Mihaela Şerban - Böcker

The first of its kind, this book traces the construction of post-memory in post-communist Romania.Focusing on the processes, gaps, agents, and contradictions of post-memory, it examines a range of topics across a variety of disciplines, addressing questions of museums and musealization, law and memory, political trials and retrospective justice, and post-memory in a digital context, while also considering marginalized and forgotten voices, such as those of the Roma population and abandoned children. Moving away from a focus on the institutional mechanisms of transitional justice or officially sanctioned historical narratives, Between the Memory and Post-Memory of Communism in Romania brings together some of the leading voices in the field of memory studies in Romania to adopt a more pluralistic and diverse approach to the communist past.It will therefore appeal to scholars of sociology, anthropology, museum studies, and history with interests in the communist period in Eastern Europe.

Subverting Communism in Romania explores the role of law in everyday life and as a mechanism for social change during early communism in Romania. Mihaela Serban focuses on the regime’s attempts to extinguish private property in housing through housing nationalization and expropriation. This study of early communist law illustrates that law is never just an instrument of state power, particularly over the long term and from a ground up perspective. Even during its most totalitarian phase, communist law enjoyed a certain level of autonomy at the most granular level and consequently was simultaneously a space of state power and resistance to power. The book draws from archives recently made available in Romania, which have opened up new perspectives for understanding a mundane yet crucial part of the modern human experience: one’s home and the institution of private property that often sustains it.