'The Children of Postsocialism' and the Village Paradigm in Bulgaria

• In Event: Folklore and Tradition: Small Encounters, Broader Meanings

Abstract

What were the childhood experiences of Bulgarian villages in the ruins of socialism, and how might they inform our understanding of contemporary village revitalization? This paper explores relationships to rurality in contemporary Bulgaria through the perspectives of a group I refer to as the “children of postsocialism”: those who came of age in postsocialist, European-Union Bulgaria with little or no living memory of the socialist past, and who inherit the problem of rural emptying. I argue that their lived experiences shape a village paradigm that animates the village revitalization efforts unfolding in the present. Taking Atanas Atanasov’s “Unlock the Stage” festival as a case study, I demonstrate how this paradigm creates a framework within which young people work out tensions between cultural heritage, locality, nationality, and Europeanness. I point to the potential of the village imaginary to contribute to radical reinvention and racialization, overtly and covertly.

Author

• Sarah Craycraft, Harvard U