“I Feel Like Two In One”: Complex Belongings Among Namibian Czechs

Main Article Content

Kateřina Mildnerová

Abstract

This paper, based on the analysis of archive documents, biographical interviews and participant observation, focuses on the social and narrative construction of collective cultural identity of so-called Namibian Czechs living in Namibia. These represent a group of originally fifty-six Namibian child war refugees who received asylum and were educated in Czechoslovakia between 1985 and 1991. In order to understand their complex identity special attention has been paid to the dual education of the children in Czechoslovakia, to the role of the Czech language and the symbolical narratives in the construction of their collective cultural identity and to diverse discursive and social practices through which they shape, maintain, and reproduce their Czechness – both situationally in social interactions and narratively in a form of communicative memory.

Article Details

How to Cite
Mildnerová, K. (2018). “I Feel Like Two In One”: Complex Belongings Among Namibian Czechs. Modern Africa: Politics, History and Society, 6(2), 55–93. https://doi.org/10.26806/modafr.v6i2.249
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Articles
Author Biography

Kateřina Mildnerová, Palacký University Olomouc, The Czech Republic

Kateřina Mildnerová is an Africanist and social and cultural anthropologist, currently Assistant Professor at the Department of Sociology, Andragogy and Cultural Anthropology of Palacký University Olomouc, Moravia, Czech Republic. Her main research interests include African Christianity, West African traditional religions, witchcraft and spiritual healing and recently also a narrative construction of identity and home of Namibian Czechs. She is deputy chair of the Czech Association for African studies (CAAS), a member of the Czech Association of Social anthropology (CASA) and executive editor of e-Rhizome, a peer-reviewed journal. E-mail: k.mildnerova@ seznam.cz.