Paper Short Abstract:

In my paper I propose to follow closely personal and local narratives to identify past potentialities that compose some of the currently dwelt-in Eastern-European landscapes, brim with halted visions of modernity and reclaimed or relinquished moments.

Paper Abstract:

Images, visions and stories of changing landscapes and accompanying changes in political, economic, social and cultural environments are some of the most often encountered elements of personal and local histories as told by older generations in Eastern Europe. My research experiences in changing and emptying (cf. Dzenovska and Knight 2020) landscapes in Transylvania point to seamless, self-evident meeting and departing points between the different dimensions that scientific writing and rewriting processes attempt to so neatly disentangle. Politics, ecology, affective realms, culture, and economy merge, fade and emerge in stories. Despite unique trajectories in different landscapes, personal and community narratives are, thus, somewhat similar in following lines (of whatever sorts; cf. Ingold 2007), intertwining with waves of different lengths (Barad 2010). They transition from the growth pattern of trees and the grass to mining project proposals and their feasibility, further on to memories of a childhood event, from which they slide to current economic policies, power regimes and their position vis-a-vis systems and flows in the most vulnerable or most empowered moment of their (hi)stories (or her-stories). In my paper I propose to closely follow such a line in narratives of my interlocutors to identify past potentialities that compose some of the Eastern-European landscapes, which are brim with halted visions of modernity (such as closed mines and abandoned socialist industrial projects) and reclaimed or relinquished moments (in form of activism, lost traditions, heritagisation etc.) in face of powerful global or national dynamics.