The study is the first to examine Anglo-Czechoslovak relations during the second world war from the perspective of discourse analysis. It reconstructs the evolution of the Czechoslovak exiles' ...Anglophilia through articles published in three major exile newspapers - Čechoslovák, Mladé/Nové Československo and Nová svoboda - between October 1939 and May 1945. It claims that the new significant Other, whose image included numerous idealizations as well as objective reflections, liberated exiled Czechs and served as an important guide in the quest for a better future for their own country. The study also demonstrates how quickly favourable conditions can create fruitful transcultural space between nations that had, hitherto, been separated by geography, culture and language.
"Obrazy nepřítele v Československu 1948–1956" Images of the Enemy in Czechoslovakia,
1948–1956 by Czech cultural historian Denisa Nečasová examines four groups of enemies constructed by the ...Czechoslovak media between 1948 and 1956: the bourgeoisie; the so-called “kulaks”; Catholic priests; and the United States of America.
The study follows the postmodern linguistic turn and focuses on the relationship between power, ideology and language. The discourses she examines are described and interpreted in four consecutive chapters. Nečasová captures the generally diminishing intensity of pejorative images, which corresponds to the loosening of the regime after the deaths of Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin and Klement Gottwald. The
book’s major contribution is that it elucidates the way in which the use of long-term stereotypical constructs helped the Czechoslovak communist regime shape images of its enemies and also that it draws attention to the interconnectedness of Czechoslovak
discourses with discourses in Western Europe in the eight years covered by the book. The review is critical of the predominantly descriptive nature of the book and
Nečasová’s decision not to attempt to reconstruct how Czechoslovak society at the time reacted to the – highly performative – “images of the enemy”.
