Loss and Creativity: Affect and Effect. Political and Cultural Representations of the Past in South-East Europe

Abstract

Nostalgia and cultural memory have for the last two decades been broadly used concepts for framing a border zone where politics, culture, art, and history writing meet. By emphasizing how the relationship between the sense of loss and the momentum for creativity are intertwined in cultural production and history writing, the contributors to this volume discuss themes that include many parts of South-East Europe as well as various chronologies and scales in society. Loss in this volume is connected to creativity and represented memory, from the avant-garde artistic to the popular, not to say populist. In emphasizing how a sense of loss intertwines with creative momentum in cultural production and history writing, the volume spans many parts of the region as well as various chronologies and levels of society.