Lieux de mémoire and post-communist nostalgia in the Central European symbolic landscape of urban spaces

The aim of this chapter is to shed some light on the explanatory power of lieux de mémoire in investigating post-communist nostalgia in the symbolic landscape of urban spaces in Central Europe. In doing so, the mutually constituting nature of remembering and forgetting as social constructs will be outlined. More specifically, drawing on Pierre Nora’s concept of lieux de mémoire, I examine the explanatory value of the social construction of the meaning of the past as an analytical perspective applied to the study of nostalgia in the contemporary symbolic landscape of Central European urban spaces.