Micro-Level Implementation—The Politics of Situations

In this chapter, I demonstrate that on the micro-level, individual citizens are finally exposed to the contents of the EUEU’s memory policymemory policy. In this chapter, I argue that the creation of situations for exposure to official memory narratives is the main outcome of the memory policies of the EU. Unlike other policies, memory policies don’t provide citizens with either cash or services. They offer meanings, which citizens can either internalize, and reactualize elsewhere, or just reject. Contrary to the meso-level, on the micro-level the totalitarianism narrative and freedom discourse are not dominant. What participants decide to reproduce is the HolocaustHolocaust narrative and the tolerancetolerance discourse. These two seem to be more familiar and meaningful for workshopworkshop participants when they talk about memory and moralitymorality. But these discoursesdiscourses and narratives are shifting within interactions.