Questioning what remains: A semiotic approach to studying difficult monuments

Abstract

In Italy there is a difference between the historical experience of Fascism and what is remembered of it. In many cases, violence and repression have been interpreted as a kind of historical removal. In particular, the lack of the Nuremberg trial, as happened in Germany, allowed the traumatic memories of Mussolini's dictatorship to be banalized and made nostalgic. To understand these defects of Italian cultural memory, it may be useful to look at urban space. If urban space always speaks of something other than itself, then looking at the monumental traces of Fascism still standing in Italy allows to provide answers about the collective amnesia that has transformed Fascism into a parenthesis, as Benedetto Croce said in 1944. The main goal of this article is to investigate the mechanisms of conservation, a practice able to include new enunciations and remove old ones. In particular, through the analysis of some fascist monuments, I address four semiotic strategies of elaboration and cancellation of the past that weaken the sense of monumental representation. Specifically, I investigate the mechanisms of erasure, normalization, narcotization-latency and the construction of polyphonic memories.

Introduction to Semiotic Approaches to Urban Space

“…A biosemiotic approach to urban space and the built environment is now being developed through recent publications (e.g. Bellentani In addition to these paradigms, several semiotics analyses have appeared exploring the relationship between space, memory and identity, focusing on specific components of the urban space such as museums (Pezzini 2011;Violi 2017), monuments and memorials (Abousnnouga and Machin 2013;Auster 1997;Bellentani 2021;Bellentani and Panico 2016;Elsner 2003;Huebner and Phoocharoensil 2017;Krzyżanowska 2016;Mazzucchelli 2010;Panico 2018Panico , 2019Pezzini 2006;Torop 2017;Yoka 2016).…”