ABSTRACT
Building upon the findings from previous chapters, the final empirical chapter in Part II revisits the same narrators encountered in Chapter 4 as they approach middle age. Using examples from the second wave of interviews (2012–2016), the chapter explores what happens to the tripolar memory divide over the course of 20 years. Where congruity with official memory already obtained, it finds the narrators portraying their subsequent trajectory as one of steady progress toward ever more seamless integration. In the other two types of narrative, overcoming barriers to symbolic inclusion entails a degree of autobiographical realignment. Among former regime supporters, such realignment takes the form of reframing, in which narrators disavow the standpoints and actions of their first-person protagonists. Reframing is frequently accompanied by temporal Othering (allochronism) of stereotypical “Ossis,” who ostensibly remain encumbered by the past. Where the previous narratives had centered on fractal complexity and hybridity, realignment more often combines revision and “forgetting.” That is, instances of non-conformity are portrayed as resistance, while incongruent emotions such as disappointment and shock after the fall of the Wall are all but excised from the story and rationalized away (“we were still young, it wasn’t so bad”).
