The Infrastructure of Traumatic Memory: Kazakhstan after Soviet Modernization Projects

Abstract

Abstract The article discusses the features of the interaction of local, national, and global memory of the traumatic past and the current commemorative practices of Kazakhstan. The authors used the concept of transnational, multidirectional, and agonistic memory to make an extended interpretation of Kazakhstan’s postcolonial/post-Soviet situation as avoiding conflict. Traditionally, the traumatic discourse of memory in Kazakhstan is described in the context of post-Gulag analytics. On the other hand, some places as the Baikonur cosmodrome produce technogenic traumas. The fundamental concept of the article is a traumatic memory infrastructure which allows, first, to link the diversity of places of memory with the implementation of technological megaprojects in Kazakhstan; second, to identify their correlation with transnational memory practices; and finally, to show the Kazakhstani outline of trauma, which is still insufficiently represented in academic literature. The article uses empirical materials collected by the authors during field research in Kazakhstan.