BlackCzech · Blackness Imagery in the Construction of European Identity/ies: The Case of the Czech Lands in a Transnational Perspective

Blackness Imagery in the Construction of European Identity/ies: The Case of the Czech Lands in a Transnational Perspective

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.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз