Between resentment and forgiveness: public histories in the Czech and South African transitions

Title:

Between resentment and forgiveness: public histories in the Czech and South African transitions

Creator:

Hladík, Radim

Identifier:

https://cdk.lib.cas.cz/client/handle/uuid:1a968ef5-fad5-4231-a8a5-e3fe348966ee
uuid:1a968ef5-fad5-4231-a8a5-e3fe348966ee

Subject:

filozofie, philosophy, post-socialism, post-colonialism, apartheid, memory, history, Czech Republic, South Africa, 5, and 101

Type:

model:article and TEXT

Description:

Departing from the recent scholarship that acknowledges fundamental similarities in the post-colonial and the post-socialist experiences, the article argues that comparisons across these two contexts and paradigms prove themselves to be a useful tool for analysis of specific problems of transitioning societies. This claim is demonstrated by examination of the making of public history of the recent past in the Czech Republic and South Africa. Two authoritative aspects of public history are considered: the state-sanctioned commemoration and historiography. Whereas the South African state has sought by the means of transitional justice to reconcile the former victims and victimizers in a shared quest for the truth, the Czech state prioritizes legislative and judiciary assignment of retroactive blame. The South African historiography is closely tied to collective memory and prefers the approach of social history. The Czech historiography of the recent past is dominated by the totalitarian paradigm and prioritizes archival work. In both cases, the political and the historiographical projects seem to overlap in crucial points. It is suggested that the articulation of public history as either resentment or forgiveness may have been ultimately predetermined by the forms of resistance to the opressive regimes.

Language:

Czech

Rights:

http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/
policy:public

Coverage:

113-137

Source:

Teorie vědy | 2009 Volume:31 | Number:2

Harvested from:

CDK

Metadata only:

false