Communities of Memory

Palembang is closely associated with its historical past, dating back to the Srivijaya Kingdom. Historically, the Srivijaya Kingdom rise to prominence was driven by the vital role of rivers in transportation, economic development, and the spread of religion. However, over time, many rivers have been covered, converted, or completely disappeared from the city’s physical landscape. However, street names, or odonyms come from tributaries name, can represent the identity of the Palembang community. This situation prompted this study to document street, lane, and alley names derived from tributaries in Palembang using an onomastic study approach. This is because river names are important from both linguistic and historical perspectives. This study aims to explore the dominant meaning and form of odonyms in street, lane and alley names derived from tributaries in Palembang. Furthermore, this study also aims to reveal the representation of the identity of the Palembang community through their odonyms. The research method used a qualitative method with data collection techniques in the form of interviews with 10 informants representing various community stakeholders to explore their lexical meaning and linguistic construction. This study analyzes 44 odonyms in Palembang City, South Sumatra Province, Indonesia. The data source for the odonyms is taken from the names of rivers recorded on the Palembang City map in 1922. The data is analyzed using a semantic approach for identity representation and a morphological approach for linguistic construction. In semantic analysis, odonyms are interpreted etymologically, while morphological analysis includes zero derivation and affixation. The results show that the dominant etymological meaning of odonyms in Palembang is the category of plants, history, rivers, and geographical conditions. In addition, there are nine odonyms formed through the zero-derivation process, namely Gang Rengas, Lorong Gayam, Lorong Manggis, Lorong Sawah, Lorong Palembang, Lorong Sintren, Jalan Blabak Jalan Mahameru and Jalan Sekanak. For affixation construction, odonyms in Palembang City have affixes in the suffix -an, confix ke-an/pe-an and there is no prefix attested. This shows that the representation of identity from the community is more inclined towards maritime with the socio-economic practices of coastal communities.

A street-name system based on European perception of landscape ordering and urban functioning officially existed in colonial Singapore. Con- currently, there existed alternative systems of street names that originated among the immigrant Asian communities. Emphases of purpose and function as well as linguistic origin were reflected in the applied street names. Singapore had a syncretic character, not the unified one inherent in the vision of the official street names. FROM the earliest days of settlement at Singapore, British East India Com- pany officials and, later, municipal authorities sought to impose a system of street names that reflected their vision of what a colonial city should be and how it should function. From a European viewpoint, such a system was essential to effect many activities, such as levying assessments and taxes, fighting fires, and counting the population as well as general surveillance of the city's inhabitants. Yet naming a place, whether as a deliberate act or informally, is also a social activity; it embodies some of the struggle for control over the means of symbolic production in the urban landscape. For example, place-names honoring public figures have been cited as indicators of nationalist feeling or community identity (Zelinsky 1983; Stump 1988). On the other hand, the renaming of streets in postcolonial societies can help to divest the landscape of its colonial associations and reinforce the legitimacy of the newly independent state. Establishment of a network of official street names not only introduces order and differentiation into an originally amorphous landscape but also reflects the mental images of the dominant culture. In colonial Singapore, official names were assigned at municipal meetings on the approval of the municipal commissioners. Once decided, notice of new or changed street names was advertised in the press, and the schedule was circulated among heads of various governmental departments, including the chief of police, the commissioner of lands, and the secretary of the Fire Insurance Associ- ation. The official naming process was strongly dominated by the opinions of municipal and governmental officers and, occasionally, those of influential property owners, but it was relatively impervious to the views of people who lived on or used the streets. Street nomenclature became a means by which the authorities were able to project onto the urban landscape their perceptions of what different areas in the city represented. Yet the actual naming of streets was far more complicated than the institutional procedure suggests. Although the authorities controlled the process insofar as the selection and application of names were concerned,

This chapter engages with the resilience of traditional streets names at Gibraltar together with the resistance they posed to the implementation of official street names. The permanence of traditional names, in use pre-1704 until the mid-nineteen seventies, raises questions regarding Edward Said’s theory of imaginative geographies regarding the colonially informed mapping of a territory. Whilst this (did) level of mapping was exercised at Gibraltar post-1704, I suggest that this process proved to be incomplete when it came to the territory’s urban streetscape, a space which had already been imaginatively mapped by the inhabitants though a linguistically and culturally codified street naming principle. These traditional street names existed only in their imagination as they did not appear on street signs, yet they were extremely effective in disrupting access to a military based settler community. As newcomers to the territory, this sector was linguistically and culturally ill equipped to decipher the norms underpinning these names, rendering this group quite unable to easily find locations in the territory’s city centre. Testament to this was the need to publish lists of street names even after official street names were placed on street corners in the 1870s. However, rather than leading to greater access or effective mapping, these publicly displayed official names created a doubling through the co-existence of two parallel albeit very different sets of nomenclature. This (piece) chapter aims at unpacking the terms under which traditional street names were generated and sustained, together with the challenge they posed to a colonially informed mapping necessary for fixity and control over the territory. Attention will be drawn towards initiatives to publish lists bearing both official and traditional street names; the aim was to decodify if not decentre these traditional names, but at a practicable level, these lists were deemed as necessary tools to be able to navigate Gibraltar’s streets. Whilst difficult to fully measure their success, the need to publish lists over a prolonged period of time offers insight into the limitations of a colonially informed mapping process when faced with a far more powerful mapping principle that existed only in the minds of Gibraltarians.

Public memory is an exceptional stage for social dialogue regarding the values and principles of a political community. One of its main axes is street names, which can be considered an authentic tapestry of urban memory. This article interprets street names as a communicative act of transmission and debate regarding historical and identity-based narratives. In describing a theoretical and methodological approach for studying street names and other contexts of public memory, it is argued that the nomenclature is the fruit of political and social practices in which many agents take part and debate the community’s past, present and future. This interpretation is based on a study of symbolic transformation of the map of Barcelona during the Second Republic and an analysis of the policies of memory, the roles of civil society in the public memory of the time and citizens’ reactions to the new historical accounts reflected therein.

Street Names and Iconography

The article deals with the impact of the politics of memory on the process of national identity formation, which is topical for the domestic political science. It is shown that the politics of memory always deals with different types of collective memory (age, gender, national, religious and other differences), which are built in the form of projection of the past into indefinite and open future, or in the form of questioning of the past from the present. These differences appear as a mediating link in the process of identity constitution. The various ideas, values, symbols and meanings of a cultural or religious kind existing in society allow groups to challenge the identity of the entire community and at the same time maintain the existence of a common identity of the community as a whole. However, it is important, that these relative variations do not become frozen in their existence and do not develop into absolute ruptures and divisions. It is these principles underlie formation of the politics of memory. The process of influence of the politics of memory on the formation of national identity is considered in the article on the example of Kazakhstan identity formation in the post-Soviet period. The authors analyze various state programs the politics of memory; analyze statistical data obtained in the course of sociological research on the peculiarities of the formation of collective memory in the Republic of Kazakhstan. The study concludes that Soviet values in Kazakhstan still play a role for the outgoing generation, born and raised in the USSR, while the younger generation replaces them with modern Western values, which also does not contribute to the preservation of national specificity and recognition of the state as an independent, separate sovereign entity. And if traditions used to fit into the dominant all-Soviet context, nowadays they should fit into the postmodern project.

As in most parts of Central and Eastern Europe, there is a tradition in Hungary of changing street names and memorials in the wake of major political transitions. This article focuses on the change of street names and memorials, i.e. the city-text, in Hungary’s political capital, Budapest, between 1985 and 2001. The city-text in Budapest became a locus of dispute between different political authorities, including the nation state, the metropolitan municipality, and the district, each bearing different political ideals during and after the fall of communism. Discursive changes in the post-communist city-text emerged expressing specific conceptions of national sovereignty, but the direction of the changes were debated. Different levels of administration in Budapest and Hungary had divergent visions of what the new discourse on national sovereignty should be. The changes, therefore, did not express a simple transition to an agreed-upon post-communist value system, but were the result of a symbolic struggle between different levels of administration over what should be commemorated in the city-text.

Naming and renaming of streets and other public spaces is an area of research interest of several social sciences; street names (odonyms), particularly official street names, are seen as symbols in urban space which cater for various politics of identity and memory. This paper compares odonomastic landscapes (urban onomastic landscapes) of Ljubljana and Belgrade, more precisely their segments which commemorate Slovenia and Slovenians in Belgrade, and on the other side Serbia and Serbian persons in Ljubljana. The focus of discussion is street (re)naming in capitals of Serbia and Slovenia from the 19th century till present (encompassing the periods of the long nineteenth century, interbellum Yugoslavia, World War Two, socialist Yugoslavia, and present independent states). Streets and squares named after members of these two nations, and after terms and toponyms from these two countries (which are a part of the urban nomenclature of the two capitals), indirectly point out to types of symbolic connections established between Serbia and Slovenia in the last hundred years or more.

With the global rise of the social movements such as the BLM driven by quests for racial justice and symbolic reparations, monuments and street names have become objects of ideological contention. BLM movement's rapid expansion across the Western world – including Eastern Europe – has been countered by lamentations over the perils of ‘cancel culture’ towards national identity, memory, and liberal values such as free speech. This study critically interrogates the (in)adequacy of the notion of ‘cancel culture’ in the context of the politics of memory enacted in contemporary Romania. Drawing on a multiple case study research focused on three recent debates on public monuments from different Romanian cities, this study documents how the rhetoric of ‘cancel culture’ is politically instrumentalized by the conservative right. ‘Cancel culture’ is employed by the latter not only to defend the cultural values of national identity, but especially to counter any attempts at criticizing the revived celebration of tainted icons of the Romanian fascist and anti-Semitic past such as marshal Ion Antonescu, Mircea Vulcănescu, and Octavian Goga. It concludes that, instead of a hegemonic ‘cancel culture’ prevailing in postsocialist Romania, what characterizes the mnemonic regime in this country is a contested politics of memorial consecration of the nationalist past.

Using history in the streetscape to affirm geopolitics of memory

ABSTRACTThis article explores the hybridity of commemoration by analysing people’s attitudes to three types of contested Soviet symbols in post-Soviet Georgia. I draw on 62 in-depth qualitative interviews conducted in 2012–2013 with Georgians in Tbilisi, Georgia. These interviews focused on what people thought about places of memory, Soviet symbols in public space, and memory politics and policies in contemporary Georgia. I examine their opinions of three different types of reminders of the Soviet past in public space: general Soviet symbols; street names; and the Stalin monument in Gori. This analysis reveals their diverse understandings of place and highlights the hybridity of their responses to the different elements of Soviet symbolism. This not only prevents one from creating ideal typologies when considering places of memory, but also highlights the impact of the form and location of the symbol. I also identify two ways that people conceptualize place, one that recognizes the power of place, and the other that perceives place as powerless.

The project began with mapping a series of informal paths and shortcuts (17 in total) created by Hamiltonians. These paths have been carved into the ground by years of repeated trespassing to, from, and across railway tracks. The inscriptions of countless footfalls, the paths form an archive of local residents’ movements through their neighbourhood. The railway is representative of formal urban planning and Hamilton’s industrial past, while the informal paths trace anonymous, everyday ways that citizens break the “rules” of the formally planned city. To highlight the importance of these paths in the lives of the local community, I erected fake notices of the City of Hamilton’s intent to formally name these informal walkways. The formal names of city streets and paths are a way for a city to officially archive particular histories, while overlooking others. The forged notices stimulated discussion in the local community around key issues: which histories get kept and whose are discarded, who has the right to name what is created by local residents, and what is the “right” way to live and move within the city?

The political philosophies of Plato and Hegel can be compared and contrasted in relation to three distinct but connected arguments. First, Plato and Hegel share a common recognition of the significance of the social world for the development of individuals. Second, they both outline political communities that are held to be able to organise social life so as to overcome the alienation and disharmony that they see as common and persistent problems of social interaction. Third, their respective political solutions for these social problems are radically different as they have distinctive conceptions of reason and its role in social life. The originality of this study resides in its focus upon the specificity of Plato’s and Hegel’s approaches to what they took to be the task of political theory, the articulation of a political community resolving the problems and tensions of social practice. Hegel self-consciously attempted to supersede Plato’s ideal community by allowing for freedom of the individual within his rational state. However his political theory is distinguished from Plato’s most dramatically by his effort to redeem the negativity of political experience by unveiling the inner rationality of the modern state, whereas Plato, contrary to Hegel’s interpretation of the Republic, sought to construct an ideal political community that was wholly removed from the tensions and negativity of contemporary states.1

This chapter examines memory understood as a public discourse that helps to build group identity; memory that is entangled in a relationship of mutual dependence with other identity-building processes. Here, memory cannot be interpreted as a fixed, unchangeable entity. Rather, it is a representation of past reality, constantly revised according to the different demands of present-day identity. The latter is not a fixed entity either: it also changes, in part because of what is remembered by a given group at a given time. The discussion here focuses on Auschwitz. The fact that Auschwitz is such an important site of ‘memory work’, in which different ‘politics of memory’ seek to master the ‘unmasterable past’, can actually be taken for granted. To elucidate the essential nature of memory work or the politics of memory, however, the chapter asks why Auschwitz is such a ‘convenient’ location for displaying collective memories and identities.

This article deals with how remembering the Second World War is conveyed in Bernard Kangro’s last three Tartu novels, The Stone Bridge (1963), The Black Book (1965) and Whirlfire (1969). The Second World War is a memory topos that has, more than anything else, divided the memory politics of European countries. If memory politics in Western Europe is focused predominantly on condemning Nazi crimes, primarily the Holocaust, then Eastern Europe, in addition to the legacy of Nazism, has to deal with the additional criminal legacy of Communism. To bridge the gap between Eastern and Western European nations’ collective memories, discussions started in 1990 about the European memory that should help form the basis for a unified European identity. In the opinion of Jan-Werner Muller, European memory assumes one of two processes. The first is linked to unifying the stances toward memory politics of various European nations; the second with unifying the contents of various collective memories. Although Kangro’s last three Tartu novels are among the peripheral works of Estonian cultural memory, they nevertheless deal with themes that have become relevant in the twenty-first century, on the one hand linking collective memory and national memory politics, and on the other hand, addressing the concept of European memory. Using Kangro’s Tartu novels, I first analyse the problematic aspects of national memory politics as they relate to remembering the Second World War in Estonia. Secondly, I point out the implicit criticism in the Tartu novels of the more inflexible and homogenizing form of European memory. For this I focus more closely on the formative stories of three characters – Benno Maran, Naatan Uirike and Juku Leebram. Benno Maran is one of the narrating voices in these novels, together with an anonymous narrator, an italicized narrator from a different time, and another character, named August September. Quotes from Benno’s diary dating from the days of the Russian and German occupations Russian and German occupations of Estonia are used extensively in the novels’ texts. These quotations overlap considerably with the inscriptions in Kangro's own diary from the period. This circumstance and the italicized narrator’s role as a witness to pivotal events in history enable Kangro’s Tartu novels to deal with moral witness, as explained by Aleida Assmann. According to Assmann, moral witness is the grievance of a forgotten historical injustice as well as an elegy which has no political objectives. What emerges from the italicized narrator’s text is that Kangro’s objective is to deliver a moral witnessing, as well as demonstrate the difficulty in bearing such witness: having participated in the events, he is responsible for the reality he remembers and portrays, and the impression he conveys of the people whose suffering he recounts. The process of bearing witness becomes the theme of these novels through the thoughts, comments and confessions of the italicized narrator; at the same time he distances himself from the narrated tale and characters, thus emphasizing the relative nature of the portrayal. The second characteristic keyword of the Tartu novels is pluralism, demonstrated by both their structure and subject matter. Namely, by using multiple characters, Kangro portrays very different Second World War experiences that are inconsistent with nationalistic memory politics as well as too conflicting for transnational memory politics. One example is theology student Juku Leebram’s life story. Juku collaborates with those in power during the Soviet occupation and takes part in the deportations, then turns traitor by fleeing to the German side, but is captured by the Germans and dies in jail. However, after the war, rumours circulate that Juku escaped and has become a Forest Brother. Thus, in the communicative memory of the Estonians in the homeland, Juku first becomes a martyr and then a resistance fighter and national hero.