In mid-March, our team met for a seminar dedicated to the book The Implicated Subject: Beyond Victims and Perpetrators by Michael Rothberg, a scholar of American literature and memory studies.

During the meeting, we reflected on how the concept of implicated subjects might be applied to the post-displacement areas that our team studies. Rothberg proposes a perspective that goes beyond the traditional division between perpetrators and victims, pointing to a space between them — a sphere of implication. In this view, individuals and groups may be connected to injustices or forms of violence in different ways, even if they were not their direct perpetrators. At times, such implication may also bring certain benefits. At the same time, Rothberg emphasizes that recognizing one’s own implication can become a starting point for transformation — encouraging reflection on responsibility and solidarity that goes beyond a simple distinction between the guilty and the innocent. In his book, Rothberg develops this theory through analyses of examples from film and other fields of art.

During our seminar, we attempted to bring these reflections into the context of research on post-displacement regions, which our team investigates. Together, we considered what forms of “implication” can be observed in the histories and experiences of people living in these areas and how such a perspective might help us better understand the complex relationships between past and present, as well as the role of material culture that is the central focus of our project.

In late winter, our team met for a regular seminar to explore a new genre. For the first time, we listened to an audio documentary. The documentary Kořeny se hledají v zemi (“Roots Are Found in the Ground”) follows artist Lucie Králíková as she and her colleagues invite participants of one of her projects to Northwestern Bohemia. Together, they explore the region’s former German heritage, visible in abandoned villages and in the remaining fruit trees that recall the vibrant life that existed before the Second World War.

While listening to the documentary, which focuses on memory work typical of the Czech borderlands, we discussed the strong visual elements and stereotypes associated with the region. We also considered how perceptions of post-displacement areas differ in Czechia, Slovakia, and Poland.

If you would like to experience the atmosphere of a post-displacement fruit feast, you can listen to the documentary here.

In this blog post, Michal Korhel explores the March of Gratitude dedicated to the Slovak National Uprising (SNP) as a present-day form of commemoration that blends physical participation with mediated remembrance. Drawing on participant observation and informal conversations with attendees, he reflects on how walking through historically significant landscapes can foster a form of experiential memory. At the same time, this dimension of memory often remains subtle and unarticulated.

Michal points to a tension between immediate, lived experience and the symbolic frameworks that seek to give the event a clear commemorative meaning. He suggests that the significance of the march tends to emerge retrospectively, if it emerges at all, rather than being fully realized in the moment of participation.

Link to the blog post you can find here.

In February, our team had the pleasure of hosting a seminar with Brett Ashley Kaplan, Professor and Conrad Humanities Scholar in the Program in Comparative and World Literature at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where she directs the Initiative in Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies. During the seminar, our guest presented not only a portion of her research but also offered insight into the creative process behind her recent book on the now-vanished village of Seneca Village, located in the nineteenth century on the grounds of what is today Central Park in New York City.

Together, we reflected on what “haunting” truly means—whether it should be understood solely as a feature associated with figures (“human” ghosts), or whether it may also belong to objects. This question resonated particularly strongly in the context of our project, which explores the agency of things and the material traces of the past. The conversation then expanded to the issue of memory tied to specific spaces—how bringing new information about the past to light affects contemporary communities and what kinds of reactions it can provoke. We also considered the differences between the work of writers and scholars—how both groups gather and interpret data, construct narratives, and combine facts with imagination.

For our team, the seminar only broadened our research perspective but also opened up new questions about the relationship between place, memory, and that which—though seemingly absent—continues to shape the present. We particularly appreciated that our guest introduced us to the context of New York City, with its entangled memories of Indigenous and Black communities, erased from the white history.