Past-Present Rewind: Remembering History in Central and Eastern European Popular Culture

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

This panel examines how contemporary popular culture artifacts such as songs, television series, films, and other media from Central and Eastern Europe engage with regional and/or national memory narratives. Its objective is twofold: firstly, to elucidate how popular culture can serve as a platform for commentary, subversion, or perpetuation of prevailing master narratives concerning historical events. Secondly, it seeks to evaluate whether current trends and phenomena in popular culture possess the capacity to innovate modes of remembrance, thereby presenting alternative memory narratives or deconstructing the notion of singular remembrance of the past.
In this endeavor, our approach is informed by John Storey's conceptualization of popular culture as delineated in "Cultural Theory and Popular Culture" (2006), wherein he characterizes it as a "terrain of exchange" and an "area of negotiation" between dominant ruling ideologies and various forms of oppositional cultures. This characterization is particularly pertinent given the embeddedness of popular cultural phenomena within mass culture frameworks specific to the respective regions. Consequently, in accordance with insights from Gramsci (“Selections from Cultural Writings” 1985) and other scholars, these phenomena play a pivotal role in perpetuating hegemonic power structures. However, they also have the potential of destabilizing or co-opting them. It is within this context that popular culture emerges as a dynamic arena conducive to processes of negotiation and emancipation regarding memory politics and culture(s).

Sub Unit

• Anthropology, Cultural Studies

Chair

• Anna Seidel, Humboldt U Berlin (Germany)

Papers

• Sentimental Auschwitz and Righteous Gentiles: Holocaust Kitsch as a Political Tool in Polish Popular Culture - Aleksandra Szczepan, U of Potsdam (Germany)

• Reconstructing Black-White-Grey: Cultural Memory and the Image of Czech Dissent - Peter Deutschmann, U of Salzburg (Austria)

Discussant

• Adrian Pelc, U of Vienna (Austria)