Memory
Organizers:
Imke Meyer, Germanic Studies
Heidi Schlipphacke, Germanic Studies
Colleen McQuillen, Slavic and Baltic
Karen Underhill, Slavic and Baltic
Dianna Niebylski, Hispanic and Italian Studies
Memory Heading link
Events
“Narrative Shock and Polish Memory Remaking in the Twenty-First Century”
Thursday, 10/16 4:00 PM to Thursday, 10/16 6:00 PM
Genevieve Zubrzycki, Associate Professor, Sociology, University of Michigan
This talk will examine different modes of memory-making, un-making, and remaking in present-day Poland, as they relate specifically to its Jewish past. In memory studies, much has been written on trauma and denial on the one hand, and mythology and nostalgia on the other. Zubrzycki investigates the relationship between these memory modes by analyzing three distinct memorial projects: the postwar creation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum and its post-1989 narrative revision; the Jedwabne massacre memorial and counter-memorial; and the commemorative projects of artist/memory activist Rafal Betlejewski “I Miss You, Jew” and “Burning Barn.” By analyzing national institutions, state-sponsored memorial monuments, and “bottom-up” citizens’ commemorative initiatives, her discussion aims not only to uncover a typology of memory-making practices and projects, but also to highlight how these form discrete links in a complex mnemonic chain reaction. She shows that postwar socialist memorialization of the Second World War, which downplayed the Holocaust and emphasized Polish victimhood, reinforced a long-standing national martyrological myth. As that mythology was seriously questioned after 1989, it sent Poles into a state of “narrative shock,” bringing about different forms of reactive memory.