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Paper long abstract:

This paper is concerned with particular spaces and places in the former socialist world (particularly in Poland) which were enshrouded in silence or even erased during the socialism period, but which are now being rebuilt, re-constructed, and actively remembered as both spaces of loss and grief, and as spaces of hope. One particular aspect of this process of reconfiguration of the past which I want to address concerns the tension between commemoration of past loss, and possible focus on future hope, in particular memorial sites on the one hand, and commodification of spaces, for instance the transformtion of factories into shopping malls, designer housing, or art galleries, on the other.