BUKOVINA OF MEMORY. NARRATIVITY AND CONSTRUCTION OF IDENTITY

There is a clear distinction between the historiography and memoirs. The first one claims to reconstruct the past more rigorous, based on the methods considered by historians as "scientific", descending deepest in the past, where the individual memory has not the access. Even so, the historians cannot ignore the memoirs approach as an expression of identity or as part of the identity discourse in Bukovina. In the former Austrian provincers case, the collective memory functions as a framework within the individual memory is structured and its coordinates are geography and ethnicity. Most of the time, the "real geography", with a precise territorial representation, is transformed into a "personal geography" which draws further in a past created on a set of family memories called "memories of memories". The result is the capture of memoirs in a geographical area, physically, with homes, meadows, boulevards, roads or streets, with luxury restaurants, cafes, and summer gardens. The memoirrs sequence is more authentic when the description is separated from stereotypes, cliches and, in general, from everything that hinders the spontaneity. Regarding the "place of memory" in the writings of Bukovinians, this is more than a "place of history". It is characterized by mobility, plasticity, objectivity, and illusion. Its understanding is rather a philosophy of history, rarely practiced by historians who prefer to start their research on strictly empirical facts. Although it may describe the same "place", there is not just one version. Even if the past event is unique, it can appear in multiple versions. In such a plural space, like Bukovina, there are two possibilities for the positioning of identity. Some writers understand that ethnicity has a key role in the community life, spreading a positive image of the "other" to convince that tolerance and respect are the conditions for a peaceful coexistence. In some other works, the meeting with the "other" is negatively valued. It creates a mental image uploaded with derogatory stereotypes, with reserve and fear.