Urban memory and oblivion in the novel by Virginija Kulvinskaitė 'when I was ‘malalietka’' (2019)

• In Event: Urban Spaces as the Space of Memory, Oblivion, and Community Belonging in Contemporary Ukrainian and Lithuanian Literature

Abstract

The notion of urban memory refers to the collective experience and collective spatiality that is the city (Crinson 2005). It manifests itself through historical centres, architecture, monuments, street names, and dominant historical narratives. However, residents or passers-by may have their individual memories, which may challenge or even conflict with the dominant urban memory. The tension and collision between shared urban memory and individual memories is characteristic of literature and art that seek to give voice to those who have been erased from the city’s landscape of memory and to enable the voice of the city of oblivion (Gilloch and Kilby 2005).
In Kulvinskaitė’s autofictional novel "when I was 'malalietka'" (2019), the narrator tells her story of coming-of-age in a typical residential area of post-Soviet Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, in the last decade of 20th century. The paper explores the relationship between gendered urban memory and the city in transition from the Soviet past to the neoliberal present.
The narrator's childhood memories adhere to the peripheral urban space, which has changed drastically since the time the story takes place. "Cool places" have disappeared, old buildings have been destroyed, new ones built, and the post-Soviet city has almost disappeared. In the memories of the generation that grew up in the 1990s, however, it was precisely this space where their identities began to form, and which is essential for moving forward.
I argue that by attaching childhood memories to this neglected space, the narrative brings it back to life as a site of memory (Norá 1989). This activates the dichotomy of urban memory/suburban oblivion (Pajaczkowska 2005) and challenges the memory politics of the neoliberal city. The female narrative of coming-of-age in an urban environment without shared cultural value also invokes the feminist critical reading of a place and the dominant urban landscape of memory as masculinist and excluding women's experiences (Rose 1993).
The project “Women’s City: Places, Territories, Identities” is funded by the Research Council of Lithuania.

Author

• Inga Vidugiryte-Pakeriene, Vilnius U (Lithuania)