Call for Papers - After Memory: Conflicting Claims to World War Two in Contemporary Eastern European Literatures

Description

Eligible topics

• 1. Memory theory and contemporary literature: With theoretical concerns in mind, we ask how we might theorize the linkages between the “post-socialist” situation and a “post-memorial” society? Comparative research on collective memory as it relates to post-socialist cultures in Eastern Europe has been confronted with a rather paradoxical image: As Catherine Merridale has shown in the case of Russia, the decades spent manipulating memories about World War II and keeping silent about the Gulag apparently did not have any “traumatic” consequences for “communicative memory”. [4] In spite of the intense academic and journalistic treatment of the socialist historical policy of partial forgetting, the social shock that was experienced after the post-socialist breakup seems to have nevertheless promoted an almost obsessive return to ritualized modes of affect and myths about history that continue to be passed on. [5] Even Pierre Nora’s diagnosis that a nation-state’s “collective memory” in the late-modern societies of the present tends towards diversification through an increase in fragmented and privatized “sites of remembrance” seems to only capture part of the issue, especially given the newfound establishment of national and religious allegiances in Europe’s East. And yet, how does the generation of authors born after the fact deal with the war’s legacy and its culture of affect? Can their poetics be described as a “post-socialist” processing of “warped memories” (Alexander Etkind)? Or are they better understood as post-memorial fictions contributing to a reinvention and reappropriation of the personal narrative, a trend that can be observed elsewhere in European literature?
• 2. Media of affect and contemporary literature: Belletristic literature about the Second World War was particularly important during the socialist era both in terms of providing representations of the war that differed from the official heroic narratives and as part of the samizdat, the “second circulation” (Drugi obieg), and the circulation of literary works about taboo topics among those living in exile. The central role of literature as a vehicle for ideas has, however, suffered losses over the last few decades. A new culture of remembrance has established itself which is largely dominated by the performative arts and foremost by film and television shows. The internet and its specific forms of media have also proved highly significant in this context, especially as a site for the “digital memory wars” (Ellen Rutten), where socio-political conflicts are played out. In contrast to digital media and its instantaneous transmission of audiovisual content, literature appears as a rather slow and distanced medium that must use writing to mediate emotions and produce figures of the imagination. In light of this opposition and with an eye on similar developments in the West, questions arise concerning the implications behind literature’s loss of standing as a central mode of communication and authors’ reactions to the competition between media. Do they attempt to imitate the immersive potential of other media through literary means? Or, conversely, do authors try to emphasize a poetics of affect that is genuinely literal or rather literary? What literary genres and forms have become more predominant as a consequence of the new opportunities made possible by digital publishing and a globalized book market?
• 3. Post-socialist narratives and contemporary literature: Socialist literary traditions as well as the works produced in the literary underground and in exile have left behind an immense cultural archive full of figures, themes, and narratives related to World War II. From a comparative perspective, this section invites historical and systematic inquiries into how contemporary literary traditions are dealing with this legacy. In the first decade of the post-socialist era, revisions of war stories were predominantly characterized by post-modern and mythopoetic styles that were both playful and mystical. Given the fundamental shifts in the parameters of literary history as observed in the literatures of the region, how did the situation change shape? What role do the paradigms of “new realism” and “new sincerity” play in these contexts? And what do we make of the rived traditions of the historical novel and pseudo-documentary narration or the boom in fantastic literature and tales of anti-utopian worlds? How are motives and narratives being adapted and rewritten? And what new forms of narration and literary devices can we identify?
• 4. History politics, globalized memory and contemporary literature: To be sure, literature was not just strongly influenced by the ideology of Cold War narratives and the aesthetic doctrines of official cultural policies in socialist states. Today literature has to assert itself worldwide in a broad field of globalized remembrance practices, consumer culture, and laws governing the neoliberal market. At the same time, literature is active in fields including the political history of nation-states, the discourse on local identity, and transnational memorialization practices— developments which have led to an increasing politization of authors and not just those living in Russia. How do literary texts intervene in this local and global setting when it comes to World War II? What kinds of socio-political conflicts, mourning practices, and fantasies of violence are implicated when reflecting back on the war? And how are they related to practices involved in establishing identities? Do texts seem to be developing more towards the purpose of globalized entertainment or towards local discourses on identity? Are we witnessing the dissolution of memorial culture in Eastern Europe, whose “post-memorial” conflicting claims regarding World War II also signal an end to the shared and specifically “post-socialist” situation in Eastern Europe?

Guidelines for submission

Organizer

• Center for Literary and Cultural Research Berlin

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