Seminar: How we lived in the years of normalization. Experiences of women from alternative backgrounds in Bratislava
During the years of normalisation, Czechoslovakia was one republic, but in terms of the diversity and intensity of dissent, it was two worlds. A simple quantifier like the number of people who signed Charta 77 suggests an abysmal difference. While in Czechia, hundreds of people signed the Charta 77, in Slovakia it was around forty, and even more, many of them added their signatures only shortly before November 1989 or were Slovaks living in Prague. There were several unofficial communities in Bratislava. These were rather loose groupings of independent artists, women artists, intellectuals, creating a free creative space, rather than the purposeful formation of a political alternative (at least until the mid-1980s). One of the signs of a „community of resistance“ was the ghettoization that resulted from the forcible expulsion of these people from official structures. At the same time, however, it was also a free decision to leave the official space and voluntarily resign from a standard career. This paper will present a feminist critical reading of interviews with 10 actors of the Bratislava community of defiance, which reveals several specific aspects of the narratives.
Main speaker: Oľga Gyárfášová (Comenius University Bratislava)
Comments: Kristina Andělová (Institute of Contemporary History of the CAS) a Ondřej Holub (Institute of Contemporary History of the CAS)
Please note that an audio recording will be made of the seminar, which will be available on the Institute’s website and Spotify.