This text presents an analysis of the recent emphasis in HIV/AIDS prevention campaigns: the discursive constructions of HIV/AIDS as an issue of risk and its management. Specifically, the text discusses the prevention materials produced by state-funded institutions in the Czech Republic. The aim of the text is twofold: First, it analyses the specific discourse (and rationality) of risk that permeates HIV/AIDS prevention in relation to and as a part of modern biopolitics and (self-)governance. Second, the text examines the discourse of risk for its gendered implications and its re-inscription of gendered power inequalities., Kateřina Kolářová., Obsahuje bibliografii, and Anglické resumé
The right to end an unwanted pregnancy as an integral part of the full citizenship of women has been influenced, reinfluenced, and questioned by different actors in the Czech Republic since the 1950s. Until 1986 the right to abortion was not viewed as a woman’s personal right, but depended upon the decision of abortion commissions and was influenced by the current demographic and political situation. The decision-making process was a very embarrassing experience for many women, who in fact had no other means of contraception available to them. In this paper, I analyse the legal and political regulation of abortion from the perspective of Foucault´s theory of governmentality and biopower. Abortion regulation is an example of how state power influences and disciplines the bodies of its subjects, how it regulates the population and shapes it according to the government’s needs. Through the regulation of abortion, the state not only attempted to restrict a woman’s right to make decisions about her own body, but also defined which of its citizens should or should not become a parent and under what circumstances, and who should or should not have the right to be born. In the text I first present the theory of governmentality, then I analyse the periods of the regulation of abortion in socialist Czechoslovakia, and finally I show how this regulation can be understood as an instrument of a specific form of governmentality typical of totalitarian communist regime., Radka Dudová., Obsahuje bibliografii, and Anglické resumé
Tento článek představuje polemiku s některými tezemi Pavla Holländera vyjádřenými v jeho článku „Soumrak moderního státu“. Konkrétně se snaží ukázat, že některé „skryté kódy“ moderního státu jsou spíše než znaky, které by splňovaly současné státy, weberovskými ideálními typy, představujícími jisté tendence v politickém uspořádání Evropy objevivší se někdy od 12. do 20. století. Zejména pak polemizuje s Böckenfördeho představou, že moderní stát vznikl v procesu sekularizace a stal se jejím „vehiklem“. Místo toho prezentuje názory historických sociologů (jako Anderson, Tilly, Ertman či Gorski), podle nichž stát vznikl díky „militaristicko-fiskálním“ krokům podniknutým přibližně od vrcholného středověku. Tyto teze pak doplňuje názory Michela Foucaulta, především představou governmentality, rozvinutou v jeho díle „Securité, Territoire, Population“, která nastupuje někdy od 16. století poté, co jí připravila půdu pastorální moc křesťanství. Moderní stát je pak chápán „jen“ jako jedna z „epizod“ ve vývoji governmentality. and This article is a polemic with some theses presented by Pavel Holländer in his article “Twilight of Modern State”. In particular it tries to show that some features of modern state according to Holländer are not fulfilled by contemporary European states and these features could be rather
perceived as Weberian ideal types or tendencies and inclinations presented during the development of European political entities from 12th to 20th century. First of all the article argues against Böckenförde’s thesis about the creation of state in the process of secularization and thesis that state is a vehicle of secularization. It presents an alternative “military-fiscal” theory of European state-building (Tilly, Ertman) connected with disciplinary theory of Gorski. At the same time it uses Foucault’s concept of governmentality as a kind of successor of Christian pastoral power to show that modern state is “only” an episode of governmentality.