"We have lost the continuity of it...": Revisiting historical implications of the contemporary feminist organizing in the Czech Republic
Abstract
Extensive research into the dynamics of the social movements has contributed significantly to the recognition that the political and geographic preconditions underlying the emergence of the feminist collective identity are important factors in the possibilities of feminist organizing. Therefore, the aim of the article was to analyse the intersection between political and personal, historical and contemporary aspects of narrating identity in the local context and to gain insight into how feminists reflect on their collective feminist identification in the light of the post-socialist history.
The study builds on narrative interviews with 26 women, who reflect on the historical background of the Czech feminist movement in which they engage nowadays. The research results discuss distinctive features of post-socialist countries, e.g., non-activism, unwillingness to express committed consent in relation to feminist movement and its continuity, the negotiation of western and local feminism and limits of the construction of the collective identity.
This article is intended to be a selective summary - linking theoretical concepts, which have been extensively discussed but have been not substantiated by practical statements, to the contemporary state of feminist organizing. My effort was to contribute to the debates on the specificity of women's experience in post-socialist societies and analyse the framework of how we think about historical implications of local feminism within the context of "western" feminism.