Sameness and Difference in the Mirror of Autobiographical Research: Collective identities of Czech and Slovak Jews and its reflection in biographical narratives
Abstract
The article presents a research of the narratively expressed collective identities in autobiographical interviews from the USC Shoah Foundation's Visual History Archive. The first and second part the theoretical and methodological background is presented (connection between identity and memory in the sociological discourse, "narrative turn" in context of the autobiographical material, the characteristics of the empirical data).
The third part of the text presents some of the research results focusing on the multiplicity or conflicts of collective identities in the context of specific individual reflection and re-interpretation in the mid-90's, when the research interviews were conducted. Article aims to grasp not only the specific features of narrative and rhetorical expression of identity and diversity, but it is also a contribution to current discussion on the identity construction, and the nature of the mutual relationships and contradictions of the collective identities.