article, Alain Corbin pondered about the challenges of sensory history for historians, advancing the knowledge of the „habitus“ as a precondition of any sensory explorations of the past.
In the final section, the article highlights the attraction of sensory history for the public and considers a fusion of sensory history and the history of emotions as a possible future of the field.
their results are surprisingly comparable to the oral history projects. Oral history has become quicker, shorter, organized through digitized forms, even without oral historians. The future will show which features of this crisis form of oral history will remain
Czech collective memory of the Second World War. The article suggests
that vivid collective representations of the Second World War are formed
by family memory as well as by generational memory. On the example of
four generations, the article shows the transformation of a national narrative of persecution and resistance of the oldest generation into an abstracted and generalized narrative of the youngest generation. Attention is paid to family recollections, their importance for the creation of the war memory by older generations, and their gradual disappearance from younger generations. The article documents the change of the perspective with which the youngest generation remembers the Second World War and stresses the
emotional engagement of remembering. It argues that holocaust memory is well included into the Czech collective memory but in a new form shaped by the new culture of remembering.
and innovative field of historical inquiry. Although the history of emotions has gained momentum only relatively recently, it has been considered as a “star” of contemporary historiography, mainly in its capacity to reconcile poststructuralist approaches with individual agencies of real people. The article focuses on the development of the field, starting with its “father”, the Annales’s historian Lucien Febvre, going through the “emotionology” of American social historians Peter and Carol Stearns to finish with the
works of Barbara Rosenwein and William Reddy whose contribution
challenged historians’ thinking about emotions in history most considerably.
On the other hand, the article emphasizes the interdisciplinary
implications of the history of emotions and seeks to explain the motives
for “paradigmatic changes” advanced by the history of emotions in broadly shared beliefs in universal and natural character of emotions.
Kolekce devatenácti esejů z pera významných historiků dokládá rozmanitost vědeckých přístupů. Jejich práce s historickými prameny, základními kameny bádání, je kombinována s etickým i estetickým rozhodováním, které tvoří nezpochybnitelnou součást jejich tvorby. Ta je často překvapující – nejen pro čtenáře, ale pro ně samotné. Představuje totiž velké intelektuální dobrodružství. Nemohou si vymýšlet prameny, nemohou si stanovit svévolná pravidla, zápletky a rozuzlení, jako to může udělat romanopisec. Mohou však napsat vědecké dílo, které je výsledkem tvůrčího přístupu.
Family memory is the most important memory community. This volume illustrates the range and power of family memories, often neglected by memory studies dealing with larger mnemonic entities. This book highlights the potential of family memory research for understanding societies’past and present and the need for a more comprehensive and systematic use of family memories. The contributors explain how family memories can be a valuable resource across a range of settings pertaining to individual and collective identities, national memories, intergenerational transmission processes and migration, transnational and diasporic studies. This volume presents the past, present and future of family memory as a prospective field of memory studies and the role of family memory in intergenerational transmission of social and political values. Family memory of violent events and genocide is also looked at, with discussions of the Armenian Genocide, Russian Revolution and Rwandan Genocide.
The research results draw on qualitative, semi-structured, three-generational interviews which were collected from a group of thirteen families in the Czech Republic (three generations were interviewed separately within each family). Extensive multidisciplinary literature was used to reflect on the outcomes of the interviews.
The book is divided into four main parts (Family Memory, Recollections and Infancy, Intergenerational Transmission and the Legacy of the Family) which represent the four main research topics. Each part comprises four chapters which develop further the main research topic.
A longer English summary in the book.
of memory studies, however, has expanded over recent decades to
all branches of the humanities and social sciences, discussing a wide
range of topics. The book intends to fill the gap by focusing on several
particular features of family memory. Since memory studies originated
as an interdisciplinary field, the book examines family memory in
an interdisciplinary way, through four traditional academic disciplines,
namely psychology, literary science, history and philosophy.
Each discipline focuses on one particular topic and discusses it in
the context of the studies of family and memory in the given field. The
chapters of the book profit from various sources. Three chapters use
oral history (qualitative) multi-generational interviews which were collected
from a group of thirteen families in the Czech Republic (three
generations were interviewed within each family) with the aim of exploring
the content and generational dimension of family memory (infancy,
family stories and family rituals were studied), one chapter is
based on literary fiction, namely the genre of family saga, and another
chapter explores the ego-documents of the nineteenth century Czech
elite, namely their memoirs, letters and personal journals.
The introductory part of the book summarizes the existing study of
family memory, mainly in the oral history field, and explains the difficulties
of similar interdisciplinary endeavors (particularly when moving
into the field of neurosciences, inevitably linked to the study of
• 239 •
memory). Observing a gap in the exploration of memory dimension in
the studies of family in psychology, the first part of the book examines
the way recollections of infancy change in generational stories. While
the oldest generations recollect children’s free games in villages and
adventures connected with them, the younger generations begin to lack
such recollections. A relationship between the independent games of
the oldest generations and a sense of rootedness and steadiness have
been found, while in contrast the recollections of the younger generations,
related particularly to trips abroad, are stimulating rather than
a protective factor.
Family memory is often passed down to subsequent generations
through family stories. Exploring the content of family stories and the
way they change when passed from generation to generation, the following
chapter focuses on the narrative frameworks of the stories. Related
mostly to well known political events such the Second World War
or Communism, the stories reveal only the positive moral qualities of
the ancestors and tend to present them as brave persons and heroes. Interestingly,
Czech family stories do not offer any competitive narrative
to the national one which is standardized in contemporary textbooks. In
addition, the family stories of the youngest generations are substantially
changed in accordance with contemporary norms.
Apart from family stories, family memory can be transmitted through
objects (such as photos and inherited objects) and by traditions and rituals.
Rituals in the chosen family sagas and in the interviewed families
are the subject of the next chapter. Arguing that the depiction of rituals
in family sagas has created a narrative model for how contemporary
families speak about the rituals, the chapter reveals a curious fact: although
the interviewed families maintain certain rituals such as birthdays,
Christmas, Easter festivities, etc., their inability to speak about
them corresponds to unclear narrative models of the rituals depicted in
the family sagas.
Family members adopt family stories according to their needs and
create their own identity with their help. This particular feature of family
memory was studied using the example of a Czech bourgeois family
of the nineteenth century, the family of the renowned sister-writers, Karolina
Světlá and Sofie Podlipská. Both their family recollections aim,
however, regardless of the particular differences, at strengthen their
• 240 •
sense of “Czechness”, and are framed, in this way, by a Czech national
story.
The concept of identity is analyzed particularly in the closing
chapter. If Locke’s concept of personal identity based on autobiographical
memory has been seriously challenged in recent decades, what else
can serve as a means of identification? The chapter offers the concept of
our ideas, dreams and future as another function of our memory.
Family memory is, in the book, viewed as a generational social construct,
as a result of interactions between family members who create
various versions of the family past through the concrete acts of recollections.
The aim of family memory is not to conserve an intact image
of the family past, but to reconstruct the past for the needs and interests
of the family at present and for the sake of its future existence.
The second part of the book is based on interviews with 31 nobles (13 women and 18 men were interviewed between 2001-2005, the majority of them were born in 1920´s and 1930´s). Interviews with 14 descendants of Bohemian and Moravian “high bourgeoisie” were added to make a comparison. The interviews are analysed on the base of the theoretical approaches explored in the first part of the book. The second part of the book thus contains a two-level analysis of “noble” memory. First, it explores what kind of memory towards nobility is dominant in the contemporary Czech public opinion seeking to explain the reasons for that. Second, it uncovers a hidden relation of public memory on one side and the memories of noble men and women on the other side. The book argues that nobility, as with all elite, perhaps even more so, have the ability to behave how memory requires. Memory is therefore a strong part of their constructed identity. They prove it through their faithfulness to the stereotypes and myths about them, they prove it by helping to create, unconsciously, these myths.
Of various approaches to myths, the myths in this text are understood mainly in terms of psychology, especially in terms of the psychoanalytical theory. Nevertheless, an expression of the postmodern challenge to the science-myth relation can be found in this text too, especially as a construction of reality with personal meanings.
The initial chapters of the second part of the book explore therefore two different myths about nobility found in Czech memory – one of them praises nobility and describes its members as having only outstanding and distinguished qualities, the second, on the contrary, blames nobility and points to their difference, their superiority or arrogance.
The following chapters focus on memory of nobles themselves. They examine their “noble” values, deeply rooted in the memories of the interviewees, even if they deny it. Then the chapters concentrate on the figures of father and mother, on education of the interviewees, on the role of their “equal” marriage, on the construction of their narratives as a hero story, on the reasons for leaving the country (in 1945 and in 1948) differed between the sexes and on the gender difference when constructing their narratives.
The concluding chapters depict such important issues (connected with a turbulent history of Bohemian and Moravian nobility in the 20th century) like the return of the exiled nobles to the country, the notions of homeland, patriotism and the betrayal of the country, the importance of Czech language for the exiled or expelled nobles etc., all issues explored through the analysis of the narratives of nobles, the narratives themselves influenced by the collective memory of nobility in contemporary Czech Republic.
Although there is an almost complete absence of primary research in the field at present, several themes presenting some starting thoughts and points of substantial value can be found in the book. The historical themes such as medieval masculinity, military masculinity or the redefinition of masculine and feminine identities in early modern period are accompanied by the sociological and cultural topics including the examination of the role of father in past and present, the reconstruction of gender roles in contemporary literary works and the role of gender in cyberspace.
From the methodological point of view, the majority of texts in the book are based on the theory of “hegemonic masculinity”, formulated by R.W. Connell and others during 1980s. Although often subjected to criticism, this theory proved its value throughout time and is still being widely accepted in the field of gender and masculinity studies, forming a useful theoretical framework and “a useful category of historical analysis” as well.
Several authors in the book acknowledge their affinity to the theory of “hegemonic masculinity”, to the concept of tight connection between masculine construct and social power. Other authors offer detailed case studies exploring the function of the masculine concept in various historical periods. Special attention spanning a number of chapters is given to the often neglected topic of military masculinity. Several chapters on fatherhood examine the underlying concept of patriarchy, while some authors concentrate on the body as a key part in the process of the masculine construction.
All of these texts in general prove that masculinity is, above all, a category that is unstable and malleable, always subject to assault, change, and renegotiation; a process at once of self-assurance, of self-control, and of self-doubt, whose capital purpose is to stay on top of gender hierarchy.
technical ones. The situation of oral history in the Czech Republic is also characterised.
The second part describes one of the least settled areas of oral history and memory studies, the relationship between individual and collective memory. In the third part of the chapter, I argue, with examples from oral history interviews on the subject of World War II and Nazism, that an individual’s memories tend to conform to dominant cultural
patterns, and are composed in ways which are publicly acceptable.