Discussion
Historical politics remain a central field of interest across national contexts. While it is undoubtedly influenced by contemporary political agendas, it continues to shape memory culture, national identity, and public historical consciousness (Assmann 1999). These dynamics are widely examined by scholars, often focusing on discourses, narratives, and ideological frameworks (Müller 2002, Schmidtke 2023). However, the practical and material dimensions that underpin and sustain historical politics tend to receive less systematic scholarly attention.
In my presentation, I propose an infrastructural approach to the study of historical politics: theoretical framework that allows for the tracing of the often-overlooked “Lilliputian threads” (Bowker and Star 1999) that quietly drive and shape memory production and transmission. This approach highlights the significance of both “hard” infrastructures (such as building materials and physical spaces) and “soft” infrastructures (including professional networks, administrative routines, and funding mechanisms) in the formation and dissemination of historical narratives (De Beukelaer 2019).
Drawing on comparative case studies from Poland and Germany, I demonstrate how these infrastructures interact with broader political agendas and memory regimes. The analysis reveals that infrastructures do not merely support historical politics; they actively participate in its making by shaping what is remembered, how it is remembered, and by whom. By foregrounding these material and practical dimensions, the infrastructural approach offers a new lens through which to analyze the production of public history and national memory.
References:
Assmann, A. 1999.
Erinnerungsräume: Formen und Wandlungen des kulturellen Gedächtnisses. München: C. H. Beck.
Bowker, G. C., S. L. Star. 1999.
Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences. Boston: MIT Press, 1999.
De Beukelaer, C. 2019. “The social and built infrastructure of cultural policy: Between selective popular memory and future plans.”
International Journal of Cultural Policy 25 (2): 140–153. Doi:10.1080/10286632.2016.1248951
Müller, J.-W. ed. 2002.
Memory and Power in Post-War Europe: Studies in the Presence of the Past. Cambridge, U.K: Cambridge University Press.
Schmidtke, O. 2023. "Competing Historical Narratives: Memory Politics, Identity, and Democracy in Germany and Poland"
Social Sciences 12, no. 7: 391. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci12070391
Keywords: infrastructural studies, memory culture, exhibitions, Second World War, Central East Europe
