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 text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2007/ivancheva_mariya.pdf |
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