In the colloquium Muriel Blaive outlined her book project on memory politics in the Czech Republic. She especially pondered on the conflation between memory and commemoration, research and activism, history and politics. The talk broached five aspects: 1) the totalitarian paradigm adapted to the post-1989 Czech terrain; 2) an epistemology of the secret police file, and its instrumentalization; 3) oral history studies and the apparent paradox between an outward detestation of communism and a genuine nostalgia for communist times; 4) the relationship between legal prescriptions and academic quality, i.e. the law and context surrounding the creation of the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes in 2007; and 5) a reflection on collective memory manufacturing.
Muriel Blaive was until 2018 Advisor to the Director for Research and Methodology at the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes in Prague. In 2018-19 she is EURIAS Senior Fellow at the IWM.
Comments by Marci Shore ( Associate Professor of History, Yale University; IWM Visiting Fellow)
