Threefold expropriation and an interrupted chance : Prague Spring and the women/gender discussion in Czechoslovakia
Abstract
In general historical perspective, the events of 1968 in Czechoslovakia were a result of a process of new negotiation between the power and the society which had become more liberated since about 1963. The violent interruption by military invasion in August 1968 meant an end to this process.
The paper raises the question as to whether similar processes can be identified with regard to gender relations and discourses. Indeed, in the sixties, experts started to play an important role in both the discursive and decisive sense, and elements of alternative discourses appeared in the sphere of art and intellectual debates.
The invasion interrupted these processes as well; in the following period, none of the characters, i. e. the authorities, the experts and the political opposition, who tried to substitute the voices of women from below, whose activism was legally banned, were unable to do so and were all sharing a position of enlightenment and paternalist attitude to the target groups, both women and men.