The systemic transformations after the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe have been widely studied, but the radical remodelling of the economic sphere along neoliberal principles and all the attendant social processes have rarely been discussed in terms of memory. The question this round table raises is how societies, groups and individuals remember and make sense of global neoliberal change in the Eastern European context. Such a discussion is all the more timely as the 1990s are increasingly looked to for answers explaining the populist and nationalist turn across the globe. When investigating the historical roots of contemporary crises, it is thus significant to look not only at the key processes that impacted many lives across the social spectrum in Eastern Europe, such as deindustrialization, privatization, restitution or abrupt social reorganization; it is equally important to consider how these processes are collectively remembered across society today and how memory narratives of the 1990s contribute to Eastern European societies' current identities and political climate.The round table brings together authors of the forthcoming volume Remembering the Neoliberal Turn (Routledge). By discussing how the economic transformations of the 1990s that followed the collapse of communist regimes have been remembered across Eastern European societies, the discussants set two goals. First, they respond to the more and more frequently advocated postulate to bring "economy" into "memory studies", a field that has been largely dominated by political and cultural matters. The second aim of this panel is to unveil a dynamic, multi-dimensional picture of how the 1990s are remembered. It traces how neoliberalism became the legitimizing myth of the so-called transition, and ...
TFDC 1.16 MSA Conference Newcastle 2023 conference@memorystudiesassociation.orgThe systemic transformations after the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe have been widely studied, but the radical remodelling of the economic sphere along neoliberal principles and all the attendant social processes have rarely been discussed in terms of memory. The question this round table raises is how societies, groups and individuals remember and make sense of global neoliberal change in the Eastern European context. Such a discussion is all the more timely as the 1990s are increasingly looked to for answers explaining the populist and nationalist turn across the globe. When investigating the historical roots of contemporary crises, it is thus significant to look not only at the key processes that impacted many lives across the social spectrum in Eastern Europe, such as deindustrialization, privatization, restitution or abrupt social reorganization; it is equally important to consider how these processes are collectively remembered across society today and how memory narratives of the 1990s contribute to Eastern European societies' current identities and political climate.
The round table brings together authors of the forthcoming volume Remembering the Neoliberal Turn (Routledge). By discussing how the economic transformations of the 1990s that followed the collapse of communist regimes have been remembered across Eastern European societies, the discussants set two goals. First, they respond to the more and more frequently advocated postulate to bring "economy" into "memory studies", a field that has been largely dominated by political and cultural matters. The second aim of this panel is to unveil a dynamic, multi-dimensional picture of how the 1990s are remembered. It traces how neoliberalism became the legitimizing myth of the so-called transition, and what were its counter-memories in politics and culture. It is sensitive to the accounts of those who contributed, resisted, and negotiated the change: politicians, cultural producers, social movements, businessmen, workers. Overall, the participants will argue that the memories of the 1990s are important because they still matter for the ways we understand the present.
