Mnemonic wars and parallel polis: The anti-politics of memory in Central and Southeast Europe: Kosovar women and Black/Roma Lives Matter

Abstract

The essay argues that anti-politics, a category borrowed from the anti-communist movement in the Eastern Bloc, can inspire memory studies. We focus on one of the chosen categories – the parallel polis (with some forays into the matter of the nonviolence movement). We discuss this universal category through the particular lens of Central and Southeast Europe with two examples: (1) women’s memories of war and violence in Kosovo with a specific focus on the Heroinat monument in Pristina and (2) the Black Lives Matter movement in Czechia that can be used to highlight the racially and ethnically motivated activities of the police, as well as oblivion of the Holocaust of the Roma community in mainstream discourse. It all leads to the identification of parallel orders of memory produced by marginalized groups, as well as the development of anti-politics of memory in opposition to the official, state-driven politics of memory.