The Master's Voice: Authenticity, Nostalgia, and the Refusal of Irony in Postsocialist Hungary

Nadkarni, Maya

doi:10.1080/13504630701580308

Cited by 8 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…10 One of the principal characteristics of the present historical moment when 9 In spite of their alternative, artistic, and maybe somewhat elitist standpoint, it would be wrong to ascribe irony to the way in which these choirs exploit the symbolism of industrial labor. The refusal of irony in the case of post-socialist Hungary was described by Maya Nadkarni (2007).…”

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confidence: 99%

Museums and Workers: Negotiating Industrial Heritage in the Former Yugoslavia

Petrović

2013

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The article discusses tensions, ambiguities, and political implications of the fact that what is nowadays negotiated as industrial heritage is still part of the lived experience of several generations of men and women in the former Yugoslavia. It argues that the issues of representation of industrial labor essentially have to do with the place given to the working communities, their members as well as their voices and affects in the museum narratives.

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confidence: 99%

Museums and Workers: Negotiating Industrial Heritage in the Former Yugoslavia

Petrović

2013

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“…Dunaújváros narratives, in contrast, suggest that the city's past might be accepted because, despite being built by communists, it can be presented as a part of Hungary's national history, an ultimate result of modernisation that started in the nineteenth century, not just a Soviet imposition. 108 At the same time, the continuous transformation of the narratives of Dunaújváros resonates well with the rapid changes in European social and cultural landscapes after 1989 and growing globalisation, while still emphasizing that 'Hungary is a country where questions of national identity' are highly influential, especially in politics. 109 Hungarian national identity is strongly tied to the Hungarian language, to culture, and to certain territories (some of them evoked in the Hungarian national anthem), which Hungarians call Historic Hungary (formerly the Kingdom of Hungary): Dunaújváros simply plays no role in such understanding of identity, which might explain why its Communist past does not arouse such hostility as it does in Nowa Huta.…”

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confidence: 89%

La reconfiguration des récits postsocialistes de Nowa Huta (Pologne) et de Dunaújváros (Hongrie)

Zechenter¹

2015

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In June 2014, for just a few days, a statue of Lenin returned to Nowa Huta, close to the spot where once a huge monument of Lenin used to stand, dominating this socialist city visually (but not only so). 1 The statue that 'returned' was small, less than half-a-meter tall and made of bright kitschy, greenish plastic: 2 it was peeing in the same manner as the Manneken-Pis in Brussels. And yet the installation of the statue which proved popular with passers-by, was enough for two members of the main opposition Party in Poland, the Law and Justice Party, 3 to file a complaint that this green 'pissing' Lenin 'promotes' Communism; and promoting Communism in post-1989 Poland is considered a crime. Even earlier, in 2008, representatives of the Law and Justice Party argued that 'any official commemoration of Nowa Huta's founding would be tantamount to proCommunist propaganda', 4 suggesting to what degree Nowa Huta's past was still a thorny issue for many Poles. How could the insignificant event during the summer festival of street art called ArtBoom 'awake the Polish demons' 5 and cause such a heated response? In some postsocialist countries that are troubled by their own Communist legacy (Russia being a separate case 6) references to the Communist past can prove popular, even attractive: suffice it to cite the example of the revival of a sausage in Lithuania named 'Soviet sausage' and promoted by large, Soviet-style advertisements. 7 Why not in Poland? And specifically, why not in Nowa Huta? This article investigates not only what such incidents suggest about the identity of postsocialist spaces 25 years after the collapse of Communism, but also, more importantly, what is necessary for a successful, i.e. generally acceptable and coherent,

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“…These identifications of "orientalism" in popular and academic constructions of Eastern Europe as "nostalgic" have given rise to a project of counter-theorizing post-communist nostalgia. This has been achieved by conducting "thick" descriptions of varied nostalgic practices within national and local (urban and rural) settings ( Berdahl 1999 ;Nadkarni 2007 ;Hann 2014 ), as well as through the analysis of alternative imaginations of the future within these practices ( Boyer 2010 ;Mišina 2016 ).…”

Section: Defining and Locating Nostalgia In The Post-communist World ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Introduction

Boele

Noordenbos

Robbe

2019

Post-Soviet Nostalgia

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More than any other recent event, Vladimir Putin's speeches in the wake of the annexation of Crimea raise questions about the political uses of nostalgia in the post-Soviet context. On March 18, 2014, during a carefully orchestrated festive concert in the Red Square, Putin solemnly declared that "after a hard, long and exhaustive journey at sea, Crimea and Sevastopol are returning to their home harbor, to the native shores, to the home port, to Russia!" ( Ria Novosti 2014 ). At first sight, Putin's rhetoric is a schoolbook example of what Svetlana Boym has called "restorative nostalgia," with its characteristic mobilization of collective myths and its wished-for return to, or rebuilding of, a "lost home" (Boym 2001).On closer inspection, however, Putin's interpretation of the events was less clear-cut. The Homeric story of Crimea's exhaustive journey at sea, and its subsequent sailing back to Russia, allocated the initiative with the peninsula itself, a reading that resonated with the Russian government's emphasis on Crimeans' right to self-determination. Yet, in another speech delivered to Duma Deputies on that same day, Putin implied that it was Russia that had returned to Crimea, symbolically reclaiming those Crimean places that were, supposedly, pivotal to Russia's identity. The ancient Crimean site of Khersones, he emphasized, was the site where Prince Vladimir was baptized in the 10th century; Sevastopol was the birthplace of the Russian Black Sea Fleet; and the peninsula still harbored the graves of Russian soldiers from the 19th and 20th centuries.Flexible as these narratives of "home" and "return" were, a constant factor was their thrust to cultivate a sense of shared belonging. Vladimir's baptism, Putin posited, was a "spiritual feat" that united "the peoples of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus"; and Crimea, "similar to Russia as a whole," had always been a multi-ethnic region where Russians, Ukrainians, Tatars, and other groups had lived side by side for centuries, blending their cultures and traditions over time ( Ria Novosti 2014 ). Through references to a common "home," nostalgic narratives about the return of (or to) Crimea sought to create political consensus among diverse groups, both on the peninsula and in Russia itself. The grandiloquent celebrations of the Crimean campaign thus testify to not only the political force

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The Master's Voice: Authenticity, Nostalgia, and the Refusal of Irony in Postsocialist Hungary

Cited by 8 publications

References 7 publications

Museums and Workers: Negotiating Industrial Heritage in the Former Yugoslavia

Museums and Workers: Negotiating Industrial Heritage in the Former Yugoslavia

La reconfiguration des récits postsocialistes de Nowa Huta (Pologne) et de Dunaújváros (Hongrie)

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