Despite its impact on the education, research and health system, Romanian brain drain is still ne... more Despite its impact on the education, research and health system, Romanian brain drain is still neglected in both the political agendas and cultural debates. Furthermore, the theme is almost absent within contemporary literature starting with the writings anchored in the transition period, which is precisely that of the first significant waves of labor and high-skilled emigration, but also that of some major social and cultural traumas. In this context, Avalon: The Secrets of the Happy Émigrés (2018) by Bogdan Suceavă fill up a main cultural gap as far as it individualize the social-historical traumatic experience of brain exodus by means of an autobiographical narrative which offers at the same time a realistic image of the so called “happiness” of émigré scholars, comprising their big efforts for achieving the highest performances in their field of research. Revealing the differences between the American and Romanian academic systems, which are condensed in the illustrative story of the hero-narrator, Avalon… incorporates, as Bildungsroman, a “cultural pedagogy” shaped especially under the guiding of one of the leading mathematicians on the world, Professor Bang Yen-Chen, but which is also grounded into the significant previous formative experience. In the same time, Avalon… offers a lesson of cosmopolitanism, which integrates, by means of literary memory, the cultural values of the post-communist East, especially those of Romanian recent pasts. Our analysis of the novel is focused on the “cultural-pedagogical” dimension of its multilayered architecture, in which the intertwined autobiographical, historical, and sociological levels are mobilized for converting the personal and collective traumas in a project of identity revision and rebuilding.
Studia Universitatis Babeș-Bolyai. Studia Europaea, 2024
About thirty years after the “bloodbath” which seemed to have been putting an end to the European... more About thirty years after the “bloodbath” which seemed to have been putting an end to the European “age of extremes”, the memoryscapes are still profoundly fragmented within the former territory of “the country that no longer exists”, especially due to the ongoing memory wars that started in the troubled, but also “iconic” – if we think at the cultural revival – eighties. From this viewpoint, the dynamics of both the political and social memory indicates – mostly in Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia (as the very “epicentre of violence” during the Yugoslav wars) – several patterns of continuity from the 1980s and 1990s until the present, even if there are also significant differences due to both the national specific circumstances and the respective statuses of these countries against the backdrop of Europeanisation. The article provides some relevant insights about these mnemonic dynamics – which are incorporated in contemporary cultural memory, including literature –, with a particular emphasis on the historical memory games instrumentalized within the (post-)Yugoslav political and intellectual arenas in the context(s) of the rise of ethno-nationalism.
Despite its impact on the education, research and health system, Romanian brain drain is still ne... more Despite its impact on the education, research and health system, Romanian brain drain is still neglected in both the political agendas and cultural debates. Furthermore, the theme is almost absent within contemporary literature starting with the writings anchored in the transition period, which is precisely that of the first significant waves of labor and high-skilled emigration, but also that of some major social and cultural traumas. In this context, Avalon: The Secrets of the Happy Émigrés (2018) by Bogdan Suceavă fill up a main cultural gap as far as it individualize the social-historical traumatic experience of brain exodus by means of an autobiographical narrative which offers at the same time a realistic image of the so called “happiness” of émigré scholars, comprising their big efforts for achieving the highest performances in their field of research. Revealing the differences between the American and Romanian academic systems, which are condensed in the illustrative story of the hero-narrator, Avalon… incorporates, as Bildungsroman, a “cultural pedagogy” shaped especially under the guiding of one of the leading mathematicians on the world, Professor Bang Yen-Chen, but which is also grounded into the significant previous formative experience. In the same time, Avalon… offers a lesson of cosmopolitanism, which integrates, by means of literary memory, the cultural values of the post-communist East, especially those of Romanian recent pasts. Our analysis of the novel is focused on the “cultural-pedagogical” dimension of its multilayered architecture, in which the intertwined autobiographical, historical, and sociological levels are mobilized for converting the personal and collective traumas in a project of identity revision and rebuilding.
Studia Universitatis Babeş-Bolyai. Studia Europaea, Jun 27, 2024
By counterbalancing the instrumentalization of the ethno-nationalist restorative nostalgia-which ... more By counterbalancing the instrumentalization of the ethno-nationalist restorative nostalgia-which was not only the affective and imaginary fuel of the mnemonic wars fought, starting from the 80s, on the territory of "the country that no longer exists", but also that of both the subsequent tragedies and cultural-political polarizations-, Yugonostalgia emerged in the painful 90s as a privileged form of post-Yugoslav mnemonic imagination. Against the background of the persistent mnemonic conflicts within the region, the multidirectional/ agonistic Yugonostalgic memory appears nowadays as a catalyst of the emotional and ethical commitment with the recent past, particularly able to inspire "visions of a better future".
Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai. Studia Europaea , 2024
By counterbalancing the instrumentalization of the ethno-nationalist restorative nostalgia-which ... more By counterbalancing the instrumentalization of the ethno-nationalist restorative nostalgia-which was not only the affective and imaginary fuel of the mnemonic wars fought, starting from the 80s, on the territory of "the country that no longer exists", but also that of both the subsequent tragedies and cultural-political polarizations-, Yugonostalgia emerged in the painful 90s as a privileged form of post-Yugoslav mnemonic imagination. Against the background of the persistent mnemonic conflicts within the region, the multidirectional/ agonistic Yugonostalgic memory appears nowadays as a catalyst of the emotional and ethical commitment with the recent past, particularly able to inspire "visions of a better future".
At the end of the Cold War, the geopolitical struggle for the shaping of reunified Europe, the ri... more At the end of the Cold War, the geopolitical struggle for the shaping of reunified Europe, the rise of populism, and the reemergence of neo-nationalism on both sides of the old Iron Curtain created the premises for a competition between the new master narratives associated to the two dominant paradigms of the politics of the past: the cosmopolitan / transnational and the antagonistic / national(istic) one. Against the background of the persistent crises following the transition processes in Eastern Europe, the Great Recession, the new geopolitical challenges, and the subsequent waves of neo-nationalism, the “memory games” intensified on both national and European institutional arenas. These games had a significant impact, detectable especially at the level of the institutionalized memory formats (the political and the cultural memory focused on the “founding traumas”, including the revisionist national historical politics), which encompassed the deepening of the ideological, political, and cultural cleavages within and beyond the nation states. In the same time, the mnemonic and cultural struggles over the conflicting “painful pasts” allowed the preservation of the old fault line which has divided “Europe’s Europes” during the Cold War. Against this mnemonic background, the new paradigm of the “agonistic memory” seems to offer a “decent” and “realistic” third way for dealing with the contested pasts, by means of a multiperspectivist approach which also allows the overcoming of the impasses revealed by the two other competitive memory models.
Romancier, dramaturge, essayiste, metteur en scene, Virgil Tănase est probablement l’un des plus ... more Romancier, dramaturge, essayiste, metteur en scene, Virgil Tănase est probablement l’un des plus importants dissidents de l’epoque Ceaucescu et, en meme temps, une figure remarquable de l’elite intellectuelle exilee en France. « Invite » a quitter la Roumanie — en 1977 — par le regime dictatorial de Bucarest, cet ecrivain continue a Paris son activite dissidente et reste un « rebelle » parmi les militants anticommunistes de l’exil. « Coupable de crime de lese-majeste » contre le clan Ceaucescu, il est, en mai 1982, la cible d’un attentat de la Securitate, dont les plans criminels sont dejoues par la D. S. T., avec l’appui du president Mitterrand. Trente ans apres l’« affaire Tănase », son protagoniste en fournit, a travers un « document policier et litteraire », le recit « romanesque » mais authentique, tout en devoilant les rapports intimes existant entre l’experience personnelle et le grand mecanisme de l’Histoire. Un, deux, trois, la mort ! est un livre fascinant sur la condition de l’ecrivain confronte a la dictature, mais aussi sur le destin d’un exile « atypique », qui affirme orgueilleusement sa vocation d’ecrivain, au-dela de toute autre forme de dissidence.
EUrope : cultures, mémoires, identités est une revue semestrielle multidisciplinaire consacrée no... more EUrope : cultures, mémoires, identités est une revue semestrielle multidisciplinaire consacrée notamment à l'étude de la dynamique des mémoires et des représentations culturelles-identitaires qui ont façonné les espaces d'expérience, les horizons d'attente et les imaginaires socioculturels dans les « Europes de l'Europe » aux XX e-XXI e siècles. En accordant un espace particulier aux approches tributaires des Cultural Memory Studies, et surtout des théories actuelles de la « mémoire agonistique », en tant que « troisième voie », celle de la recherche d'un équilibre entre les contraires représentés par les deux paradigmes compétitifs qui se disputent l'hégémonie dans l'espace européen notamment depuis la fin de la guerre froide-cosmopolite/ transnationale et national(ist)e/ antagoniste-, la revue reste ouverte à toute contribution, de préférence transdisciplinaire, sur la problématique générale susmentionnée. Les propositions d'articles peuvent être ancrées dans tout champ disciplinaire des sciences socio-humaines : les études sur la mémoire et sur la nostalgie, l'historiographie, la philosophie de l'histoire et la mnémohistoire, les sciences sociales et politiques, les études sur les diasporas et les migrations, les études sur les médias, l'anthropologie, les études culturelles et littéraires, les études sur le théâtre et le film, les études de genre etc. Structurés autour des dossiers thématiques, mais incluant également des sections varia, des comptes rendus et des recensions d'ouvrages, les deux numéros publiés chaque année vont accueillir des contributions originales rédigées en français et en anglais, dont la pertinence et la rigueur scientifiques seront évaluées par au moins deux référents indépendants anonymes, spécialistes dans les domaines envisagés (double blind peer review).
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EUrope : cultures, mémoires, identités is a semiannual multidisciplinary peer-reviewed journal devoted especially to the study of the dynamics of memories and of cultural identity representations which have shaped the spaces of experience, the horizons of expectation, and the sociocultural imaginaries in “Europe’s Europes” in the 20th and 21st centuries. EUrope… provides a special outlet to the analysis grounded in cultural memory studies, and particularly in contemporary theories of “agonistic memory”, considered as a “third way”, that of the research of an equilibrium between the contraries embodied in the two competitive paradigms which have disputed their hegemony in the European area, particularly since the end of the Cold War: the cosmopolitan/ transnational one, and the national(ist)/ antagonistic one. Though, the journal encourages submissions, if possible transdisciplinary, from a wide range of disciplines based in social sciences and humanities, concerning the general issues mentioned above: memory studies, nostalgia studies, historiography, philosophy of history and mnemohistory, social and political sciences, diaspora & migration studies, media studies, anthropology, cultural studies, literary studies, film, theater and performance studies, gender studies etc. Structured around thematic dossiers, but also including sections dedicated to varia and reviews, the two issues published per year will host original contributions in French and English, whose relevance and scientific accuracy will be evaluated by at least two independent anonymous referees, experts in the respective domains (double blind peer review).
Nous invitons les chercheurs actifs dans de divers champs disciplinaires – (Cultural) Memory Stud... more Nous invitons les chercheurs actifs dans de divers champs disciplinaires – (Cultural) Memory Studies, Nostalgia Studies, Utopian Studies, Diaspora & Migration Studies, Media Studies, Digital Memory Studies, historiographie, philosophie de l’histoire, mnémohistoire, anthropologie, sociologie, psychologie, sciences politiques, études culturelles et littéraires, études sur le théâtre et le film, études de genre, études postcoloniales etc. – à envoyer des propositions pouvant porter sur les axes thématiques suivants (sans s’y limiter) :
• Dynamiques des mémoires politiques, nostalgies et (anti-)utopies dans les Europes de la Guerre Froide. « L’épée à deux tranchants » de la nostalgie et de l’utopie
• Politiques mémorielles et mémoires collectives fragmentées dans l’espace européen après 1945
• La « fin » des idéologies et des utopies progressistes dans les « Europes de l’Europe » avant et après 1989
• Mémoires divisées de l’Europe après la Guerre Froide : entre le trauma et la nostalgie
• Guerres des mémoires, avatars de la nostalgie et « choc » des utopies dans l’espace européen : des années ’80 à présent. Nostalgies réflexives et nostalgies restauratrices. Utopies rétrospectives /vs/ rétro-utopies
• Mémoires conflictuelles, nostalgies et visages de l’utopie dans l’Europe des transitions démocratiques (y compris l’espace post-soviétique). Mémoires collectives des transitions dans le contexte socioculturel actuel
• Avatars de la nostalgie postsocialiste dans l’Europe Centrale et Orientale – Ostalgie, la yougonostalgie / la titostalgie etc. Utopies rétrospectives et politiques de l’avenir
• Incertitudes, crises de la mémoire et réflexions sur l’avenir collectif (collective future thought) en Europe après la Guerre Froide
• Présentisme et crise de l’avenir. Avatars du passé dissocié /fracturé et de « l’avenir déconnecté » dans la culture européenne actuelle. Visions utopiques et dystopiques de l’avenir. Formes commerciales de la mémoire, de la nostalgie et de l’utopie : la « mémoire imaginée », la « nostalgie ersatz » et les visages de l’utopie consumériste
• Mémoire, nostalgie et utopie dans le contexte épistémologique des réflexions sur l’avenir collectif (collective future thought). La mémoire pour l’avenir dans la culture européenne actuelle
• Paradigmes actuels dans les (Cultural) Memory Studies: cosmopolitisme, nationalisme, agonisme. La mémoire agonistique, la ré-politisation de la sphère publique et les visions de l’avenir
• Perspectives actuelles dans les Digital Memory Studies. La « mémoire digitalement compromise » et le passé fracturé /vs/ la mémoire pour l’avenir. Les guerres digitales et les guerres des mémoires.
Les textes acceptés (après le peer review) seront publiés dans un volume collectif qui paraîtra en décembre 2024.
The article provides some relevant insights about the dynamics of the European politics of histor... more The article provides some relevant insights about the dynamics of the European politics of history and memory against the background of the third wave of European integration, which is the so called “cultural Europeanization.” These dynamics, originated in Western European both cultural turn of the 1970s and memory boom of the 1980s, is inscribed in the complex geopolitical landscape configured after the end of Cold War, within the context of European enlargement and the struggles for recognition of the “new Europe”. The competition of “Europe’s Europes” memorial narratives about the “painful pasts” of West and East, which is also a competition between two mnemonic paradigms (cosmopolitan vs. national(ist)-antagonist), is followed against the background of both the transnational turn in memory studies and memory politics and the re-nationalization of European politics and ideologies, tightly connected to the post–Cold War developments.
Despite its impact on the education, research and health system, Romanian brain drain is still ne... more Despite its impact on the education, research and health system, Romanian brain drain is still neglected in both the political agendas and cultural debates. Furthermore, the theme is almost absent within contemporary literature starting with the writings anchored in the transition period, which is precisely that of the first significant waves of labor and high-skilled emigration, but also that of some major social and cultural traumas. In this context, Avalon: The Secrets of the Happy Émigrés (2018) by Bogdan Suceavă fill up a main cultural gap as far as it individualize the social-historical traumatic experience of brain exodus by means of an autobiographical narrative which offers at the same time a realistic image of the so called “happiness” of émigré scholars, comprising their big efforts for achieving the highest performances in their field of research. Revealing the differences between the American and Romanian academic systems, which are condensed in the illustrative story of the hero-narrator, Avalon… incorporates, as Bildungsroman, a “cultural pedagogy” shaped especially under the guiding of one of the leading mathematicians on the world, Professor Bang Yen-Chen, but which is also grounded into the significant previous formative experience. In the same time, Avalon… offers a lesson of cosmopolitanism, which integrates, by means of literary memory, the cultural values of the post-communist East, especially those of Romanian recent pasts. Our analysis of the novel is focused on the “cultural-pedagogical” dimension of its multilayered architecture, in which the intertwined autobiographical, historical, and sociological levels are mobilized for converting the personal and collective traumas in a project of identity revision and rebuilding.
Studia Universitatis Babeș-Bolyai Studia Europaea, 2023
Less than a decade after the proclamation of "the end of history", the anxieties about "the end o... more Less than a decade after the proclamation of "the end of history", the anxieties about "the end of utopia" are gaining ground in the intellectual field all over the world, in the context of both "the crisis of the future" and the haunting of the present by the painful pasts. The latter two are the main consequences of the fracture in the contemporary temporal orderoccurred in the '70s and deepened after the fall of the Iron Curtain-which defines the "presentist regime of historicity". These dynamics are counterbalanced, in the same period, by a "global epidemic of nostalgia", including the commodified forms of "retromania", that reveals the presentist "faces of utopianism", from the non-instrumental "retrospective utopias"-as poles of "existential" types of reflective nostalgic practices-to the instrumental "retrotopias" based on the "restorative nostalgia", which were mobillized in the contemporary memory wars, starting from the '80s. Reflecting the tensions between the fixation on the traumatic legacy of the "age of extremes" and the apprehensions about "the future of nostalgia", the presentist dynamics of multidirectional memory discloses conflictual landscapes (social, cultural, and political), from the mnemonic turn of the '70s and the '80s-which has arisen against the background of the decline of both welfare state and the nation-states, and of the global economic crisis-to the post-Cold War contests around "the divised memories" of "Europe's Europes", coexisting with the clashes of contradictory "faces" of nostalgia and utopia.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, particularly during the hard transition of the 90s, the h... more After the collapse of the Soviet Union, particularly during the hard transition of the 90s, the highly polarized Russian society revealed two main forms of remembering and coping with recent past. This past was either idealized as a time of imperial glory, national pride, and relative welfare, even if it also included periods of anomie (the late Stalin era) or stagnation (the Brejnev era), either treated as a period of significant traumas that necessitated persistent recognition and working through. As for the official memory regimes, if the first post-Soviet decade was dominated by the totalitarian anticommunist (and antinostalgic) paradigm, the 2000s brought a radical turn, with the rise of victimhood nationalism and “redemptive” authoritarianism of the Putin era. The new mnemonic regime is shaped by an official, “patriotic” restorative nostalgia that is also placed in the centre of the presidential cultural programe designed to legitimize the authoritarian system and to support t...
Romanistische Zeitschrift für Literaturgeschichte / Cahiers d’histoire des littératures romanes, 2023
The “competitive memory” of the Romanian Revolution, which engendered antagonistic narratives wit... more The “competitive memory” of the Romanian Revolution, which engendered antagonistic narratives within both the political arenas and cultural field, is also reflected in a significant number of novels in which 1989 as lieu de mémoire has been almost obliterated, whereas the events of December have lost their tragic dimension, being painted in grotesque colors by means of satire and allegory or by those of the “miserable realism”. In contrast with these fictions, the novel of Bogdan Suceavă, The Night when someone died for you (2010) restores the dimension of human tragedy – even if it preserve the topics of the “chaotic bloodshed” – through a profound affective and ethical engagement in the “individualization of history”, the Revolution being here memorialized within an exemplary story, incorporated in an autobiographical narrative. It is the story of an “absent”, and yet one of the most “implicated subjects” in the tragic events (the departed): a young soldier, Cristi (the symbolic double of the narrator-protagonist), who died the night of December 23, killed by a stray bullet. From this viewpoint, the novel accomplish a similar function to those cultural artifacts in which is activated the “prosthetic memory” whose ability of generating “empathy and social responsibility” is crucial in connecting readers, and especially young people, with “painful pasts”. In The Night…, these affective-imaginative links are going beyond the level of the individualization of history, as the novel integrate, at the same time, like all the books of Suceavă, an intertextual dimension, connecting historical with cultural and especially literary memory. Finally, The Night… comprise a metatextual level in which the introspections of the hero-narrator, his memories of recent military experience (which constitutes a second diegetic layer, and a “mirror” for the “film” of the Revolution), and his dialogues with other “implicated subjects” are mobilized in a “post-ideological” meta-narrative regarding the “ideologization of memory”, and the politicization and moralization of contested pasts. By this complex architecture, the “novel of memory” constructed by Suceavă is acquiring an “agonistic”, “multidirectional” dimension, despite the limitations of the autobiographical form.
, Romanistische Zeitschrift für Literaturgeschichte / Cahiers d’histoire des littératures romanes, 2021
After recording a “syncope” during the first decade of transition, against the background of the ... more After recording a “syncope” during the first decade of transition, against the background of the inflation of memorial narratives, of the media explosion and of an “imaginary crisis” (J.-J. Wunenburger) closely related to political, social and economic crises, the Romanian prose (particularly the novel) achieves, during the first half of the 2000s, a significant revival. It is the moment of a true “return of the repressed” that reflects, within the obsessive themes of this prose, on the one hand, the “clash” of – both cultural and political – transitional utopias and, on the other hand, the conflict between this utopias and the post-communist “disenchanted” world. It is also the case of the “apocalyptic” novel of Bogdan Suceavă, Coming from an Off-Key Time (2011 [2004]), a parable about the failure of “the re-enchantment of the world” in the Romanian early 1990s, in which the author deconstructs the mechanisms of the transitional utopias, denouncing their inadequacy to reality, by means of both parody and anti-utopian satire.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, particularly during the hard transition of the 90s, the h... more After the collapse of the Soviet Union, particularly during the hard transition of the 90s, the highly polarized Russian society revealed two main forms of remembering and coping with recent past. This past was either idealized as a time of imperial glory, national pride, and relative welfare, even if it also included periods of anomie (the late Stalin era) or stagnation (the Brejnev era), either treated as a period of significant traumas that necessitated persistent recognition and working through. As for the official memory regimes, if the first post-Soviet decade was dominated by the totalitarian anticommunist (and antinostalgic) paradigm, the 2000s brought a radical turn, with the rise of victimhood nationalism and “redemptive” authoritarianism of the Putin era. The new mnemonic regime is shaped by an official, “patriotic” restorative nostalgia that is also placed in the centre of the presidential cultural programe designed to legitimize the authoritarian system and to support the restoration of a great, mythical Russia. Against this background, new forms of counter-memory and counter-nostalgia began to manifest within both the social and cultural field. One of the most remarkable exemples is offered within the “new realities” created by the young photographer Danila Tkachenko, who’s compositions marked by a “second-hand nostalgia” challenge both the Soviet utopia and its official nostalgic-populist recostructions. By means of a special nostalgic technique based on reframing the remnants and the “trukhliashechkas” of the Soviet past – (re)interpreted as the symbols of “the perfect technocratic future that never came” –, the young artist also deconstruct the imagined “sovietness” embedded in the cultural-political products shaped by the statist patriotic nostalgia. His representations of the post-Soviet landscape are those of “a ghost of utopia”, a land of ruins, of abandoned cities, of ecological disasters, and of millions unburied deads of the GULAG.
The article provides some relevant insights about the dynamics of the European politics of histor... more The article provides some relevant insights about the dynamics of the European politics of history and memory against the background of the third wave of European integration, which is the so called "cultural Europeanization." These dynamics, originated in Western European both cultural turn of the 1970s and memory boom of the 1980s, is inscribed in the complex geopolitical landscape configured after the end of Cold War, within the context of European enlargement and the struggles for recognition of the "new Europe". The competition of "Europe's Europes" memorial narratives about the "painful pasts" of West and East, which is also a competition between two mnemonic paradigms (cosmopolitan vs. national(ist)-antagonist), is followed against the background of both the transnational turn in memory studies and memory politics and the re-nationalization of European politics and ideologies, tightly connected to the post-Cold War developments.
Studia Universitatis Babeș-Bolyai Studia Europaea, 2023
Abstract: Having been seen, at first, as the foundation of a “rebirth”, both European and global,... more Abstract: Having been seen, at first, as the foundation of a “rebirth”, both European and global, the “refolutions” of 1989 left a highly controversial legacy which is still subject of political memory clashes and a source of “cultural bipolarities”, but also of disillusionment and polarizations within multiple mnemonic communities. These contradictions, anchored in the ”traumatogenic changes” of the democratic transitions that engendered, at the end of the 90s, post-socialist nostalgia, are also related to a crisis of utopian thinking which characterized the moment 1989 itself and became a main feature of post–Cold War political-cultural paradigms, including the mnemonic ones, dominated by the traumatic legacy of the ”century of extremes”.
Keywords: revolutions of 1989, political memory, social memory, utopia, post-socialist nostalgia
"After the horrific experiences of ex-Yugoslavia, the tragedy of Ukraine reveals the terribl... more "After the horrific experiences of ex-Yugoslavia, the tragedy of Ukraine reveals the terrible consequences of the memory conflicts radicalization. Anticipated by a constant mnemonic war led by the Russia particularly against its Eastern neighbors, it proves “what happens when memory wars turn into real wars”. Since the end of Cold War, in the context of the re-nationalization of ideologies, the remythologization of national histories, and the reshaping of memory politics, the European memory games, as part of the struggle for recognition, have often became memory wars. This article provides some relevant insights about the political instrumentation of the “restorative nostalgia”/“retrotopia” in the (post-)Cold War illiberal memory games/wars, against the background of the growing crises connected to the rise of neo-nationalism. Keywords: memory wars, memory games, (re)mythologization of history, restorative nostalgia, populist neo-nationalism."
Despite its impact on the education, research and health system, Romanian brain drain is still ne... more Despite its impact on the education, research and health system, Romanian brain drain is still neglected in both the political agendas and cultural debates. Furthermore, the theme is almost absent within contemporary literature starting with the writings anchored in the transition period, which is precisely that of the first significant waves of labor and high-skilled emigration, but also that of some major social and cultural traumas. In this context, Avalon: The Secrets of the Happy Émigrés (2018) by Bogdan Suceavă fill up a main cultural gap as far as it individualize the social-historical traumatic experience of brain exodus by means of an autobiographical narrative which offers at the same time a realistic image of the so called “happiness” of émigré scholars, comprising their big efforts for achieving the highest performances in their field of research. Revealing the differences between the American and Romanian academic systems, which are condensed in the illustrative story of the hero-narrator, Avalon… incorporates, as Bildungsroman, a “cultural pedagogy” shaped especially under the guiding of one of the leading mathematicians on the world, Professor Bang Yen-Chen, but which is also grounded into the significant previous formative experience. In the same time, Avalon… offers a lesson of cosmopolitanism, which integrates, by means of literary memory, the cultural values of the post-communist East, especially those of Romanian recent pasts. Our analysis of the novel is focused on the “cultural-pedagogical” dimension of its multilayered architecture, in which the intertwined autobiographical, historical, and sociological levels are mobilized for converting the personal and collective traumas in a project of identity revision and rebuilding.
Studia Universitatis Babeș-Bolyai. Studia Europaea, 2024
About thirty years after the “bloodbath” which seemed to have been putting an end to the European... more About thirty years after the “bloodbath” which seemed to have been putting an end to the European “age of extremes”, the memoryscapes are still profoundly fragmented within the former territory of “the country that no longer exists”, especially due to the ongoing memory wars that started in the troubled, but also “iconic” – if we think at the cultural revival – eighties. From this viewpoint, the dynamics of both the political and social memory indicates – mostly in Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia (as the very “epicentre of violence” during the Yugoslav wars) – several patterns of continuity from the 1980s and 1990s until the present, even if there are also significant differences due to both the national specific circumstances and the respective statuses of these countries against the backdrop of Europeanisation. The article provides some relevant insights about these mnemonic dynamics – which are incorporated in contemporary cultural memory, including literature –, with a particular emphasis on the historical memory games instrumentalized within the (post-)Yugoslav political and intellectual arenas in the context(s) of the rise of ethno-nationalism.
Despite its impact on the education, research and health system, Romanian brain drain is still ne... more Despite its impact on the education, research and health system, Romanian brain drain is still neglected in both the political agendas and cultural debates. Furthermore, the theme is almost absent within contemporary literature starting with the writings anchored in the transition period, which is precisely that of the first significant waves of labor and high-skilled emigration, but also that of some major social and cultural traumas. In this context, Avalon: The Secrets of the Happy Émigrés (2018) by Bogdan Suceavă fill up a main cultural gap as far as it individualize the social-historical traumatic experience of brain exodus by means of an autobiographical narrative which offers at the same time a realistic image of the so called “happiness” of émigré scholars, comprising their big efforts for achieving the highest performances in their field of research. Revealing the differences between the American and Romanian academic systems, which are condensed in the illustrative story of the hero-narrator, Avalon… incorporates, as Bildungsroman, a “cultural pedagogy” shaped especially under the guiding of one of the leading mathematicians on the world, Professor Bang Yen-Chen, but which is also grounded into the significant previous formative experience. In the same time, Avalon… offers a lesson of cosmopolitanism, which integrates, by means of literary memory, the cultural values of the post-communist East, especially those of Romanian recent pasts. Our analysis of the novel is focused on the “cultural-pedagogical” dimension of its multilayered architecture, in which the intertwined autobiographical, historical, and sociological levels are mobilized for converting the personal and collective traumas in a project of identity revision and rebuilding.
Studia Universitatis Babeş-Bolyai. Studia Europaea, Jun 27, 2024
By counterbalancing the instrumentalization of the ethno-nationalist restorative nostalgia-which ... more By counterbalancing the instrumentalization of the ethno-nationalist restorative nostalgia-which was not only the affective and imaginary fuel of the mnemonic wars fought, starting from the 80s, on the territory of "the country that no longer exists", but also that of both the subsequent tragedies and cultural-political polarizations-, Yugonostalgia emerged in the painful 90s as a privileged form of post-Yugoslav mnemonic imagination. Against the background of the persistent mnemonic conflicts within the region, the multidirectional/ agonistic Yugonostalgic memory appears nowadays as a catalyst of the emotional and ethical commitment with the recent past, particularly able to inspire "visions of a better future".
Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai. Studia Europaea , 2024
By counterbalancing the instrumentalization of the ethno-nationalist restorative nostalgia-which ... more By counterbalancing the instrumentalization of the ethno-nationalist restorative nostalgia-which was not only the affective and imaginary fuel of the mnemonic wars fought, starting from the 80s, on the territory of "the country that no longer exists", but also that of both the subsequent tragedies and cultural-political polarizations-, Yugonostalgia emerged in the painful 90s as a privileged form of post-Yugoslav mnemonic imagination. Against the background of the persistent mnemonic conflicts within the region, the multidirectional/ agonistic Yugonostalgic memory appears nowadays as a catalyst of the emotional and ethical commitment with the recent past, particularly able to inspire "visions of a better future".
At the end of the Cold War, the geopolitical struggle for the shaping of reunified Europe, the ri... more At the end of the Cold War, the geopolitical struggle for the shaping of reunified Europe, the rise of populism, and the reemergence of neo-nationalism on both sides of the old Iron Curtain created the premises for a competition between the new master narratives associated to the two dominant paradigms of the politics of the past: the cosmopolitan / transnational and the antagonistic / national(istic) one. Against the background of the persistent crises following the transition processes in Eastern Europe, the Great Recession, the new geopolitical challenges, and the subsequent waves of neo-nationalism, the “memory games” intensified on both national and European institutional arenas. These games had a significant impact, detectable especially at the level of the institutionalized memory formats (the political and the cultural memory focused on the “founding traumas”, including the revisionist national historical politics), which encompassed the deepening of the ideological, political, and cultural cleavages within and beyond the nation states. In the same time, the mnemonic and cultural struggles over the conflicting “painful pasts” allowed the preservation of the old fault line which has divided “Europe’s Europes” during the Cold War. Against this mnemonic background, the new paradigm of the “agonistic memory” seems to offer a “decent” and “realistic” third way for dealing with the contested pasts, by means of a multiperspectivist approach which also allows the overcoming of the impasses revealed by the two other competitive memory models.
Romancier, dramaturge, essayiste, metteur en scene, Virgil Tănase est probablement l’un des plus ... more Romancier, dramaturge, essayiste, metteur en scene, Virgil Tănase est probablement l’un des plus importants dissidents de l’epoque Ceaucescu et, en meme temps, une figure remarquable de l’elite intellectuelle exilee en France. « Invite » a quitter la Roumanie — en 1977 — par le regime dictatorial de Bucarest, cet ecrivain continue a Paris son activite dissidente et reste un « rebelle » parmi les militants anticommunistes de l’exil. « Coupable de crime de lese-majeste » contre le clan Ceaucescu, il est, en mai 1982, la cible d’un attentat de la Securitate, dont les plans criminels sont dejoues par la D. S. T., avec l’appui du president Mitterrand. Trente ans apres l’« affaire Tănase », son protagoniste en fournit, a travers un « document policier et litteraire », le recit « romanesque » mais authentique, tout en devoilant les rapports intimes existant entre l’experience personnelle et le grand mecanisme de l’Histoire. Un, deux, trois, la mort ! est un livre fascinant sur la condition de l’ecrivain confronte a la dictature, mais aussi sur le destin d’un exile « atypique », qui affirme orgueilleusement sa vocation d’ecrivain, au-dela de toute autre forme de dissidence.
EUrope : cultures, mémoires, identités est une revue semestrielle multidisciplinaire consacrée no... more EUrope : cultures, mémoires, identités est une revue semestrielle multidisciplinaire consacrée notamment à l'étude de la dynamique des mémoires et des représentations culturelles-identitaires qui ont façonné les espaces d'expérience, les horizons d'attente et les imaginaires socioculturels dans les « Europes de l'Europe » aux XX e-XXI e siècles. En accordant un espace particulier aux approches tributaires des Cultural Memory Studies, et surtout des théories actuelles de la « mémoire agonistique », en tant que « troisième voie », celle de la recherche d'un équilibre entre les contraires représentés par les deux paradigmes compétitifs qui se disputent l'hégémonie dans l'espace européen notamment depuis la fin de la guerre froide-cosmopolite/ transnationale et national(ist)e/ antagoniste-, la revue reste ouverte à toute contribution, de préférence transdisciplinaire, sur la problématique générale susmentionnée. Les propositions d'articles peuvent être ancrées dans tout champ disciplinaire des sciences socio-humaines : les études sur la mémoire et sur la nostalgie, l'historiographie, la philosophie de l'histoire et la mnémohistoire, les sciences sociales et politiques, les études sur les diasporas et les migrations, les études sur les médias, l'anthropologie, les études culturelles et littéraires, les études sur le théâtre et le film, les études de genre etc. Structurés autour des dossiers thématiques, mais incluant également des sections varia, des comptes rendus et des recensions d'ouvrages, les deux numéros publiés chaque année vont accueillir des contributions originales rédigées en français et en anglais, dont la pertinence et la rigueur scientifiques seront évaluées par au moins deux référents indépendants anonymes, spécialistes dans les domaines envisagés (double blind peer review).
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EUrope : cultures, mémoires, identités is a semiannual multidisciplinary peer-reviewed journal devoted especially to the study of the dynamics of memories and of cultural identity representations which have shaped the spaces of experience, the horizons of expectation, and the sociocultural imaginaries in “Europe’s Europes” in the 20th and 21st centuries. EUrope… provides a special outlet to the analysis grounded in cultural memory studies, and particularly in contemporary theories of “agonistic memory”, considered as a “third way”, that of the research of an equilibrium between the contraries embodied in the two competitive paradigms which have disputed their hegemony in the European area, particularly since the end of the Cold War: the cosmopolitan/ transnational one, and the national(ist)/ antagonistic one. Though, the journal encourages submissions, if possible transdisciplinary, from a wide range of disciplines based in social sciences and humanities, concerning the general issues mentioned above: memory studies, nostalgia studies, historiography, philosophy of history and mnemohistory, social and political sciences, diaspora & migration studies, media studies, anthropology, cultural studies, literary studies, film, theater and performance studies, gender studies etc. Structured around thematic dossiers, but also including sections dedicated to varia and reviews, the two issues published per year will host original contributions in French and English, whose relevance and scientific accuracy will be evaluated by at least two independent anonymous referees, experts in the respective domains (double blind peer review).
Nous invitons les chercheurs actifs dans de divers champs disciplinaires – (Cultural) Memory Stud... more Nous invitons les chercheurs actifs dans de divers champs disciplinaires – (Cultural) Memory Studies, Nostalgia Studies, Utopian Studies, Diaspora & Migration Studies, Media Studies, Digital Memory Studies, historiographie, philosophie de l’histoire, mnémohistoire, anthropologie, sociologie, psychologie, sciences politiques, études culturelles et littéraires, études sur le théâtre et le film, études de genre, études postcoloniales etc. – à envoyer des propositions pouvant porter sur les axes thématiques suivants (sans s’y limiter) :
• Dynamiques des mémoires politiques, nostalgies et (anti-)utopies dans les Europes de la Guerre Froide. « L’épée à deux tranchants » de la nostalgie et de l’utopie
• Politiques mémorielles et mémoires collectives fragmentées dans l’espace européen après 1945
• La « fin » des idéologies et des utopies progressistes dans les « Europes de l’Europe » avant et après 1989
• Mémoires divisées de l’Europe après la Guerre Froide : entre le trauma et la nostalgie
• Guerres des mémoires, avatars de la nostalgie et « choc » des utopies dans l’espace européen : des années ’80 à présent. Nostalgies réflexives et nostalgies restauratrices. Utopies rétrospectives /vs/ rétro-utopies
• Mémoires conflictuelles, nostalgies et visages de l’utopie dans l’Europe des transitions démocratiques (y compris l’espace post-soviétique). Mémoires collectives des transitions dans le contexte socioculturel actuel
• Avatars de la nostalgie postsocialiste dans l’Europe Centrale et Orientale – Ostalgie, la yougonostalgie / la titostalgie etc. Utopies rétrospectives et politiques de l’avenir
• Incertitudes, crises de la mémoire et réflexions sur l’avenir collectif (collective future thought) en Europe après la Guerre Froide
• Présentisme et crise de l’avenir. Avatars du passé dissocié /fracturé et de « l’avenir déconnecté » dans la culture européenne actuelle. Visions utopiques et dystopiques de l’avenir. Formes commerciales de la mémoire, de la nostalgie et de l’utopie : la « mémoire imaginée », la « nostalgie ersatz » et les visages de l’utopie consumériste
• Mémoire, nostalgie et utopie dans le contexte épistémologique des réflexions sur l’avenir collectif (collective future thought). La mémoire pour l’avenir dans la culture européenne actuelle
• Paradigmes actuels dans les (Cultural) Memory Studies: cosmopolitisme, nationalisme, agonisme. La mémoire agonistique, la ré-politisation de la sphère publique et les visions de l’avenir
• Perspectives actuelles dans les Digital Memory Studies. La « mémoire digitalement compromise » et le passé fracturé /vs/ la mémoire pour l’avenir. Les guerres digitales et les guerres des mémoires.
Les textes acceptés (après le peer review) seront publiés dans un volume collectif qui paraîtra en décembre 2024.
The article provides some relevant insights about the dynamics of the European politics of histor... more The article provides some relevant insights about the dynamics of the European politics of history and memory against the background of the third wave of European integration, which is the so called “cultural Europeanization.” These dynamics, originated in Western European both cultural turn of the 1970s and memory boom of the 1980s, is inscribed in the complex geopolitical landscape configured after the end of Cold War, within the context of European enlargement and the struggles for recognition of the “new Europe”. The competition of “Europe’s Europes” memorial narratives about the “painful pasts” of West and East, which is also a competition between two mnemonic paradigms (cosmopolitan vs. national(ist)-antagonist), is followed against the background of both the transnational turn in memory studies and memory politics and the re-nationalization of European politics and ideologies, tightly connected to the post–Cold War developments.
Despite its impact on the education, research and health system, Romanian brain drain is still ne... more Despite its impact on the education, research and health system, Romanian brain drain is still neglected in both the political agendas and cultural debates. Furthermore, the theme is almost absent within contemporary literature starting with the writings anchored in the transition period, which is precisely that of the first significant waves of labor and high-skilled emigration, but also that of some major social and cultural traumas. In this context, Avalon: The Secrets of the Happy Émigrés (2018) by Bogdan Suceavă fill up a main cultural gap as far as it individualize the social-historical traumatic experience of brain exodus by means of an autobiographical narrative which offers at the same time a realistic image of the so called “happiness” of émigré scholars, comprising their big efforts for achieving the highest performances in their field of research. Revealing the differences between the American and Romanian academic systems, which are condensed in the illustrative story of the hero-narrator, Avalon… incorporates, as Bildungsroman, a “cultural pedagogy” shaped especially under the guiding of one of the leading mathematicians on the world, Professor Bang Yen-Chen, but which is also grounded into the significant previous formative experience. In the same time, Avalon… offers a lesson of cosmopolitanism, which integrates, by means of literary memory, the cultural values of the post-communist East, especially those of Romanian recent pasts. Our analysis of the novel is focused on the “cultural-pedagogical” dimension of its multilayered architecture, in which the intertwined autobiographical, historical, and sociological levels are mobilized for converting the personal and collective traumas in a project of identity revision and rebuilding.
Studia Universitatis Babeș-Bolyai Studia Europaea, 2023
Less than a decade after the proclamation of "the end of history", the anxieties about "the end o... more Less than a decade after the proclamation of "the end of history", the anxieties about "the end of utopia" are gaining ground in the intellectual field all over the world, in the context of both "the crisis of the future" and the haunting of the present by the painful pasts. The latter two are the main consequences of the fracture in the contemporary temporal orderoccurred in the '70s and deepened after the fall of the Iron Curtain-which defines the "presentist regime of historicity". These dynamics are counterbalanced, in the same period, by a "global epidemic of nostalgia", including the commodified forms of "retromania", that reveals the presentist "faces of utopianism", from the non-instrumental "retrospective utopias"-as poles of "existential" types of reflective nostalgic practices-to the instrumental "retrotopias" based on the "restorative nostalgia", which were mobillized in the contemporary memory wars, starting from the '80s. Reflecting the tensions between the fixation on the traumatic legacy of the "age of extremes" and the apprehensions about "the future of nostalgia", the presentist dynamics of multidirectional memory discloses conflictual landscapes (social, cultural, and political), from the mnemonic turn of the '70s and the '80s-which has arisen against the background of the decline of both welfare state and the nation-states, and of the global economic crisis-to the post-Cold War contests around "the divised memories" of "Europe's Europes", coexisting with the clashes of contradictory "faces" of nostalgia and utopia.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, particularly during the hard transition of the 90s, the h... more After the collapse of the Soviet Union, particularly during the hard transition of the 90s, the highly polarized Russian society revealed two main forms of remembering and coping with recent past. This past was either idealized as a time of imperial glory, national pride, and relative welfare, even if it also included periods of anomie (the late Stalin era) or stagnation (the Brejnev era), either treated as a period of significant traumas that necessitated persistent recognition and working through. As for the official memory regimes, if the first post-Soviet decade was dominated by the totalitarian anticommunist (and antinostalgic) paradigm, the 2000s brought a radical turn, with the rise of victimhood nationalism and “redemptive” authoritarianism of the Putin era. The new mnemonic regime is shaped by an official, “patriotic” restorative nostalgia that is also placed in the centre of the presidential cultural programe designed to legitimize the authoritarian system and to support t...
Romanistische Zeitschrift für Literaturgeschichte / Cahiers d’histoire des littératures romanes, 2023
The “competitive memory” of the Romanian Revolution, which engendered antagonistic narratives wit... more The “competitive memory” of the Romanian Revolution, which engendered antagonistic narratives within both the political arenas and cultural field, is also reflected in a significant number of novels in which 1989 as lieu de mémoire has been almost obliterated, whereas the events of December have lost their tragic dimension, being painted in grotesque colors by means of satire and allegory or by those of the “miserable realism”. In contrast with these fictions, the novel of Bogdan Suceavă, The Night when someone died for you (2010) restores the dimension of human tragedy – even if it preserve the topics of the “chaotic bloodshed” – through a profound affective and ethical engagement in the “individualization of history”, the Revolution being here memorialized within an exemplary story, incorporated in an autobiographical narrative. It is the story of an “absent”, and yet one of the most “implicated subjects” in the tragic events (the departed): a young soldier, Cristi (the symbolic double of the narrator-protagonist), who died the night of December 23, killed by a stray bullet. From this viewpoint, the novel accomplish a similar function to those cultural artifacts in which is activated the “prosthetic memory” whose ability of generating “empathy and social responsibility” is crucial in connecting readers, and especially young people, with “painful pasts”. In The Night…, these affective-imaginative links are going beyond the level of the individualization of history, as the novel integrate, at the same time, like all the books of Suceavă, an intertextual dimension, connecting historical with cultural and especially literary memory. Finally, The Night… comprise a metatextual level in which the introspections of the hero-narrator, his memories of recent military experience (which constitutes a second diegetic layer, and a “mirror” for the “film” of the Revolution), and his dialogues with other “implicated subjects” are mobilized in a “post-ideological” meta-narrative regarding the “ideologization of memory”, and the politicization and moralization of contested pasts. By this complex architecture, the “novel of memory” constructed by Suceavă is acquiring an “agonistic”, “multidirectional” dimension, despite the limitations of the autobiographical form.
, Romanistische Zeitschrift für Literaturgeschichte / Cahiers d’histoire des littératures romanes, 2021
After recording a “syncope” during the first decade of transition, against the background of the ... more After recording a “syncope” during the first decade of transition, against the background of the inflation of memorial narratives, of the media explosion and of an “imaginary crisis” (J.-J. Wunenburger) closely related to political, social and economic crises, the Romanian prose (particularly the novel) achieves, during the first half of the 2000s, a significant revival. It is the moment of a true “return of the repressed” that reflects, within the obsessive themes of this prose, on the one hand, the “clash” of – both cultural and political – transitional utopias and, on the other hand, the conflict between this utopias and the post-communist “disenchanted” world. It is also the case of the “apocalyptic” novel of Bogdan Suceavă, Coming from an Off-Key Time (2011 [2004]), a parable about the failure of “the re-enchantment of the world” in the Romanian early 1990s, in which the author deconstructs the mechanisms of the transitional utopias, denouncing their inadequacy to reality, by means of both parody and anti-utopian satire.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, particularly during the hard transition of the 90s, the h... more After the collapse of the Soviet Union, particularly during the hard transition of the 90s, the highly polarized Russian society revealed two main forms of remembering and coping with recent past. This past was either idealized as a time of imperial glory, national pride, and relative welfare, even if it also included periods of anomie (the late Stalin era) or stagnation (the Brejnev era), either treated as a period of significant traumas that necessitated persistent recognition and working through. As for the official memory regimes, if the first post-Soviet decade was dominated by the totalitarian anticommunist (and antinostalgic) paradigm, the 2000s brought a radical turn, with the rise of victimhood nationalism and “redemptive” authoritarianism of the Putin era. The new mnemonic regime is shaped by an official, “patriotic” restorative nostalgia that is also placed in the centre of the presidential cultural programe designed to legitimize the authoritarian system and to support the restoration of a great, mythical Russia. Against this background, new forms of counter-memory and counter-nostalgia began to manifest within both the social and cultural field. One of the most remarkable exemples is offered within the “new realities” created by the young photographer Danila Tkachenko, who’s compositions marked by a “second-hand nostalgia” challenge both the Soviet utopia and its official nostalgic-populist recostructions. By means of a special nostalgic technique based on reframing the remnants and the “trukhliashechkas” of the Soviet past – (re)interpreted as the symbols of “the perfect technocratic future that never came” –, the young artist also deconstruct the imagined “sovietness” embedded in the cultural-political products shaped by the statist patriotic nostalgia. His representations of the post-Soviet landscape are those of “a ghost of utopia”, a land of ruins, of abandoned cities, of ecological disasters, and of millions unburied deads of the GULAG.
The article provides some relevant insights about the dynamics of the European politics of histor... more The article provides some relevant insights about the dynamics of the European politics of history and memory against the background of the third wave of European integration, which is the so called "cultural Europeanization." These dynamics, originated in Western European both cultural turn of the 1970s and memory boom of the 1980s, is inscribed in the complex geopolitical landscape configured after the end of Cold War, within the context of European enlargement and the struggles for recognition of the "new Europe". The competition of "Europe's Europes" memorial narratives about the "painful pasts" of West and East, which is also a competition between two mnemonic paradigms (cosmopolitan vs. national(ist)-antagonist), is followed against the background of both the transnational turn in memory studies and memory politics and the re-nationalization of European politics and ideologies, tightly connected to the post-Cold War developments.
Studia Universitatis Babeș-Bolyai Studia Europaea, 2023
Abstract: Having been seen, at first, as the foundation of a “rebirth”, both European and global,... more Abstract: Having been seen, at first, as the foundation of a “rebirth”, both European and global, the “refolutions” of 1989 left a highly controversial legacy which is still subject of political memory clashes and a source of “cultural bipolarities”, but also of disillusionment and polarizations within multiple mnemonic communities. These contradictions, anchored in the ”traumatogenic changes” of the democratic transitions that engendered, at the end of the 90s, post-socialist nostalgia, are also related to a crisis of utopian thinking which characterized the moment 1989 itself and became a main feature of post–Cold War political-cultural paradigms, including the mnemonic ones, dominated by the traumatic legacy of the ”century of extremes”.
Keywords: revolutions of 1989, political memory, social memory, utopia, post-socialist nostalgia
"After the horrific experiences of ex-Yugoslavia, the tragedy of Ukraine reveals the terribl... more "After the horrific experiences of ex-Yugoslavia, the tragedy of Ukraine reveals the terrible consequences of the memory conflicts radicalization. Anticipated by a constant mnemonic war led by the Russia particularly against its Eastern neighbors, it proves “what happens when memory wars turn into real wars”. Since the end of Cold War, in the context of the re-nationalization of ideologies, the remythologization of national histories, and the reshaping of memory politics, the European memory games, as part of the struggle for recognition, have often became memory wars. This article provides some relevant insights about the political instrumentation of the “restorative nostalgia”/“retrotopia” in the (post-)Cold War illiberal memory games/wars, against the background of the growing crises connected to the rise of neo-nationalism. Keywords: memory wars, memory games, (re)mythologization of history, restorative nostalgia, populist neo-nationalism."
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EUrope : cultures, mémoires, identités is a semiannual multidisciplinary peer-reviewed journal devoted especially to the study of the dynamics of memories and of cultural identity representations which have shaped the spaces of experience, the horizons of expectation, and the sociocultural imaginaries in “Europe’s Europes” in the 20th and 21st centuries. EUrope… provides a special outlet to the analysis grounded in cultural memory studies, and particularly in contemporary theories of “agonistic memory”, considered as a “third way”, that of the research of an equilibrium between the contraries embodied in the two competitive paradigms which have disputed their hegemony in the European area, particularly since the end of the Cold War: the cosmopolitan/ transnational one, and the national(ist)/ antagonistic one. Though, the journal encourages submissions, if possible transdisciplinary, from a wide range of disciplines based in social sciences and humanities, concerning the general issues mentioned above: memory studies, nostalgia studies, historiography, philosophy of history and mnemohistory, social and political sciences, diaspora & migration studies, media studies, anthropology, cultural studies, literary studies, film, theater and performance studies, gender studies etc. Structured around thematic dossiers, but also including sections dedicated to varia and reviews, the two issues published per year will host original contributions in French and English, whose relevance and scientific accuracy will be evaluated by at least two independent anonymous referees, experts in the respective domains (double blind peer review).
https://calenda.org/1164698
https://www.memorystudiesassociation.org/call-for-papers-divided-memories-and-political-cultural-imaginaries-in-post-cold-war-europe/
• Dynamiques des mémoires politiques, nostalgies et (anti-)utopies dans les Europes de la Guerre Froide. « L’épée à deux tranchants » de la nostalgie et de l’utopie
• Politiques mémorielles et mémoires collectives fragmentées dans l’espace européen après 1945
• La « fin » des idéologies et des utopies progressistes dans les « Europes de l’Europe » avant et après 1989
• Mémoires divisées de l’Europe après la Guerre Froide : entre le trauma et la nostalgie
• Guerres des mémoires, avatars de la nostalgie et « choc » des utopies dans l’espace européen : des années ’80 à présent. Nostalgies réflexives et nostalgies restauratrices. Utopies rétrospectives /vs/ rétro-utopies
• Mémoires conflictuelles, nostalgies et visages de l’utopie dans l’Europe des transitions démocratiques (y compris l’espace post-soviétique). Mémoires collectives des transitions dans le contexte socioculturel actuel
• Avatars de la nostalgie postsocialiste dans l’Europe Centrale et Orientale – Ostalgie, la yougonostalgie / la titostalgie etc. Utopies rétrospectives et politiques de l’avenir
• Incertitudes, crises de la mémoire et réflexions sur l’avenir collectif (collective future thought) en Europe après la Guerre Froide
• Présentisme et crise de l’avenir. Avatars du passé dissocié /fracturé et de « l’avenir déconnecté » dans la culture européenne actuelle. Visions utopiques et dystopiques de l’avenir. Formes commerciales de la mémoire, de la nostalgie et de l’utopie : la « mémoire imaginée », la « nostalgie ersatz » et les visages de l’utopie consumériste
• Mémoire, nostalgie et utopie dans le contexte épistémologique des réflexions sur l’avenir collectif (collective future thought). La mémoire pour l’avenir dans la culture européenne actuelle
• Paradigmes actuels dans les (Cultural) Memory Studies: cosmopolitisme, nationalisme, agonisme. La mémoire agonistique, la ré-politisation de la sphère publique et les visions de l’avenir
• Perspectives actuelles dans les Digital Memory Studies. La « mémoire digitalement compromise » et le passé fracturé /vs/ la mémoire pour l’avenir. Les guerres digitales et les guerres des mémoires.
Les textes acceptés (après le peer review) seront publiés dans un volume collectif qui paraîtra en décembre 2024.
Keywords: revolutions of 1989, political memory, social memory, utopia, post-socialist nostalgia
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EUrope : cultures, mémoires, identités is a semiannual multidisciplinary peer-reviewed journal devoted especially to the study of the dynamics of memories and of cultural identity representations which have shaped the spaces of experience, the horizons of expectation, and the sociocultural imaginaries in “Europe’s Europes” in the 20th and 21st centuries. EUrope… provides a special outlet to the analysis grounded in cultural memory studies, and particularly in contemporary theories of “agonistic memory”, considered as a “third way”, that of the research of an equilibrium between the contraries embodied in the two competitive paradigms which have disputed their hegemony in the European area, particularly since the end of the Cold War: the cosmopolitan/ transnational one, and the national(ist)/ antagonistic one. Though, the journal encourages submissions, if possible transdisciplinary, from a wide range of disciplines based in social sciences and humanities, concerning the general issues mentioned above: memory studies, nostalgia studies, historiography, philosophy of history and mnemohistory, social and political sciences, diaspora & migration studies, media studies, anthropology, cultural studies, literary studies, film, theater and performance studies, gender studies etc. Structured around thematic dossiers, but also including sections dedicated to varia and reviews, the two issues published per year will host original contributions in French and English, whose relevance and scientific accuracy will be evaluated by at least two independent anonymous referees, experts in the respective domains (double blind peer review).
https://calenda.org/1164698
https://www.memorystudiesassociation.org/call-for-papers-divided-memories-and-political-cultural-imaginaries-in-post-cold-war-europe/
• Dynamiques des mémoires politiques, nostalgies et (anti-)utopies dans les Europes de la Guerre Froide. « L’épée à deux tranchants » de la nostalgie et de l’utopie
• Politiques mémorielles et mémoires collectives fragmentées dans l’espace européen après 1945
• La « fin » des idéologies et des utopies progressistes dans les « Europes de l’Europe » avant et après 1989
• Mémoires divisées de l’Europe après la Guerre Froide : entre le trauma et la nostalgie
• Guerres des mémoires, avatars de la nostalgie et « choc » des utopies dans l’espace européen : des années ’80 à présent. Nostalgies réflexives et nostalgies restauratrices. Utopies rétrospectives /vs/ rétro-utopies
• Mémoires conflictuelles, nostalgies et visages de l’utopie dans l’Europe des transitions démocratiques (y compris l’espace post-soviétique). Mémoires collectives des transitions dans le contexte socioculturel actuel
• Avatars de la nostalgie postsocialiste dans l’Europe Centrale et Orientale – Ostalgie, la yougonostalgie / la titostalgie etc. Utopies rétrospectives et politiques de l’avenir
• Incertitudes, crises de la mémoire et réflexions sur l’avenir collectif (collective future thought) en Europe après la Guerre Froide
• Présentisme et crise de l’avenir. Avatars du passé dissocié /fracturé et de « l’avenir déconnecté » dans la culture européenne actuelle. Visions utopiques et dystopiques de l’avenir. Formes commerciales de la mémoire, de la nostalgie et de l’utopie : la « mémoire imaginée », la « nostalgie ersatz » et les visages de l’utopie consumériste
• Mémoire, nostalgie et utopie dans le contexte épistémologique des réflexions sur l’avenir collectif (collective future thought). La mémoire pour l’avenir dans la culture européenne actuelle
• Paradigmes actuels dans les (Cultural) Memory Studies: cosmopolitisme, nationalisme, agonisme. La mémoire agonistique, la ré-politisation de la sphère publique et les visions de l’avenir
• Perspectives actuelles dans les Digital Memory Studies. La « mémoire digitalement compromise » et le passé fracturé /vs/ la mémoire pour l’avenir. Les guerres digitales et les guerres des mémoires.
Les textes acceptés (après le peer review) seront publiés dans un volume collectif qui paraîtra en décembre 2024.
Keywords: revolutions of 1989, political memory, social memory, utopia, post-socialist nostalgia