Territorial phantom pains: Third-generation postmemories of territorial changes

Abstract

Forced border changes and population transfers have affected many nation-states. However, memories of these events are usually described as part of a “unique” national memory of cartographic violence, “lost” territories, and victimhood. In popular representations, often reinforced by the personal memories of the wartime resettled, the territories ceded from Poland (Kresy) and Finland (Karelia) to the Soviet Union after World War II are remembered and imagined as “timeless” places which preserve and encapsulate “Polishness” and “Finnishness.” “Territorial phantom pains” is a central framing idea for us. We understand phantom pains as a social emotion related to memories and postmemories that tells members of a community that the body of their nation is not complete without the detached territories. Phantom pains are nostalgic, romanticizing, but also exclusive keeping memories of the territorial loss as not (only) memories of personal loss of home and heimat, but of a national loss.