Post-Soviet Contexts and Trauma Studies.

The goal of this article is to consider the agendas that shape the field of post-Soviet cultural studies through an examination of post-Soviet Russian appropriations of the traumatic memory of the Soviet past. Post-Soviet scholarship, in questioning collectivizing constructions of identity, has begun to question its own agendas and cohesion. Parallel with developments in Trauma Studies, post-Soviet scholarship considers the relationship between individual and collective experience while enabling a narrative of self-determination on the part of Soviet subjects and those who study them. By working around the poststructuralist emphasis upon partiality and contingency that has impaired the ability to assert 'an absolute foundation of shared experiences upon which to build an invincible moral stance' (Ball 2000), scholars, contemporary artists and online fora stage interventions that reveal the instability of institutional discourses and reveal the political stakes of discussions about post-Soviet trauma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]