Michel Foucault versus socialistický člověk: Interdisciplinarita jako mainstream humanitních věd?
Michel Foucault versus the Socialist Man: Interdisciplinarity as a Mainstream of the Humanities?

Summary/Abstract: The author of this review article focuses primarily on the monograph by cultural historian Denisa Nečasová titled "Nový socialistický člověk: Československo 1948–1956" [New Socialist Man: Czechoslovakia 1948–1956]. While paying particular attention to the methodological aspects of Nečasová’s research approach, based on discourse analysis and inspired by Michel Foucault, he draws more general conclusions about the problematic adoption of fashionable trends in Czech academic mainstream. In his view, Nečasová presents extensive heuristics, drawn from non-fiction texts, which offer a solid picture of the construction of the ideal of the new socialist man in Stalinist Czechoslovakia (although she limits her sources and conclusions to the Czech lands). She differentiates the object of her research into three categories, defined by the concepts of the worker, the new woman, and the Soviet man, analysing herself their characteristics. In doing so, she quotes a number of inspiring domestic and foreign authors and incorporates a number of historical excursuses. In the reviewer‘s opinion, Nečasová is less convincing in her methodological grasp of the topic, the shortcomings of which did not allow her to fulfil the potential of an otherwise rich work and to arrive at generally valid theses on which further research could be based. Thus, despite its undeniable strengths, the book may also illustrate the dangers of the popular interdisciplinarity, when the artificial linking of methods and superficial use of concepts obscures more traditional ways of treating the topic.

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