Talk by Gruia Badescu, 2024-2025 Paris IAS Fellow, as part of event "The Visceral and the Virtual: Memorial Practices in Eastern and Southeastern Europe" organized by the Max Planck Institute.

More information: https://www.mmg.mpg.de/events/39187/47148

In the aftermath of war, ruined cities await reconstruction. Yet their societal context is often different, mired in different understandings and valuations of having been victimized by destruction. From desires to move on and erase the evidence of pain, to those to memorialize suffering and anger, political emotions and memory narratives influence the actions of reconstruction and dealing with past ruins.  This talk examines the relationship between the post-war reconstruction of cities and memory narratives focused on victimhood and perpetration. Drawing on historical cases of reconstruction in Eastern and Southeastern Europe since 1945, this paper interrogates how reconstruction practices responded to the perceived roles of societies as victims or perpetrators in the aftermath of different types of war. It offers a typology of approaches based on the impact of narratives of victimhood and perpetration on post-war reconstruction, including a set of practices that go beyond these dichotomies, that I theorize as reflective reconstruction and syncretic place-making.