Synopses & Reviews
In the last decades of the twentieth century, a 'memory boom' took place in Western Europe and North America. It is the aim of this volume to investigate how academic practices of Memory Studies are being applied, adapted, and transformed in the countries of East-Central Europe and the former Soviet Union. Importing the 'memory boom' into a new cultural context without interrogating the paradigm itself is of course impossible, and this has been the starting point for the current volume. While for scholars of Eastern Europe the volume will be interesting for the specifics discussed in each chapter, for scholars in Memory Studies it affords a new, startlingly different perspective on a paradigm that has become canonical and crystallized.
Review
to come
Review
'The contributors to this volume explore the difficult challenges facing Europe in reaching common understandings of very different historical memories of Holocaust and Gulag. The editors have brought together scholars who cross the boundaries of humanistic disciplines. Above all, they have found scholars who have been brave enough to learn about the other half of Europe.' - Mark von Hagen, Arizona State University
'A compelling volume that powerfully challenges the Western canon of Memory Studies to define a new age of cultural memory in the East.' - Andrew Hoskins, Editor-in-Chief, Memory Studies
Synopsis
It is the aim of this volume to investigate how academic practices of Memory Studies are being applied, adapted, and transformed in the countries of East-Central Europe and the former Soviet Union. It affords a new, startlingly different perspective for scholars of both Eastern European history and Memory Studies.
Synopsis
In the last decades of the twentieth century, the humanities and social sciences in Western Europe and North America experienced a 'memory boom' that gave rise to new research agendas and provoked interdisciplinary exchange. Less known are the ways in which academic practices of Memory Studies have been applied, adapted, and transformed in the countries of East-Central Europe and the former Soviet Union. Proceeding from a clear-eyed interrogation of the 'memory boom' paradigm itself - and its theoretical portability into a new cultural context - this volume collects new and varied perspectives on the challenges of post-catastrophic memory, offering a novel approach to a paradigm that has become canonical and crystallized.
About the Author
Uilleam Blacker is Research Associate on the 'Memory at War' project in the Department of Slavonic Studies at the University of Cambridge, UK. He is the co-author of Remembering Katyn (2012).
Alexander Etkind is Professor of the European University at Florence, Italy. He directed the international project 'Memory at War' (2010-2013). He is the author of Eros of the Impossible (1996); Internal Colonization: Russia's Imperial Experience (2011); Warped Mourning: Stories of the Undead in the Land of the Unburied (2013); and co-author of Remembering Katyn (2012).
Julie Fedor is Research Associate on the 'Memory at War' project in the Department of Slavonic Studies at the University of Cambridge, UK. She is the author of Russia and the Cult of State Security (2011); co-author of Remembering Katyn (2012); and co-editor of Memory, Conflict and New Media: Web Wars in Post-Socialist States (2013).
Table of Contents
Introduction; Uilleam Blacker and Alexander Etkind
PART I: DIVIDED MEMORY
1. Europe's Divided Memory; Aleida Assmann
2. Human Rights and European Remembrance; Jay Winter
3. European Memory: Between Jewish and Cosmopolitan; Natan Sznaider
PART II: POST-COLONIAL, POST-SOCIALIST
4. Between Paris and Warsaw: Multidirectional Memory, Ethics and Historical Responsibility; Michael Rothberg
5. Theory as Memory Practice: The Divided Discourse on Poland's Postcoloniality; Dirk Uffelmann
6. Occupation vs Colonization: Post-Soviet Latvia and the Provincialization of Europe; Kevin M. F. Platt
PART III: MOURNING MATTERS
7. Murder in the Cemetery: Memorial Clashes over the Victims of the Soviet-Polish Wars; Andrzej Nowak
8. Living among the Ghosts of Others: Urban Postmemory in Eastern Europe; Uilleam Blacker
9. Towards Cosmopolitan Mourning: Belarusian Literature between History and Politics; Simon Lewis
PART IV: MEMORY WARS IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
10. Why Digital Memory Studies Should Not Overlook Eastern Europe's Memory Wars; Ellen Rutten
11. Memory Wars in Post-Soviet Ukraine (1991-2010); Andriy Portnov
12. The Struggle for History: The Past as a Limited Resource; Ilya Kalinin