THE OUTCOMES OF PROJECT «THE MEMORY OF GENERATIONS IN A CRISIS OF HISTORICAL CONSCIOUSNESS»

Abstract

The article is an outcomes review of research project «The Memory of Generation in a Crisis of Historical Consciousness», which was conducted with the support of the Russian Foundation for Fundamental Research. The starting point and the connecting link between all studies within the project is the issue of cultural memory mechanisms in the focus of generation memory, which needs to be worked out due to the modern transformation of culture memory structure in general and in particular due to the loss of previous positions by traditional institutions and modes that worked previously in the processes of cultural continuity. The review of works published in the framework of project reproduces the main directions and topics raised by team of researchers: self-consciousness of generation as a united collective identity; transgeneration aspect of cultural memory; memory as a remembrance and as an oblivion; image of generation and «the aristocrats of spirit» as keepers of cultural memory; biographical writing and strategies of existential experience expression in writing; biographical writing as «the archive of era»; autobiography and metaphor of lifeway as a technique to overcoming the discreteness of biographical writing; landscape of creativity in connection with the metaphor of lifeway; Russian experience of mechanisms of generation memory in the historical crisis periods; possibility of commemorative practices within one generation and between different generations; displacement of memory and oblivion; the phenomenon of «lost» and «forgotten» as constituting issue for the boundaries of memory; symbolic archeology of bodily practices as a method of studying the cultural memory. In addition to the large amount of work done at the theoretical level, the article pinpoints the project practical contribution, namely an analytical review of foreign sources on the topic, field research and establishment of cooperation with institutions in Germany and France, and the creation of an electronic resource as a platform for further studies of generation and cultural memory.