{"title":"“Politics of Plastic Nationhood”: Sokol Mass Gymnastics and Eugenics Between Empire and Nation-States","authors":"Lucija Balikić, Vojtěch Pojar","doi":"10.30965/18763308-50020002","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article examines how mass gymnastics in East Central Europe became increasingly entangled with eugenics. It traces the proliferation of eugenic discourses alongside the medicalization of gymnastics within Sokol, a mass nationalist voluntary association. In this context, the bodies of gymnasts became crucial sites of knowledge production and ideological projection. The article introduces the “politics of plastic nationhood,” a concept that foregrounds the fierce debates within Sokol over strategies to shape the imagined body of the nation though physical exercise. It also highlights key actors in these discussions, including medical doctors, physical anthropologists, and gymnastics trainers. The article shows that four major themes shaped these biopolitical disputes: health, diversity, gender, and ability. Focusing specifically on Sokol associations in interwar Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia and their prewar predecessors, the article outlines a chronology of the politics of plastic nationhood, which emerged in the Habsburg Empire and reached their zenith in the successor states. After imperial collapse, in particular, Sokol eugenicists sought to merge the diverse Slavic populations of the new states into a single “national body.” Owing to their perceived failure to achieve national unity, starting in the mid-1930s onward, eugenicists turned to rigid racial hierarchies, statism, and authoritarian politics.","PeriodicalId":40651,"journal":{"name":"East Central Europe","volume":"68 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2000,"publicationDate":"2023-10-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"East Central Europe","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.30965/18763308-50020002","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"HISTORY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Abstract This article examines how mass gymnastics in East Central Europe became increasingly entangled with eugenics. It traces the proliferation of eugenic discourses alongside the medicalization of gymnastics within Sokol, a mass nationalist voluntary association. In this context, the bodies of gymnasts became crucial sites of knowledge production and ideological projection. The article introduces the “politics of plastic nationhood,” a concept that foregrounds the fierce debates within Sokol over strategies to shape the imagined body of the nation though physical exercise. It also highlights key actors in these discussions, including medical doctors, physical anthropologists, and gymnastics trainers. The article shows that four major themes shaped these biopolitical disputes: health, diversity, gender, and ability. Focusing specifically on Sokol associations in interwar Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia and their prewar predecessors, the article outlines a chronology of the politics of plastic nationhood, which emerged in the Habsburg Empire and reached their zenith in the successor states. After imperial collapse, in particular, Sokol eugenicists sought to merge the diverse Slavic populations of the new states into a single “national body.” Owing to their perceived failure to achieve national unity, starting in the mid-1930s onward, eugenicists turned to rigid racial hierarchies, statism, and authoritarian politics.
摘要本文考察了东中欧的大众体操是如何日益与优生学纠缠在一起的。它追溯了在Sokol(一个大规模民族主义自愿协会)内部,优生学话语与体操医学化的扩散。在这种背景下,体操运动员的身体成为知识生产和意识形态投射的重要场所。文章介绍了“塑料国家政治”(politics of plastic nationhood),这一概念突显了索科尔内部围绕通过体育锻炼塑造国民想象中的身体的战略展开的激烈辩论。它还强调了这些讨论中的关键角色,包括医生、体质人类学家和体操教练。这篇文章表明,四个主要主题塑造了这些生物政治争端:健康、多样性、性别和能力。本文特别关注两次世界大战之间的捷克斯洛伐克和南斯拉夫及其战前前身的Sokol协会,概述了塑料国家政治的年表,这种政治出现在哈布斯堡帝国,并在继承国达到顶峰。特别是在帝国崩溃后,索科尔优生学家试图将新国家的不同斯拉夫人口合并为一个单一的“国家实体”。从20世纪30年代中期开始,优生学家们意识到他们无法实现国家统一,于是转向了严格的种族等级制度、国家主义和威权政治。