Periodic Reporting for period 1 - BlackCzech (Blackness Imagery in the Construction of European Identity/ies: The Case of the Czech Lands in a Transnational Perspective)
Reporting period: 2022-10-01 to 2024-09-30
In the absence of an “official” colonial history of their own, most Central and Eastern European countries have long been left out of conversations on (post)colonialism. This interdisciplinary project proposes a critical contribution addressing the context of the Czech lands from the beginning of the nineteenth century until the 1930s. Its aim is to analyse the extent to which the cultural, artistic and scientific output of a “non-colonial” national society (i.e. that never had colonies) can also be considered a form of colonial participation – even if the members of this nation were occasionally depicted as “colonized objects”. The project thus examines the forms and functions of racial imagery in the construction of European identity/ies, focusing on representations of imagined black and mixed-race people within the bounds of Czech-German and Czech-French cultural relations and transfers. The research spans five interconnected objectives: (1) to account for the “scientific” constructions of black and mixed-race alterity in the Czech lands, (2) to survey the translating literature with colonial topics for the Czech lands, (3) to analyse the representations of black and mixed-race characters in Czech literature (4) as well as the ascription of surrogate “black” identity in German and French literature to Czechs/Slavs, and (5) identify the instrumentalization of the imagery of “blackness” in cultural-political struggles. European society, including Czech society, not only faces racial prejudices, but is also insufficiently informed about historical facts such as the colonial ambitions of Czech lands or the depictions of black and mixed-race people in Czech literature, culture and art. The BlackCzech project, which examines the integration of the imagery of “blackness” into the Central European cultural space and its notions of identity, thus aims to overcome this deficit and contribute to a general awareness of the use of words that in the past created racialized ideas of national belonging. Exploring such representations and better understanding their role in the creation of national identities will thus allow us to take a critical stance towards their problematic legacy in the present.
The starting point of the project was the confirmation and extension of the previously assembled textual corpus. This research took place in libraries and archives in three European countries - the Czech Republic, Germany and France. The analyses focused on translations of French literature and academic, literary and media discourses in the Czech lands and the mutual representation of Czechs and Germans as “black”. The examined data confirmed the predefined hypotheses and in some respects exceeded them - for example, the assumption of a generalized mixophobic discourse was challenged by identified cases of mixophilia in art. This allowed more nuanced conclusions to be formulated. Gradually refined hypotheses were tested within the Department of Slavic Studies at Humboldt University and subsequently consulted in institutions where the researcher completed secondments, i.e. in the Department of Slavic studies at the Sorbonne University and at the Institute for Czech Literature of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague. A project website has been created to promote and record the research activities and as a channel of communication with the wider public (https://www.blackczech.hu-berlin.de/en(opens in new window)). Partial results of the research were presented to the international scientific community in the usual way, i.e. through conferences, workshops, colloquia and participation in seminars, which enabled a confrontation with colleagues from different disciplines. The findings of the research are available in four open access publications so far (three articles and one afterword). As the project progressed, the researcher’s work gained recognition, which allowed access to new responsibilities: co-organizing two international scientific events and being entrusted with editing and co-editing special issues of scientific journals. The strict research work was also accompanied by activities such as the translation of a literary work from the analysed corpus and its publication; pedagogical activities in the form of a translating workshop for students and the conception and implementation of a master’s seminar; cultural and social engagement, which also served as a preparation of the terrain for dissemination. All the work performed (scientific, pedagogical and organizational) culminated in obtaining an Assistant professorship in Czech studies and cultural history at the Sorbonne University.
One of the main research results is a case study exploring how the Haitian revolution resonated in the Czech literary and cultural landscape, especially through translations from French and German. A microanalysis of the Czech version of Victor Hugo’s novel Burg Jargal shows that the translation adds an anti-colonial and anti-imperial layer to the text, suiting local emancipatory aspirations. Thus, from the beginning of the 19th century, in addition to the stereotyping racial colonial discourse, cases of the heroization of enslaved and struggling Africans with identifying potential can be recorded in the Czech lands. Another article, “The Death of the Black and White Venus”, examines the way the female body is depicted as an object of violence in Central and Eastern European art and literature in late 19th century, focusing on the specific motif of the woman on the cross. In doing so, it reveals that the imagery of the suffering body is not universal, but racialized; the parallels in the images of the mixed-race woman and the Polish Jewish woman suggest that in the case of the marginalized “Other”, aesthetic norms are more pervasive. A forthcoming article in the Journal of European Studies explores how colonial discourses of “racial mixing” entered the Czech context. A forthcoming article in the Journal of European Studies explores how colonial discourses of “racial mixing” entered the Czech lands. It offers an analytical overview of this motif, while emphasizing its function as a projection surface for colonial fantasies, aspirations of great Europeanness and fears of “blackness”. Tracing a long period of time allows us to highlight specific phenomena, such as the delay in the spread of certain racial stereotypes as a result of Austrian censorship or the rise of mixophilic motifs in avant-garde art. The project also resulted in the French translation of Vladislav Vančura’s play Jezero Ukereve, set in Uganda, in which the metaphor of the enslavement of the Czech nation and the symbolic dimension of blackness come to life. The publication’s critical apparatus shows how the play challenges racial prejudices and thus contributes to our understanding of anti-colonial resistance during the interwar period. Further impact of the project lies especially in expanding the scope of (post)colonial scholarship on Czech cultural context and in fostering interdisciplinary dialogue leading to new insights into the formation of European and national identity/ies in Central Europe, both in the past and in the present.