Герои и паметници. Локални проекции на националната памет
Heroes and Monuments: Local Projections of National Memory

Summary/Abstract: The paper focuses on the construction of local cultural memory in the period of post-socialism and gives an account of how the heroes’ pantheon of a given city has been rearranged since 1989. The change reflects the new political (and social) lives of the heroes, as well as the work of memory and the pursuit of political legitimacy through the past and its heroes. It is in the construction of local memory and identity that the nature of locality as a symbolic representation of the national is revealed, and in the case of the commemorations of Dimitar Peshev as the savior of the Bulgarian Jews – also as a manifestation of the global culture of Holocaust memory.The social and political frameworks shaping the new culture of memory have changed in the years of post-socialist transformations. What seems indisputable for the time being is that the memory of the recent past is not a field of consensus. Society is divided into mnemonic groups and the competition among them to endorse their own historical version is irreconcilable. Therefore, the attempts for public rehabilitation, institutionalization, and re-claiming of the lost positions of the symbols and the heroes do not subside.

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