| Ilina Marinova Department of Anthropology, New Bulgaria University, Sofia [ilieva.ilina@gmail.com] ORCID ID: 0009-0008-8397-6178 | Download https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18078106 |
INDUSTRIAL HERITAGE WITHOUT MEMORY: THE COTTON FACTORY OF VARNA BETWEEN PAST AND REDEVELOPMENT
Abstract: This article examines why one of Varna’s largest pre-socialist buildings – the Cotton Factory – remains materially intact while its industrial past has largely disappeared from public memory. Drawing on site observation, archival fragments, interviews and online discussions, the study identifies a set of mechanisms through which memory erodes: fragmented sensory recollection, low occupational prestige, institutional opacity, shifting moral regimes after 1944 and 1989, urban discontinuity, spatial distancing and the emergence of neighbourhood myths. These forces converge, producing a durable silence around the factory’s social world. At the same time, certain residual attachments – belonging, aesthetic recognition and projected cultural aspirations – continue to anchor the building in collective imagination. The factory persists as a material form whose past cannot be fully narrated yet has not been culturally concluded.
Keywords: industrial heritage; collective memory; institutional opacity; labour history; urban transformation; silence and forgetting; Varna (Bulgaria).
- Declaration by Authors
- Ethical Approval: Approved
- Conflict of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest.