Abandoned spaces, mute memories: On marginalized inhabitants in the urban centres of Slovenia

Abstract

Article focuses on degraded heritage(s) and their meanings for different groups of inhabitants, interpreting it/them through the studies of dominant and silenced memories. Case-studies of chosen Slovenian urban centres illustrate the consequences of drastic population change after the Second World War and of the transformation of power relations after Slovenia’s independence which brought changes in the political-ideological and economic system. As the authors observed, memories and heritage of Italian, German and Yugoslav inhabitants are often mute and silenced within the contemporary Slovenian hegemonic/authorised heritage discourse. Consequences of changes in social relations were also recognised at the micro level in the valorisation of the socialist heritage of industrial plants and military barracks. Today, these places are left to decay as the material reminders of the unwanted (pre-WWII or socialist) past or they are transformed into centres of youth culture, creative industries or administrative centres. However, such reinterpretation does not enable their former users to access them and claim them as their own heritage.