Nikolai Vukov
The project aims at the comparative study of the strategies and techniques applied after 1944 and 1989 by political actors, scholars and society at large for producing evidence about one the most debatable periods in modern Bulgarian history, the anti-fascist resistance during World War II. Taking methodological inspiration from Susan Sontag’s cultural criticism and Bruno Latour’s cognitive criticism, the project will analyze the ways in which evidence of the anti-fascist movement was looked for, collected, interpreted and constructed, as well as modified, manipulated, and destroyed depending on the immediate political and social contexts. By undertaking a closer examination of three major realms of evidence production and reassessment – documentary materials, physical bodies, and witness testimonies – the project will trace similarities and difficulties in the approaches followed during the communist and post-communist periods in the attempts for writing, rewriting, and revising of the past.