NON-COMMEMORATION AND THE NATION: MEMORY AND FORGETTING IN THE FORMER YUGOSLAVIA

University of Bucharest Review. Literary and Cultural Studies Series

关键词: memory;    forgetting;    non-commemoration;    yugoslavia;    irony;    turbosculpture;    monumentality;    countermonument;   

DOI  :  

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

The concepts of monumentality and collective memory have not beenneglected by discourses concerning national identity. However, insights favouringforgetting and counter-memory are considerably new approaches reconstructingidentities and redressing tragedy after pronounced violence. Erecting monuments isoften a strategy towards building and inciting public memory and defining thenation, but they can also be used as a means of masking histories and manipulatingnational narratives – this is seemingly the case in a number of post-war monumentsthroughout the former Yugoslavia. The interplay between cultural heritage,memory, and space is a huge component of national identity; the installation ofmonuments memorializing non-Yugoslav celebrities throughout the newly definedstates serve as a means to reconstitute identity, redefine heritage and avoid thecelebration of a painful past. This paper will examine the potential consequences ofmanipulating public space through the erection of structures that function todisguise. By discussing the way in which identities can strive to strategically avoidthe state in the ‘non-commemoration’ of the nation and its inflicted traumas, I hopeto demonstrate that the state is always present: That even through neglecting it – itis always referenced, that the academic conceptions of the state can operate, notjust by identifying and treating the state as an actor, but also by simplyacknowledging the state as spectre. By comparing these contemporary structures tothe numerous national monuments dedicated to victims of fascism built after theSecond World War, I will show how the relationship between the state and memoryhas shifted in some regards and stayed the same in others.

【 授权许可】

Unknown