Literary representations of 'racial mixing' in Czech modernism

This article aims to demonstrate that colonial discourses on 'racial mixing' and their taxonomic intricacies were by no means limited to the Western colonial powers. By focusing on literary representations of racial mixing, it offers an analytical overview of this motif in the Czech context, while emphasising its function as a projection surface for colonial fantasies, aspirations of Europeanness and concerns about the integrity and homogeneity of the 'national body', principally fears of the subaltern position associated with 'blackness'. Attention is paid to translations of French and German literature (e.g. Eug & egrave;ne Sue, Wilhelm Bauberger) from the first half of the nineteenth century, to Czech patriotic productions (Mat & ecaron;j Karas) and especially to representations of modernists and avant-gardists and their critical perspective (e.g. Jaroslav Ha & scaron;ek, V & iacute;t & ecaron;zslav Nezval, Vladim & iacute;r Raffel). Considering a longer period of time allows the author to point out some tendencies characteristic of the Czech cultural context, especially its oscillation between mixophobic and mixophilic approaches.