'A man is not what he feels like': Identities of the Czechoslovak Jews in the USC Shoah Foundation's Visual History Archive
Abstract
The paper is focused on narrative expression of collective identities in the autobiographical interviews from the USC Shoah Foundation's Visual History Archive. The first part is a brief discussion of the theoretical and methodological background; the second part presents some results of the research of multiple collective identities (in the context of specific individual reflection and re-interpretation in the mid-90's, when the VHA interviews were conducted).
I understand identities sociologically from the interactionist and social-constructivist point of view, which is conceiving identity not as a fixed and given “objective” fact, but as a (linguistically and socially negotiated) reflexive construction. Following P.
Ricoeur and others, I argue that identity is based on the interplay of sameness and difference. In the contemporary society, individuals have a number of social identities, sometimes engaging simultaneously, but also conflicting.
For the purpose of this paper, I present segments of the Czech and Slovak survivor narratives, where the speakers reflect on the multiplicity or conflicts of their national-state identity (Czech, Slovak or Czechoslovak) and ethnic identity (Jewish) in the pre-war Czechoslovakia. The aim is to grasp not only the specific features of narrative and rhetorical expression of identity, but also to contribute to the current discussion on the identity construction and the relationships between different collective identities.