Paper short abstract:

A small town of Sulina which has multicultural past, memories of localized cosmopolitanism alternate with stories of communist abundance, an innocent natural state, rich European future, strong Romania and corrupt and weak Romania, making it a place rich in narratives.

Paper long abstract:

While history never stops, and no place is marked by perfectly monolithic discourse, we argue that the story of Sulina is instructive in several ways. It is a site with a remarkably high absorption of narratives and a remarkably high complexity in memory shifts. Thus it is an arena favorable for the study of how flexible communities can be in their continuous reinvention. In fact, this place seems to be particularly permeable to narratives; on the one hand, its current identity is visibly shaped by Mr. Zachis's and other people's stories and "memories", as they construct a desirable image of "our city"; on the other hand, the projection of Sulina in mass media (mostly negatively) influences how people perceive themselves and their hometown. In fact, all of these stories reinforce each other with positive and negative images circulating freely in peoples' narratives, mixing genres and details, data and sources. Mr. Zachis's "memories" get published in central newspapers and receive a much wider audience than his "live" performances, turning him into a character and a local star (also shaping his "repertoire"). However, despite appearances, his version of "how our town used to be" does not enjoy universal acceptance. In fact, what this overarching narrative that seems to saturate the current social and discursive space is doing is silencing counter-memories, the kind of memories that would testify to a different record of the past.