Dances with Despots: Reinterpretation and recontextualization of urban monuments and the conflicted role of the engaged tourist.

Event Date: 13 February 2019

Speaker: Dr Elizabeth Carnegie

Time: 2pm

Location: Strathclyde Business School, Cathedral Wing CW507b. Tea, coffee and cakes will be provided from 1.45pm.

Please confirm your attendance with Christina MacLean (christina.maclean@strath.ac.uk).

Abstract:

Among the many urban manifestations of the process of collective remembrance, the staging of material icons of memory including sculpture, memorials and museums, carries particular significance (Becksterad et al., 2011). Yet, as Karen Wells (2017: 139) notes,

“because the purpose of monuments is often to commemorate a particular moment in a government’s ascendancy and at the same time to insist on the permanence or atemporality of its rule, they are, of course, difficult to dispose of. “

Representing a challenge to the currently dominant political or historical narratives, past monuments demand reinterpretation, recontextualization, or removal (possibly in combination. Drawing on an ethnographic study of recent history museums and statue parks in Central and Eastern Europe, we examine the problematic urban and suburban presence of sculptures and buildings representing dark and/or rejected narratives of history. We explore how reinterpretation and reclamation of historic buildings (ranging from the Palace of Culture in Warsaw to Terror House in Budapest to the Museum of Genocide Victim in Vilnius). Our particular interest is drawn to the repositioning and recontextualization of monumental statuaries, whether in symbolic basements of history (such as beside the underground toilets of the Museum of Occupations in Tallinn) or in suburban spaces designed to diminish their former power, as in Memento Park, Budapest.

We pinpoint the ways in which tourists are implicated in these narratives at places such as Memento Park, Budapest, by performing acts of playfulness such as posing with the statues in ways overtly disrespectful to the individuals and ideas depicted. We argue that mockery represents alignment and collusion in the act of banishment as stipulated by current political narratives. We consider the ways in which the studied sites are set up for such encounters, with the emphasis on using humour and mocking tactics to keep them neutralised in the hearts and minds of locals who may chose NOT to visit. Ultimately, we argue that the heritagization of political pasts is central to the destruction of past narratives and that tourists have a key, if sometimes unwitting,  role to play in the shaping of the emerging political imaginaries.

Biography:

All of my work is interdisciplinary drawing on sociology, anthropology, material culture studies and social history. It is concerned with the representation of peoples and cultures within publically funded or endorsed museums and galleries and festive spaces. I am particularly interested in how such cultural spaces ‘curate people’ by drawing on individuals’ life histories and present values to shape collective memory and to make group identity ‘truth’ claims. Current relevant projects include projects that reflect both local and international concerns. These include a study of representations of the recent past within museums in eastern and Central Europe, a Hull based project ‘All Haul Together’ an intergenerational study of the role and meaning of tattoos within seafaring communities and a study of Orientalism drawing on Western-generated images of the ‘other’.

Published: 21 February 2019