Copyright

Erica Burman

Published On

2024-04-22

Page Range

pp. 93–115

Language

  • English

Print Length

23 pages

4. The Other Side of the Curtain?

Troubling Western Memories of (Post)socialism

Chapter of: (An)Archive: Childhood, Memory, and the Cold War(pp. 93–115)
I interrogate my historical and current positionings in this chapter by recalling memories of growing up during the Cold War but on the other (Western) side of the so-called Iron Curtain. Focused on a specific example from my minoritized but otherwise quite privileged background in the north of England, I explore what returns to me now as either topicalised or occluded by, presumably, the cultural-political construction of the Cold-War period that dominated my own place and time. Specifically, I attempt to retrieve my memories of what I knew and understood about the ‘Save Soviet Jewry’ campaign in the 1970s, and consider what it these might indicate about how now-former Soviet and allied communist countries were perceived. During this process, I encounter memorial gaps and obstacles and address the temptation to fill these in and to elaborate upon them my recollections from my current geopolitical, chronological, and biographical position. What emerges is the impossibility of ‘looking back’ without also reflecting on the ‘now’ and how it shapes the perspective from which the review takes place.

Contributors

Erica Burman

(author)
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2504-5120

Erica Burman grew up in Liverpool, UK, and so had a different Cold War childhood from most of the other contributors to this volume, albeit obviously still subject to its dynamics in ways she attempts to explore in this chapter. Erica is author of Child as Method: Othering, Interiority, and Materialism (Routledge, 2024), Developments: Child, Image, Nation (Routledge, 2020, 2nd edition), Fanon, Education, Action: Child as Method (Routledge, 2019), Deconstructing Developmental Psychology (Routledge, 3rd edition, 2017, 4th in preparation). Erica's research has focused on critical developmental and educational psychology, feminist and postcolonial theory, childhood studies, and on critical mental health practice (particularly around gender and cultural issues). Her recent work addresses the connections between emotions, mental health and (social as well as individual) change, in particular as anchored by representations of, and appeals to, childhood. She sees debates about children and childhood as central to current theories and practices around decolonisation, as indicated by her current work on ‘Child as method’, in which the Recollect/Reconnect project has played an important role. ORCID ID 0000-0002-2504-5120