Periodic Reporting for period 2 - TRANSLATING MEMORIES (Translating Memories: The Eastern European Past in the Global Arena)
Berichtszeitraum: 2021-07-01 bis 2022-12-31
The project offers a new understanding of transnational memory as a process of translation by focusing on postsocialist Central and Eastern European attempts to make their local histories of the Second World War and the Socialist regime known globally. It examines these efforts through aesthetic media of memory – literature, film and art – that circulate globally and bring local experiences to global audiences and through the heated public debates that these works of art have provoked in different national and transnational contexts. It argues that the comparative and competitive political discourses about twentieth-century totalitarianisms in Eastern Europe throughout three decades can be better understood by exploring the arts, which have developed more productive comparative and translational approaches and can therefore help to untangle the most recalcitrant nodes of confrontational political discourses and address the ethical and political complexity of remembering war and state terror. The project innovates methodologically by bringing together transcultural memory studies, translation theory, world literature studies, transnational film studies and heritage studies to offer translation as a new model for conceptualising the transnational travel of memories that operates through transcultural memorial forms. What memorial forms have been used to make Eastern European memories intelligible in the global arena? What is gained and what is lost in this translation? What can the different ways that aesthetic acts of memory are received, nationally and transnationally, tell us about the frictions between these scales of memory and within national memory itself? How has the globalisation of memory practices reinforced national memory in Eastern Europe? In providing the answers to these questions, the project offers a transnational view of Eastern European attempts to negotiate their entangled histories of twentieth-century totalitarianisms within the global framework.
In the first half of the project, the research has focused on the (trans)cultural memorial forms that have been used in the post-socialist period in Central and Eastern Europe to articulate the Eastern European memories of the Second World War and of Socialism and make them intelligible in the global arena. The theoretical framework of the project has been laid out in the special issue co-edited by the PI, ‘Memorial Forms’ (Memory Studies, 2021) to offer translation as a new model for conceptualising the transnational travel of memories. By drawing on world literature studies and translation theory, the PI has developed the concepts of ‘born translated’ memories, their domestication and foreignisation. In the first project workshop, Perpetrators, Collaborators and Implicated Subjects in Central and Eastern Europe (June 2021), the team has focused on the underexplored memorial forms of perpetration, collaboration and implication. The aim was to explore if and how the models of negative memory imported from Western Europe have proven fruitful in the region and, if not, what might be the alternative memorial forms to remember perpetration and collaboration. The research has resulted in a forthcoming special issue in the Slavic & Eastern European Journal.
The second line of research has focused on the specificities of aesthetic media of memory: literature, film, art, but also monuments and museums, including an interest in popular genres, such as conspiracy novels, popular biographies and alternative history, and a renewed attention to reception of aesthetic media as acts of memory. In the second workshop, Mnemonic Migration: Transcultural Transmission, Translation and Circulation of Memory Across and Into Contemporary Europe (April 2022), the medium of literature as a vehicle of travel of memory was explored.
To adapt to the situation of the pandemic and serve the comparative aims of the project, the team has organised the Translating Memories Online Speaker Series and contributed to graduate student training with the summer school Translating Memories in Literature, Film, Museums, and Monuments (July 2022).
The team members have reached out to wider public spheres in different capacities, including public talks for different interested audiences and on Estonian Public Broadcasting on the issues of public remembering in the arts. The project members also collaborate with the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA).
The second line of research has focused on the specificities of aesthetic media of memory: literature, film, art, but also monuments and museums, including an interest in popular genres, such as conspiracy novels, popular biographies and alternative history, and a renewed attention to reception of aesthetic media as acts of memory. In the second workshop, Mnemonic Migration: Transcultural Transmission, Translation and Circulation of Memory Across and Into Contemporary Europe (April 2022), the medium of literature as a vehicle of travel of memory was explored.
To adapt to the situation of the pandemic and serve the comparative aims of the project, the team has organised the Translating Memories Online Speaker Series and contributed to graduate student training with the summer school Translating Memories in Literature, Film, Museums, and Monuments (July 2022).
The team members have reached out to wider public spheres in different capacities, including public talks for different interested audiences and on Estonian Public Broadcasting on the issues of public remembering in the arts. The project members also collaborate with the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA).
The idea of cultural translation of memories via transcultural memorial forms and the concepts of ‘born translated’ memories, domestication and foreignisation have advanced the research field of transcultural memory studies and refined the understanding of how memories travel nationally, regionally and globally; in particular, they have problematised the unexamined optimism of the idea of travel and transnationalisation.
In the contexts of the significant difficulties faced when dealing with perpetration, collaboration and implication in Central and Eastern Europe, the models of grievability and blamability, developed by project team members, have helped to highlight the partial, ‘warped’ reckoning with a violent past where, for instance, in Russia, the victims of the Gulag are publicly commemorated without any discourse about who victimised them, etc. In the wake of the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine, there is a renewed need to highlight the link between ‘warped’ memory of Stalinist repressions in post-Soviet Russia and Russia’s new imperialist narratives.
As a reaction to war, conservative nationalist discourses about the legacies of the Second World War and the Socialist regimes are also making a powerful return in many Central and Eastern European countries, impeding coming to terms with the legacies of collaboration and complicity. In this situation, the project hopes to contribute to a public understanding of the processes of remembering and their relevance for defining the political present.
Remaining tuned to specific Eastern European cultural and political contexts, the project offers a rare transnational view of Eastern European attempts to negotiate local historical legacies in a global framework. The study of a substantial number of case studies in different media of memory (literature, film, video art and monumental art, memorial museums) and in different Central and Eastern European contexts will offer not only a comparison of different national contexts, but also a synthesis of some tendencies and trends common to Eastern Europe, as well as highlighting the differences therein. The big interdisciplinary project conference will be organised at Tallinn University in September 2023, in collaboration with the Memory Studies Association’s Post-Socialist and Comparative Memory Studies (PoSoCoMeS) Working Group.
In the contexts of the significant difficulties faced when dealing with perpetration, collaboration and implication in Central and Eastern Europe, the models of grievability and blamability, developed by project team members, have helped to highlight the partial, ‘warped’ reckoning with a violent past where, for instance, in Russia, the victims of the Gulag are publicly commemorated without any discourse about who victimised them, etc. In the wake of the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine, there is a renewed need to highlight the link between ‘warped’ memory of Stalinist repressions in post-Soviet Russia and Russia’s new imperialist narratives.
As a reaction to war, conservative nationalist discourses about the legacies of the Second World War and the Socialist regimes are also making a powerful return in many Central and Eastern European countries, impeding coming to terms with the legacies of collaboration and complicity. In this situation, the project hopes to contribute to a public understanding of the processes of remembering and their relevance for defining the political present.
Remaining tuned to specific Eastern European cultural and political contexts, the project offers a rare transnational view of Eastern European attempts to negotiate local historical legacies in a global framework. The study of a substantial number of case studies in different media of memory (literature, film, video art and monumental art, memorial museums) and in different Central and Eastern European contexts will offer not only a comparison of different national contexts, but also a synthesis of some tendencies and trends common to Eastern Europe, as well as highlighting the differences therein. The big interdisciplinary project conference will be organised at Tallinn University in September 2023, in collaboration with the Memory Studies Association’s Post-Socialist and Comparative Memory Studies (PoSoCoMeS) Working Group.