Paper Short Abstract:

This paper will present the method of ‘dialogic remembering’: a novel approach to remembering conflicting pasts that allows one to relate to others’ and to one's own memories despite differences in experience and through reflection on one's own habitual recourse to prevalent mnemonic narratives.

Paper Abstract:

Based on ethnographic fieldwork at museums in Germany and Poland, this paper will propose a novel approach to interrelating conflicting memories of postsocialist ‘transitions.’ Often remembered in strongly divergent or even antagonistic ways, the period of the 1980s–1990s remains a contentious topic in Central and Eastern Europe, providing a fruitful ground for its instrumentalization by populist actors. Drawing on findings of the project ‘Reconstituting Publics through Remembering Transitions: Facilitating Critical Engagement with the 1980–90s on Local and Transnational Scales’ (carried out by the presenter together with Ksenia Robbe, Agnieszka Mrozik, and the ‘Transition Dialogue’ network), the paper will present the concept and method of ‘dialogic remembering’ developed by the project’s participants. Central to dialogic remembering are possibilities of interrelating different mediated and vernacular memories (representing perspectives and experiences of various professions, generations, genders, and so on) of the same events – without collapsing them into each other or drawing them apart. This theoretical and methodological approach to group remembrance grew out of the experimental workshops – conducted as part of the above-mentioned project – with citizens of Berlin, Eisenhüttenstadt, Gdańsk, and Łódź, during which postsocialist transformations were recollected in small groups in ways that allowed participants to relate to others’ and to their own memories despite differences in experience or even disagreements and through reflection on their own habitual recourse to prevalent mnemonic narratives.