Споменици и/или гробови: Сећање на смрт или декорација
Monuments and/or Graves: Reminiscences of Death or Decoration

Author(s): Aleksandra Pavićević
Subject(s): Politics, History, Anthropology, Politics of History/Memory
Published by: Етнографски институт САНУ
Keywords: Monuments; Graves; death; public space; cemetery
Summary/Abstract: Monuments always served as means to create memories, markers of time, spatial separators, reflections of political ideas, teachers of morality and the highest values of a given epoch, instrumental artistic forms which were suppose to bring to a standstill a historical segment and win over temporariness. This paper will attempt to answer if and in which way monuments testify about death, that is, do they reflect an attitude of a certain society about this eternal issue, and what are the ways and means used so that the ideas became created and materialized in monuments? During my research, I came across several levels of readings of these monumental testimonies, while two came up as special to anthropology: the first issue revolves around ways in which a given time/epoch determines monuments, while the other revolves around ways in which monuments testify about latent contents of a given time/epoch. This is so because monuments do not testify only about what is being incision/made but also on people who ordered them. This research (which is in fact, more of a thinking about the issue than it pretends to provide final conclusions) is limited to so-called monument sculpture, that is, to monuments dedicated to persons and events on the territory of Belgrade, including memorial monuments at Novo Groblje. Deplacement of death from collective memory patterns is presented as a process which corresponds with the development of modern society in Serbia. This multi-layered process speaks about secularization of collective memory and place and role that the phenomena of death had in construction of desirable and mobilizing identity of the nation.

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