Recognition that societies will not be able to build a future as long as they do not face the ‘demons of the past’ has become a kind of universal truth over the last decades of the 20th Century (Gibney et al., 2008, p. 1). This view, though challenging and ambiguous, is reflected in the globally present attempts to improve or rebuild relations within and between different communities at the domestic and international level. The question concerning, on the one hand, the essence and most essential elements and, on the other hand, the instruments and the limitations of rebuilding relations, as well as the political implications of those processes have become the broad area of interest and the discourse leading to significantly different ideas and solutions. The article aims at presenting different approaches referring to dealing with the conflicted and traumatized past both at the domestic and international level. Some selected instruments and methods which enable movement from a divided past towards a common future are discussed namely the strategy of engagement with the past versus the strategy of avoidance of the past. The special attention is paid to the notion of reconciliation understood as a process of rebuilding of relations through the multi-dimensional transformation of former adversaries after the period of violence and repression.

This paper analyses Romania’s foreign policy during the first post-communist years, by employing a theoretical viewpoint based on ontological security and trauma. It uncovers the elite efforts to secure the post-totalitarian state’s identity and international course. Romania’s search for ontological security featured the articulation of narratives of victimhood, which were linked with its proclaimed western European identity. The Romanian identity narrative has long struggled between “the West” and “the East”, trying to cope with traumatic historical events. These discursive themes and ontological insecurities were crystallized in the controversy surrounding the Romanian-Soviet “Friendship Treaty” (1991). Key Romanian officials displayed different typical responses to cultural trauma and debated the state’s path to ontological security, which was reflected in the foreign policy positions. 

Memory of world war II in the novels of Kate Atkinson

The article analyzes Kate Atkinson’s novels «Life after Life», «Ruins of God» and «Transcription» in terms of memory studies. The current objectives of the study were: 1) to outline private memories in the textual structure (these are the main correlates of individual and collective memory); 2) revealing the relationship between the injuries suffered by the heroes and the «wounds of time» inflicted by World War II; 3) understanding the mechanism of «crystallization» of collective memory in a particular cell («place of remembrance» in novels); 4) delineation of the boundaries of the cultural archive, which is reproduced by the author. The study found that the main message of the novels is focused on the theme of World War II, its understanding and reflection in the collective memory of the British. Through the images of the main characters, the author recreates the memories of wartime. It is noticed that in all novels the chaotic, instead of chronological principle of reproduction of the past is applied: the plot acquires cyclic character. This image principle mimics the work of the human brain, which sporadically emits layers of memory. This kaleidoscope of memories follows the author’s logic: the scattered fragments of memory form a coherent history, correlated with the national archive. Teddy Todd is a survivor who survived to preserve the memory of his fallen comrades («places of remembrance») and to testify about war crimes, as well as to nurture a new generation of Britons. At the same time, Ursula Todd and Juliet Armstrong present a feminine but polar experience of war. At first glance, there are no significant differences between the heroines: both work for secret military departments, contributing to the approach of victory, both took the place of men who went to the front. At the same time, Juliet Armstrong is a double agent recruited for espionage in favor of the Soviet Union, who, through her own betrayal, separates herself from the collective memory. Miss Armstrong’s memoirs do not correlate with the National Archives, but are the antithesis of the British collective consciousness, constituting an unexplored «white spot» (the phenomenon of betrayal is indeed something of a native «stain»). The post-war duty of Teddy and Ursula Todd, the true heirs of national values, is to heal the «place of remembrance» and to preserve the memory of the fallen. Todd’s memories should be embodied in «places of remembrance» (monuments, museums, military burials, works of art, etc.). The conditional archive of the novel, the «place of remembrance» recreated in it, correlate with the collective memory of the peoples of Britain, thus encouraging the understanding of the traumatic experience of World War II.

The article is devoted to the coverage of the problem of bricolage as a method of memory reconstruction in the novel “Austerlitz” by the greatest German writer Winfried Sebald. The article notes that “Austerlitz” marks the transition from trauma to conscious identity as part of the historical memory of the Holocaust. It shows how the hero of the work, Jacques Austerlitz, acquires his identity by assembling from scattered information his personal history, reflecting a significant part of the collective tragedy. The genre feature of the work as a travelogue, memoir, investigation, as literature bordering on documentary and artistic experience, where the real is combined with the fictional, is highlighted. The article describes in detail the content of the technique of bricolage as a form of “wild”, “pre-rational” way of thinking, as a technique of fitting auxiliary materials (old photographs, newspaper clippings), a montage of disparate episodes, the technique of collage. The structure of the work’s storytelling is analyzed when the narrator does not tell the story but describes what he hears from Jacques Austerlitz. It is as if it is not a text, but the story itself, which someone tells, and also shows pictures for authenticity. The functions of the hero in the novel gradually shift from people to things, documents, bearers of the memory of individual and collective civilizational catastrophe. These indescribable witnesses break the blockade of traumatic silence around the childhood of Austerlitz, embodied in images of blindness, dumbness, oblivion. Before the protagonist of the work, the “man without a past,” the history of his family, the ghostly happy childhood that was rudely cut short by the separation from his biological parents, is suddenly revealed. Sebald demonstrates a contemporary form of novel narrative in which the truthfulness of the Holocaust narrative is revealed by incorporating the exile’s personal authorial biography, pain, and guilt into the memory of this tragedy. The role of photographs and descriptions of architectural structures in revealing the immanent semantic content of the subject, not manifested verbally, is analyzed. The latter is the key document that unites and structures the important for the writer themes of memories, memory, indifference, oblivion, return to the ghostly past, overcoming of the psychological trauma. Based on the analysis the author concludes that the attitude to the reader as a co-author brings Sebald’s novel closer to the tradition of the European intellectual novel and postmodern hypertexts, in which meaningful units are not presented in a traditional linear sequence, but as a multiplicity of links and transitions. The author notes that the acute experience of humanitarian catastrophe, the multilayered text, the density of meaningful meanings make this work a notable phenomenon in the context of artistic comprehension of traumatic memory.

A tangle of cultures, a tangle of images. Dinh Q. Lê photographic memory fabric

The paper aims to present the issues of post-memory arising from the photographic and video art works of Dinh Q Lę. The specific technique used by the American-Vietnamese artist can be described as “fabric” due to the post-media processing in the form of interwoven photographic strips connected to create an innovative combination dedicated to the connections between East and West, the sacred and the profane, and colour contrasts. Deconstruction of the initial material creates unconventional iconographic combinations that blur the clear meanings recorded in the image, with the aim of their secondary reconfiguration, often marked by traumatic war events. The peculiar form of expression seems to reflect the dynamics of a complex form, ambiguity, and allusion, which is no longer just an automatic reproduction of reality, but a creative field of transformations, weaving, entanglement of threads overlapping various spheres of reference, animation of the meanings of words transformed into moving images that reflect them. The subject of the considerations outlined in this article is an exhibition entitled Dinh Q.Lę. Le fil de la mémoire et autres photographs organised between February 8 and November 20, 2022 at the Musée de Quai Branly.