The Romanian ‘Latchkey Generation’ writes back: memory genres of post-communism on Facebook

Since the 2000s an alternative engagement with the communist past has emerged across media in Romania in the shape of a generational discourse, which negotiates a post-communist generational identity for individuals growing up in the 1970s-1980s. This article focuses on the online memory practices of this self-dubbed "latchkey generation" by investigating an emerging life writing genre-the Facebook generatiography-and its reliance on the archiving of communist memorabilia in the shape of photographed objects. How do generational frames of remembrance, members of a specific generation, and the sociotechnical affordances of Facebook pages intra-act to produce this genre? And what does it "do" in the context of post-communist Romania? This article sets about answering these questions while arguing for the renewed need to think about generations as generically actualized discursive strategies in the age of social media.