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Agreeing to Disagree on the Legacies of Recent History

Memory, Pluralism and Europe after 1989

TALLINN UNIVERSITY, ESTONIA, siobhan{at}ehi.ee

Since 1989, social change in Europe has moved between two stories. The first being a politics of memory emphasizing the specificity of culture in national narratives, and the other extolling the virtues of the Enlightenment heritage of reason and humanity. While the Holocaust forms a central part of West European collective memory, national victimhood of former Communist countries tends to occlude the centrality of the Holocaust. Highlighting examples from the Estonian experience, this article asks whether attempts to find one single European memory of trauma ignore the complexity of history and are thus potentially disrespectful to those who suffered under both Communism and National Socialism. Pluralism in the sense of Hannah Arendt and Isaiah Berlin is presented as a way in which to move beyond the settling of scores in the past and towards a respectful recognition and acknowledgement of historical difference.

Key Words: Europe • the Holocaust • legacy • memory • trauma

European Journal of Social Theory, Vol. 12, No. 3, 375-395 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/1368431009337352


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