Book presentation about the Soviet Past in Estonia

On Thursday, 27 September, Francisco Martinez from the University of Helsinki will introduce his new book “Remains of the Soviet Past in Estonia. An Anthropology of Forgetting, Repair and Urban Traces“. The book presentation takes place at 16.15 in the UT Social Sciences building, Lossi 36, room 305.

What happens to legacies that do not find any continuation? In his book, Francisco Martinez brings together a number of sites of interest to explore the vanquishing of the Soviet legacy in Estonia. The anthropological study of all these places shows that national identity and historical representations can be constructed in relation to waste and disrepair, too, demonstrating also how we can understand generational change in a material sense.

By adopting the tropes of “repair” and “waste”, this book innovatively manages to link various material registers from architecture, intergenerational relations, affect, museums with ways of making the past present.

Victor Buchli, Professor of Material Culture, UCL

This book comprises an endearingly transdisciplinary ethnography of post-socialist material culture and social change in Estonia. It defies disciplinary boundaries and shows how an attention to material relations and affective infrastructures might reinvigorate political theory.

Maria Mälksoo, Senior Lecturer, Brussels School of International Studies of the University of Kent

The discussion will be led by Heiko Pääbo (Lecturer in Politics of Baltic Region Countries, University of Tartu) and Siobhan Kattago (Senior Research Fellow in Practical Philosophy, University of Tartu)

Francisco Martínez is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki and member of the editorial team of the Anthropological Journal of European Cultures. In 2018, he was awarded with the Early Career Prize of the European Association of Anthropology.

Forwarded by:

Annika Maksimov
Marketing and Communications Specialist
Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies
University of Tartu
annika.maksimov@ut.ee