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Identity and Displacement in Contemporary Postcolonial Fiction
Olehlová, Markéta ; Nováková, Soňa (advisor) ; Franková, Milada (referee) ; Kolinská, Klára (referee)
English summary The main objective of this thesis is to present some key issues relevant for postcolonial field of study with respect to two basic areas of interest: concepts of identity and place, respectively displacement in contemporary postcolonial discourse and their reflection in fiction, too. The thesis should provide the potential reader with basic theoretical background based on the most fundamental sources and by means of selected literary works it should support (or disclaim, if necessary) conclusions reached by the most notable theories. This dissertation work consists of three major parts. In the introduction, apart from providing the motivational, theoretical and literary objectives of the thesis, I cover some basic difficulties that may occur when dealing with the postcolonial field of study. The central part of the thesis can be divided into two parts, each of them consisting of two further sections. The first one, "Identity in Postcolonial Discourse", is focused on one of the key terms in all of postcolonial theory: identity and other concepts related with it. I cover the basic development of theoretical reflection concerning this concept, drawing primarily from secondary sources dealing with it. The theoretical part on identity is succeeded by a chapter "Reflections of Identity in the...
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Komparační studie čtyř romských životních příběhů
Ryvolová, Karolína ; Ulmanová, Hana (advisor) ; Acton, Thomas (referee) ; Soukup, Daniel (referee)
The objective of this thesis is to do a comparative analysis of four Romany life-stories in prose from different parts of the world and identify features which may justly be called characteristic of Romany writing. The comparison of Victor Vishnevsky's Memories of a Gypsy, Mikey Walsh's Gypsy Boy and Gypsy Boy on the Run, Andrej Giňa's Paťiv. Ještě víme, co je úcta and Irena Eliášová's Naše osada yields valuable insights into how Romany writers construct their identity and to what extent their current work relates to the existing literary genres. Because of Romany studies' multidisciplinary nature, the extensive introduction lays the theoretical foundations for the analysis. I proceed from the characteristics of Romany studies in general in part 1.2 to the way it was practised during my undergraduate years in Prague as opposed to the Western tradition (part 1.3). Using a case study of the schism Romany studies are currently facing in the Czech Republic, in part 1.4 I attempt to illustrate the more general epistemological challenges the field has been grappling with between essentialist/primordialist and radical constructivist views. As there is a definite scarcity of theoretical literature conceptualising Romany writing, in part 1.5 of the introduction the existing body of work is assessed and found...
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Cultural Conflicts in the Writing of Hanif Kureishi
Dongresová, Marta ; Nováková, Soňa (advisor) ; Kolinská, Klára (referee)
The situation of immigrants in Britain has been inspiring writers for several decades and Hanif Kureishi is no exception. His own background allows him to describe the immigrant experience from the realistic perspective of an insider and his characters reflect the conflicts that immigrants have to deal with during their life among the members of the dominant culture of the state. The thesis focuses on The Buddha of Suburbia, while it also makes short digressions and touches upon a number of other works which were published by Kureishi from the mid 1980s to the late 1990s, such as The Black Album, My Son the Fanatic, My Beautiful Laundrette, The Rainbow Sign and Sammy and Rosie Get Laid. The whole discussion consists of three parts and begins with a chapter which primarily concentrates on important theoretical terms and their definitions that are necessary for all analyses of diasporic literatures; the terms and concepts are then applied to Kureishi's books and scripts. The second chapter deals with the conflicts experienced by the first generation immigrants who try to find out who they are as people as they oscillate between the culture of their country or origin and England, while the third chapter focuses on the second generation immigrants born in Britain who want to gain an identity in England...
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International Intervention and Local Hybrid Order: UNIFIL in South Lebanon
Daniel, Jan ; Karásek, Tomáš (advisor) ; Bliesemann de Guevara, Berit (referee) ; Bureš, Oldřich (referee)
Bibliographic Record DANIEL, JAN. International Peacekeeping and Hybrid Order: UNIFIL II in South Lebanon. Prague, 2017. 257 p. Doctoral dissertation (Ph.D.) Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Political Studies. Thesis supervisor: JUDr. PhDr. Tomáš Karásek, Ph.D. Abstract The thesis explores an engagement of a UN peace operation with a local political order. It builds on understanding of peacekeeping as policing of certain vision of international and local order and on that basis, it explores practices and politics of keeping peace. Drawing on the study of UNIFIL II, the UN peacekeeping operation deployed in South Lebanon, the study focuses on practices by which peacekeepers perform their policing duties in the local order, which is marked by entanglements between state and non- state ordering authorities and different practice of stateness. By doing so, it seeks to advance the research on the everyday practices of peacekeeping, as well as the research on local hybridity of peace operations and engagement of liberal actors with the local difference. Drawing on the debates in critical peace studies and works on practice-oriented approaches to research on liberal governmentality, it makes the case for focusing on the peacekeepers' engagement with the 'local' order on the...
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International Intervention and Local Hybrid Order: UNIFIL in South Lebanon
Daniel, Jan ; Karásek, Tomáš (advisor) ; Bliesemann de Guevara, Berit (referee) ; Bureš, Oldřich (referee)
Bibliographic Record DANIEL, JAN. International Peacekeeping and Hybrid Order: UNIFIL II in South Lebanon. Prague, 2017. 257 p. Doctoral dissertation (Ph.D.) Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Political Studies. Thesis supervisor: JUDr. PhDr. Tomáš Karásek, Ph.D. Abstract The thesis explores an engagement of a UN peace operation with a local political order. It builds on understanding of peacekeeping as policing of certain vision of international and local order and on that basis, it explores practices and politics of keeping peace. Drawing on the study of UNIFIL II, the UN peacekeeping operation deployed in South Lebanon, the study focuses on practices by which peacekeepers perform their policing duties in the local order, which is marked by entanglements between state and non- state ordering authorities and different practice of stateness. By doing so, it seeks to advance the research on the everyday practices of peacekeeping, as well as the research on local hybridity of peace operations and engagement of liberal actors with the local difference. Drawing on the debates in critical peace studies and works on practice-oriented approaches to research on liberal governmentality, it makes the case for focusing on the peacekeepers' engagement with the 'local' order on the...
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Immigrants in the Metropolis
Dongresová, Marta ; Nováková, Soňa (advisor) ; Varhaníková, Halka (referee)
Urban spaces have appeared in literature for a long time and they seem to fascinate a lot of contemporary writers. The constructions of cities become exceptionally complex in postcolonial British fiction that portrays urban landscape from the perspective of first and second generation immigrants from Britain's former colonies. All of the novels discussed in this work are set in London and the characters are immigrants of the South Asian and Caribbean diasporas in Britain: the thesis focuses namely on Brick Lane (Monica Ali), White Teeth (Zadie Smith) and Life Isn't All Ha Ha Hee Hee (Meera Syal). However, the work also makes short digressions to a number of older works which deal with the immigrant experience in London: The Lonely Londoners (Sam Selvon), The Satanic Verses (Salman Rushdie) and The Buddha of Suburbia (Hanif Kureishi). The entire thesis consists of five parts and begins with an introduction to several theoretical terms that are necessary for analyses of immigrant identities and urban spaces. All of the theory that is discussed in the first chapter is then applied to the chosen novels by Ali, Smith and Syal. Overall, the thesis focuses on the ways in which the ex-colonial subjects in the books perceive London according to their gender and the particular generation of immigrants that...
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Spread of journalistic hoaxes in Czech media: the case of Central European News agency
Čáslavská, Veronika ; Hájek, Roman (advisor) ; Trunečková, Ludmila (referee)
This bachelor's thesis frames concrete examples of hoaxes that are spreading into the wider scale of the contemporary functioning of newsrooms. Next, it examines the ethical standards of the media and the spreading of contents within an online environment. The thesis is focused mainly on the online media that makes proper verification more difficult. Furthermore, it examines the characteristics of hoaxes; how and why they spread. It further deals with possible solutions of how to avoid them. The spreading of hoaxes is illustrated mainly on the texts produced by the Central European News agency and its daughter media that are claimed to be untrustworthy. Approximately 355 texts have surfaced in the Czech media in between the years 2007 and 2016. Czech News Agency (ČTK) was cited as the author or the co-author in circa 141 cases.
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Question of Identity in The Impressionist and Baumgartner' s Bombay
Sehnalová, Kamila ; Topolovská, Tereza (advisor) ; Chalupský, Petr (referee)
This diploma thesis aims to depict the nature of identity formation in the main characters of two works of postcolonial literature, Hari Kunzru's The Impressionist and Anita Desai's Baumgartner's Bombay. The concept of identity is approached from two perspectives, the traditional and the postcolonial one. Apart from that, the reactions of the two characters to their identity crises are scrutinized. The goal of this thesis is to determine what consequences the extreme implementation of a fluid, therefore ideal postcolonial identity, and the fixed one, as its extreme opposite, might have upon human lives. Special attention is paid to the three terms crucial in the postcolonial theory, liminality, hybridity and mimicry and how they predetermine the characters of the two novels. The analysis shows that neither extreme approach proves to be viable or beneficial for the life of an individual.
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Hybrid Bodies and Hybrid Identities in the Fiction of Octavia Butler
Korejtková, Adéla ; Veselá, Pavla (advisor) ; Procházka, Martin (referee)
The thesis explores the theme of hybridity in Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis trilogy and in her last novel, Fledgling, which both deal with complex relationships between humans and a different species. The main focus is on the characters of mixed origin - offspring of two distinct species and beings whose existence is a result of genetic experiments. These individuals occupy a metaphorical "in-between" space where cultural, racial, sexual and other boundaries meet and blur. The theoretical framework follows two sets of ideas - Homi Bhabha's notion of hybridity and the so-called Third Space, and Donna Haraway's cyborg figure. The second chapter of the thesis is centered on the origins and development of the concept of hybridity and its current use in postcolonial discourse. Furthermore, it introduces the most relevant ideas from Bhabha's The Location of Culture and Haraway's "A Cyborg Manifesto" and compares them. The following two chapters are mainly devoted to Butler's hybrid characters, Akin and Jodahs from Xenogenesis and Shori, the protagonist of Fledgling. This section analyses, among other issues, their physical features and special skills connected with hybridity, the construction of their identity, their relationship with others and their relation to the clash between different species and...
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Komparační studie čtyř romských životních příběhů
Ryvolová, Karolína ; Ulmanová, Hana (advisor) ; Acton, Thomas (referee) ; Soukup, Daniel (referee)
The objective of this thesis is to do a comparative analysis of four Romany life-stories in prose from different parts of the world and identify features which may justly be called characteristic of Romany writing. The comparison of Victor Vishnevsky's Memories of a Gypsy, Mikey Walsh's Gypsy Boy and Gypsy Boy on the Run, Andrej Giňa's Paťiv. Ještě víme, co je úcta and Irena Eliášová's Naše osada yields valuable insights into how Romany writers construct their identity and to what extent their current work relates to the existing literary genres. Because of Romany studies' multidisciplinary nature, the extensive introduction lays the theoretical foundations for the analysis. I proceed from the characteristics of Romany studies in general in part 1.2 to the way it was practised during my undergraduate years in Prague as opposed to the Western tradition (part 1.3). Using a case study of the schism Romany studies are currently facing in the Czech Republic, in part 1.4 I attempt to illustrate the more general epistemological challenges the field has been grappling with between essentialist/primordialist and radical constructivist views. As there is a definite scarcity of theoretical literature conceptualising Romany writing, in part 1.5 of the introduction the existing body of work is assessed and found...
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