Events

dJaroslav Dušek (speaking, acting, dancing, singing), Pjér Lašéz (bass, guitar, singing, speaking), Zdeněk Konopásek (drums, percussion, trumpet), Viktor Zborník (lights).

Lecture within series The key texts for social anthropology, Dept. of anthropology, Faculty of human sciences, Charles University

Concert at the music club Barák, Kostelec nad Černými Lesy

Presentation at the 5th international conference on Conflict in identities, identities in conflict, Faculty of social studies, Masaryk University in Brno

When participating in environmental controversies, social actors engage not only in arguing, but also in various forms of “identity work”. By articulating the subject of a controversy, they often imply definitions of themselves and of their opponents. Examples from my recent empirical work suggest that flexibility, mutability and multiplicity of these identities are an important resource for conflict resolution. Although this may sound as a typically abstract academic view of the problem I will discuss its practical political relevance.

Concert

Jaroslav Dušek (speaking, acting, dancing, singing), Pjér Lašéz (bass, guitar, singing, speaking), Zdeněk Konopásek (drums, percussion, trumpet), Viktor Zborník (lights).

Concert at the Nad Viktorkou pub (Bořivojova, Praha 3 - Žižkov)

Invited presentation for the plenary session of the 9th conference of The International Institute for Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis (IIEMCA), Bentley College, Waltham, MA, USA; August 6-9, 2005

Understanding the communist past of Central and Eastern European countries is a persisting task even today, 15 years after the fall of the iron curtain. Dominant political discourses, media images and legal documents push through the following idea of communism: it was something, which originated in a few extra-ordinary, single and far-reaching events (such as violent turnovers, revolutions, military interventions, and colossal intellectual failures); which was based and dependent on a totally controlled and clearly located, centralized power (e.g., the power of a Central Committee of the Communist Party); and which is essentially incommensurable with other political/social regimes (i.e., with democracies in the West and with the new democratic regimes in the region). This tendency is particularly strong if the issue of communism is addressed explicitly and on a general level. At many other occasions, however, when we focus upon situated and practically oriented actions of different social actors, both in the present and in the past, the picture looks different and more complicated. A space for ethnomethodologically inspired study of the communist regime opens up and ordinary resources of the extraordinary power become visible. To show the charm and relevance of such an approach, very much neglected in this field of research, I will use an example of a study undertaken together with my colleague Zuzana Kusá from Bratislava: we have chosen the example of political screenings in former Czechoslovakia to demonstrate the local production of power relations that constituted the reality of the political regime. The analysis of detailed narrative accounts of events that happened in early 1970s suggests that an inverted, non-totalitarian theoretical interpretation of communism is feasible, which better corresponds to the lived, practical experience of involved actors: the power of communists was made real and durable not so much by means of total control, unconditional subsumption and clear-cut categorizations, but rather by means of flexible and subtle identity-work and of partial connections.

Live at the 2nd annual underground festival in Rankovice

Concert in the new club Metropolis (Donatellova 2001, Praha 10, Strašnice)

Concert at the Nad Viktorkou pub (Bořivojova, Praha 3 - Žižkov)

Concert at the Half-way Cafe, Central park Pankrac, Praha 4

Concert in the pub Nad Viktorkou (Bořivojova ul. Praha 3)

Concert at the Nad Viktorkou pub (Bořivojova, Praha 3 - Žižkov)

Concert, Club Vagón (Národní st.)