In the latest issue of the European Journal of Life Writing, guest editors Agnieszka Mrozik and Anja Tippner explore the role of autobiographical writing in commemorating the past as well as in demonstrating the demise of socialism, as represented in contemporary literatures in Czech, Polish, Romanian, and Russian – supported by transform! europe.
Since the fall of communism in 1989 and 1990/91 literature has dealt with this epochal societal change, trying to come to terms with the past and assessing its influence on the present. In the last years, the focus has turned towards the era of late socialism, that is the 1970s and 1980s. Many writers who attempt to present and reevaluate these decades and their ongoing influence on biographies and societies today grew up or came of age in this era. The editors mainly contend that different forms of life-writing, especially autofictions and autobiographical novels, have become the dominant narrative device for addressing and narrating the socialist past. Accordingly, the contributions to this cluster explore the era of late socialism, examining its different and often contested meanings not only from the perspective of the past but also from the perspective of today.
Vol. 10 (2021): European Journal of Life Writing (EJLW)
Cluster "Remembering Late Socialism": Table of Contents
Agnieszka Mrozik and Anja Tippner
Remembering Late Socialism in Autobiographical Novels and Autofictions from Central and Eastern Europe: Introduction
Agnieszka Mrozik
Growing Up as a Girl in Late Socialist Poland: The Personal, the Political and Class in Feminist Quasi-Autobiographical Novels by Izabela Filipiak and Joanna Bator
Anja Tippner
‘How it all turned out alright’: Autofiction as Memory Form in Irena Dousková’s Novels about Childhood and Youth in Post-1968 Czechoslovakia
Doris Mironescu and Andreea Mironescu
Maximalist Autofiction, Surrealism and Late Socialism in Mircea Cărtărescu’s Solenoid
Ksenia Robbe
Reanimating/Resisting Late Soviet Monstrosity: Generational Self-Reflection and Lessons of Responsibility in Alexei Ivanov’s Pischeblok [The Food Unit]
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