City and Ideology: ‘Culture of Oblivion’ on the Example of the Town of Sisak Cover Image

Grad i ideologija: "Kultura zaborava" na primjeru grada Siska
City and Ideology: ‘Culture of Oblivion’ on the Example of the Town of Sisak

Author(s): Sanja Potkonjak, Tomislav Pletenac
Subject(s): Museology & Heritage Studies, Cultural Anthropology / Ethnology, Rural and urban sociology, Politics and Identity
Published by: Sveučilište u Zagrebu, Filozofski fakultet
Keywords: re-symbolization; processes of remembrance; post-socialism; Sisak;

Summary/Abstract: The city is the place of multiple meanings subjected to social performances. This article questions the static perception of the city which is seen as the given and urbanistically completed set of meanings and discusses the ways in which the city adjusts to the demands of human imagination – cultural, social and political. The article observes the ways in which political imagery, be it discursive or concrete, is inscribed and embedded into the city. Here the article uses the concept of Svetlana Bom (2001) and her discussions on the ‘embedding’ of the imagery into the physical body of the city. This article specifically deals with the ideologically motivated yearnings which were embedded in the urban landscape of the town of Sisak in the negotiations of socialist and post-socialist ideology. Using the example of the ways in which socialist monuments were treated in the last seventeen years, which were seen as the period of the strong re-symbolization, the author pointed to the processes of remembrance which were efficiently modified through public discourse. The socialist symbolic capital of monuments was questioned though the linguistic practices of neglect, aggression and hate and materialized in the ways the space was used.

  • Issue Year: 2007
  • Issue No: 19
  • Page Range: 171-198
  • Page Count: 28
  • Language: Croatian