Flooded with memories: Emergence and development of the “memory boom”

Abstract

This paper aims to describe the development of the recent wave of interest in memory and the past in general (so-called ?memory boom?), as well as the overall cultural climate that encouraged this ?invasion? of the past in both public and scientific discourses. While the first wave of memory boom was supposed to legitimate the emerging nation-states, the second boom signified the exhaustion of the old paradigm of nationalism, decline of the nation-state, as well as the emergence of a new paradigm: globalization.