אֱמוּנָה

The depoliticization of the private sphere in late-Socialist societies is 'compulsive', marked by the fundamental prohibition of free political discussion; for that reason, such depoliticization always functions as the evasion of what is truly at stake. This accounts for the most immediately striking feature of Kundera's novels: the depolitical private sphere in no way functions as the free domain of innocent pleasures; there is always something damp, claustrophobic, inauthentic, even desperate, in the characters' striving for sexual and other pleasures.