11.10.2023 seminar of accidental wisdom: Andrea Průchová Hrůzová, Decolonization "the Czech way"
Seminar of Accidental Wisdom: Andrea Průchová Hrůzová, Decolonization "the Czech way"
11.10.2023
Decolonization "the Czech way"
The debate about the colonial heritage of rich European countries is stirring the global cultural and artistic landscape. It asks us to confront the symbolic and physical violence inflicted by European societies on colonial (d)inhabited countries. At the same time, it presents a problem that takes many forms: in the cultural sphere, for example, from discussions about the return of stolen cultural heritage, to the practice of removing statues of colonialists, to the transformation of museum labels and history textbooks. But how does Czech society approach the question of the colonial past and contemporary decolonial tendencies? The one that supposedly "never had a colony" or "was a colony itself"? How do the views of the Czech professional and general public differ? The lecture by the theoretician of (visual) culture Andrea Průchová Hrůzová will outline the first findings of a three-year research on the shape and formation of public narratives related to decolonization and anti-racism in the Czech Republic.
Andrea Průchová Hrůzová (she/her) is a researcher and educator, head of the Fresh Eye Platform for the Study of Visual Culture. She teaches at the Department of Sociology at the Charles University and conducts research at the Institute for Contemporary History of the Czech Academy of Sciences. She occasionally translates professional publications on culture and image theory into Czech (Berger, Mitchell, Mirzoeff, now Mekas) and regularly publishes abroad (e.g. journals Visual Studies, European Journal of Cultural Studies, Handbook of Image Studies and Visual Studies Workshop Press).