Въображението на мъртвите останки: смърт и виталност на паметниците от социалистическото минало в България
Imagination of Vital Remains: Death and Vitality in the Monuments of the Socialist Past in Bulgaria

Summary/Abstract: The paper examines the fate of socialist monuments in Bulgaria and the changes in their forms and interpretations after the end of the socialist ideology. Taking as a launching point the notion of "remainder" and the coexistence of the meanings of life and death in it, the paper focuses on four possible states of monuments beyond the representation of power: monuments as ruins, as museum objects, as objects of metamorphoses, and as commodities. All of these are interpreted from the perspective of their ambivalent status as signifying both the intention to remind and to refuse reminding, both to refer to the recent past, and to do it in a way that would preserve a proper distance and detachment. Discussing various opinions on the preservation or destruction of the former symbols of power, the paper addresses also the issues of memory and forgetting, of continuity and termination of artistic representation beyond the ideology’s end.

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