Mads Bielefeldt Stjernø:
Vicissitudes of Post-Communist Identity: A Discourse analysis of Czechoslovak
and Czech Constructions of Political Identities 1989-2000.
MA Thesis (submitted May 2001)
ABSTRACT
This thesis presents a discourse
analysis of the way Czech politicians ‘construct’ the political entities of
Czechoslovakia, the Czech Republic and Europe in period from 1989-2000.
Theoretically, the thesis takes its
outset in a social constructivist approach, asserting that such political
entities are not present as empirical facts, but continuously created and
recreated through the way people talk about them. This verbalization of reality
helps to construct the world, and creates the basis of political visions and
identities. The main argument behind this approach is that states and other
political entities, and not least political visions, are solidified by
articulating differential relations to certain representations of the world
outside, which are excluded from the Self-understanding of entities such as
Czechoslovakia/the Czech Republic and Europe.
The analysis presented is based on
a model, which is established for the purpose of examining the way people
construct the identity of these political entities. The model suggests that the
excluded representations (labeled ‘the Other’ as opposed to the ‘Self’
of the entities) can be described in terms of an ‘ontological’, an ‘axiological’,
and a ‘praxeological’ dimension, the latter suggesting the political
response towards the Other. Moreover, a theoretical mission here is to assert
that the construction of the Self does not have – at least not exclusively –
to rely on the articulation of ‘radical Others’, portraying a sense of
enmity towards the Other. This is reflected in the model, which suggests that
that images of the Other should be analyzed as a continuum; that the
degree of difference from the Self may vary; and that the construction of
the Other is not limited to a matter of asserting absolute difference.
The model is employed in a
discourse analysis locating the excluded representations used by Czech president
Václav Havel and former Czech Prime Minister Václav Klaus to construct
Czechoslovakia, the Czech Republic and Europe. Texts by Havel and Klaus are
selected as empirical sources, since they – beyond any doubt – has been the
two most dominating agents in Czech politics during the 90s. Specifically, the
analysis is focused on speeches and writings produced by these public figures in
three different phases of Post-Communist Czechoslovakia/Czech Republic;
1989-1992, 1993-1997, and 1998-2000.
The analysis points out that Havel
and Klaus construct two dissimilar images of the Czech and the European Self
through different representations of the Other. Both construct the Czech
Republic against a radical Communist Other, which is used to construct two
widely different Self-images. Conversely, Havel and Klaus construct the Self of
Europe by means of dissimilar Others. Havel builds both entities as historical
and cultural communities based on a discourse of values and morality, while
Klaus constructs them as communities of individuals rooted in a ‘free market’
discourse. This is mirrored in the representations located throughout the
analysis. The representations of the Other, and even more so the representation
of the Self, changes only slightly over time, most notably in the case of Havel.
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