The Language of Resistance? Czech Jokes and Joke-telling under Nazi Occupation, 1943-45

Bibliographic Data

ID10072908
AuthorsChad Bryant (0000-0003-0365-9209, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, corresponding author)
Year2005
Volume41
Issue1
Pages133-151
Publication date2005-12-15
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Contemporary History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0022-0094 • E-ISSN: 1461-7250
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0022009406058687
OpenAlexW2000231691
LanguageEN
Citations received13

This article analyses jokes that Czech informants transmitted to their London government in exile from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, a nazi rump state carved from the former Czechoslovakia in March 1939. The first half of the article explores the informants’ claims that jokes constituted a particular form of resistance [ odboj] and Czech nationalism in the face of an oppressive and ‘Germanizing’ nazi regime. The second half of the article complicates the informants’ interpretations, suggesting other ways in which we might understand Czech jokes and joke-telling under nazi rule. At times the Czechs’ ‘resistance’ was individual, personal and local, not necessarily part of any collective, national project. Further, jokes show that ambiguity and uncertainty constituted the essence of everyday life for most Czechs in the Protectorate. While challenging the resistance/collaboration and Czech/German dichotomies that have informed history writing on the Protectorate, the article proposes a different approach to the study of everyday life and experience under occupation, and not just in the nazi-controlled Czechlands

Art · Colonialism · Czech · Everyday life · Joke · Linguistics · Literature · Nationalism · Nazism · Political science · Politics · Protectorate · Resistance (ecology · Sociology · Eastern European Communism and Reforms · History · Law · Philosophy

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