ABSTRACT
The Prague Spring, without doubt, has scarred the culture of Czechoslovakia and the whole of Central and Eastern Europe for decades. One can observe the influence of 1968 on Czech culture through artistic pieces such as Milan Kundera’s Nesnesitelná Lehkost Bytí (The Unbearable Lightness of Being), David Cerny’s Ruzovy Tank (Pink Tank) and Jan Hrebejk’s Pelisky (Cosy Dens). These pieces are supposed to act as cultural mediators, which reflect cultural trauma, constructed and experienced by members of a ‘traumatized’ society. The first approach derives from the theoretical field of trauma studies. Jeffrey Alexander distinguishes four types of issues that the traumatic narrative consists of: the nature of the pain; the nature of the victim; the relationship between the trauma victim and the wider audience; the attribution of moral responsibility. From a practical standpoint, the concept of cultural trauma is much easier to apply to traumatic oral narratives than when viewed as a discourse.
