The Struggle for Legitimacy
The Struggle for Legitimacy

Constructing the National History of Slovakia After 1989

Author(s): Miroslav Michela
Subject(s): Transformation Period (1990 - 2010), Present Times (2010 - today), History of Communism, Post-Communist Transformation
Published by: Central European University Press
Keywords: post-communism;Slovakia;historiography;
Summary/Abstract: Here the author discusses the rise of this polarization of contemporary Slovak historiography, which was institutionalized in the 1990s, and still remains in the academic debates, and also as one of the constitutive elements in the public representations of history. The efforts to enforce a certain canonical interpretation of the past are not just a matter of politics or professionals. Academics often give it legitimacy or even create it, and are a part of the institutional networks involved in the dissemination of knowledge and ideas. Shared representations of the past are not accidentally produced by social groups, but are a consequence of cultural meditation, primarily of textualization and visualization

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