Complicating Dichotomies of Grief and Blame: Examining the Heritage of Stalinist Repression
Author(s): Margaret A Comer
Year: 2019
Summary
This is an abstract from the "Exploring the Recent Past" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.
A key point of conflict and contest at sites related to Soviet repression is the matter of victimhood and perpetration. At each site, who is identified as a victim, perpetrator, or bystander, and why? Who decides on these classifications, and, within each site’s interpretation, is there any reflection of the very real contestation and ambivalence that attend the application of these categories? The post-Soviet Russian case offers an array of different approaches to this dilemma, and this paper will analyze Moscow sites related to Stalinist repression through the lens of variable degrees of ‘grievability’, which takes Judith Butler’s (2009) work as a point of departure, as well as different types of ‘blameability’ as these are expressed in each site’s interpretation and memorialization. The paper will also explore the potential of a cyclical model for thinking through and categorizing the heritage of authoritarian repression.
Cite this Record
Complicating Dichotomies of Grief and Blame: Examining the Heritage of Stalinist Repression. Margaret A Comer. Presented at Society for Historical Archaeology, St. Charles, MO. 2019 ( tDAR id: 449123)
This Resource is Part of the Following Collections
Keywords
General
dark heritage
•
Memorialization
•
Repression
Geographic Keywords
United Kingdom
Temporal Keywords
Twentieth Century
Spatial Coverage
min long: -8.158; min lat: 49.955 ; max long: 1.749; max lat: 60.722 ;
Individual & Institutional Roles
Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology
Record Identifiers
PaperId(s): 382