The historical analysis takes into account not only the political circumstances in which the two new towns were planned, constructed and developed, but also their social construction as two outstanding ideological and propagandist projects launched by the respective totalitarian regimes. The monograph compares them with other newly built fascist and socialist towns and sheds light on the symbolic meaning of the new urban landscape and its ideological representation. It also delineates basic differences between socialist and fascist urbanism, as well as several similarities arising from the concept of modernization, which was the common goal of both regimes. The issue of today’s presentation and interpretation of the remains of totalitarian regimes or, to use a recently introduced terminology, dissonant heritage is addressed through the presentation of case studies from Germany, Italy, Poland and Greece.
COBISS.SI-ID: 280652800
This article discusses the transformation of the urban space after World War I in the former Habsburg port city of Trieste. It reveals the key role played by the newly annexed northeastern Adriatic borderland in the national symbolism of postwar Italy, and it indicates how slogans and notions of Italian nationalism, irredentism, and fascism intertwined and became embodied in the local cultural landscape. The article argues that even if the cityscape had undergone drastic changes in its aesthetics after World War I, its ideological language was rooted in prewar nationalism and continued to support the local urban palimpsest in the Cold War.
COBISS.SI-ID: 1539443396
The article presents “the first town of autarky” as Arsia, the new town constructed in the vicinity of Labin/Albona, was officially propagated upon its completion in November 1937. It not only sheds light on Gustav Pulitzer-Finali’s special architectural style that combined modernist, lictorian, art deco and vernacular features, but also analyzes ideological subtext and representation of this new town located “on the margins of the Italian civilization”. Even if its urbanistic layout was an outstanding expression of utilitarian principles and strict social hierarchy, the analyses of political and ideological discourses reveals elements because of which the symbolic image of the new town can be read from the point of view of not only general anthropology of Italian Fascism but also its borderland version (“fascismo di confine”) marked by the presence of the Other, i.e. “allogeneic” population.
COBISS.SI-ID: 1539049412
More than a decade and a half after the end of socialism, in post-communist societies we are witnessing processes that attract the curiosity and attention of both their actors and outside observers. This article approaches remembering socialism as a cultural and discursive practice that is intrinsically connected to present-day reality and enables negotiation and justification of social positions, strategies, and moral values in the period of post-communist transformations in Slovenia.
COBISS.SI-ID: 38807853
The essay analyzes selected historical monuments that were used in the 20th Century as boundary-defining mechanisms in the area of the North-Eastern Adriatic. The paper is concentrated mainly on the border city of Trieste/Trst and its surroundings in the period between the end of WWII and the dissolution of Yugoslavia in 1991. Several partisan and anti-Fascist monuments and related commemorations, considered "controversial" and "contested", are examined. In this framework local cultures of remembrance and politics of memory “from below” are analysed with the aim to overcome dichotomic ideological and ethnic explanations.
COBISS.SI-ID: 1539281860