Abstrakt
Taking as a starting point cases of several African women who at some point of their lives crossed paths with representatives of Central European "colonialism without colonies", the presentation will thematize the specificities of Central European gaze upon the African continent and, specifically, African female body. While within the colonial discourse black female body had always carried numerous resonances and was, mostly, represented in a misogynic and othering way, the Central European colonial representations had some specificities.
While, at the first sight, the inexistence of de facto colonial involvement (and the fact that the Czechs themselves were in a situation of being dominated from the outside and deprived of political and cultural autonomy) could have provoked feelings of sympathy towards the colonized peoples from the overseas, the efforts to increase the visibility of the Czech nation in the wider European context, to prove its "greatness" and level of civilization led to the copying and in fact intensifying of condescending, derogative representations.