Agonistic memory as a relational concept: Remembering socialism in Lithuania

Abstract

Based on a biographical narrative interview, this article analyzes the policies of discursive positioning enacted by Adele, a history teacher born in the Lithuanian countryside in 1951, while telling her life story. Showing how she consistently disrupts two rival narratives, the misalignments between which inform public debate in Lithuania’s divided memory culture, I interpret her account as a bottom-up example of agonistic memory. To date, this mode of remembering the past has usually been described as the project of creative intellectuals. In order to prepare the ground to include the memory practices of the rank and file, I suggest (1) reconceptualizing agonistic memory as a relational concept and (2) using agonistic memory as a sensitizing concept in an analysis of oral history accounts focused on the positions articulated by interviewees in response to public memory discourses.