Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgements
- List of Archives and Used Abbreviations
- Introduction: The Politics of Disability: Structure and Agency in Nation Building in Czechoslovakia
- Part 1 Building the Czechoslovak Nation and Sacralizing Peoples’ Health: The Vicissitudes of Disability Discourse during the Interwar Period
- Part 2 Postwar Institutionalization of Care for the Disabled: Toward a Universalized Discourse of “Defective Gypsies”
- Conclusions: Going from Knowledge about the Violent Past to Acknowledging It
- Abstracts in German and French
- Bibliography
- Index
5 - The Intersectionality of Disability and Race in Public and Professional Discourses about the Roma in Socialist Czechoslovakia: Between Propaganda and Race Science
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 November 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgements
- List of Archives and Used Abbreviations
- Introduction: The Politics of Disability: Structure and Agency in Nation Building in Czechoslovakia
- Part 1 Building the Czechoslovak Nation and Sacralizing Peoples’ Health: The Vicissitudes of Disability Discourse during the Interwar Period
- Part 2 Postwar Institutionalization of Care for the Disabled: Toward a Universalized Discourse of “Defective Gypsies”
- Conclusions: Going from Knowledge about the Violent Past to Acknowledging It
- Abstracts in German and French
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Abstract
The chapter revises the vicissitudes of public policy on national and international levels that turned socialist policy concerning the Roma from an attempt to secure their rights to reproducing the racial assimilationism and tough surveillance established during the interwar period. The interrogation between Western, anticommunist and socialist propaganda is seen as a main factor in this shift. Alongside exploring public discourse around the Roma, this chapter pays special attention to how the international agenda of racial science worked in favor of the reproduction of nationalist rhetoric in Czechoslovak anthropology – supplemented by universal codes of nationalist consciousness as part of a more general outlook on the world.
Keywords: racial assimilationism, war of propaganda, physical anthropology, neocolonial thinking
The political turbulence of postwar policies concerning the Roma
The socialist politics concerning the Roma was not homogeneous in terms of its main pathos and practicalities. During the first decade of socialism (1948-1958), not only official discourse but also the initiatives of Roma intellectuals and some activists helped with the “renaissance” of the Roma culture and language in contrast to previous policies of surveillance and extermination. This trend survived till the end of the socialist period – but within a narrow range of studies conducted by Emilia Horváthová and Milena Hübschmannová, two anthropologists who remained devoted to the interests of the Roma and preserving their identity. Although Horváthová and Hübschmannová reinforced the cooperation between academia and the Roma activists, especially during the short but bright period of operating the Gypsy-Roma Association (Svaz Cikánů-Romů, 1969-1973), the impact of these scholars remained limited, particularly in the realm of emancipating the Roma from surveillance.
Until the second half of the 1950s, the main thrust of the policies was the struggle against previous injustices experienced by the Roma. Benevolent paternalism toward the Roma resulted in an intensive struggle against illiteracy and attempts to reestablish ethnic minority status for them. The headlines of newspaper articles called for action: “Let's Face the Injustice of the Past: On the Elimination of the Backwardness of Gypsy citizens” or “Eliminating an Unfair Legacy of the Past: The Agenda of Gypsy Settlement.”
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Politics of Disability in Interwar and Socialist CzechoslovakiaSegregating in the Name of the Nation, pp. 145 - 176Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2019