CEU eTD Collection (2007); Ivancheva, Mariya Plamenova: Civil Society as a Discursive Frame: Vaclav Havel's "Anatomy of Reticence" as a case study

CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2007
Author Ivancheva, Mariya Plamenova
Title Civil Society as a Discursive Frame: Vaclav Havel's "Anatomy of Reticence" as a case study
Summary “Civil society” was the exchange ‘currency’ of the dialogue between Eastern European dissidents and Western activists and critical intellectuals before the fall of state-socialism in 1989. But was there a strict understanding of the term “civil society” as utilized by the dissidents beyond their local activist context?
The present study attempts to refocus the “East-Central Europe 1989” ‘chapter’ of ‘civil society’.
Wiith the help of framework alignment, discourse analysis and analytic tools from intellectual history and critical social theory I analyze Vaclav Havel’s essay Anatomy of Reticence (1985).
Discussing the context, argumentative structure, and the stylistics of the text as a discursive act, I argue that it displayed the discursive strength of civil society as a frame.
As such the conception of civil society – in the existential principle “life-in-truth” and the political stance of “anti-political politics” – was employed to address audiences in the West. It was aimed to demonstrate the idea/l of an independent life of society, to which people on both the eastern and western side of the Iron Curtain could align.
Supervisor Gaspar Miklos Tamas, Andras Bozoki
Department Sociology MA
Full texthttps://www.etd.ceu.edu/2007/ivancheva_mariya.pdf

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