LANGUAGE OF PROTEST OR PROTEST OF LANGUAGE ?
THE STUDENT MOVEMENTS IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA IN THE 1960S

A certain ambivalence is still inherent in those efforts, since it is not entirely clear whether the subversive potential is to reside in discursive language or in social interaction. It makes a considerable difference whether social interactions themselves bear normative expectations of historical actors or whether it is only through language that a normative element comes into communication.

The conventional interpretations of student movements in Czechoslovakia are subject to retrospective discourse of 1968. The danger in such an approach is the reduction of social protest to that part already made visible in politics by publicity organizations. This reduction affirms the prevailing level of conflicts in a given society: only experiences of protest that have already crossed the threshold of mass media attention are confirmed as historically relevant.

The paper illustrates that subversive language used among students was established much earlier than 1968. Some student groups had already transgressed the dominant order of discourse at the beginning of the 1960s. In relation to normative typology were student demands on private sphere, equality and difference differentiated. Each of the three types established diverse social interactions.

Zdenek Nebrensky M.A. (*1978) born in Pribram / Bohemia, studied History (Modern Historiography, Comparative and Social History of Europe) at the Charles University Prague (1998-2004) and as an Erasmus-Scholarship holder at the University Leipzig (2002-2003).

Since October 2004 he has been working in the project “Comparative analysis of Student Movements of the 1960s in East-Central Europe.” Furthermore, he has been a Research Fellowship of Czech-German Fund for the Future at the Humboldt-University Berlin in 2004-2005 and graduate fellow supported by the Hertie-Stiftung at the Berlin School of European Comparative History in April 2006. His research interests are modern historiography, comparative history of modern Europe, civil society, protest movements and social theory.

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