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Visual Representations of "Self" and "Others": Images of the Traitor and the Enemy in Slovak
century and the first decade of the twentieth. We focus above all on the process
of distinguishing images of "the other"? from “ours,” and we pay particular atten¬
tion to images of “traitors” and “enemies,” including the figures of the Jew and the
madarön (the latter being a Slovak pejorative term derived from the word Magyar’
and used for people who were born of Slovak parents or whose Slovak origin was
supposed‘ but who declared themselves to be Magyars and Hungarian patriots). The
term madarén was a key tool in the anti- Hungarian rhetoric of Slovak national pa¬
triots, especially in the second half of the nineteenth century, and in Cernokriaznik
(The Wizard) it belongs to the most popular topics and objects of satire, mockery,
and criticism.
During the time period in question, the territory of present-day Slovakia pos¬
sessed no form of administrative delimitation within the Hungarian state. Only
as an informal geographic entity was it given a distinct name, Horné Uhorsko (in
Slovak), Felvidék (in Hungarian, literally, the “Upper Land”). Nevertheless, begin¬
ning in the first half of the nineteenth century, an awakening desire for national
emancipation expressed itself in the social and political discourse of a large part of
the Slovak cultural elite, who were influenced by modern nationalist thought, which
attributed a crucial role to language. The fact that Slovaks spoke a Slavic language
presented a major barrier to their assimilation into “Hungarian” culture; at the
same time, it provided an important point of argument against the idea of a unified
Hungarian nation that was being promoted in Hungarian politics during the period
of the dual monarchy (1867-1918). Slovak political discourse was also increasingly
influenced by a confrontation between prevailing conservatism and rising liberal¬
ism, which manifested itself not only in nationalist politics but also in approaches
to political anti-Semitism.
Our source material was the humor magazine Cernokñaëntk, which was pub¬
lished from 1861 to 1910 (with a break from 1865 to 1875) and was ideologically
tied to Slovak efforts toward national emancipation. For purposes of comparison
we also discuss texts and images from the Slovensky obrdzkovy antisemitsky kalendär
? The internal hierarchization of different groups of “others” is expressed in a continuum from “the
other” (“iny” in Slovak, “der Andere” in German) to “the foreign” (“cudzi” in Slovak, “der Fremde” in
German) with no fixed boundary between the two ends of the continuum. “The foreign” is most fre¬
quently given negative attributes, dangerous for the group of “ours.” The image of “others,” by contrast,
is marked by a greater quantity of concrete signs demonstrating the specificity of given groups. For more
on the categories of “the other” and “the foreign,” see Krekoviéov4 1998. In this text the more general
term “other” will be used for the entire continuum. We will use the term “foreign” in cases where marks
of “the foreign” are particularly accentuated.
> The term Magyar is used in the ethnical and lingual sense; the term Hungarian indicates political
nationality and was used in connection with all citizens of the Kingdom of Hungary (including the
Magyars, the Slovaks, the Serbs, etc.). See also Kova& 2011: 120-136.
* This was often the case with members of the upper or lower nobility whose family names refer to
toponyms from the territory of present-day Slovakia.
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