“The Velvet Divorce”: the Czech Republic, 20 years on

On 1 January 1993, the federal state of Czechoslovakia was formally dissolved and two new independent states created: the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The event became known as the “Velvet Divorce”, owing to its peaceful nature and the fact that it followed on from the “Velvet Revolution” of 1989, which brought about the fall of the Communist Party and the formation of a democratic government. By taking the Czech Republic of the past 20 years as her time and spatial frame, and using an anthropological perspective, the speaker will analyse the construction of the different narrative, historical and iconographic discourses of the Czech national identity.
Based on the work of Ladislav Holy, carried out at the time the Republic dissolved, and on a recent ethnographic work, the speaker will be reflecting on the way in which the myths, symbols and traditions in which ethnicity and language have played an essential role have been crucial in the construction of a national Czech identity. An exclusionary discourse that will help us to understand the current situation of other ethnic and national minorities, such as the Roma, the new "pariahs" of 21st-century Europe.
 

Cycle: The State of the world - IV Central Europe and its transitions

Organized by: Residence for Researchers