Cultural Homogenisation, Places of Memory, and the Loss of Secular Urban Space

2006 ◽  
pp. 67-82
Itinerario ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 461-489
Author(s):  
Jorge Flores ◽  
Giuseppe Marcocci

The article builds on a succession of visually disturbing events that occurred in Goa—the capital city of Portuguese India—during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. From the early years of the Portuguese conquest (1510), Goa went through a redefinition of its urban space, which implied the appropriation and re-semantization of buildings and other key sites of the old Muslim city. This process included the spread of images and symbols related to several Portuguese viceroys, soon-to-be targets of acts of political insult and even political iconoclasm performed by their Portuguese opponents in a context of growing factionalism. We speak namely of episodes of protest against places of memory associated to different clans, encompassing statues (both official and bogus), textual inscriptions, and viceroys’ portraits. These were European phenomena to a large extent, but coloured by significant local and native elements. The article engages with a grid of questions that places real statues, satirical effigies, and erased faces (and the diverse reactions they have aroused) in dialogue with current debates on popular politics; high and low vis-à-vis the colonial social fabric; the uses of public space; verbal, written, and visual insult; political languages; and disputed authority in an imperial setting.


2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 73-81
Author(s):  
Nadiya Mikhno

In the article the possibility of application of the futures concept E. Toffler to explain changes in commemorating the objects and practices of the modern urban environment. The theoretical justification of the concept of "space" as one of the central categories of science, and it kind of "social space", that is, of course, the object of the social sciences and humanities, primarily sociological analysis. The proposed explanatory scheme the ratio of physical and social space. Provides an overview of the concept of "urban space" as a specific education between physical and social space. Attention is drawn to the possibility of using a semiotic approach to the identified issues within the urban space. Based on the semiotic approach identified the need in our study to consider certain points in urban space, which are able to perform the function of historical and social translation of the past – "places of memory", and their General set – «landscapes of memory». Moreover that «landscapes of memory» and a separate "places of memory" of urban space is a resource mapping of the historical and social memory in the city. For clarity, the conceptual-categorylink research system, a distinction between "social" and "historical" memory. Outline the General provisions of the wave concept E. Toffler, namely the explanation of the three "waves" which are defined by the author as a large-scale global process of social dynamics. Recorded discussion of memory through the circuit of the wave of change in society. For memory analysis in contemporary urban space using wave concept of E. Toffler made the distinction between the concepts "memory" and "memory in the city", which differ in the locality translocase images of the past: the particular city or events and personalities outside the city. The study carried out analysis of the characteristics of the existence of «places of memory» and related commemorative practices in the contemporary and divergent of the future city, based on the idea regarding relationship E. Toffler’s "Second wave" and "Third wave" in modern society.


2019 ◽  
pp. 221-246
Author(s):  
Agata Anna Rogoś

Old Boundaries and New Cultural Landscapes of a Multiethnic City in Modern-day MacedoniaIn the context of Macedonian and Albanian ethnonational discourses functioning in Macedonia that constitute a significant component of the system of the city’s symbols and semantics, we come upon confrontational strategies between the Slavic and non-Slavic entities that function in the cultural area of Skopje. On the one hand, these confrontational strategies determine the polemic nature of urban space, understood as both material cultural space established on the basis of places of memory and cultural artefacts, and, on the other hand, they are a product of space as an area of activity of actors and social and political networks, often used to construct incoherent self-defining processes within the space defined by the influence of ethnocultural processes.Based on the two entities in this discourse, one Slavic and one non-Slavic (Macedonian and Albanian), a semantic model of the city, described as a “polemic city”, was created as an outcome of the empirical research performed. This model can also be used for analysing other cultural areas characterised by polycentric interethnic relations. A significant point of reference, a category that constitutes the key component of this analysis, is the transformative nature of the place as an area of stigmatisation by ethnic, cultural and political determinants and subjected to a game with the participation of social and political actors. Anthropological research distinguished semantic categories referring to the place and the contestation of place, all of which I have analysed, drawing special attention to the Slavic and non-Slavic entities in Macedonian and Albanian discourse in Macedonia. Stare granice i nowe krajobrazy kulturowe wieloetnicznego miasta we współczesnej MacedoniiW kontekście macedońskich i albańskich dyskursów etnonarodowych funkcjonujących w Północnej Macedonii, które stanowią znaczący element systemu symboli i semantyki miasta, natrafiamy na strategie konfrontacyjne między komponentami słowiańskimi i niesłowiańskimi, które funkcjonują w obszarze kulturalnym Skopje. Z jednej strony te strategie konfrontacyjne składają się na polemiczny charakter przestrzeni miejskiej, rozumianej zarówno jako materialna przestrzeń kulturowa ustalona na podstawie miejsc pamięci i artefaktów kulturowych, a z drugiej strony są produktem przestrzeni jako obszaru aktywności aktorów, sieci społecznych i politycznych, często wykorzystywanych do konstruowania niespójnych procesów autodefinicyjnych w przestrzeni zdominowanej przez procesy etnokulturowe.W oparciu o dwa komponenty: słowiański i niesłowiański (macedoński i albański) w analizowanym dyskursie powstał semantyczny model miasta, określony jako „miasto polemiczne”, w wyniku przeprowadzonych badań empirycznych. Model ten można również wykorzystać do analizy innych obszarów kulturowych charakteryzujących się policentrycznymi relacjami między etnicznymi. Istotnym punktem odniesienia, kategorią stanowiącą kluczowy element tej analizy, jest transformacyjny charakter miejsca jako obszaru stygmatyzacji przez uwarunkowania etniczne, kulturowe i polityczne oraz poddanego grze z udziałem aktorów społecznych i politycznych. W badaniach antropologicznych wyróżniono kategorie semantyczne odnoszące się do miejsca i kontestacji miejsca, które przeanalizowano, zwracając szczególną uwagę na komponenty słowiańskie i niesłowiańskie w dyskursie macedońskim i albańskim w Macedonii.


Author(s):  
O.V. Sannikova

The article discusses the problem of urban identity in the opposition between global and local processes in urban space. Urban identity is viewed as a type of individual’s social identity in relation to his/her affiliation to a certain urban community. The study of the causes and effects of the urban identity’s crisis is based on the notion of this identity as valuable and meaningful cohesion of individuals and urban community. The problem of urban identity is studied via the analysis of modern concepts of social change in urban space, related to mainstream of human resources, financial, material, information resources. The article indicates that the crisis of identity is represented in the potential loss of individual and personal links to the city, in the loss of affiliation to the place of living, in the vanishing demand for urban identity. The notions of retrospective and prospective urban identity are introduced to identify the ground to maintain urban identity. Retrospective urban identity is based on the existence of so-called “places of memory” in urban space that integrate physical space, fragments of collective memory and individual valuable attitude to this memory as the inclusion to the city history. Prospective urban identity rests on individual’s cohesion and affiliation to future states of urban community as a source of potential social options. Assessments of directions for social change are figured out in positive and negative prospective urban identity, which defines residents’ migration intentions and their active participation in the city life.


2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 97-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Harris

This essay draws upon the author’s performance script Fall and Walter Benjamin’s The Arcades Project as a provocation for considering the ways performance texts provide a threshold for somatic inquiry, and for recognizing the limits of scholarly analysis that does not take up performance-as-inquiry. Set at the Empire State Building, this essay embodies the connections and missed possibilities between strangers and intimates in the context of urban modern life. Fall’s protagonist is positioned within a landscape of capitalist exchange, but defies this matrix to offer instead a gift at the threshold of life/death, virtual/real, and love/loss. Through somatic inquiry and witnessing as threshold experiences, the protagonist (as Benjamin’s flaneur) moves through urban space and time, proving that both scholarship and performance remain irrevocably embodied, and as such invariably tethered to the visceral, the stranger, risk, and death.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document