Memory of the Political Transformation as a Memory of Slow Change

Year, pages: 2024, 449 - 462

Despite the many changes that memory studies have undergone in recent years, we still usually link memory, especially national memory, with major political events, not gradual, slow changes. However, memory oriented towards events is inherently selective and susceptible to a specific narrative mode in which little or no attention is paid to what lies between those great events. The aim of this article will be to analyse the memory of the political transformation in Poland, treated not as a political breakthrough that took place within a few months between 1989 and 1990, but as a slow, ongoing change whose effects are still felt today. Adopting this perspective will allow to capture at least two separate memory perspectives on the political transformation: the first one, which treats the political transformation as a wasted opportunity or – at best – a process which is still unfinished, and the second one, which perceives the transformation as a task that is still open in the positive sense of the word, that is, as a task not only for the broadly defined present, but also – for the future.

Tabaszewska, J. 2024. Memory of the Political Transformation as a Memory of Slow Change. In Slovenský národopis / Slovak Ethnology, vol. 72, no.4, pp. 449-462. ISSN 1335-1303. DOI: https://doi.org/10.31577/SN.2024.4.35

Tabaszewska, J. (2024). Memory of the Political Transformation as a Memory of Slow Change. Slovenský národopis / Slovak Ethnology, 72(4), 449-462. ISSN 1335-1303. DOI: https://doi.org/10.31577/SN.2024.4.35

Publisher: Ústav etnológie a sociálnej antropológie SAV, v. v. i.

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