Anthropologists and Their Monsters: Ethnicity, Body, and Ab/Normality in Early Czech Anthropology

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F00216208%3A11240%2F16%3A10325236" target="_blank" >RIV/00216208:11240/16:10325236 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/18763308-04302007" target="_blank" >http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/18763308-04302007</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/18763308-04302007" target="_blank" >10.1163/18763308-04302007</a>

Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Anthropologists and Their Monsters: Ethnicity, Body, and Ab/Normality in Early Czech Anthropology

Original language description

This article traces the emergence of the discipline of physical anthropology in the Czech lands and on its first public presentation at the Czechoslavic Ethnographic Exhibition held in 1895 in Prague. The search for the physical characteristics of Czechs involved a large-scale anthropometric survey in Czech schools and among the adult population from 1893 to 1895, which was subsequently presented at this exhibition. This article focuses on the production of expert knowledge within the context of contemporary nationalist discourses. Comparison with anthropological traditions in other parts of the Habsburg Empire (Vienna and Budapest) show how the Czech tradition differed in strongly insisting on the existence of a "Czech type" resulting from anthropology's entanglement with Czech nationalist discourses, which in the 1880s and 1890s partly subscribed to a social-Darwinist vision of the Czech collective body. Taking the notion of disability as an analytical category into the analysis, the article confirms how the search for the "Czech type" depended on the notion of bodily ab/ normality and how people with disabilities served as the "internal Others" against which the "normal" Czech self could emerge. This is most vividly demonstrated by the figure of Josef Drásal, a professional freak show "Giant," who was exhibited at the 1895 anthropological display in reference to the normative size of the human body, to the strength and ability of the national collective, and to the rather problematic relationship of Czech nationalism to "peasants."

Czech name

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Czech description

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Type

J_x - Unclassified - Peer-reviewed scientific article (Jimp, Jsc and Jost)

CEP classification

AB - History

OECD FORD branch

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Project

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Continuities

S - Specificky vyzkum na vysokych skolach

Publication year

2016

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Name of the periodical

East Central Europe

ISSN

0094-3037

e-ISSN

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Volume of the periodical

43

Issue of the periodical within the volume

1-2

Country of publishing house

NL - THE KINGDOM OF THE NETHERLANDS

Number of pages

35

Pages from-to

64-98

UT code for WoS article

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EID of the result in the Scopus database

2-s2.0-84991229793