Text

Chapter 10 Complicity in Commemoration

---

The chapter reads Maria Stepanova’s 2017 Памяти памяти (In Memory of Memory, 2021) in view of the boom of testimonies of involvement in twentieth-century mass violence in Central and Eastern European literatures. Why this interest now? Hypothesis is that the texts address convergences between past complicities and current forms of participation in the wrongdoings of neoliberalism. These issues are related, since justifications of past involvement established the terminology, narratives, and heuristics in which mass violence has been subsequently discussed, thus forming the frame for the negotiation of current problematic involvement. Stepanova’s text stands out from the large corpus of contemporary family history narratives. First, it inverts the common order of critical discourse, as the literary text discusses theoretical concepts of memory studies, most notably Hirsch’s “postmemory.” Secondly, this discussion challenges a Western bias of memory studies, where political violence is portrayed as a traumatizing element of a past era handed down through transgenerational transmission. Stepanova outlines that in Eastern Europe, the experience of totalitarian terror and mass violence spread over several eras and multiple generations, creating a “traumatic enfilade” that comprises even the narrator’s present. In Memory of Memory addresses the critical participation of analysis in forming the aftermath of terror and mass violence.

---

Availability

No copy data

Detail Information

Series Title

-

Call Number

-

Publisher

: Taylor & Francis., 2023

Collation

-

Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

9781032305257, 9781032305264

Classification

NONE

Content Type

text

Media Type

computer

Carrier Type

online resource

Edition

1

Subject(s)

-

Specific Detail Info

-

Statement of Responsibility

-

Other Information

Cataloger

Hasan

Source

https://directory.doabooks.org/handle/20.500.12854/99129

Validator

-

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

10.4324/9781003305569-15

Journal Volume

-

Journal Issue

-

Subtitle

-

Parallel Title

-

Other version/related

File Attachment

Comments

---

You must be logged in to post a comment