Picturing the Political Violence in Children's Educational Materials: An Analysis of Representations of the Nazi and the Soviet Occupation in the Czech History Textbooks and Education
Abstract
Based on an extensive research of the Czech history textbooks coming from communist and post-communist era (in total 13 books ranging from the year of 1967 to 2009 were examined) the paper aims to present how the events of two political occupations are displayed in those textbooks understood as media of mnemonic socialization (Zerubavel 2003). By using the methods of content and semiotic analysis it reveals particular significant signs, groups of signs as well as image categories (e.g. victims, perpetrators, acts of resistance, acts of violence) based on which a general term of ""occupation"" is constructed by visual means in the Czech history.
It explores a specific relationship between the image and the text in educational materials demonstrating (according to the critical theory of images, Stocchetti, Kukkonen 2001) the importance of more neglected visual media. In the second step it compares the results of analysis and detected image categories with a character of images (photographs as well as videos) displayed as a part of a general educational exhibition devoted to those historical events (1939, 1968) in the Czech National Museum.
What do they share in common? Does a kind of visual album or an atlas of the Czech history of modern occupations exist?