The transnational ‘memorialization’ of monumental socialist public works in Eastern Europe

Preda, Caterina

doi:10.1177/1367877919885950

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…Assmann, 2017; De Cesari and Rigney, 2014; Serpente, 2015). In so doing, scholars point to the social and mnemonical considerations and consequences of these transcultural and transnational processes (Bekus, 2021; Garde-Hansen et al, 2009; Hirsch, 1997; Preda, 2020). The political aspect of collective memory has been prominently noted (what is termed “the politics of memory,” e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reorientation of foreign memories in domestic political speech: Considerations and effects

Adams

2022

International Journal of Cultural Studies

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Within the “politics of memory,” this study conceptually expands understanding of the role of political leaders as active producers of memory. By considering the growing exchangeability of ideas and meanings across cultural and national borders, analysis demonstrates how political leaders adapt and reorient transnational memory narratives’ most iconic events. However, deliberately relying on memories from across the border also embody additional functions that are not entirely focused on the domestic. Identifying three considerations that affect how memories are used in political speech: audience, context, and memory, this study shows that political leaders re-narrate, change, and revise foreign memories so that new meanings and utilizations are devised. These intertwining memories contribute to the blurring of frontiers, bringing to the fore the everlasting debate between history and memory, truth and post-truth, and the exalted role of politicians in the construction of past events.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reorientation of foreign memories in domestic political speech: Considerations and effects

Adams

2022

International Journal of Cultural Studies

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“…Counter-monuments practices have been analyzed especially in what relates to the memory of the Nazi regime (Young 1992) but could be applied to other post-socialist contexts (Isto 2020). Moreover, comparative, transnational regional analyses (De Cesari and Rigney 2014; Preda 2020) are limited. The contribution of this article is to analyze artistic practices of memory that are not discussed by the scientific literature that examines the processes of reckoning with the past (Stan 2008; Stan and Nedelsky 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Living Statues” and Nonuments as “Performative Monument Events” in Post-Socialist South-Eastern Europe

Preda

2022

Nationalities Papers

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After the fall of the socialist regimes in South and Eastern Europe socialist statues and monuments were either removed, dislocated, or resignified. Several performance practices have been employed to engage with these statues and monuments. Focusing on the role played by artistic memorialization in the processes of dealing with the communist past, this article uses the concepts of “performative monuments” (Widrich) and “memory events” (Etkind) to analyze several examples of what can be called “performative monuments events.” As many statues were removed, the statues witnessed performative practices in the process of their elimination. The monuments that were conserved were dislocated and exhibited as part of “sculpture park museums” and observed nostalgic, ironic practices of tourists that perform the memory of communism by interacting with the monuments. This article analyzes several examples in Albania, Bulgaria and Romania of socialist monuments that have remained in place or that have been dislocated and resignified by contemporary artists using performative practices of memory events that engage monuments. This exploratory research argues that artists, through their “performative monuments events,” try to bring the people back to replace the statues with “living statues” and to question the absurd megalomaniac monuments using metaphorical, material instruments.

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Postsocialist Statuary Politics in Romania and Bulgaria: An Ambivalent Socialist Heritage

Preda

2023

Comparative Southeast European Studies

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Using an approach situated at the intersection of cultural memory studies and (critical) heritage studies, with a focus on the ambivalent socialist heritage of socialist statues and monuments and their changing role in postsocialist public spaces, this article engages with the postcommunist strategies of reckoning with the past in Romania and Bulgaria in the period 1990–2020. Comparing the kinds of monumental memory of communism that were established in these countries, the author discusses how each dealt with their ambivalent socialist heritage through a public memory policy comprising three combined strategies: removal; preservation; and the replacement of communist heroes with anticommunist counter-monuments. The author concludes that stances toward the socialist heritage manifest various tensions in terms of the types of statues that were removed or, alternately, allowed to remain; of the opposition between local and national decisions as well as between the official approach and citizens’ perspectives; and, finally, of aesthetic versus political criteria.

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The transnational ‘memorialization’ of monumental socialist public works in Eastern Europe

Cited by 3 publications

References 24 publications

Reorientation of foreign memories in domestic political speech: Considerations and effects

Reorientation of foreign memories in domestic political speech: Considerations and effects

“Living Statues” and Nonuments as “Performative Monument Events” in Post-Socialist South-Eastern Europe

Postsocialist Statuary Politics in Romania and Bulgaria: An Ambivalent Socialist Heritage

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