The Romanian “Latchkey Generation” writes back: Memory genres of post-communism on Facebook

Abstract

Since the 2000s an alternative engagement with the communist past has emerged across media in Romania in the shape of a generational discourse, which negotiates a post-communist generational identity for individuals growing up in the 1970s–1980s. This article focuses on the online memory practices of this self-dubbed “latchkey generation” by investigating an emerging life writing genre—the Facebook generatiography—and its reliance on the archiving of communist memorabilia in the shape of photographed objects. How do generational frames of remembrance, members of a specific generation, and the sociotechnical affordances of Facebook pages intra-act to produce this genre? And what does it “do” in the context of post-communist Romania? This article sets about answering these questions while arguing for the renewed need to think about generations as generically actualized discursive strategies in the age of social media.