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Recognition of the Armenian Genocide as an Issue in Political Discourse in Armenia, Turkey and selected EU Countries

Uznání genocidy Arménů jako téma politického diskursu Arménie, Turecka a vybraných zemí EU

Author(s): Vincent Kopeček,Emil Souleimanov,Maya Ehrmann / Language(s): Czech / Issue: 4/2013

Keywords: Genocide Recognition; Armenia; Turkey; Caucasus; European Union

The issue whether to legally recognize the tragic events of 1915 in Eastern Anatolia as a genocide remains a key political issue which drives an edge between Armenia and the Republic of Turkey. Through their European diaspora communities, the issue has also entered the domain of the European Union (EU), becoming even more controversial as Turkey is in the process of hotly contested EU accession talks. The present article uses the instruments of discourse analysis to focus on the current perceptions of the Armenian genocide in the various countries involved, specifically within the EU, Armenia and Turkey, in order to explore the political rationale behind the commitment of various states to recognize or deny the aforementioned historical events as an act of genocide. After providing a brief historical overview of the 1915 events, we analyse internal EU perceptions of the “reality” of the Armenian genocide recognition, primarily in relation to Turkey's accession efforts. We then focus on the domestic discourses in Armenia and Turkey, with the goal of shedding light on the rationale behind both Yerevan's encouragement of genocide recognition and Ankara's unwillingness to recognize the genocide, as well as on the political implications of recognition and denial.

Memory, trauma, death: the intervention of language and narrative

Paměť, trauma, smrt: intervence jazyka a narativu

Author(s): Miroslav Kotásek / Language(s): Czech / Issue: 3/2013

Keywords: Čapek Karel; Freud Sigmund; limits of narrative; memory; narrative identity of a subject; trauma

This article discusses the options that narrative and language have in their attempts to capture or describe traumatic experience and death. It concentrates on two prose texts by Karel Čapek, Obyčejný život and Povětroň, and the first phase of Freudian psychoanalysis, pointing at generally distinguishable limits and distortions that arise when narrative and language come in contact with trauma and death. Contrary to the current trend within „trauma studies“, the article does not deal with autobiographical records of traumatic experience. It rather tries to point out that thinking consistently about the connection between memory, language and trauma tends to blur and question the traditional distinction between fiction (understood as a work of imagination) and autobiography (taken as a description of real events). It also tries to show that psychoanalysis arrives, explicitly and implicitly, at a similar conclusion. The last part of the article poses the question what the resulting relationship between the outside (narrated, written story) and the „inner“ experience is like, and to what extent the structure of this dyad can also be questioned.

Public Events as Theatrical Performance

Veřejné akce jako divadelní představení

Author(s): Petr Krčál,Vladimír Naxera / Language(s): Czech / Issue: 1/2011

Keywords: Communal celebration; Dramaturgical analysis; Public events; Robert Fico; Slovak national uprising; St. Constantine and Methodius

In the following article we will utilize dramaturgical analysis to analyse two selected state-organized public events in Slovakia. We contend that public events serve political elites as a tool to manifest their superiority and perform sovereignty, legitimate social hierarchy by constructing an ideological “false consciousness”, and produce social cohesion and solidarity by invoking culturally significant symbols. As the objects of our analysis we selected the commemoration of the Slovak national uprising and the ceremonial unveiling of the sculptures of St. Constantine and Methodius. Both of these events can be defined as celebrations of the Slovak state as well as of the Slovak nation.

The roles of the city in the books of CLIOHRES

The roles of the city in the books of CLIOHRES

Author(s): Karel Kubiš,Božena Radiměřská,Luďa Klusáková / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2010

Keywords: cities; communities; culture; identities; frontiers; spatial scales; CLIOHRES Network

Through an analysis of the approach to the concepts of frontiers and identities in four books of the CLIOHRES Network the authors of this article found a very up-to-date contribution to the broad understanding of urban history. The article suggests pondering about current paths of the specific research field of urban history, which is not easy to define. The city itself was not the object of research of the members of the network, but rather a space for analysis of more general questions. Although the focus on the city was often instrumental, the authors understood its paradigmatic function. The analysis highlighted intensive interest in spatial scales and questioning of the two key concepts of frontiers and identities simultaneously in interaction. The urban perspective was not felt as a reduction or limitation. Frontiers and identities played a key role, even if they were not in focus. During the last two or three decades the research field of urban history went through considerable transformation. Some urban historians even speak about its semantic expansion. While classical urban historiography focused on the city and urban society as an object of analysis, current research very often studies past societies only through the optics of the life of cities. The microcosm of cities is explored as a showcase of the society or only as its sample, as a representation of the society of the period or of its mentali ty. These new approaches to urban studies are present in the books analyzed in the following pages.

Discourses, Institutions and Practical Care Arrangements for Children under the Age of Three in a French-Czech Comparative Perspective

Diskursy, instituce a praxe péče o děti do tří let ve francouzsko-české komparativní perspektivě

Author(s): Radka Dudová,Hana Hašková / Language(s): Czech / Issue: 02/2010

Keywords: discourse; institutionalism; childcare

The article offers a comparison of the development of institutions of care for children under the age of three in France and in the Czech Republic. It explains the differences in the forms of institutions, policies and the level of state support using a comparative analysis of the discourses of childcare that have existed in the two countries since the end of the Second World War. Expert discourses in particular were found to have an important role in the development of institutions and policies: psychological discursive framings had a strong influence on the public discourse, political decisions and the resulting form of institutions. While in France mainly empirically-oriented psychologists and pedagogues entered the debate, in Czechoslovakia/the Czech Republic the discursive arena was dominated by clinical psychologists and paediatricians. Other influential factors were identified, such as the economic situation, political actors, social movements; and sequencing of events; but the expert discourse was proved to be crucial for the understanding of the divergent development of childcare institutions in the two countries.

How Women and Men Are Constructed as Clients in Social Work Practices

Konstrukce žen-klientek a mužů-klientů v praxi sociální práce

Author(s): Lucie Černá,Radka Janebová / Language(s): Czech / Issue: 02/2008

Keywords: social work; social construction; gender; stereotypes; prejudices

Gendered practices in social work have never before been the subject of research in the Czech Republic. This article looks at gender perceptions and stereotypes in social work practices. It contains a discussion of some findings from a recent qualitative study of a social work organization. The research set out to explore the gendered constructions of women and men as clients. Data were collected from in‑depth interviews with social workers. The conclusion of research is that women are constructed as responsible for protection, as cooperative, as subordinate and as hysterical, whereas men are constructed as outspoken, as uncooperative and as aggressive. The findings show the importance of raising the awareness of social workers about their gender strategies and the possible impact of these strategies on their professional work.

Everyday Life in ‘Socialism’

O všedním životě v „socialismu“

Author(s): Karel Hrubý / Language(s): Czech / Issue: 02/2014

Keywords: Communism; Totalitarianism; Dictatorship; Normalization

This article focuses on the method and interpretation of several key concepts which Michal Pullmann and some other younger historians use in their study of history of communism. Their basic starting point is a conviction that existing interpretations of communist dictatorship are one-sided because they tend to posit a binary contrast between an all-powerful regime and a powerless society. At the same time, however, these younger historians explain the longevity of communist regimes by consent on the part of the population, which makes such a system a ‘participative’ dictatorship. Part of the responsibility is thus transferred to ‘society’ which is seen as undifferentiated, as a homogeneous whole. Their studies, however, focus only on that part of society which played an active part in the public discourse. Other parts of the society, those which were either excluded from the authoritative discourse or resigned from their participation, are represented neither in the discourse nor in the image of everyday life. In the author’s view, this method thus beings only partial knowledge of the final stage of ‘socialist regimes’ and any criticism arising from such a narrow base can produce only an unconvincing and disproportionate criticism of the totalitarian model.

A History of Women or Gender History?

Dějiny žen či gender history?

Author(s): Denisa Nečasová / Language(s): Czech / Issue: 01/2008

Keywords: gender history; history of women; history of power

The article provides a critical overview of research into the history of women and gender history of roughly the last three decades, focusing on the founding generation of American women historians. It considers in detail the debate that was called forth by the provocative, manifesto-like articles of Joan W. Scott, particularly ‘Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis’. In addition, however, it discusses reserved approaches to historiography, which can be called feminist. With many small observations the article considers, for example, the limits of existing interpretations of approaches, the fuzziness of the definition of gender history, and the sometimes too narrowly defined conception of gender history as the history of power. The author briefly also considers Czech research, which hitherto has tended to concentrate on the history of women rather than gender history, and for the time being has not, with few exceptions, gone beyond the reception of English-language works and the methods they employ.

The nature of typeface, its limits and media

Povaha písma, jeho meze a nosiče

Author(s): Tomáš Glanc / Language(s): Czech / Issue: 6/2015

Keywords: medium; typeface; electronic text; hypertext; materiality; cultural technology; samizdat; ergodicity; semiotics; paper; visual poetry; experimental poetry

This article examines literature from the standpoint of mediality, defining medium as an act, i.e. “an apparatus brought into operation”. A new sensitivity towards the media dimension of literary communication, bolstered by new technologies, applies to typeface and writing itself, the media of the work and communication — the treatment of the work as a physical phenomenon. The media dimension of writing is not just conceived as a phenomenon bound to digital data or the internet, but as an age-old element in the treatment of texts and associated both with the meanings of texts and the authority mediated by texts. From these standpoints samizdat also appears to be a noteworthy phenomenon which creates a particular materiality for writing, along with various forms of experimental treatment of typeface, writing and text. One productive tool here appears to be Aarseth’s ergodicity, a term applied to an attribute of a work that involves or creates rules on which its non-linear “usage” is based. On the basis of a number of specific cases it is shown what media-“staged” and variously produced (cf. Kittler) text might be like, and what uncertainties apply to it. From this standpoint avant-garde experiments confront questions raised by theologians, mystics and glossolalia theorists.

“How to Live Naturally in Order to Reach High Age”

„Jak bychom přirozeně žíti měli, abychom dosáhli věku nejvyššího“

Author(s): Veronika Najmanová / Language(s): Czech / Issue: 01/2015

Keywords: Gender History; History of the Body; History of Medicine

The aim of this study is to briefly explore the possibility of using medical literature to study the history of gender and to present some preliminary conclusions resulting from gender analysis of a particular type of source, such as medical manuals. By ‘medical manuals’ we mean medical publications intended for the lay public. Their main purpose was to inform the public about the functioning of the human body, various ways of diagnosing particular diseases, healthy lifestyle, and appropriate nursing of ill persons. This contribution presents the outcome of analysis of a specific medical source, namely medical guides published in the Bohemian Lands between the second half of the nineteenth and the early decades of the twentieth centuries. Its aim was to answer the following questions: How do the authors of these medical manuals treat femininity and masculinity? What do these publications say about the status of physicians and medicine in general in society of the time? Are some of the diseases treated in the manuals associated with a particular gender? On a general level, the aim of the study is to analyse the way in which gender was conceptualised in the medical manuals.

Biography as a Textual and Social Practice

Biografie jako textová a sociální praxe

Author(s): Lenka Řezníková / Language(s): Czech / Issue: 01/2015

Keywords: Biography; 19th Century; Narrativism

Despite all the various postmodernist trends in historiography, biographies continue to be an essential part of historical literature. And while at the end of the 20th century biography as a genre may have seemed exhausted and dead, the first decades of the new millennium had clearly demonstrated that this is not the case. This holds for both medieval studies and Modern history. Especially in medieval studies, we have recently witnessed almost a rebirth of biographic writing, and that despite the fact that sources for biographies of medieval persons are few and far between and, with but a handful of exceptions, one cannot produce a well-balanced biography where the person of interest would figure as more than just a mute participant of historical events. Czech historians still tend to focus on individuals who were active in politics or culture and using their stories try to capture the outline of the times in which they lived and which they helped mould by their actions. Surprisingly much attention is currently paid to biographies of Czech and Czechoslovak historians of the 19th and 20th centuries. They are seen as one of the ways in which historiographers can come to terms with their own past. And this continuing interest is the focus of our discussion board. Lenka Řezníková in her contribution analyses the causes of increase in biographical writing in the late 18th and the 19th centuries. She focuses on the textual practice of biographies and on the social interaction between ideas about the character, status, and meaning of life of an individual, which contributed to the creation of a modern notion of an individual. Her basic claim is that the quantitative increase in the number of biographies and autobiographies was the result of social changes which in the late 18th century led to the establishment of a new concept of an autonomous subject. Lukáš Fasora analyses the biographical approach to the history of working classes in the German and Anglo-Saxon historiography of recent decades and confronts it with Czech biographical contributions to this subject. And finally, Jiří Štaif uses his experience from writing the social and political biography of František Palacký to consider the various approaches to writing a biography, the limitations of such an enterprise, and its advantages over a narrative discourse.

'Only Slightly Does the Water Separate Us!’. On Flowing, the Vanishing Point, and Navigation

„Trocha jen vody nás dělí!“ O ubíhání, úběžníku, o navigaci

Author(s): Pavel Kordík / Language(s): Czech / Issue: 29/2018

Keywords: Narcissus; Prospero; Gilgamesh; speech; silence; attention; resonance; ondulation; identity; identification; heteronomy; Ovidius, Metamorphoses; Miloslav Kabeláč; Dino Buzzati; The Seven Messengers

The topic of our deliberation is resonance as an issue of understanding ourselves and the world, — an understanding that is undoubtedly related to speech. Resonance, as an issue, opened by senses in the world; an issue opening for senses and in the world; resonance as a matter of senses, whose sensorium commune is the body: becoming of the body (the body-becoming), therefore always a question of identity and difference (identifying and identified, marking and marked, differentiating and differentiated). The subject of our deliberation is the undulation that shapes cannot be represented by the shape of the wave or by the sum of individual shapes of the waves (any confirmation, reassuring of My-self in a shape or by a shape is always seriously threatened by the disintegration of Me). So, if Eastern thought says “the shape is empty”, besides the philosopher of being and existence, besides the phenomenologist, besides the metaphysician, besides the philosopher of the body, besides the philosopher of significance, in our reflection we also recognize the philosopher of emptiness.

The teaching potential of urban space in history teaching (case study of České Budějovice)

Město — prostor — dějepis. Didaktický potenciál městského prostoru ve výuce dějepisu (příklad Českých Budějovic)

Author(s): Michal Kurz / Language(s): Czech / Issue: 1/2018

Keywords: teaching of history; history didactics; school historical sources; inquiry-based learning; urban space; memory; České Budějovice;

The study endeavours to analyze the urban space as a specific school historical source and examines its possible use in the context of Czech history teaching. It describes some inspiring concepts and methods connected with the category of space in different disciplines (urban studies, memory studies, historiography, heritage) and suggests several teaching activities applied to the urban spaces in the South Bohemian city of České Budějovice.

Cultural constructions of the King of Šumava

Kulturní konstruování Krále Šumavy

Author(s): František Kölbl / Language(s): Czech / Issue: 2/2020

Keywords: King of the Šumava Mountains, Kalčík Rudolf; Kachyňa Karel; Sichinger Martin; Žák David Jan; cultural representation; frontier

This study focuses on literary and film representations of the “King of Šumava” and associated narratives (state border guards and people-smugglers), examining the links between individual works and their period context and media. Attention is also focused on the intertextual “communications” interconnecting works and the relations between the individual Šumava King characters to their real-world prototypes. Emphasis is placed on film analysis and the eponymous novel Král Šumavy (King of Šumava) together with the post-revolutionary prose works Smrt Krále Šumavy (Death of the Šumava King) and Návrat Krále Šumavy (Return of the Šumava King). The concluding section articulates both the contrasting and the shared features of individual representations, which are often closely associated with the period in which any given work was written. To summarize, none of the works under review goes against the paradigm of its era, so that we may generally categorize those written before 1989 as the Communist Šumava King anti-myth (people-smuggler characters who play exclusively negative roles), while the later ones, referring to the inhumanity of 1950s totalitarianism and the need to fight against it, may be categorized as the post-Communist Šumava King myth.

On Author, Copyright and Originality: Does the Unified EU Originality Standard Correspond to the Digital Reality in Wikipedia?

On Author, Copyright and Originality: Does the Unified EU Originality Standard Correspond to the Digital Reality in Wikipedia?

Author(s): Aurelija Lukoševičienė / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2017

Keywords: Copyright Law; Concept of Author; Originality; Wikipedia;

This article is contributing to the future of copyright law debate by exploring the recently harmonised originality standard in the EU copyright law and its suitability to a creative sharing community of Wikipedia. It shows that the “free creative choices” and “author’s personal” touch criteria established by the CJEU might be unsuitable not only because of practical concerns, but also because the understanding of “author” they are based on does not match the understanding possessed by Wikipedia community. The concepts of author (or rather author and Wikipedian) are compared through three key elements: author’s relationship with work, author’s relationship with others and presumptions about author’s personality and creative process.

From Market Socialism to Privatization

From Market Socialism to Privatization

Author(s): Václav Rameš / Language(s): English / Issue: 1 (29)/2019

Keywords: Czechoslovakia; Privatization; Economics; Normalization;Socialism;

The article focuses on the development of Czech political economy (economics) in the 1970’s and 1980’s. It examines the texts of professional economists and analyses new theoretical paradigms they were using after the 1960’s analytical categories of market socialism had been pushed out of the official expert discussion. It identifies the 1980’s expert group, formed around the seminars at the State bank with Václav Klaus as one of the main organizers, as an important intellectual milieu where a new language of critique of the socialist economy was created. The new approaches, based largely on microeconomics, enabled their adherents to imagine alternative economic policies, different to the alternatives presented by their predecessors in the 1960’s, and prepared them for embracing even radical ideas such as privatization of state assets OPEN ACCESS 88 WISOHIM/ESHP 29 (something unheard of in the previous decades). Such development was possible also because of the limited capability of the state’s security apparatus to effectively control the experts’ professional activities.

Lex Ex Machina: Reasons for Algorithmic Regulation

Lex Ex Machina: Reasons for Algorithmic Regulation

Author(s): Mirko Pečarič / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2021

Keywords: Planning; Anticipation; Adaptive Legislation; Autopilot; Stochastic Indicators; Algorithms

A major unanswered question in regulation concerns the application of cognitive diversity and various data as inputs for the creation of general legal rules. The paper claims this diversity can be assured with the help of algorithmic planning. Classical regulation is hence put under question due to its inability to quickly adapt to changing conditions, where relations per se change also intentions, tools and goals. The paper proposes two paths towards a computational simulation of legal situations: with the help of algorithms that can ensure the needed adaptability and relevancy of hidden data correlations, and with collective intelligence based on human inputs where data for algorithms is not available. The aim of this work is to extend the pre-regulatory practice of extracting information from data with the help of algorithms to determine patterns and predict future results and trends (written now as general legal rules). Nowadays, algorithms could be used at least as advice, especially in a prepreparation, draft phase of legal acts.

Between the Hidden and the Conventional: Kenneth Burke and the Theory of the Symbol

Mezi skrytým a konvenčním. Kenneth Burke a teorie symbolu

Author(s): Martin Švantner,Marianna Abrahamyan / Language(s): Czech / Issue: 40/2022

Keywords: Kenneth Burke; sign; symbol; symbolic action; rhetoric; semiotics

This article discusses Kenneth Burke’s theory of the symbol, which considers the use of the sign as a specifically human activity associated with the formation of meaning. In Burke’s view, the symbol is a meaning-making device that can influence human action and thoughts, and therefore represents the key to understanding the nature of human communication. In this article, Burke’s ideas are compared to other sign-symbol theories — namely, the semiotics of Umberto Eco and Juri Lotman, Charles Sanders Peirce’s semeiotics, as well as Ernst Cassirer’s philosophy of symbolic forms —, with analysis on the way each of these theorists defines the nature of the symbol and its conventional acceptation, principle of identification, and the characteristics of the symbolisation process itself.

Humanistic Challenges in the (In)Balance of Processes and Social Practices (A Panorama of Tropes of Duality / Dual-process Theory)

Humanistyczne wyzwania (nie)zrównoważenia procesów i praktyk społecznych (panorama tropów dwoistości / dual-process theory)

Author(s): Lech Witkowski / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 2/2022

Keywords: dual structure; sociological ambivalence; levels of complexity of systems of activity; practices and social processes; feedback mechanisms

The article discusses the contemporary conflict over “meta-patterns” in the humanities. Aside from the introduction, it consists of seven sections. First, the author presents and objects to the dominant visions of cognitive strategies in contemporary humanities, which are defective when analyzing the complexity of phenomena and processes. Secondly, they are named and questioned as illusions about excellence in the dominant modes of the institutionalization of science. Thirdly, the author discusses examples pertaining to the increasing complexity of phenomena as a humanistic challenge. Fourthly, he refers to the concept of dual processes in culture and social practice. The fifth section illustrates the recurring problem of imbalance in the structure of such processes and practices, also highlighting the importance of an ecological approach, together with its new understanding of the humanities. The sixth section of the article examines the tension between the institutionalization and the intellectualization of discourse, for the sake of uniting them into one process. Finally, instead of a conclusion, in the seventh part the author offers some emphasis in the form of a message for the future in the postulated strategy of development and self-education.

Discourse as a communicative event

Дискурсът като комуникативно събитие

Author(s): Dimitar Popov / Language(s): Bulgarian / Issue: 1/2005

Keywords: Discourse; communicative event;