Czech political prisoners: Remembering, relatedness, reconciliation

This study is the story of men and women who survived Czechoslovakian Communist concentration camps. Men and women disappeared, were arrested, imprisoned, interrogated, tortured, put on trial, convicted and sentenced to forced labor camps. In 1948 in Czechoslovakia "political others" became political prisoners. New forms of political practices developed under the institution of the totalitarian Czechoslovak Communist state. These new regimes of totalitarian political power produced culturally specific forms of political violence. The political power of the state was constituted in ritualized forms of violence. Between 1948 and 1961 some citizens recognized by the state as 'political others' were subjected to such ritualized political violence. The link between ritualized violence and state subjects' political passage laid the groundwork for the formation of new social identities. Like other members of the Czech and Slovak states, former prisoners are now facing the present post-totalitarian 'remaking' of life. In contrast to society at large, the political prisoners' recovery from the totalitarian past has proven that the ethics of political life and individual 'coming' to terms with the past is closely related and crucial to their efforts toward reconciliation. They call themselves Mukl/Muklyne(s)---a man/woman selected for "liquidation" (in Czech language---Muz urceny k likvidaci). In the post-totalitarian state the 'political other', Mukl from the previous political regime, remains as an 'other' through distinct desires and acts of 'coming to terms' with the experience of organized violence. The focus of this doctoral dissertation is on two concepts: Subject formations in the context of violent practices of the state, and remaking life afterwards. I write about social suffering, subjectivity, remaking life after violence and the register of hope within the Mukls' language of 'reconciliation'. I am concerned with the tensions between individual and social experiences of suffering caused by state organized violence. Memory, time and place are instrumental notions for my interpretative analysis. This study is limited to a number of individual informants and therefore cannot be understood as representation of the general experience of all prisoners of the Czechoslovak Communist regime.