The meanings of monuments and memorials: toward a semiotic approach
Bellentani and Panico (2016)'s concrete examples are mostly from post-soviet cities.
- April 2015 Ukrainian government approved laws to enable the removal of Communist monuments
- April 2016 Skopje protest against Macedonian government
- 2007 Estonia: Relocation of Red Army memorial of Tallinn
- the War of Independence Victory Column in Tallinn, capital of Estonia
- the monument to the Soviet Army in Sofia, capital of Bulgaria, has turned from a sacred memorial into a space of entertainment and leisure
-in Odessa, Ukraine, a statue of Lenin was turned into Darth Vader, the villain of the film series “Star Wars”. This replacement was made after the Ukrainian government approved laws to ban Communist symbols in April 2015. The Ukrainian government saw in the excision of Soviet material remains an opportunity to exorcize the traumatic experience of Soviet rule and to build a particular conception of the future.
They are defending a semiotic approach in order to overcome the rigidity of dualist conceptualizations such as material/symbolic, visual/political, art/power, designer/user.
"..monuments become essential for the articulation of the national politics of memory and identity through which political elites set political agendas and legitimate political power."
Monument studies:
1. Urban and art historians...iconography+iconology
2. Sociology and anthropology.... commemoration function
Alois Riegl: "A monument in its oldest and most original sense is a human creation, erected for the specific purpose of keeping single human deeds or events [...] alive in the mind of future generations. (Riegl 1903: 117)"
3.Geographers.. creating selective historical narratives + investigating the use of monuments by elites to shape and reinforce sentiments of national distinctiveness and unity
-Sites of memory (Pierre Nora), Hobsbawm, Anderson, Harvey, Landscape of Remembrance (Johnson,1995) ---designer/user problem: different interpretations because of geography, culture, gender etc..
"A monumental work, like a musical one, does not have a ‘signified’ (or ‘signifieds’); rather, it has a horizon of meaning: a specific or indefinite multiplicity of meanings, a shifting hierarchy in which now one, now another meaning comes momentarily to the fore, by means of – and for the sake of – a particular action. (Lefebvre 1974: 222)"
The functions of the meanings of monuments
- April 2015 Ukrainian government approved laws to enable the removal of Communist monuments
- April 2016 Skopje protest against Macedonian government
- 2007 Estonia: Relocation of Red Army memorial of Tallinn
- the War of Independence Victory Column in Tallinn, capital of Estonia
- the monument to the Soviet Army in Sofia, capital of Bulgaria, has turned from a sacred memorial into a space of entertainment and leisure
-in Odessa, Ukraine, a statue of Lenin was turned into Darth Vader, the villain of the film series “Star Wars”. This replacement was made after the Ukrainian government approved laws to ban Communist symbols in April 2015. The Ukrainian government saw in the excision of Soviet material remains an opportunity to exorcize the traumatic experience of Soviet rule and to build a particular conception of the future.
They are defending a semiotic approach in order to overcome the rigidity of dualist conceptualizations such as material/symbolic, visual/political, art/power, designer/user.
"..monuments become essential for the articulation of the national politics of memory and identity through which political elites set political agendas and legitimate political power."
Monument studies:
1. Urban and art historians...iconography+iconology
2. Sociology and anthropology.... commemoration function
Alois Riegl: "A monument in its oldest and most original sense is a human creation, erected for the specific purpose of keeping single human deeds or events [...] alive in the mind of future generations. (Riegl 1903: 117)"
3.Geographers.. creating selective historical narratives + investigating the use of monuments by elites to shape and reinforce sentiments of national distinctiveness and unity
-Sites of memory (Pierre Nora), Hobsbawm, Anderson, Harvey, Landscape of Remembrance (Johnson,1995) ---designer/user problem: different interpretations because of geography, culture, gender etc..
"A monumental work, like a musical one, does not have a ‘signified’ (or ‘signifieds’); rather, it has a horizon of meaning: a specific or indefinite multiplicity of meanings, a shifting hierarchy in which now one, now another meaning comes momentarily to the fore, by means of – and for the sake of – a particular action. (Lefebvre 1974: 222)"
The functions of the meanings of monuments
"The meanings one attaches to monuments depend on the interrelation between cognitive, axiological and emotional functions. Moreover, the everyday practices of users are able to attach new meanings to monuments."
1) the cognitive function refers to the kind of human knowledge monuments embody as well as the knowledge users have about the representations of monuments
"As every narrative selects some events while omitting others (Cobley 2001: 7), monuments necessarily focus on some histories while obliterating others. Since every “remembering, nevertheless, involves a forgetting” (Dovey 1999: 73), it is natural that monuments represent only specific events and individuals."
"They can articulate specific national politics of memory to educate citizens toward what to remember and what to forget of the past (Tamm 2013: 651)"
2) the axiological function considers whether users value this knowledge positively or negatively
3) the emotional function investigates which emotions and feelings monuments elicit
"This evaluation is based on the axiological structure euphoria/dysphoria (Greimas and Courtés 1982: 21)"
"With reference to the axiological and the emotional functions, we distinguish between “hot” and “cold” monuments."
Hot monuments may become cold: "in post-socialist cities, monuments erected during the Communist era have increasingly become sites of oppositional and resistant practices as a consequence of the shift in political, social and ethnic relations since the fall of Communism"
4) the pragmatic function concerns the practices of users within the space of monuments.
"The semiotic approach considers the formal, the unexpected as well as the resistant practices as equally contributing to the meaning-making of monuments." demişler.. en kısa ve içeriksiz bölüm...
Visual Dimension of Monuments
"The visual dimension of monuments refers to monuments as material built forms beyond their political implications. It examines both the material features and the representations of monuments. Following the proposal of visual semiotics, we divide the visual aspect into two autonomous but related levels: the plastic and the figurative (Greimas 1984), respectively describable as the material and symbolic levels."
"Contemporary semiotic research has demonstrated that the material and the symbolic levels cannot be automatically associated to expression and content respectively (Paolucci 2010)."
Political Dimension of Monuments
"Memorials and monuments are political constructions, recalling and representing histories selectively, drawing popular attention to specific events and people and obliterating or obscuring others. (Hay et al. 2004: 204)"
"Monuments contribute to fix in space dominant “discourses on the past” (Violi 2014: 11,"
"Along with other legal, institutional and commemorative means, political elites use monuments to educate citizens toward “what is and what is not to be remembered of the past” (Tamm 2013: 651)"
"monuments and memorials are “dynamic sites of meaning” (Osborne 1998: 453)"
1) the cognitive function refers to the kind of human knowledge monuments embody as well as the knowledge users have about the representations of monuments
"As every narrative selects some events while omitting others (Cobley 2001: 7), monuments necessarily focus on some histories while obliterating others. Since every “remembering, nevertheless, involves a forgetting” (Dovey 1999: 73), it is natural that monuments represent only specific events and individuals."
"They can articulate specific national politics of memory to educate citizens toward what to remember and what to forget of the past (Tamm 2013: 651)"
2) the axiological function considers whether users value this knowledge positively or negatively
3) the emotional function investigates which emotions and feelings monuments elicit
"This evaluation is based on the axiological structure euphoria/dysphoria (Greimas and Courtés 1982: 21)"
"With reference to the axiological and the emotional functions, we distinguish between “hot” and “cold” monuments."
Hot monuments may become cold: "in post-socialist cities, monuments erected during the Communist era have increasingly become sites of oppositional and resistant practices as a consequence of the shift in political, social and ethnic relations since the fall of Communism"
4) the pragmatic function concerns the practices of users within the space of monuments.
"The semiotic approach considers the formal, the unexpected as well as the resistant practices as equally contributing to the meaning-making of monuments." demişler.. en kısa ve içeriksiz bölüm...
Visual Dimension of Monuments
"The visual dimension of monuments refers to monuments as material built forms beyond their political implications. It examines both the material features and the representations of monuments. Following the proposal of visual semiotics, we divide the visual aspect into two autonomous but related levels: the plastic and the figurative (Greimas 1984), respectively describable as the material and symbolic levels."
"Contemporary semiotic research has demonstrated that the material and the symbolic levels cannot be automatically associated to expression and content respectively (Paolucci 2010)."
Political Dimension of Monuments
"Memorials and monuments are political constructions, recalling and representing histories selectively, drawing popular attention to specific events and people and obliterating or obscuring others. (Hay et al. 2004: 204)"
"Monuments contribute to fix in space dominant “discourses on the past” (Violi 2014: 11,"
"Along with other legal, institutional and commemorative means, political elites use monuments to educate citizens toward “what is and what is not to be remembered of the past” (Tamm 2013: 651)"
"monuments and memorials are “dynamic sites of meaning” (Osborne 1998: 453)"
"Semiotic analysis takes into account both the cultural context in which monuments are erected and interpreted and the intertextual relations monuments establish with one another. Specifically, it explores how the meanings of monuments originate from the dialogue between different interpretative communities within a cultural context."
The contextual and inter-textual relations of monuments
"different interpretative communities interpret monuments differently on the basis of their shared stock of knowledge: the same monument can be for one community a sacred site of commemoration, for another a source of traumatic memories."
monuments and their spatial settings affect each other mutually by extending this relationship to other artifacts and practices. "Semiotic analysis takes into account both the cultural context in which monuments are erected and interpreted and the intertextual-like relations monuments establish with one another"
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