Martins Kaprans

The PhD thesis demonstrates how the Latvian public biographical discourse has framed and transformed the understanding of Soviet period over the last 20 years and how these processes were influenced by autobiographers’ collective identities. The conceptual framework of the study is derived from the social representations theory that was founded at the beginning of the 1960s by French social psychologist Serge Moscovici. The empirical part of the thesis is based on three datasets: autobiographies, newspaper articles, and interviews with publishers of post-Soviet autobiographies. The analysis of biographical discourse suggests that along with the positive or negative social representations of Soviet period an important role has been played by a pragmatic representation. This representation does not ignore humiliating conditions under the Soviets; however the pragmatic representation highlights autobiographers’ individual, as well as collective advancements during the Soviet era.

This article deals with the autobiographies of former Soviet officials which have been published in Latvia since the 1990s. In particular, it focuses on three interrelated layers of biographical narrative: construction of social identity, strategies for avoiding the stigmatization of collaboration, and comparisons between the Soviet and post-Soviet experience. The analysis of autobiographies is embedded in the theory of social representations. The article contends that the vast majority of former officials who have published memoirs use a pragmatic representation of the Soviet past as the major locus of their positive identity narrative. From there, former officials can show their complicity in the Soviet era as neither principally undermining the conceptual themes of anti-Soviet representation nor those of pro-Soviet representation. Thus autobiographers emphasize virtues that might be accepted by a post-Soviet neoliberal society. The paper also argues that moral relativism has become a cultural practice which former officials and other autobiographers exploit to overcome the structural limitations imposed by post-Soviet political memory.

In 2008, Edvīns Šnore, the Latvian film director, released a shocking and provocative documentary, “The Soviet Story”, which explored some terrible episodes from Soviet history as well as the collaboration between the Soviet and Nazi regimes. Scholars have argued that “The Soviet Story” is an effective Latvian response to ongoing Russian propaganda, but it also exemplifies the problems of Latvian memory politics. This article takes a step further in the discussion of “The Soviet Story”. It focuses on the idea of how memory work triggered by the documentary got started on social networking sites. In particular, the article deals with the video-sharing website YouTube and the Internet encyclopaedia Wikipedia, both of which are crucial meaning-making sites with respect to history. The article demonstrates memory work in YouTube and Wikipedia as a multi-directional enterprise that both reinforces and emancipates existing hegemonic representations of controversial history.

The presentation of paper. Presented at international interdisciplinary conference "Still Postsocialism? Cultural memory and Social Transformations", in Kazan. See the program http://postsocialism.ru/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/PSKAZAN_PreliminaryProgramme.pdf

Ever since the fictitious Kazakh journalist Borat Sagdiyev became an icon of contemporary popular culture, many questions have arisen about the reception of Borat by the general public. Namely, how have common people created a shared representation of Borat? And how is this complicated character and comedic manner undertaken by Sacha Baron Cohen being deciphered? These questions are crucial for understanding the challenges and constraints of social satire that exploits ethnically and stylistically sophisticated identity. To address these questions, which surely could be asked about other international media products as well, this article deals with the reception of Borat the character on YouTube. In particular, the viewers' reaction to the YouTube video titled "The Best of Borat" is analysed. This video has been viewed more than seven million times and commented on more than seven thousand times. The conceptual framework of this analysis is derived from the theory of social representations postulated by Serge Moscovici. In line with this theory two main dimensions - anchoring and objectification - are explored in order to understand how shared or divergent knowledge of Borat is created. Thus the basic socio-cognitive processes behind Borat are revealed. The results suggest that anchoring of Borat is embedded in national identification discourse, whereas objectification differentiates people according to their sense of humour. Likewise, some implications of Borat's reception for participatory culture and civic engagement are outlined.

... Qualitative Research Methods Series 17. Newbury Park: SAGE, 1988. Print. Dabolins, Martins. meza skandalista memuari [The memoirs of the forest quarreler]. Riga: Vizualais Elements, 2005. Ferda, Erika. Ka sendienas [Like in the bygone days]. Riga: Liktenstasti, 1995. Print. ...

Abstract: The article deals with an autobiographical representation of diverse experiences. Namely, through the analysis of post-Soviet Latvian autobiographies the framing of the Soviet and Post-Soviet era is revealed. The article suggests that instead of using ...