1,721,007 research outputs found
Introduction: Heritage in ‘conflict-time’ and nation-building in the former Yugoslavia
No full textThe introductory chapter frames the book theoretically and thematically, in relation to ongoing debates in critical heritage studies, as well as the anthropological literature and the historiography of the former Yugoslav space. First, it discusses how heritage studies has moved towards an understanding of heritage as a dynamic process, interconnected with shifts in collective memory and socio-political change. Second, it underlines the double relevance of investigating such processes in the region, both for broader understandings of the role of heritage and memory in nationalist mobilizations, as well as to express the multi-scalar specificities of transformation in the post-Yugoslav space. Third, the introduction unpacks the synchronicity of the pasts displayed through heritage processes. The contexts of the former Yugoslavia highlight not only heritage as ‘dissonant’ (Turnbridge and Ashworth 1996) and, often ‘difficult’ (MacDonald 2010), but also in some places as a manifestation of ‘conflict-time’ (Baillie 2013). While some heritage has become ‘bracketed’ (Frykman 2005) other forms have become actors in the negotiation of ‘conflict-time’—the continuation of conflict in the aftermath of war. The chapter then shifts from temporal concerns to the different scales and lenses explored in the volume: from architectural objects to urban space, from tangible to intangible heritage, from national narratives to minority perspectives, from memory entrepreneurs to reception by diverse publics. It proceeds to survey the variety of methodologies and disciplinary approaches used in the book. Finally, it gives a brief overview of the three sections which comprise the volume, their relation to each other and to the main themes of conflict-time and nation-building
Borders of memory. Competing heritages and fractured memoryscapes in Bosnia and Herzegovina
No full textThis chapter explores the semantic transformation of ‘war heritage’ and the proliferation of divisive memory sites in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The point of departure will be the notion of the ‘border’, examined here not just in its spatial and geopolitical meaning, but rather as a ‘narrative function’ that produces (and is produced by) a fractured memoryscape, in which different narratives compete and conflict. A heterogeneous corpus of sites of memory – the memorial of Srebrenica; the region of Prijedor; the city of Mostar and the memorial sites of Jasenovac/ Donja Gradina – will be analyzed, in an attempt to draw a conceptual map of the discontinuous topographies of memory in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Adopting the theoretical framework of a cultural (Lotman) and spatial-narrative (Greimas) semiotics, these places of memory will be analyzed not as single and isolated sites, but in a systemic perspective, so as to illustrate their reciprocal narrative interactions. The aim is to verify how these conflicting heritages hold a semiotic dialogue which generates a peculiar structure of symbolic territoriality, where different forms of spatiality, temporality and subjectivity coexist and compete
La quarta parete di casa. Il pubblico dentro lo spazio domestico
Full text linkL'articolo si interroga sulle trasformazioni dei sensi dello spazio domestico nell'attuale regime di ipermedialità, nell'era dell' 'onlife' (Floridi). La recente pandemia di Covid ha determinato un'accelerazione della trasformazione dello spazio domestico in spazio mediatizzato
Heritage, Memory and Conflict Journal
No full textHeritage, Memory and Conflict (HMC) is an international, peer-reviewed, diamond open access journal that critically analyses the tangible and intangible remnants, traces and spaces of the past in the present, as well as the remaking of pasts into heritage and memory, including processes of appropriations and restitutions, significations and musealization and mediatisation. This interdisciplinary journal addresses the dynamics of memory and forgetting, as well as the politics of trauma, mourning and reconciliation, identity, nationalism and ethnicity, heritage preservation and restoration, material culture, conservation and management, conflict archaeology, dark tourism, diaspora and postcolonial memory, terrorscapes, migration, borders, and the mediated re-enactments of conflicted pasts.
HMC covers the fields of memory studies, cultural studies, museum studies, arts and media and performative studies, postcolonial studies, ethnology, Holocaust and genocide studies, conflict and identity studies, archaeology, material culture and landscapes, conservation and restoration, cultural, public and oral history, critical and digital heritage studies. By crossing academic, artistic and professional boundaries, the journal aims to offer an interdisciplinary space for the rich scholarship in these fields, and to contribute to a better understanding of the extent to which memory sites and discourses operate as vehicles at local, national and transnational levels
Marzamemi non esiste. L’invenzione di un luogo tra nuovi sicilianismi e contemporanee estetiche del pittoresco
No full textMarzamemi is a beautiful coastal village located in South-Eastem Sicily. Until the end of last century, it has been a touristic destination for a limited and mainly local tourism. In the last decades, the flow of tourists has dramatically increased, transforming this small fishermen's village into one of the most popular Sicilian destinations. Marzamemi - and especially its piazza, that of this village is often a figurative synecdoche, in its various representations circulating in media and social media - has thus become, in a short time, a "symbol of Sicilianity", able to condense a certain idea of Sicily, through a panoply of stereotypical motifs and figures, reproducing a form of "sicilianism". The contemporary visual identity of Marzamemi resonates with a contemporary aesthetics of the 'picturesque', what is today called as "instagrammability". The article reflects on the strategies through which the visual identity of Marzamemi stages a sort of scenario that aims at self-proposing as a cohesive system of "instagrammable sites", that re-articulates new syntaxes for the tourists' forms of life. This reflection moves both from a direct observation of places and practices, and from the analysis of a corpus of social posts (especially on lnstagram), with the aim of tracing some of the discursive strategies of invention and re-invention of this place
Italian Semiotics of Memory: Genealogies and Current Perspectives
No full textThe article gives an overview of the development – in Italian semiotic research of the last fifteen years – of a semiotics of memory, as a specific subfield of a semiotics of culture. After a brief account of how memory has usually been defined in the different semiotic traditions (generative, interpretive and, above all, cultural), and after a focus on Eco’s theorisation on memory (and its parallels with Aleida Assmann), the article presents some recent semiotic studies on the subject in Italy – mainly, but not exclusively, in the context of a research centre at the University of Bologna (TraMe), dedicated since 2009 to the study of memory from a semiotic and interdisciplinary perspective. Memory (especially cultural memory) has also been a relevant field of investigation for several Italian semiotic scholars that have explored different aspects related to a semiotic approach to cultural memory
Comunicazione e potere durante l’assalto a Capitol Hill. La guerriglia semiologica che non ci aspettavamo
No full textQuesto capitolo propone una lettura semiotica e comunicativa dei "fatti di Capitol Hill", quando, il 6 gennaio 2021, una folla di sostenitori del presidente uscente Donald Trump assaltò il Campidoglio degli Stati Uniti, contestando la proclamazione del nuovo presidente eletto Joe Biden. L'evento viene analizzato come un esempio, imprevedibile e distorto, di "guerriglia semiologica". Quello che a prima vista potrebbe infatti sembrare un caso classico di “chiamata alle armi”, indirizzata al proprio “popolo”, da parte di un leader-condottiero, può invece essere considerata una nuova tecnica comunicativa di colpo di stato, basata sull'ambiguità della posizione enunciazionale occupata da Trump. Questi si situa ambiguamente al tempo stesso sia “dove la comunicazione parte” sia “dove arriva”, sia dalla parte della produzione che della ricezione del messaggio. Per usare la terminologia echiana: Trump occupa sì la “sedia” di un emittente istituzionale (situato dalla parte del Potere), ma anche un’altra “sedia” che Eco non poteva certo prevedere quando scrisse il saggio nel 1973: quella dell’influencer
Lasciare il segno: tracce urbane tra strada e museo. L’affaire Blu/Genus Bononiae
No full textQuale deve essere il destino del segno della street art? Quale il suo statuto e la sua valenza? È più opportuno lasciare che viva, di vita propria, negli spazi e tempi effimeri del “momento urbano” o è legittimo ipotizzarne la preservazione, un’azione consapevole di selezione che lo faccia sopravvivere e, verrebbe da dire, lo prolunghi (ma in che modo e a che costo)? Conservare o lasciare (a se stesso? o a chi altri?) il segno della street art? L’affaire Blu riscoperchia una questione certamente non nuova, ma trascinandola forse per la prima volta in un dibattito pubblico acceso e a più voci, e introducendo ulteriori livelli di complessità, che si sovrappongono al mero giudizio estetico, sino a confonderlo (o a confondersi con esso). Primo fra tutti: a chi appartiene la street art? Nel mio saggio ripercorro alcuni snodi della vicenda Blu provando a tracciare una mappa semantica dei conflitti valoriali implicati
The Birth of a Pet? The Rabbit
No full textIn Western cultures, the rabbit holds a double status: it is, at once, live- stock and pet. Furthermore, manifold connotations (rabbit can also be hunting quarry, vermin, test animal, etc.) and a rich and long-lasting iconography (it is an iconic animal with a meaningful symbolic presence in many cultures) make this animal a powerful metonymy of the dynamics of the human-animal relation, grounded in incessant renegotiations.
Looking speci cally at the Italian cultural context, this chapter aims at exploring the diverse processes of semiotization of the rabbit, and the different (sometimes incompatible) visions of nature lying behind, which may at times take the form of a (only apparently minor) “war of the worlds” (Latour) in which different ontologies come into con ict.
Through a quick analysis of different texts, objects, practices and discourses, I shall underline how various “modes of existence” of this animal con rm the hypothesis of Descola, according to whom different “regimes” of nature (and hence “animality”) can coexist (sometimes successfully, sometimes not) in the same society
Forme di vita, forme del corpo / Forms of Life, Forms of the Body: Case Studies
No full textLa nozione di “forma di vita”, in semiotica, appare al tempo stesso evidente e confusa. Vagliata e discussa da parecchi anni, viene utilizzata da molti studiosi in più occasioni e con diversi scopi. Funziona come un tipico termine ombrello. Parallelamente, molti nodi problematici relativi alla scienza della significazione, pur avendo palesi tangenze con tale nozione, sembrano volerne o poterne fare a meno, dichiarandola in contumacia fuori corso. Da qui la scelta di dedicare un fascicolo di Versus alla questione delle Forme di vita, nel suo nesso con le Forme del corpo, e con l’indicazione imprescindibile secondo cui quel che va messo in gioco sono innanzitutto studi di caso, nel dialogo necessario e costante con le parallele ricerche che oggi si stanno compiendo in sede etnologica (le ontologie di Descola) e socio-filosofica (i modi di esistenza di Latour), ma anche filosofico-linguistica, sociologica, letteraria, psicologica, cognitivista, etologica, e così via
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