What would have been my name? The Post-Memory of the “Generation After” the Revival Process in Bulgaria

This research paper looks at the “generation after” the so-called “Revival Process” (1984–89) in order to explore the intergenerational trans-mission of memories of family traumas related to the largest assimilation campaign in Communist Bulgaria, which was implemented in the 1980s. To investigate how young Turks and Muslims hold, recollect, and contemplate family memories, this qualitative empirical research was conducted through in-depth interviews complemented with a semi-structured and theme-guided questionnaire. Adopting an ethnographic sensibility, this study unravels an inconspicuous yet present web of family memories about the Revival Process and its aftermath, and an accompanying narrative that is verbalised in the most intimate spaces of everyday life. At a personal level, it turns out that the Turkish and Muslim generation of post-memory does not ransack the history of the Revival Process for political profit. In-stead, it argues that there is a lack of self-examination with respect to the recent past in Bulgaria.