Sylabus
1) Introduction
2) Pavel Barša, Zora Hesová, Ondřej Slačálek, Introduction: How Does Post-communism End. Central European Culture Wars in the 2010s, in: Central European Culture Wars: Beyond Post-communism and Populism, FF UK, Prague
3) Michal Kopeček, Narrating Dissidence to Post-Dissident Narratives of Democracy: Anti-totalitarianism, Politics of Memory and Culture Wars in East-Central Europe 1970s–2000s, ibid.
4) Csaba Szaló, The Cultural Sociology of Hungarian National Conservatism, ibid.
5) Ondřej Slačálek, The Dynamics of the Polish Culture Wars, ibid.
6) Ondřej Slačálek, Czech Republic: Populism without Culture Wars? Ibid.
7) Jana Vargovčíková, Anti-gender Campaigns in Slovakia and the Dissolution of the Liberal-Conservative Alliance, ibid.
8) Zora Hesová, A New Austrian Kulturkampf? Ibid.
9) Zora Hesová, The Moment After: Culture Wars in a Polarized Croatia, ibid.
10) Pavel Barša, Zora Hesová, Afterword (I)
11) Pavel Barša, Zora Hesová, Afterward(II)
12) Closing Discussion
13) Written Examination
Anotace
Whereas the year 1989 symbolizes the victory of globalization and universalistic values in Central Europe, 2015 may stand for the reaffirmation of national sovereignty and cultural particularism. Reconfirmation of external borders, which reversed their softening in the wake of 1989, was complemented by the opening of a domestic front against those who insisted on human solidarity and multicultural coexistence.
Simultaneously, the ultra-conservatives started attacking gender equality and LGBT rights. Against these and other liberal norms adopted in the process of Western integration, they claimed the right of Central European countries to decide upon their way of life in a sovereign manner—without interference from the West, depicted as decadent precisely for its embrace of cultural diversity and universalism.
Drawing on the book in print which the instructor of the course has co-edited the course will focus on this national-conservative turn in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, Austria and Croatia. Replacing the frameworks of populism and post-communism by that of culture wars the course will elaborate on how they manifested themselves in those countries in the last decade along the axes of memory, identity and morality.