Paper short abstract:

Ethnography of palimpsest-like cities in Eastern Europe opens up interesting possibilities for autoethnographic reflection. What if the researcher herself is an "implicated subject" who, through her tangled family history, has indirectly helped to perpetuate certain modes of borderland home-making?

Paper long abstract:

A typical feature of borderline cities in East-Central Europe is coexistence of remnants of different historical periods and (geo)politial contexts. Such urban environments are typically considered to be palimpsests exposing various layers of both material (architecture, fashions, cuisines, ways of arranging public and private spaces) and immaterial (stories, genres of urban folklore, skills, practices) character. These mixtures have different psychological effect on people with different biographies, education, family memories, and outlooks. In the city of Lviv stories of the inhabitants of old houses about their previous residents, and especially about those groups and categories who perished in the WWII or left their homes in the wake of the post-war resettlements, are of great interest as an oral-historical source. However, for many reasons, a systematic collection of the material is not an easy task. Autoethnograhic approach may be instrumental in filling upp narrative gaps and adressing "the unhomeliness" of one's own home as a space once created and inhabited by strangers. At the same time, autoethnographies may trigger another, a more difficult insight, namely that the researcher herself is an implicated subject (Rothberg 2019) who, through her tangled family history, has indirectly helped to maintain traditional distributions of power and perpetuate certain modes of borderland home-making.