Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book considers how collective memory-work might be reconfigured around an alternative form of solidarity which promises to avert such an infinite regress. It explores the vocabulary of symbolic self-placement inductively to develop a more formal scale for discerning shifts along the spectrum between perceptions of symbolic marginalization and full inclusion vis-a-vis the imagined community of German citizens. The book then examines how the tripolar divisions among the Dictatorship Memory and the two variants of counter-memory are prefigured to a striking degree within vernacular memory itself, just five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. It also considers how the proposed framework can help make sense of the resurgence of right-wing populism in Germany, offering a critique of attempts to explain xenophobia as a peculiarly “eastern” phenomenon.