TY - JOUR
TI - From Memory Conflicts to the Demarcation of Cultural Memory: Teschen Silesia One Hundred Years After Division
AU - Kajfosz, Jan
TI - From Memory Conflicts to the Demarcation of Cultural Memory: Teschen Silesia One Hundred Years After Division
AB - The aim of the paper is to analyse a specific case of transformation of communicative memories into cultural memories under the influence of state institutions in Teschen Silesia [Cieszyn Silesia; Těšín Silesia]. In 1920, the multi-ethnic territory of the former Duchy of Teschen was divided between Poland and Czechoslovakia. The author focuses on the state of local social memories after one hundred years since the division and raises the question, what kind of social memories are supported by the Polish and Czech local administrations and what kind of social memories are ignored or suppressed by them. Both sides of the Polish-Czech state border have at least one common feature today, namely the colonization of the past by the national states present here, in that the history of the Polish part of Teschen Silesia is commonly seen here as the history of Poland, and the history of the Czech part of this area as the history of the Czech Republic. It is an unconscious – and thus unreflective – conceptual structure that affects local national identities. The author calls this cognitive structure “demarcation logic”.
VL - 2022
IS - Tom 50
PY - 2023
SN - 0083-4327
C1 - 2299-9558
SP - 101
EP - 115
DO - 10.4467/22999558.PE.22.006.17634
UR - https://ejournals.eu/czasopismo/prace-etnograficzne/artykul/from-memory-conflicts-to-the-demarcation-of-cultural-memory-teschen-silesia-one-hundred-years-after-division
KW - borderland
KW - Cieszyn Silesia
KW - Teschen Silesia
KW - Těšín Silesia
KW - demarcation
KW - social memory
KW - imagined communities
KW - local community