Injurious Identities, Wounding Attachments, and Dispositives of Silence: Gender, Czech Dissent Literature, and Václav Havel’s Essay Anatomy of a Reticence

• In Event: New Approaches to Czechoslovak Dissent

Abstract

The paper discusses the ways in which gender was excluded or silenced in Czech literature during the 1970s and 1980s Interpellating readers through positive, socially sanctioned values of independence and autonomy, this literature was at the same time wounding and dis-empowering in gender terms. To this end, the paper focuses on possible gender shortcomings of otherwise important authors from both samizdat and the exile community.

Author

• Jan Matonoha, Institute of Czech Literature CAS (Czech Republic)