Representing Communism After the Fall

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-x

   PDF

2. Introduction: what does coming to terms with the past mean?

   • Cristian Tileagă

   Pages 1-21

3. Transitional Justice as Situated Practices

   • Cristian Tileagă

   Pages 23-46

4. Collective and Cultural Memory: Ethics, Politics, and Avoidance in Remembering Communism

   • Cristian Tileagă

   Pages 47-72

5. Communism as Moral Problem

   • Cristian Tileagă

   Pages 73-102

6. Communism as Other

   • Cristian Tileagă

   Pages 103-124

7. Mea Culpa

   • Cristian Tileagă

   Pages 125-153

8. Remembering with and Through Archives

   • Cristian Tileagă

   Pages 155-178

9. Transgression and the Social Construction of Moral Meanings

   • Cristian Tileagă

   Pages 179-208

10. Using Discursive Psychology to Explore Contested and Troubled Pasts

    • Cristian Tileagă

    Pages 209-233

11. Back Matter

    Pages 235-262

    PDF

This book explores the contribution of discursive psychology and discourse analysis to researching the relationship between history and collective memory. Analysing significant manifestations of the moral vocabulary of the Romanian transition from communism to democracy, the author demonstrates how discursive psychology can be used to understand some of the enduring and persistent dilemmas around the legacy of communism. This book argues that an understanding of language as an action-oriented, world-building resource can fill an important gap in the theorizing of public controversies over individual and collective meaning of the recent (communist) past. The author posits that discursive social psychology can serve as an intellectual and empirical bridge that can overcome several of the difficulties faced by researchers working in transitional justice studies and cognate fields. This reflective book will appeal to students and scholars of transitional justice, discursive psychology, memory studies, and the sociology of change.

• remembering
• morality
• democracy
• discursive psychology
• discourse analysis
• collective memory
• communism
• Romanian political history
• legacy of communism
• social psychology
• transitional justice studies
• memory studies
• sociology of change
• prejudice and social exclusion
• interdisciplinary research
• cultural memory
• moral vocabulary

• School of Social Sciences, Loughborough University, Loughborough, UK

  Cristian Tileagă

Cristian Tileagă is Senior Lecturer in Social Psychology at the School of Social Sciences at Loughborough University, UK. His research interests include discursive psychology, prejudice and social exclusion, and interdisciplinarity. He has published widely on these topics.

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