"My body is African but my soul is Czech". Othering and belonging in the biographies of the Namibian Czechs.

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F61989592%3A15210%2F20%3A73598195" target="_blank" >RIV/61989592:15210/20:73598195 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

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DOI - Digital Object Identifier

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Result language

angličtina

Original language name

"My body is African but my soul is Czech". Othering and belonging in the biographies of the Namibian Czechs.

Original language description

The article focuses on biological-racist and cultural forms of othering, as experienced and narrated by Namibian Czechs. This experience, which was significantly inscribed into their complex belonging, has been strongly influenced by both spatial and symbolic mobility. The Namibian Czechs are a group of originally fifty-six Namibian child war refugees that fled from Angola and received asylum in Czechoslovakia in 1885. The children spent seven years in Czechoslovakia during which they were socialized, encultured and successfully integrated into Czech society. Although they were educated to become the elite of a future independent Namibia, they culturally assimilated with Czech culture and appropriated the Czech language as their mother tongue. They were relocated to Namibia in 1991 due to the political changes in both countries. This political decision had a far reaching impact on their future lives. Only a few of them had the chance to return to the Czech Republic between 1998-2002 to study at Czech universities. The problematic sense of belonging of Namibian Czechs and their awareness of their otherness was gradually constructed as they moved from one cultural setting to another. While in Czechoslovakia and later on in the Czech Republic, their otherness was primarily constructed around their physical difference (the experience of exoticization during childhood and the experience of racism during their second arrival), after their return to Namibia, a cultural form of othering has been mainly involved. The awareness of their distinctiveness in both socio-cultural environments, accompanied by a common experience of denied belonging both to Czechness and Namibianess, has led to a contrast in antagonistic solidarization within the construction of collective belonging.

Czech name

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Czech description

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Type

C - Chapter in a specialist book

CEP classification

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OECD FORD branch

50404 - Anthropology, ethnology

Project

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Continuities

I - Institucionalni podpora na dlouhodoby koncepcni rozvoj vyzkumne organizace

Publication year

2020

Confidentiality

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

Book/collection name

Africa on the move. Shifting identities, Histories and Boundaries.

ISBN

978-3-643-91174-2

Number of pages of the result

26

Pages from-to

67-92

Number of pages of the book

107

Publisher name

LIT Verlag

Place of publication

Zurich

UT code for WoS chapter

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