The Memory of the Repressed: Online Ritual of Commemoration “Return of Names”

Abstract

In this article, we will consider the formal and semantic extension of the action-ritual of commemoration of the repressed “Return of the Names”, as well as the emotional characterization of participation. The memory of repressions is a difficult memory, that is more likely to be maintained “from below” — relatively low-resource actors. In this context, the Internet seems to be a promising platform for broadcasting such memory. We will consider the performativity of the ritual of commemoration, that is, the broadening of its forms and meanings by the participants. We reconstruct how they participate in remembrance and express their political and civic position regarding human rights, past and present repressions, and the state. We will turn to emotive markers (affect, emotions, evaluations) as a spectrum, thus seeing how language is able to express feelings about a difficult past, which is problematic to talk about. We will come to the conclusion that the conversation about the difficult past within the framework of the ritual of commemoration occurs to a greater extent through the use of value judgments than affect or even emotions, which means that the ways of talking about the difficult past are largely formed, although the language, discourse does not exhaust the fullness of participants` experiences.