The Politics of Disability in Interwar and Socialist Czechoslovakia

Abstract

Answering the question concerning what driving forces had led public health, welfare policy and education to operate as agents and structures of segregation is one of the core prerequisites for sustainable desegregation and historical justice. This book reexamines the politics of disability in interwar and socialist Czechoslovakia as embedded into nation building, recruited to legitimize diverse forms of structural violence against people with disabilities and ethnic minorities. The authors trace the intersectionality of ethnicity and disability, which proliferated across diverse realms of public life, positioning the continuities and ruptures of interrogating propaganda and racial science during the interwar and post-war periods as establishing and reinforcing the border between a healthy Czech majority and a disabled Roma minority. Writing from their experience, the authors critically revise this border that remains observable but unapproachable until it operates as a part of constructing the authenticity of a nation.