Name: Who are We and Who Are We Not? Polish, Slovak, and Czech National Narratives
Start: 2026-04-21T18:00:00+02:00
Location: Šternberkova 11, Praha 7

Who are We and Who Are We Not? Polish, Slovak, and Czech National Narratives

Who are We and Who Are We Not?
Complications and Contradictions of Polish, Slovak, and Czech National Narratives
Are dominant Polish narratives still stuck in a noble imaginary that represses the memory of a wartime and post-WWII revolution that created the Polish middle class? Are Slovak national narratives still immersed in a bucolic ideal that has never fully come to terms with modern reality? Are Czech myth-makers perpetually beset by the contradictory sense of belonging to a Slavic East and belonging to a West that denies Eastern-ness?
Join philosopher Andrzej Leder, anthropologist Juraj Buzalka, and historian Johana Kłusek in discussing how national narratives navigate between ideas of East and West, past and modernity, place and world. Moderated by Joe Grim Feinberg
Juraj Buzalka is a social anthropologist at Comenius University and author of the 2023 book Postsedliaci: Slovenský ľudový protest (Post-Peasants: Slovak Folk Protest), described as “a merciless look at Slovaks” that “critically comments on our illusions about ourselves.”
Johana Kłusek is a social and cultural historian Assistant Professor at Jagiellonian University, specializing in discursive encounters between East and West in modern history. She is currently completing her first book, which explores Czechoslovak Anglophilia during the turbulent 1940s.
Andrzej Leder is a psychotherapist and philosopher of culture at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, and author of the 2014 influential book Prześniona rewolucja. Ćwiczenie z logiki (Sleepwalking through the Revolution: An Exercise in Historical Logic). His most recent book Ekonomia to stan umysłu (Economics is a State of Mind, 2023) critically analyzes the semantics of economic language.