engleski

Embedding oblivion - identity politics in the landscapes of Banovina, Croatia

Culture from the viewpoint of semitics is perceived as a supraindividual mechanism for preserving, transferring and creating messages (Lotman, 1992). Collective memory is, therefore, an aspect of culture, which we can consider, in accordance with Lotman's ideas, a mechanism for organizing and protecting information in collective awareness. The space of collective memory is heterogeneous. In other words, in a specific space distinct "dialects of memory" coexist. Social groups create partial versions of heritage, materializing them in space and place. Cultural geographers have been centrally concerned with material manifestations of social memory. This paper, on the contrary, deals with the material manifestations of social oblivion. Its main point of departure is that oblivion is not a defect o culture, but one of its indispensable factors. Remembering and forgetting are culturally conditioned, the nonexistence of certain cultural messages is a condition for the existence of others - if they are semantically incompatible. Therefore forgetting certain aspects of historical experience is one of the important forms of cultural contestation over space. By selecting public heritage as part of identity politics, memory makers reduce the relevance of dissonant heritages. This paper deals with the way in which three cultural strategies of oblivion were manifested in the cultural landscapes of the conflictive multiethnic area of Banovina in Croatia in the second half of the 20th century: desemiotisation (the sign-bearer loses the semiotic quality and function of providing meaning that it had in the system), resemiotisation (the sign changes its meaning in the system) and semiocide (the destruction, deletion of the sign).

oblivion; identity; semiotics; heritage; collective memory

nije evidentirano