Details

Speaker:
CAT group of Ksenia Robbe (University of Groningen)

Abstract:

In this talk, the CAT (Constructive Advanced Thinking) group will present their research project ‘Reconstituting Publics through Remembering Transitions’ (2021-2024). The project engages with the possibilities and specific strategies of facilitating critical remembrance of the 1980-1990s ‘transitions’ in countries of Eastern Europe, which have been a site of contention and contestation, especially lately as far-right parties in the region have exploited this recent past in their political visions of the future. We will introduce our experimental approach to conducting public and small group discussions focusing on memories of this past, which we have developed and tested in different locations of Germany and Poland. This approach aims to bring out and investigate the processes and strategies of building connections across and through differences without avoiding conflict – the practice that we conceptualize as ‘dialogic remembering.’