Historical policy and memorial culture of modern Romanian society
- DOI
- 10.5922/sikbfu-2023-3-7
- Pages
- 69-84
Abstract
The aim of the research is to analyze the contemporary politics of memory in Romania in the early 2020s. The author examines the role and place of intellectual communities as key spaces of memory genesis and the functioning of memorial culture and collective historical memory in the contemporary social and political thought of Romania. The novelty of the study lies in exploring the current stage in the development of the historical politics of Romanian society in the context of an objective deficit of interdisciplinary research focused on the analysis of memorial cultures. The article demonstrates that: 1) the intellectual community, as one of the systemic segments of modern Romanian society, significantly contributes to the development and transformation of memorial culture; 2) the spectrum of memorial practices of Romanian intellectuals, as agents of historical memory politics and shapers of various versions of memorial culture, varies from historical revisionism to attempts to form a liberal memorial canon; 3) the memorial practices of the contemporary intellectual community are interconnected with the development of civil and ethnic nationalist discourse; 4) the participation of intellectuals in memory politics actualizes the political and ideological heterogeneity of modern society, contributing to the simultaneous coexistence and competition of different forms of historical memory. It is assumed that the role of Romanian civil society in the historical politics of contemporary Romania will increase, and the intellectual community will remain one of the active participants in the politics of collective memory.