ABSTRACT
This study explores the trajectories of cultural mediators and their movements between various literary circulations, namely official, samizdat (self-published), or tamizdat (produced in the country of exile and smuggled to the homeland). Following Pierre Bourdieu, a trajectory is understood here as a series of positions that the specific agent occupies, in this case within the tamizdat distribution of Czech literature in West Germany in the 1970s and 1980s. Trajectories are traced through an analysis of the activities of Czech author Ota Filip during his time in exile in the Federal Republic of Germany. Findings are based on archival materials from the Czechoslovak Security Services Archive and the Bavarian State Library and focus on three main positions within the literary field: Filip's role as author, promoter, and translator.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Data availability statement
Non-digital data supporting this study are curated at the Czechoslovak Security Services Archive and the Bavarian State Library.
Notes
1 All translations of the archival material are the author’s own.
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Anna Gnot
Mgr. Anna Gnot, Ph.D. is a researcher at the Institute of Czech Literature of the Czech Academy of Sciences with scientific interests in autobiographical literature, Czech-German and Czech-Polish literary transfer.