The Politics of Disability in Interwar and Socialist Czechoslovakia 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
Conclusions: Going from Knowledge about the Violent Past to Acknowledging It
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
This conclusions provide an overview of the methodological framework of the volume and discuss the contemporary obstacles for recognizing the role of politics of disability in segregation of the Roma and the limits of recent attempts to advance transitional justice.
Keywords: historical justice, strategic litigation, transitional justice in postsocialism, Human rights
Exploring the politics of disability in twentieth-century Czechoslovakia alludes to the broader circumstances of intersecting discourses around health and ethnicity, and the institutions of public health, education and social care; it combines political propaganda with science, reproducing the reciprocity of national and international agents creating the politics of health, disease and disability. By bringing together these mutually interrelated lines of historical analysis, this book recognized as specific the mainstream traits of the nation-building process during the interwar and socialist periods – that particular time of intensive building of the Czechoslovak state and the practice of nationalism. During these periods, the politics of disability attainted the position of one of the most influential realms for shaping national ideology and advancing diverse political interests. Undoubtedly, its ongoing influence is embedded in the specific interrelation between health and ethnicity produced by political and academic elites within the nation-building process.
Experiencing two authoritarian regimes, national socialism and communism, brought into action specific strategies aimed at minimizing the responsibility of academic and professional communities for participating in systematic injustice including violence of knowledge against the minorities. On the one hand, the Czech scholars systematically opposed their own approach to both Nazi and Soviet science. On the other hand, they avoided the majority of the options to take part in the process of critical revision targeted at recognizing the legacy of authoritarian regimes in producing the knowledge, which was recruited for legitimizing segregation. The lack of historical continuities between the interwar, Protectorate and socialist periods vitiates the options for ensuring epistemic justice that calls for recognizing the role of professionals in practicing segregation.
The public discourse on disability during the interwar and socialist periods dovetailed with one of the main components of the Czechoslovak national ideology – the concept of “functional health,” or linking health with the ability to work and to be a useful citizen.
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- The Politics of Disability in Interwar and Socialist CzechoslovakiaSegregating in the Name of the Nation, pp. 203 - 212Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2019