The return of suppressed memories in Eastern Europe: Locality and unsilencing difficult histories

Abstract

This introductory article contextualizes theoretical and methodological frameworks for analyzing difficult pasts through arts, and articulates historical and current political realities in Eastern Europe which are at the core of this special issue. It contributes to the debates in memory studies particularly based on the post-Soviet experience. We introduce scholarly and artistic efforts to integrate difficult and uncomfortable facets of pasts into local and transnational histories, and further consider how recent research attempts to integrate local specificities while maintaining a relational approach by adopting transnational, transcultural, translocal, and cross-cultural perspectives. Rethinking how different artistic media contribute to processing suppressed memories, we propose the notion of “unsilencing” difficult memories in reference to the breaking of silences that sometimes run through generations and the articulation of which can change public perception of the past. Such acts of unsilencing can contribute to nuancing understanding about the relationships between locality, silencing, and remembering.