Francisco Martinez “Remains of the Soviet Past in Estonia”

BOOK PRESENTATION!

Remains of the Soviet Past in Estonia.
An Anthropology of Forgetting, Repair and Urban Traces

Wednesday, 5th of September, at 18:00.
Discussants: Liina Siib, Keiti Kljavin, Tauri Tuvikene and Sten Ojavee.
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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.
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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
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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
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Francisco Martínez, is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki and part of the editorial team of the Anthropological Journal of European Cultures. In 2018, he has been awarded with the Early Career Prize of the European Association of Anthropology.

The event will be held in English.