Migration, Mobility and the Making of a Global Europe

In 2017–18, the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei created a special installation addressing the refugee crisis in Prague. ‘Law of the Journey’ consisted of an enormous black inflatable raft, crowded with inflatable rubber people wearing lifejackets. Their human forms were clear, but they lacked faces. The raft hung from the ceiling at an angle, casting a dark shadow over a list of quotations from thinkers and writers, beginning and ending with two locals: Franz Kafka and Václav Havel. A few isolated rubber tubes floated on the concrete floor next to the raft, with rubber humans reaching out to be saved. The exhibit conveyed both the desperation of the migrants and the inadequacy of the response.

Airport security as translation through division and movement

Based on an ethnographic research at Václav Havel Airport Prague, this article explores how contemporary airport security might by studied using an ANT-inspired approach. Security provision can be understood as a set of chains of translation that produces security and threat. Incoming actors, whose statuses are initially indeterminate, are translated into secure or threatening ones. This framing enables the uncovering of division and movement as the logics guide the system performance. The use of this perspective enables us to explicate the system’s functioning in practice, including its inherent challenges and social consequences.

Réticularités de La Chapelle numérique

Le fonds patrimonial numérisé La Chapelle numérique met en ligne depuis 2015 des documents iconographiques, textuels, audios et vidéos, plans et cartes autour de l’histoire du quartier de la Chapelle, à Paris. Créé et alimenté par la bibliothèque Václav-Havel, ce fonds est valorisé sur les réseaux sociaux numériques (RSN). Le fonctionnement réticulaire de ce fonds auquel contribuent habitants, institutions patrimoniales, artistes locaux, participe à l’ancrage territorial de la bibliothèque, lui donne une identité et encourage une communauté d’intérêt autour de la thématique du quartier. Dans la communication en ligne comme dans la gestion du fonds, c’est le rapport de la bibliothèque à son environnement qui est en jeu. Afin d'analyser la façon dont les stratégies de communication sur les RSN s’appuient sur l’identité de la bibliothèque, ses forces réticulaires, la communauté d’intérêt qu’elle suscite et l’émergence d’une communauté virtuelle et physique, une analyse inspirée des travaux de Niklas Luhmann est proposée. La médiation en ligne du fonds Chapelle numérique est ainsi analysée à l'aune de la relation de la bibliothèque avec son environnement.

(Mis)Interpreting Vaclav Havel: Conviction and Responsibility in Post-Communist Politics

This article examines Vaclav Havel’s alleged failure to understand the need for a “realistic” approach to post-communist politics and the criticisms of his insistence on retaining his principles and focus on morality in his conduct as president of Czechoslovakia in the early 1990s. It argues that these criticisms do not stand up against an examination either of how Havel actually behaved in this period or of his writings and statements concerning his actions and beliefs, that they are based on a misunderstanding of what Havel hoped to achieve as president, and make unjustified assumptions concerning the desirability of Western political and economic systems in the early post-communist period. This article seeks to clarify Havel’s perception of his role as president, of the goals of the revolution and what he personally hoped to achieve, and his understanding of the opportunity that had been offered to Czechoslovakia by the fall of the communist government.

Vaclav Havel, Russia and Nato

The attitude of Vaclav Havel, the first head of the post-Communist Czech Republic, towards NATO went beyond just Atlanticism and included some reverence for the Atlantic bloc. Havel moralistically encouraged the bombing of Yugoslavia and the interventions in Iraq and Libya; he urged to bring NATO closely to Russian borders and to punish Russia for the USSR's sins and potential imperial ambitions. Such views, though not shared by most Czech citizens, have long defined foreign policy priorities of some Czech political elites. Their traces are being found at the brink of the third decade of the 21st century. However, Havel's approach, always in praise of NATO, has been recognized as futile even by his strong supporters.

President Václav Havel as an inspiration for Czech urbanonymy

The goal of the text is to summarise and analyse commemorative strategies and trends that were used in case of the Czechoslovak and Czech president Václav Havel (1936–2011; 1989–2003, in office) and that were especially expressed through proper names, mostly street names. The research is primarily based on selected archival sources and opinion journalism of the day. The research issue is presented against the broad background of place names commemorating Czechoslovak and Czech presidents over the course of the 20th century.