![Sample our Politics & International Relations journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5947/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Politics-International-Relations.jpg"})
Acknowledgements
This essay is based on a paper presented at the 6th International Conference on History and Culture in North Eastern Europe on ‘Places of Commemoration in North Eastern Europe: National – Transnational – European?’, held on 20–23 September 2007 at Tallinn Town Archives. The research was supported by Estonian Ministry of Research and Education (targeted financed project SF0402739s06) and by the Estonian Science Foundation (grant no. 7129). I am grateful to Peter Burke, Linda Kaljundi and Siobhan Kattago for their comments.
Notes
Notes
1. For some recent overviews of the rapidly growing field, see Winter and Sivan (Citation1999), Radstone (Citation2000), Winter (Citation2001), Müller (Citation2002), Hodgkin and Radstone (Citation2003), Lebow, Kansteiner and Fogu (Citation2006). See also the first issue of the new journal Memory Studies (Volume 1, issue 1, 2008) and the recent special issue on collective memory and collective identity of Social Research (Volume 75, issue 1, 2008).
2. Although we can find in Greek mythology a distinction between two goddesses: Clio, the Muse of history, is the daughter of Mnemosyne, the Titan goddess of memory.
3. The same aspect is underlined by Michel de Certeau: ‘Far from being the reliquary or trash can of the past, memory sustains itself by believing in the existence of possibilities and by vigilantly awaiting them, constantly on the watch for their appearance’ (Certeau 1984, p. 87, italics in original).
4. In similar terms, Michel de Certeau has stated that ‘event is not what we can see or know about, but what it becomes later (first of all for us)’ (Certeau Citation1994, p. 51).
5. The expression was introduced in different context by Dan P. McAdams (Citation1993). Also W. L. Randall speaks in similar terms about ‘stories we are’, arguing for the concept of ‘narrative identity’ which consists of ‘stories we tell to ourselves about ourselves and the stories we or others tell to others, or stories that are told to others about ourselves – all the stories in which we are included’ (Randall Citation1995, pp. 54–6). See also classical statements on ‘the narrative construction of reality’ by Jerome Bruner (Citation1991, Citation2005) and Marc Augé's interesting reflections on ‘life as story’ (2001, pp. 39–74).
6. See also Straub (Citation2005, p. 64, italics in original): ‘Historical narrative and reflection do not simply shape subjects cognitively. Narratives, especially historical narratives formulated from the perspective of the present, are unique articulations of a continuity that creates and maintains coherence. This coherence is generally perceived as a meaning-structured unity of events, occurrences, and acts’
7. Respectively, Lennart Meri (president in 1992–2001) and Mart Laar (prime minister in 1992–1994, and again in 1999–2002).
8. ‘Kalevipoeg’ (Son of Kalev) by Fr. R. Kreutzwald (1853). The manifesto quotes the last lines of the poem (canto XX, lines 1047–1050, 1053–1055).
9. See also a vivid testimony in the very influential Estonian novel Kevade [Spring] (1913) by Oskar Luts: ‘T õnisson has read only one book on the battles and subsequent slavery of ancient Estonians, but this one has had such an impact on him that he had became an implacable enemy of Germans’ (Luts Citation1982, p. 43). Luts probably had Bornhöhe's Tasuja in mind.
10. However, one should not forget the importance of artistic imagination, although the role of visual culture in the construction of the Estonian nation has been less important than in many other eastern and central European countries. For a comparative survey of the visual history of nation building in Europe, see Flacke (Citation1998).