102: the semiotics of living memorials

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this study, I analyse a commemorative gathering “The White Armbands Day” which works as the reperformance of dehumanizing practices dating back to the 1992–1995 war in Bosnia–Herzegovina. The commemoration specifically presents a request for the construction of a monument for the 102 killed children in Prijedor, the third largest municipality in the Serb Republic entity. The study is structured as a transdisciplinary reading (Halliday 2001. “New Ways of Meaning: The Challenges to Applied Linguistics.” In The Ecolinguistics Reader: Language, Ecology and Environment, edited by Alwin Fill, and Peter Mühlhäusler. New York: Continuum. First published in Journal of Applied Linguistics 6 (1990): 7–36.) of the “living memorial” (Allen and Brown 2011. “Embodiment and Living Memorials: The Affective Labour of Remembering the 2005 London Bombings.” Memory Studies 4 (3): 312–327. doi:10.1177/1750698011402574) showing that the affective and experiencing body is key in the production of more-than-visual/verbal, highly fluid discourses of remembering. My analysis shows that public spaces materialized through living memorials accomplish their moral dimension (Waksman and Shohamy 2016. “Linguistic Landscape of Social Protests: Moving from ‘Open’ to ‘Institutional’ Spaces.” In Negotiating and Contesting Identities in Linguistic Landscapes, edited by Robert Blackwood, Elizabeth Lanza, and Hirut Woldemariam. London, New York: Bloomsburry) as they call attention to human rights and unspeakable violence, powerfully representing a resistance to the imposed memory regimes and the marginalized status that people have in their own country.