Abstract
“Memory activism” is public advocacy for change in how the past is recalled and represented, and it has taken many forms in Eastern Europe after 1989. Much of this activism has centered on the difficult issues surrounding the history of Jewish life and death in Poland; scholars have documented Poland’s “Jewish spaces” and debates over memorialization of the Holocaust. This chapter frames these issues as problems of representation, ideology, and attachment to national identity, drawing on the work of Kaja Silverman. It critically assesses the “reconciliation paradigm,” a frequent model for memory work; addresses the impact of Jan Gross’s Neighbors on Jedwabne; and presents an approach to memory activism that attends to the assignation of the “traumatic” and the possibility of ideological rupture.
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Holc, J. (2018). Introduction. In: The Politics of Trauma and Memory Activism . Memory Politics and Transitional Justice. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63339-8_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63339-8_1
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