Reconstituting Publics through Remembering Transitions Facilitating Critical Engagement with the 1980-90s on Local and Transnational Scales

Three decades after the radical transformations of the USSR and its satellites began in the 1980s – 1990s, the topic of ‘transitioning’ from socialist states to liberal democracies remains highly contentious in Central and Eastern Europe. Over the last decade, the transitional past has been increasingly instrumentalized, by national-populist actors and in the counter-memories of their opponents. In the context of heated contestations of memory, with high political stakes, spaces for dialogue are rapidly shrinking and public spheres are becoming increasingly ‘disconnected.’

The project addresses this societal issue by engaging with memory practices of the ‘transitional period’ beyond the polarized versions. Drawing on approaches of cultural analysis of discourse and affect, critical memory studies, public history, (digital) ethnography, and intersectional study of gender and generations, we aim to develop strategies for facilitating more cohesive and at the same time more critical practices of remembering that have the potential to lead to dialogue and form reflective communities. The comparative approach will allow for developing strategies and policies on a transnational (European) level based on trans-local resonances rather than top-down scripts.

The participation of the network ‘Transition Dialogue’ (Berlin) and close collaboration with four museums – the European Solidarity Center (Gdańsk), the Humboldt Lab in the Humboldt Forum (Berlin), the Central Museum of Textiles (Łódź), and the Museum of Utopia and the Everyday (Eisenhüttenstadt) – facilitate the execution of empirical research and its translation into comparative and theoretical studies as well as recommendations for public history and memory institutions.