Word Made Flesh: Czech Women's Writing from Communism to Post-Communism

Abstract

Abstract This article explores changes in from communism to post- communism, focusing in particular on women writers' relationship to literary discourse and feminism. It contends that women writers' rapport to ideological discourse and literary production under communism is a determining factor in relationship to both writing and feminism. It examines this literary legacy in terms of post-communism, surveying differences between a totalitarian socialist regime and that of a materialist, capitalist economy, as exemplified in literature. The article offers a survey major post-communist women writers, including Hodrova, Bouckova, Kriseova, as well as delving into a comparative close-reading analysis of two representatives of both communist and post-communist writing: Eva Kanturkova's Pritelkyne z domu smutku (Companions Of The Bleak House) and Iva Pekarkova's Kulaty svet (The World is Round). Both these texts offer a challenging vision of women's community for today's global order. Key Words: Czech, Women, literature ********** beginning was Word, and Word was with God, and Word was God And Word became flesh and lived among us ... (John 1:1; 1:14 NRSV) I begin with a rather revelationary quote, perhaps because my endeavor in this essay appears rather apocryphal: I will attempt a synoptic account of transition of from communist to post-communist era. At outset I faced with three seemingly eschatological dilemmas. First is difficulty I find in establishing a body of Czech fiction in corpus of literature when my belief is that good literature transcends all gender categorization, as it speaks of desires driving one's being and therefore tends towards universal human condition. Second, however, I am also convinced that, asymptotically, good writing is derived from an individual experience, which is gendered indeed, and so I must allow for a gendered women's experience which could be shared collectively. Finally, while oscillating between individualism and universalism, I must somehow take into account diversity of women writers that have contributed to literature over fifty year period but at same time positing a fundamental change revolving around of 1989 Velvet Revolution: communism and post-communism. Taking into account these dilemmas, I offer this revelationary parabolic parable: that from communism to post communism transformed from to flesh. The bare-bone skeleton of this argument may be structured as follows. In communism, language, both in its oppressive and resistant form, established Word as paradigm defining governing economy and resistant literary economy--the Word was God. In pre-revolutionary summer of 1989,Vaclav Havel drew from same Bible passage as I: can be said to be very source of our being, and in fact substance of cosmic life form we call human one thing would seem to be obvious: we have always believed in power of words to change history. (WW 377-378) Havel illustrates how under communism, power of words formulated itself in collective and generic terms, either as totalizing communalism of totalitarian system or in dissident denunciation advocating universal human rights. Conversely, in post-communism, the word became shift to a market economy, private property and democracy favored a turn to individualism, material concerns, and emphasis on body. In summer of 1991, in newly-formed Czechoslovak Federation, Havel's cautions against harmful effects of post-communism, which he submits are most saliently felt in flesh: the catastrophic decline in general cultural level, level of public manners, related to economic decline . …