Palimpsestic Memoryscape: Heterotopias, "Multiculturalism" and Racism in Białystok

This article examines the palimpsestic memoryscape of Białystok to illuminate the ongoing struggle in contemporary Poland between two memory regimes: the declarative "multiculturalism" and the submerged racism. It employs the concept of "heterotopia" and the method of walking in order to study the Jewish Heritage Trail (JHT) as an attempt to recover the memory of bygone multiethnicity and, in doing so, to mint a new "multicultural" brand for the city. By analyzing the post-Jewish spaces located on the JHT—all of which have been appropriated, erased and/or marginalized—the article shows that this new "multicultural" memory regime actually reproduces the inequalities and segregation that structured interethnic relationships in the past.