Legitimation crisis, memory, and United States exceptionalism: Lessons from post-communist Eastern Europe

Abstract

The article examines how the experiences of post-communist transitional justice policies could inform current controversies in the United States regarding its reckoning with the past. To lay the ground for this analysis, three facets of American exceptionalism—the dual state reality, the triumphalist myth, and the denialist myth—are identified as principal obstacles that have preempted any substantive reparations for the crimes against humanity perpetrated against enslaved Africans and their descendants. This is followed by a presentation of how the 1989 revolutions in East and Central Europe failed to promote an inclusive and pluralistic model of the past. Instead, current representations of the past rooted in essentialist and ethnocentric historical narratives are weaponized by non-democratic political actors. Finally, the authors caution against misguided representations of historical trauma and memory wars in the United States that could potentially reproduce White supremacist ideologies and escalate existent political and cultural divisions.