Paper short abstract:

I explore the consequences of internalising shocks and crisis as the norm, which determines our ways of making sense and produces a society in a permanent state of transition. Post-socialism is compared to a waiting room, referring to a state of in-betweenness, indeterminacy, and entropy.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper I depict several snapshots from Tallinn (Estonia), which interrupt and question the hegemonic discourse about transition by suspending 'normality', its necessity and causality and the way we experience the flow and course of time. The post-socialist Zeitgeist has been conditioned by a runaway experience and has nostalgia as a symptom. During the last decades, many people have found in nostalgia a safety-shelter or the way to deal with a blurred horizon. I explore the consequences of internalising shocks and crisis as the norm, which determines our ways of making sense and produces a society in a permanent state of transition. In this work post-socialism is compared to a waiting room, referring to a state of in-betweenness, indeterminacy, and entropy. I conclude that the contemporary chaos and turbo normality is better understood if we go off the established social patterns, un-develop post-socialism, and approach the field intuitively, without any reliance on preconceived categories. Without a critical thinking, the living present shrinks into a small point that is by crisis stretched at infinitum.