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- Convenor:
-
Masha Vukanovic
(Center for Study in Cultural Development)
- Stream:
- Socialist and post-socialist studies
- Location:
- A107
Short Abstract:
Panel focuses on practices once created with the purpose to "approach communism". In such way aim is to raise questions about the role of socialist heritage: What can be learned from past experiments and practical experiences? What should be passed on to future generations as morals of the past?
Long Abstract:
In Eastern European countries given themes from socialist theory (collective ownership of production, encouraging creativity in improving material basis and criticism towards coercive "institutions") were conceptualized as practices that were supposed to lead towards communist society. The primary task was to provide a material basis for existence of a society in which there would be enough resources to allow for each individual to pursue his or her genuine creative interests. The conceptualization of practices required innovations that varied from state to state. In reality tough, the creativity in pursuing personal interests bore "silent" oppositions and subtle criticisms of the innovations that were being put into practice. These said innovations, practices, oppositions and criticisms in both tangible and intangible forms now form a specific kind of socialist heritage. This panel aims to contribute to the stream of socialist studies research by addressing issues (such are morals of past experiences) that surround socialist heritage in present times.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Sidonia Grama (Romanian Academy, Cluj)
Paper short abstract:
This paper focuses on the monuments and cultural markers of the 1989 Romanian revolution, erected in different cities of Transylvania (memorial inscriptions, street names or statues), interrogating them emphatically from an oral history and cultural anthropology approach.
Paper long abstract:
At a quarter of century since the momentous of the 1989 collapse of communism in Central and Eastern Europe, the collective memories of the violent founding event of the Romanian post communist democracy still bear indelible wounds.
This paper will focus on the social lives of the monuments representing the 1989 Romanian revolution, which have been erected in its aftermath in different cities of Transylvania. It will deal broadly with different cultural markers such as: memorial inscriptions, street names or statues dedicated to the 1989 political changes and to the "martyr-heroes" of the revolution.
The study also aims at investigating both the durable and the evanescent traces of collective and cultural memories of the 1989 events (graffiti, as well as monuments and stone inscriptions) focusing on both material and immaterial practices of remembering and/or forgetting in common (commemorations, religious celebrations and political contestations), promoted by different communities of memory.
These practices will be related to different competing narratives on the historical events, as pieces of evidence for the emerging politics of memory and oblivion of the 1989 Romanian historical change.
Situated between and betwixt memory and history, these monuments have a special relationship to the recent past. They are contemporary with the witnesses of historical events they con-celebrate or with the protagonists of the history they represent. The paper will provoke an empathetic interrogation of these tense co-existences, through an interdisciplinary approach of oral history and cultural anthropology.
Toms Ķencis (Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art)
Paper short abstract:
Soviet folklore as a newly constructed research object was shaped by the fusion of two utopian projects: location of the folk creativity among class-defined others on the one hand and revolutionary modernization of Soviet society and consciousness of Soviet people on the other hand.
Paper long abstract:
Folkloristics in post-war Latvia (Soviet Socialistic Republic of Latvia) was facing a new task: collection and research of new, Soviet folklore. Due to the particular definition of this research object, the collection and invention practices merged into a functional whole, while theoretical side of the research exposed a set of centre-periphery dynamics in the grand scheme of Soviet knowledge production system. The new folklore and folkloristics combined two utopias: an antimodernist understanding of class-related creativity and a modernizing project of new society, new man and new consciousness.
The project of new folklore took shape within a complicated discourse of dogmatic theory, ideology of atheism, and cult of authority. All those facets have left their traces in post-war works on folklore materials, but a more detailed analysis also reveals multiple intersections of institutional agendas and positions of particular agents operating within the field: from representations of straight-forward state propaganda to ironic resistance within the system of knowledge production.
Marie Barešová (Masaryk University, Brno, Czech rep.)
Paper short abstract:
Yugoslav students who came to the Prague film school (FAMU) in the 1960s and 1970s learned the craft and went back to their home states to work. Movies they made were not only influenced by their own cultural background, they also carried the tradition of the Czechoslovak cinema.
Paper long abstract:
Yugoslav students were coming to the Prague film school (FAMU) for decades since the Academy was established in 1946. Young filmmakers learned the craft and went back to their home states to work. Their early movies carry strongly tradition of the Czechoslovak cinema, but also capture local cultural background which throughout time outweighes the experience they had as young students in Prague. Paper will focus on Yugoslav filmmakers, who came to FAMU in the 1960s and 1970s, and their work. Some of them studied in Czechoslovakia in turbulent second half of the 1960s and lived through both Prague Spring and Soviet invasion. Interesting subject of investigation is a fact that their Czech schoolmates did not have a productive career in Czechoslovakia unlike their colleagues including Slovaks. Strong group of Yugoslav film beginners who studied in Prague at the time holds the name "Prague School". The phenomena serves as a case study of foreign filmmakers drawing on experience gathered abroad and adapting it to one´s own film tradition. But it can also be seen from Czechoslovak perspective if we analyse the circulation and reception of those films. Yugoslav film students in Prague represent a very important chapter in terms of mutual relations of the two countries. Historical context of socialistic past that they both share enriches the topic with specific circumstances. These links therefore invite us to investigate hitherto neglected cinematic interactions of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia.
Uta Karrer (Fränkisches Museum Feuchtwangen)
Paper short abstract:
This paper analyses the change in the perception of “amateur art” created between 1949 and 1989 in the Polish People´s Republic after the end of the communist era.
Paper long abstract:
The promotion of amateur art was one of the main cultural policy objectives of communist governments. Under the support and supervision of the Polish Peoples Republic numerous works of so called "amateur art" and "folk art" were created, which were to become part of European public museum´s and private collections. During the communist time they were presented to the public in large exhibitions and publications, which took place in Poland as well as other European countries, particularly in Western Germany.
This paper aims to analyze the consequences of the political transformations between 1989 and 1991 on the visibility and perception of these art objects. Based on case studies on public and private collectors and collections in Western Germany, the paper demonstrates how the different actors of the art world- artists, collectors, gallerists and vendors as well as ethnographers- adapted their strategies of valorization of the objects to the new political situations. Furthermore, the influence of collectors and curators is discussed. The paper examines which kinds of objects and groups of artists gained visibility while others lost public attention and to what extent this process is connected to a depoliticization of objects and producers and an insertion in new contexts.
Masha Vukanovic (Center for Study in Cultural Development)
Paper short abstract:
Using "Školigrica" project of Cultural Center „Stari grad“ in Belgrade as an outline, paper aims to remind how important culture and education are and were in former Yugoslavia, why cultural centers were opened in a first place, and how does it all corresponds with contemporary European tendencies.
Paper long abstract:
Project "Školigrica" lasted for 25 years as activity of Cultural Center of Peoples' University "Stari grad" in Belgrade. It was dedicated to children of pre-school age and based upon understanding that imaginative and creative (young) people are (to become) the most productive members of society. Cultural Center "Stari grad" was one among many cultural and educational centers that Yugoslav Communist Party, after it seized power in 2nd World War, opened throughout the country because illiterate and unconscious people could not contribute achieving communist society. Yet, throughout decades such Marxists thought and raison d'être of cultural centers were forgotten. In times of transition it was easy to label cultural centers as dragons eager to drain public funds because majority of them seemed reluctant to change into organizations that facilitate consumers society. Thus, they were dismissed from both cultural and educational systems. Contemporary tendencies in Europe, however, display recognition of benefits provided by conscious and creative cultural citizens. In order to encourage creativity in relationships between people, activities of establishments that link culture and education are actually very appreciated.
Madalina Musca (Independent Researcher)
Paper short abstract:
This paper tries to analyze and describe the practice of private tutoring in the socialist Romania after the 770 Decree (1966), which prohibited the contraceptive means. It explores how this policy of the state determined changes in the shape and dimension of the phenomenon of private tutoring.
Paper long abstract:
In this paper l analyze the practice of private tutoring as a "shadow" for the educational system (Bray; 2007), parallel with the formal system, but also as a form of the secondary economy, in the context of the paternalist state (Kornai: 1992, Verdery: 2003) . I describe and explain the mechanisms put in function by this type of practice and insert that "meditațiile" (private tutoring), beyond the economical dimension -a private market which was not recognized by the state-, involved also a component of symbolic nature. I speak about this elements of symbolic nature as a form of resistance to the internal contradiction between the promises of the communist ideology and the reality of the penury economy (Kornai, ibid.). Thus, I explore the direct connection between the intervention in natality of the state with the 770 Decree and the growth of the phenomenon of private lessons. I also map other implications of the centralized planning of the socialist state in shaping the way private tutoring evolved and took place under Ceausescu's regime.