Taxonomies of pain: Museal embodiments of identity and belonging in post-communist Romania

The fall of communism in 1989 represented a turning point in the political and cultural development of the European continent, demanding more careful definitions and consideration of the use of heritage and memory in the construction of “new” Eastern European national identities.

This chapter proposes a reevaluation of these concepts within a contemporary theoretical frame that assesses Eastern Europe “otherwise”, highlighting decolonial aspects in the relationship between Eastern Europe and European institutions and examining the position of heritage and citizenship in the processes of national historical becoming. These theoretical principles are exemplified through two “sites of citizenship” in the same Northern Romanian city, Sighetu Marmației, commemorating two conflicting metanarratives of European cultural memory: the Holocaust and communism. The Elie Wiesel Memorial House and the Sighet Memorial Museum are discussed within the larger frameworks of national identity and European belonging, by investigating the tension between a proposed European common heritage and the historical and cultural “fault lines” encountered by Eastern European nations in their attempt to reinvent their national identities.