Political Screenings as Trials of Strength: Making the Communist Power/lessness Real ZDENE ˇ K KONOPA ´ SEK 1, * and ZUZANA KUSA ´ 2 1, *Center for Theoretical Study, Charles University in Prague, Jilska 1, Praha 1, 110 00, Czech Republic (E-mail: zdenek@konopasek.net) 2 Institute for Sociology, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Klemensova 19, Bratislava, 813 64, Slovakia (E-mail: zuza.kusa@savba.sk) Abstract. In this paper, we discuss the problem of communist power in so called totalitarian regimes. Inspired by strategies of explanation in contemporary science studies and by the ethnomethodological conception of social order, we suggest that the power of communists is not to be taken as an unproblematic source of explanation; rather, we take this power as something that is itself in need of being explained. We study personal narratives on political screenings that took place in Czechoslovakia in 1970 and analyze how the power of communists obtained its strength from ordinary and ‘‘unremarkable’’ interactions between participants. The screenings are interpreted, in the terms of Bruno Latour, as ‘‘trials of strength.’’ We show that it was crucial for all the participants that associations, translations or mobilizations involved in making the regime real, remained partial and multiple, and not exclusive and ‘‘total’’ as is often assumed within dominant discourses on totalitarianism. Key words: actor-network theory, communism, Czechoslovakia, ethnomethodology, political screenings, power, totalitarianism, trials of strength Power is an ‘‘essentially contested concept’’ (Clegg, 1989: 239). In spite of this–or perhaps because of this – the concept is widely used. It enables us to speak about hierarchies, inequalities, suffering, injustice, successes and This English version of the paper has been elaborated within our work on the following projects: ‘‘Transforming identities in contemporary historical contexts with respect to the processes of integration,’’ grant no. 2003 SP 51/028 09 00/028 09 12 (Zuzana Kusa´ ); and ‘‘Theoretical research on complex phenomena in physics, biology and the social sciences,’’ grant no. MSM 0021620845 (Zdeneˇk Konopa´sek). An earlier version of this work was originally published in Slovak under the title ‘‘Budovanie komunistickej moci a bezmocnosti’’ (Konopa´ sek and Kusa´, 1999). Some parts of the analysis have also appeared in Konopa´sek and Kusa´ (2000) and in the plenary speech prepared by Zdenek Konopa´ sek for the ‘‘International Perspectives’’ conference of Human Studies (2006) 29:341–362 Ó Springer 2006 DOI 10.1007/s10746-006-9025-6