Beskrivning
In recent years, there has been a growing scholarly interest in the cultural and political significance of joyful, positive and nostalgic memories and forms of remembrance. Without downplaying the role of trauma and oppression in the mnemonic makeup of contemporary societies, memory scholars have pointed to the co-existence, or parallel existence, of brighter recollections of the past, and to their role in bringing about hope and social mobilization (Katriel & Reading 2015; Rigney 2018; Sindbæk Andersen & Ortner 2019). Engaging with these streams of thought, my presentation will offer a closer look at the interplay between memories of friendship and mutual care, and remembrance as a form of caring (Till 2012), which enables the continuation and/or formation of solidaric bonds, practices, and ideas. Empirically, the presentation departs from Nowa Huta, a district in Kraków, which was initially founded in 1949 as the “first socialist town in Poland”, and which eventually, in the 1980s, turned into a bastion of the oppositional Solidarity movement. After 1989, Nowa Huta became fertile ground for memory work of different kinds: commemorations, exhibitions, nostalgic venues and paraphernalia, along with heated debates on the matter of remembrance. While divisive in the public sphere, memory has simultaneously served as a creative and cohesive force for many of the local communities, of different creed, which put their mark on contemporary Nowa Huta. Drawing on ethnographic field work, my presentation will illustrate the role of memory, in it’s explicit as well as implicit (embodied, non-commemorative) forms (cf. Connerton 1989; Schudson 1997; Erll 2022), in sustaining care and friendship within a few of these communities. It will also show the wider entanglements of these communal memories; how they relate and sometimes serve as corrections to diverging representations of the past and how they are passed on from their ‘original’ confines to a younger generation of locally involved inhabitants in Nowa Huta. In that way, they function as a kind of springboard, a resource, for continuous place-based caring within and for the neighborhood (Till 2012).Period | 2023 juli 3 → 2023 juli 7 |
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Evenemangstitel | MEMORY STUDIES ASSOCIATION 7th ANNUAL CONFERENCE |
Typ av evenemang | Konferens |
Plats | Newcastle, StorbritannienVisa på karta |
Omfattning | Internationell |