Reading Memory Sites Through Signs: Hiding into Landscape 9789048544301

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Reading Memory Sites through Signs

Heritage and Memory Studies This ground-breaking series examines the dynamics of heritage and memory from transnational, interdisciplinary and integrated approaches. Monographs or edited volumes critically interrogate the politics of heritage and dynamics of memory, as well as the theoretical implications of landscapes and mass violence, nationalism and ethnicity, heritage preservation and conservation, archaeology and (dark) tourism, diaspora and postcolonial memory, the power of aesthetics and the art of absence and forgetting, mourning and performative re-enactments in the present. Series Editor Ihab Saloul and Rob van der Laarse, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands Advisory Board Patrizia Violi, University of Bologna, Italy Britt Baillie, Cambridge University, United Kingdom Michael Rothberg, University of Illinois, USA Marianne Hirsch, Columbia University, USA Frank van Vree, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Reading Memory Sites through Signs Hiding into Landscape

Edited by Cristina Demaria and Patrizia Violi

Amsterdam University Press

Cover illustration: Museo Sitio de Memoria ESMA – Ex Centro Clandestino De Detención, Tortura y Exterminio. Photo: Loreno Arboritanza Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden Lay-out: Crius Group, Hulshout isbn 978 94 6372 281 0 e-isbn 978 90 4854 430 1 (pdf) doi 10.5117/9789463722810 nur 680 © All authors / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2023 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use all copyrighted illustrations reproduced in this book. Nonetheless, whosoever believes to have rights to this material is advised to contact the publisher.



Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

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For a Semiotics of Spaces of Memories

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1 Stories that Shape Spatialities

31

2 Interpretation and Use of Memory

55

3 Uncomfortable Memories of Fascist Italy

81

Practices of Enunciation and Narratives from Monuments to Global Landscapes of Inheritance Cristina Demaria and Patrizia Violi

Lieu and Milieu de Mémoire through the Lens of Narrativity Daniele Salerno

How Practices Can Change the Meanings of Monuments Mario Panico

The Case of Bigio of Brescia Anna Maria Lorusso

4 What Does Fascist Architecture Still Have to Tell Us?

101

5 Berlin, the Jewish Museum and the Holocaust Memorial

141

6 Making Space for Memory

163

7 Ruins of War

183

Preservation of Contested Heritage as a Strategy of Re-Enunciation and ‘Voice Remodulation’ Francesco Mazzucchelli

Isabella Pezzini

Collective Enunciation in the Provincial Memory Archive of Córdoba, Argentina Paola Sozzi

The Green Sea and the Mysterious Island Gianfranco Marrone

8 Turning Spaces of Memory into Memoryscapes 207 Cinema as Counter-Monument in Jonathan Perel’s El Predio and Tabula Rasa Cristina Demaria

9 Voices from the Past: Memories in a Digital Space The Case of AppRecuerdos in Santiago, Chile Patrizia Violi

231

10 500,000 Dirhams in Scandinavia, from Mobile Silver to Land Rent 255 A Semiotic Analysis Manar Hammad

Index 315 Index of Names

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List of Illustrations

Figure 2.1

Figure 3.1 Figure 3.2 Figure 4.1

Figure 4.2 Figure 4.3 Figure 4.4

Figure 4.5 Figure 4.6

Figure 4.7

The Affile monument in honour of Rodolfo Graziani. Still from the documentary ‘If Only I Were That Warrior’ (2015) directed by Valerio Ciriaci and produced by Awen Films Photo: Valerio Ciriaci67 The Bigio sculpture Image copyright: © Archivio fotografico Civici Musei di Brescia84 Mimmo Paladino’s stele Image copyright: © Archivio fotografico Civici Musei di Brescia91 Enunciational projection of the ideological subject in Fascist architecture. The rectangle represents the architecture considered as enunciated discourse (AT: architecture as text), while the circle is the subject of enunciation (S), that is present and actorialised in the architecture116 The Middle Finger (amputated Roman salute) directed against the Palazzo Mezzanotte in Milan Photo: Guilhem Vellut – Flickr Account119 The former OND building today. It is now a university museum Photo: RaBoe –Wikipedia Account120 Lowering the ideological voice of the architecture: while the enunciational marks that manifested the Fascist subject of enunciation are cancelled, the refurbishment does not project an explicit subject122 A picture of exGIL (now WeGIL) building Photo: Pierluigi Cervelli124 Re-tuning the voice of ideological architecture: the new subject of enunciation, which is represented even in the renaming of the building (WeGIL), partially overlaps (at least aesthetically) with the simulacrum of the Fascist subject of enunciation. The new subject, although present in first person, is undefined126 Critical distance from the ideological voice: the patina is preserved to mark the status of the

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Figure 4.8

Figure 4.9 Figure 4.10 Figure 5.1 Figure 5.2 Figure 6.1 Figure 6.2 Figure 6.3 Figure 7.1 Figure 7.2 Figure 7.3 Figure 7.4

Figure 7.5

Reading Memory Sites through Signs

monument as historical trace and document Photo: Francesco Mazzucchelli128 Distancing the ideological voice through enunciational encasing: the old enunciational structure is ‘put in quotes’ in the new text, in which the new subject does not speak in first person129 The illuminated quote by Arendt superimposed on the bas relief Photo: Bartleby08 – Wikipedia account131 New text with a new manifested enunciational subject, that projects itself onto the previous text, disputing the previous voice133 The Jewish Museum, plan of the underground itineraries Image copyright: © Jüdisches Museum Berlin152 The Jewish Museum, cross-section of the building Image copyright: © Jüdisches Museum Berlin155 The outside of the museum, Thursday, 30 June 2016, with a photographic exhibitionon the left Photo: Paola Sozzi170 One of the patios Photo: Paola Sozzi172 Patio with the cells Photo: Paola Sozzi172 Palermo, a postcard from 1935: the sea waves almost reach the city188 An image from the 1930s: the balustrade of the Foro Italico seafront is featured on a postcard from the early twentieth century188 Francesco Laurana, bust of Eleanor of Aragon, 1471, Palermo, Palazzo Abatellis Photo: Maxnashville –Wikipedia account193 The rows of princesses run along the edges of the pavement, suggesting a second threshold between the road and the park Photo: Gianfranco Marrone195 A ship sailing the sea’s green waters Photo: Gianfranco Marrone198

List of Illustr ations

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Figure 7.6 The same photo, now an indulgent cliché of the city, is used on the cover of a book listing the amusing oddities of Palermo Image copyright: © Pietro Vittorietti Edizioni198 Figure 7.7 René Magritte, La Représentation (1937) Photo: Rosa Menkman – Flickr Account202 Figure 10.1 Dirhams found in the hoard of Stora Velinge (Gotland Island, Sweden), with a silver arm ring (after Stenberger 1947)256 Figure 10.2 Distribution of dirham hoards in relation with Scandinavian activity, eighth to eleventh centuries. Note the concentration on the south-eastern coasts of today’s Sweden, along the Baltic coast and the rivers of the drainage basins of the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. There are no hoards on the lower course of Volga River (after Kilger 2008) Image copyright: © Aarhus University Press266 Figure 10.3 Distribution of minting places emitting dirhams (after Kilger 2008) Image copyright: © Aarhus University Press267 Figure 10.4 Map of Jutland peninsula constriction with position of Danevirke sections (after Tummuscheit and Witte 2019) Image copyright: © Aarhus University Press290 Figure 10.5 Map of Danevirke segments with the positions of Hedeby and Shlesvig cities (after Tummuscheit and Witte 2019) Image copyright: © Aarhus University Press291



For a Semiotics of Spaces of Memories Practices of Enunciation and Narratives from Monuments to Global Landscapes of Inheritance Cristina Demaria and Patrizia Violi Abstract This chapter offers an introduction to the semiotic approach to the space of memory. After defining in what terms space is a language, we focus on two key concepts: narrativity and enunciation. The former, which should not be equated with a story or plot, is understood as the fundamental organisation of meaning, the form that structures our experiences. The latter concerns not the physical production of a text but the traces left by the enunciator in the text, and, more specifically, it may be represented by the architectural style of a building, the form of an urban plan or the display in a museum. In the second part, we present the theoretical and methodological specificities of the contributions in this volume. Keywords: Semiotics of Space; Semiotic Methodology; Cultural Memory; Narrativity; Enunciation.

This Book This book aims to present the most relevant concepts of semiotic methodology to a wide audience of scholars and researchers working on memory who may not be familiar with a semiotic approach. In order to do so, we have decided to focus on space, analysing different kinds of spaces, real and virtual, from cities to monuments, from architecture to urban practices, from museums to spaces represented in documentary films or imagined through digital devices. Such a choice implies two main questions: why space? And why semiotics?

Demaria, Cristina and Patrizia Violi (eds), Reading Memory Sites through Signs: Hiding into Landscape. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2023 doi: 10.5117/9789463722810_intro

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Cristina Demaria and Patrizia Violi

As we will briefly explain in this introduction, from a semiotic perspective space is in itself a language, or, to use Jurij Lotman’s words (1992), a modelling system, capable of giving shape to the world and at the same time of being modelled by it. Space talks about our values and the structure of our society, but also, and maybe in the first place, about what we have been, about our past and the transformations it has undergone. Space therefore represents a highly privileged vantage point for the understanding of our memory of the past, as well as – as we shall see throughout the chapters of this book – of the way in which space itself produces memory, rewriting, transforming, interpreting and sometimes erasing it. Space is indeed the storage of our collective memory, where we can find and read the traces of memorial processes: no study of cultural memory can neglect the spatial traces left by it. Why can semiotics be important to scholars working on these topics within different frameworks and even different disciplines? We believe that semiotics can offer a very useful ‘toolkit’ to analyse the relationship between memory and space, approaching the various problems of this particular field with a transversal and unifying methodology, thus making fruitful comparisons possible. Semiotic tools can sharpen our analysis, deepen our intuitions in a more coherent and structured framework and allow us to compare different analytical approaches. Obviously, memory studies scholars will find some familiarities with our approach and the way we analyse various spaces; however, far from being a negative element, this shows the communalities of our work within the discipline, at the same time enriching this field of study with the contribution of semiotic methodology. In order to demonstrate the use of semiotics for this kind of analysis, we asked a number of semioticians with a long practice of research in different spatial environments to write one chapter, each analysing a specific place, using semiotic methodology. We believe that the main added value of semiotics is to provide the analyst with a set of strong methodological tools and heuristic categories that can provide a more precise, detailed and thoughtful analysis. In doing so, semiotics can shed light on the underlying structure hidden behind any given object endowed with content; it is not limited to linguistic texts. The chapters in the book do not appear in strictly geographical order; although most of the contributions concentrate on cases related to the Italian Fascist past, the itinerary suggested privileges a criterion based on two parameters: on the one hand the analytical and theoretical tools utilised, on the other hand a typology of spaces, from concentration camps (Salerno) to monuments (Panico, Lorusso), monumental architectures

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(Mazzucchelli), museums and archives (Pezzini, Sozzi), urban spaces (Marrone) and mediated forms of space representation and construction, such as audio-visual (Demaria) and digital devices (Violi), concluding with an original, unusual and very distinctive analysis of the transit of objects, specifically coins, through different geographical and social spaces (Hammad). It is no coincidence that all the case studies – but for Hammad’s contribution – are concerned with difficult heritage of different kinds: Italian Fascism, the Holocaust, Latin American dictatorships. This is due to the central role traumatic memories play in the construction, reconstruction and transformations of the competing memories that arise after difficult and tragic pasts, as well as the crucial relevance they acquire in what we call ‘spaces of memory’. All analyses in their different forms utilise some of the main semiotic analytical tools that will be briefly described in the following paragraphs: narrativity and enunciation in the first place, then structural semantic analysis and articulation of semantic categories, with their processes of transformation and resemantisation, as well as the notions of interpretation – with the related concepts of model and empirical users –, semiosphere and encyclopaedia.

For a Semiotic of Space Before describing each contribution, we present a short summary of the main ideas of a semiotics of space. The starting point of a semiotic approach to space is the very basic idea that space is in itself a language: space always speaks to us of something else: social relationships, power positions, gender issues, economic hierarchies and so on. In more technical terms we could say that space is a semiotic system, that is, a system of elements correlated to given meanings, or, to use Louis Hjelmslev’s (1953) terms, a function between two functors: expression and content. Such an intuition was already present in Lévi-Strauss’s (1955) well-known analysis of a Bororo village, where a first partition separates the centre – the space of men and ritual dances – from the external circle of the periphery, where women are confined. Moreover, the village is also divided orthogonally, according to the different clans who live in the same space. In this way one’s position in the space of the village at the same time signifies one’s gender and clan. Other, more familiar, examples may illustrate this point: in a sports competition, when the three top athletes are awarded their prizes, they stand

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on a podium that has three different heights according to their placement in the competition, so that the athlete who won the first prize always stands on the higher podium. Spatial differences signify different values, as in the seating arrangements at a highly formal dinner, where the placement of the guests is decided according to their status: the most important or influential persons sit closer to the guest of honour. These are not exceptional cases; all spaces, with their particular morphology, shape social positions, hierarchies and social roles. Take the case of a classroom: there is a teacher’s desk, generally on a raised platform to make her sit in a higher position in front of rows of desks for the students. This configuration establishes not only different statuses endowed with different power positions between teacher and students, but also different access to the right to speak and interact; in fact, it establishes an overall underlying concept of culture, knowledge and education. It would be misleading, however, to think that the expression plan is made up only of material objects: walls, buildings, houses, artefacts, chairs, tables and so on. These are elements that imply and suggest precise ways of interaction with the users of the space, and they structure interactions among the users themselves; thus, all the actions and activities performed in a given space are also an integral part of the expression plan, which is therefore a syncretic system.1 The content of a spatial system is the complex net of meanings that that space conveys: in a school classroom, for example, the content is the set of values that, in our culture, are related to knowledge transmission, education, discipline and so on. In a museum, the content can be the value of art, high culture or memory, as in the case of the Libeskind Museum in Berlin, here analysed by Isabella Pezzini. Space and society mirror each other in a double relationship: society inscribes its values and norms in space and, on the other hand, space embodies and makes visible the values of society. Each space foresees a given use which is ‘embedded’ in its morphology: a street is made for walking, a window to be looked through, a classroom to teach in. This foreseen usage is created by the people who design and project the space. They assume the abstract actantial role of the addresser, to which corresponds the role of the receiver, called addressee. 1 In semiotics, a syncretic text is a text made up of many different semiotic systems, such as for example an audio-visual text, which includes words, images and music. In the case of space, the expression is a composite level, where there are objects and also people performing actions and interacting with each other.

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All places have their implicit inscribed standard use, which is not only a way to act and move in that space, but also a set of allowed or disallowed behaviours: you cannot speak aloud or eat in a church, you do not kneel in a restaurant. Behaviours are manifestations of given values that are socially shared: in this way space shapes our values, beliefs, and actions. Umberto Eco (1979) has defined the notion of Model Reader as the ideal reader who understands and actualises the interpretation intended by the author; the Model Reader should not be confused with an empirical reader; it is instead an abstract notion that could be defined as the set of implicit instructions that every text foresees for its correct interpretation.2 Paralleling such a notion, we can refer to the concept of the Model User to indicate the foreseen way of using a given space, including actions, practices and behaviours. The Model User is the ideal user, who accomplishes the project embedded in a space by following the ‘instructions’ that are implicitly inscribed in it. Real users, however, are not necessarily Model Users and do not always follow the instructions for the use of a place. We can thus have a gap between the project of a place, with its foreseen uses, and the effective uses actualised by people, as empirical real users. The practices performed by users, although not necessarily affecting the physical morphology of a place, transform its meaning, that is, its content. We call such a change in meaning resemantisation, which can be planned (top-down) or spontaneous (bottom-up). In this volume there are examples of both, in the chapters by Gianfranco Marrone and Mario Panico respectively. Resemantisation is what often happens with historical monuments: the Coliseum in Rome was a theatre for popular entertaining shows at that time, such as those featuring Christians being devoured by lions. Today, fortunately, this function has changed into a touristic attraction. Another example is a street, made to be walked in, which becomes the venue for young people to meet, making transit almost impossible, as happens in good weather in Bologna, in the streets close to the university. This is a clear example of an unforeseen practice that spontaneously resemanticises a public area of transit into a meeting place. But a similar transformation can also happen as the result of a carefully planned decision. At the time of 2 The notion of ‘correct interpretation’ is obviously more complex than this. Especially for complex text, such as literary texts, it might not be so easy to def ine what is the right interpretation. If a train schedule has only one possible reading, Joyce’s Ulysses has many possible interpretations. There are nonetheless some interpretations that are certainly wrong. In the case of space, however, there much less complexity; it is not that difficult to see what purpose a given building or artefact has been made for.

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writing, when restaurants in Italy are allowed to operate in outside spaces only because of the pandemic, many streets in our cities have completely transformed into dining places, crowded with tables and chairs. These examples show how the ‘same’ place can acquire many different meanings while remaining physically unchanged, and can stratify multiple senses, depending on the kind of actions performed there. From this perspective, practices are more important than material morphology.3 However, resemantisations are rarely so radical as to completely lose the original meaning of a space; more often, some properties that were central to the definition of a given space become part of its peripheral semantic field. The idea of centre and periphery comes from the seminal work of the Russian semiotician Jurij Lotman (1984), who created the term ‘semiosphere’ for the continuum that enables social life, in analogy with the notion of the biosphere, the continuum that makes biological survival possible. A semiosphere can be imagined as an environment, a semiotic space outside which semiosis cannot exist; it can refer both to the global space of semiosis of a given culture and to some local field of that environment. Each semiosphere is structured around a more culturally stable centre and a more variable and fluctuant periphery. Spatial resemantisation can affect the basic meaning of a place, moving some elements or functions that were previously in the centre towards the periphery of the semiosphere. The information relegated to the periphery does not disappear completely but remains available for further reattribution of sense. Eco (1979) describes this phenomenon as narcotisation; applied to space, this means that an original function can always be restored in time; for example, a street which was transformed into an open-air restaurant can return to its original content of a thoroughfare. The widely diffused phenomenon of resemantisation shows that, in a spatial system, the correlation of expression and content is not fixed – practices and users’ habits can modify the meaning of any place, together with the system of values connected to that particular place. This appears very clearly in the case of so-called ‘contested heritage’: monuments erected to celebrate a political regime and its system of values that become unacceptable when those values change, as happened with the Nazi-Fascist or Soviet regimes. At that point, monuments can be resemanticised in various ways. In this volume, three chapters deal with the difficult heritage of Fascist monuments and architecture: Mario Panico shows how bottom-up 3 This very idea can be found in de Certeau (1984) and is here discussed in Daniele Salerno’s chapter.

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protest practices trigger a resemantisation of monuments related to the memory of the Italian colonial past, Anna Maria Lorusso analyses a case of ‘top-down’ resemantisation, and Francesco Mazzucchelli analyses the transformations of Fascist monuments in Italy, addressing the issue of dissonant and difficult heritage. The continuous process of rewriting and transforming the uses and meanings of places makes space a semiotic system with a variable signification, an unstable and changeable system whose sense is never rigidly defined, where different practices and actions continuously modify its content. Finally, two important semiotic concepts – narrativity and enunciation – are widely used in the semiotic analysis of space. The notion of narrativity is probably one of the most basic concepts of the semiotic methodology: it constitutes the fundamental organisation of meaning, the form that structures and gives sense to all our experiences. Narrativity is not limited to novels or stories, but underlines all kinds of texts, from scientific treatises to cooking recipes, and it represents the deeper structure of semiotic objects. Space, too, can be analysed from this perspective. As we have already noted, any constructed portion of space, whether a single building or the design of an entire city, presupposes an addresser: the abstract instance – be it a single person, a group of individuals or an institution – that wants, designs and produces that space, foreseeing a given use for it. The functional role of the addresser underlies the f irst phase of any narrative, setting the goal and the motivation for the following action. This phase is called ‘manipulation’, which should not be interpreted in its usual meaning but as the attempt to make another subject (the addressee) perform a given action. Manipulation thus is more than simple communication between subjects: rather, it is causing another subject to do something. For example, in a supermarket, the design of the space may suggest a given path among the various sections of the place from the entrance to the exit, ‘forcing’ people to follow it. In this case, we could say that the users are ‘manipulated’ in order to perform the sequence of actions foreseen for them. Another example is the case of a museum, analysed by Isabella Pezzini: here the manipulation by the addresser consists of making the addressee perform the visit according to the path and modalities foreseen for that action. In the case of space, the manipulation by the addresser concerns the function and use of that space; the addresser inscribes in the space the instructions for its ‘correct’ or intended use, which, as we saw, the addressee can follow or not, giving rise to a set of different actions, possible variants in the ‘story’ of the place. The action – called ‘performance’ – represents the core of the narrative structure and can be seen as the use of a space,

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which can be either the realisation of the foreseen use or an alternative use, one which deviates from the intended one. Finally, the performance can be sanctioned, in a positive or in a negative way; the ‘sanction’ represents the last phase of the narrative schema. As an example, we could think of a beach in Italy, with its chairs and umbrellas, where people (the addressee) are expected to pay, sit and enjoy their time at the sea. This is the foreseen use of the beach, but other ‘deviant’ uses are possible. Somebody can sit without paying, bringing their own chairs: such behaviour would be negatively sanctioned, and the person would be forced to leave. It is frequent, on Italian beaches, to see immigrants who try to sell cheap merchandise to holiday-makers. This is not a foreseen use of the beach, and it is sometimes tolerated and sometimes not. When peddlers are banned, this is a negative sanction. As such an example shows, the ‘meaning’ of a given place can vary greatly, depending on whether it is a leisure site or our working place. Finally, we consider the semiotic notion of enunciation, which should not be understood here as the physical production of a text (the physical utterance in a spoken discourse, or the act of writing in a written text) but as the traces left by the enunciator in the text itself, through the use, for example, of the first or third person. In relation to space, enunciation can be represented by the architectonic style of a building, by the form of a city plan, by an exhibition in a museum, or by the different choices on how to set up a place of memory, as discussed here in Paola Sozzi’s chapter, where multiple enunciators are present in the same space, with their various voices, displaying different perspectives of the very same place. In space, too, there can be a form of enunciation that is in line with the values and style of the enunciator, a kind of ‘first person’ – as is the case in some Fascist buildings – or a form of distancing in what parallels a third-person voice in speech. Examples of these cases are analysed in Francesco Mazzucchelli’s chapter. So far, we have sketched a synthetic picture of the most relevant concepts of classical semiotic theory developed especially between the 1960s and the 1990s. However, since then, semiotics has developed significantly, opening up to new fields of inquiry and also, to some extent, to methodological innovations. Probably the most important transformation has been the shift of attention from pure systemic structure to the temporal dimension of semiosis: at its foundation, semiotics was mainly concerned with the synchronic dimension of sign systems, that is, their structural organisation in a given moment, without taking into account the changes to which sign systems

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are subjected over time. Contemporary semiotic inquiries, on the contrary, are characterised by widespread attention to the diachronic dimension of semiotic processes, as the growing interest in the study of memory processes shows. New attention has been accorded to historical, cultural and social phenomena in contemporary semiotic research, widening the field from the strictly textual – especially literary – analysis that prevailed in the 1970s. The reading of Jurij Lotman’s cultural semiotic has certainly been an important influence on this turn, but it is not the only factor. New fields of inquiry have been opened and new branches of the discipline explored. Sociosemiotics has opened the field to the investigations of social interactions and practices, rediscovering, in some way, the original inspiration that lay at the basis of Saussure’s foundational work, who defined la sémiologie as the study of the social life of signs. The combination of a diachronic dimension and socio-cultural concerns has widened the range of semiotic objects to be considered well beyond traditional texts, incorporating the inquiry of social practices and all forms of experience, with increasing attention being paid to the bodily basis of sense. Perception and sensory experience are no longer considered to be purely physiological processes outside the realm of semiosis, and their complex structuring of our processes of sense making have been revealed, together with their constitutive links to feelings, emotions, affects and passions. The present work can be seen in at least two ways as a result of a similar cultural turn. First, all the case studies discussed here deal, from different angles, with memory and forms of remembering where the diachronic dimension is central. Secondly, they focus on space, and the way in which space is transformed, inhabited and used to transmit the past through various forms of artefacts. From monuments to urban places, from museums to new technological devices, the underlying basic assumption is that space is first and foremost where our cultural memories leave their traces.

Contributions to the Volume The volume opens with an essay centred on a semiotic reinterpretation of Pierre Nora’s seminal category of lieu de mémoire, as a way of constructing and intertwining memories and spaces. In ‘Stories that Shape Spatialities. Lieu and Milieu de Mémoire through the Lens of Narrativity’, Daniele Salerno argues that, in Nora’s conceptualisation of lieux de mémoire, an acknowledgment is lacking of the coexistence of a plurality of meanings and experiences

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underlining the practices of production, interpretation and consumption of any space of memory. However, in a semiotic perspective, spaces are the result of an act of polysemic, and pluri-isotopic construction carried out by different actors, that is, of a dynamic and on-going process that the concept of lieu de mémoire, as an interpretative category, somehow obscures. A semiotic investigation, and, specifically, the category of narrativity as one of its main tools, can indeed shed light on how a spatial dimension may bear witness to the multiple ways a past is produced, interpreted and lived. Salerno’s essay thus discusses how spatiality is always already dynamised by different practices and narratives that may either follow established itineraries and rituals, or propose new interpretations, new paths and new subject positions and actantial roles that are able to destabilise, and sometimes even disrupt, the fixed and mnestic meanings of a place as a space of memory. These meanings are activated by the contexts and frames that are at play within a place in a given historical and political time, thus following not only a logic of location but also a logic of action. By reinterpreting Nora’s dichotomy milieu vs lieu, Salerno proposes two semiotic models of spatiality: the spatiality of position (lieu) and the spatiality of situation (milieu), applying them to the analysis of the former Italian transit camp of Fossoli – the camp where Primo Levi was detained before his journey to Auschwitz – and of its configuration both as a lieu, and as a milieu, of memory. The ways in which new narratives and practices of interpreting and experiencing spaces of memory may be aimed at disrupting their established and institutional meanings are further explored in Mario Panico’s ‘Interpretation and Use of Memory. How Practices Can Change the Meanings of Monuments’. In thinking of a monument both as an act of enunciation and as a hub of pedestrian re-enunciations, Panico here concentrates on the study of protest practices developed around two monuments built to celebrate figures tied to the Italian Fascist and colonialist past, as if it were a time worthy of being remembered. Drawing from Umberto Eco’s semiotic theory, the general aim of his chapter is to investigate forms and actions of ‘memory reversal’, that is, of resemantisation of monuments that conceal Fascist Italy’s troubling past in Africa. By exploring how protest practices create the possibility to investigate different types of subjectivity that can be ‘activated’ by the monumental space, the essay also demonstrates how their analysis may deepen the understanding of the cultural mechanisms of magnification or narcotisation of historical events; to use Eco’s terms, of their freezing or thawing. Often, these mechanisms remain ‘unsaid’ by the monument, either because of the economy of the monument’s enunciation,

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or due to choices that led to the ideological f iltering of memory as the result of cultural modalities of cancelation, cross-reference and latency of information. As Panico’s reading convincingly shows, acts of forgetfulness are not always the result of political manipulation, but of practices of filtering that are necessary in order to prevent cultures from being saturated with irrelevant details that can otherwise be deduced at the contextual level, or in the cooperation between the addresser of the values inscribed in the monument and its many addressees. By continuing the investigation of monuments as receptacles of conflicting and competing acts of remembrance, Anna Maria Lorusso dwells on yet another example of uncomfortable memories of Fascist Italy, focusing in her article on the case of Bigio of Brescia, a sculpture commissioned in the early 1930s by Marcello Piacentini, one of the most important architects of the Fascist period. Representing, through a colossal male body, both the ideals of the vigour of victory and the new virility promoted by Fascist regime, the Bigio was removed from Piazza della Vittoria – the main square of the northern Italian town of Brescia – in 1945, and never returned to its place. Yet, although the sculpture was removed, the debate around it has never blown over, and continues today. However, the vicissitudes of its history, along with the public debate about its meanings, uses and processes of symbolisation, have moved beyond the binary division between a pro-Fascist and an anti-Fascist position. Lorusso explores this debate and its complex instances with the help of the category of ‘ideology’ as formulated by Eco in A Theory of Semiotics (1975), in which ideology is a form of rhetoric, a strategic organisation of an ‘interested’ discourse that selects and presents its arguments in order ‘to hide the contradictory nature of one’s own semanticcultural system’, that is, what Eco calls ‘encyclopaedia’. Lorusso thus retraces the positions for and against the statue itself, along with its proper location, that are still competing within different discursive spheres, each centred on a different axiology, a different system of value: from that of political discourse, which oscillates between pride (the right wing) and shame (the left wing) and that of aesthetic discourse, which celebrates the expressive and symbolic force of the sculpture, to its cultural representativeness and the instances promoted by what could be called a ‘civic discourse’ that appeals also to monetary values. What the article very thoroughly demonstrates is that the history of this cumbersome and immeasurable monument, which has been uncomfortable from the time it was erected – both Fascist and popular, loved and mocked – points to memory policies and memorial solutions that can never be considered adequately without taking into account their internal contradictions and the different historical contexts

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that accompany any monument’s life, both in actual and material spaces, and in competing discursive and immaterial spheres. In his chapter on ‘What Does Fascist Architecture Still Have to Tell Us? Preservation of Contested Heritage as a Strategy of Re-Enunciation and “Voice Remodulation”’, Francesco Mazzucchelli, too, addresses the notions of dissonant and difficult heritage, reframing them through the semiotic theory of enunciation that we presented at the beginning of this introduction and that Mazzucchelli here further expands. He starts from the idea that architecture, especially ideological and totalitarian architecture, owns a peculiar ‘voice’, through which it addresses its users. Any subsequent work of restoration or refurbishment of these architectures is then an (implicit or explicit, conscious or unaware) attempt at ‘re-modulating’ this voice and transforming the relationship between the building itself (as a subject) and its user. This idea is used to analyse some Fascist buildings in Italy and their transformations after the fall of the regime. The case studies explored are examples of monumental architecture built in Italy during the Fascist period and restored or refurbished in the last few decades, and Mazzucchelli attempts to describe specific and controversial cases of ‘difficult heritage management’ in Italy. The essay effectively shows how the notion of enunciation might be an extremely useful tool to differentiate among the diverse meaning effects generated by different solutions of restoration of the original architecture, aimed at resemanticising and transforming its ideological narrative. Four forms of enunciational re-modulation are identified – silencing, preserving, re-writing, engaging – depending on how the new enunciation overlaps the previous (ideological) one. Isabella Pezzini’s essay brings us from the uncomfortable memories of Fascist Italy to the exploration of what, for decades, has been the paradigm of any discussion of traumatic memory and the Holocaust, by examining two spaces of remembrance built in the urban area that was the heart of the Nazi regime: the Jewish Museum designed by Daniel Libeskind, and the Memorial conceived by Peter Eisenman, both in Berlin. These two renowned milieux de mémoire, to go back to Salerno’s chapter, enshrine the same story with a different slant, due to the very diverse architectural ‘gestures’ inscribed in their design, the type of urban memory space they represent and the kind of interpretation they are subjected to. Furthermore, Pezzini’s essay introduces a methodological and theoretical aspect that is further discussed in Paola Sozzi’s article, that of the museum as a complex cultural unit, as a semiosphere: a place of knowledge that expresses some of the values that characterise the cultural perspective of a society towards, in this case, the Shoah, and its political and aesthetic manifestations in the country of

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the perpetrators. In investigating the relationship between identity and memory, and in asking what identity and what memory these two spaces stand for, Pezzini elaborates Paul Ricœur’s contribution to the topic by focussing on the narrative dimension through which this relationship can be re-articulated over time. The identity of a place, and the memory in which it is rooted, can in fact be conceived both as permanence and repetition of a more stable nucleus of characters, recognisable through time (identity as idem), but also by a dynamic and contractual aspect, through which a place reconfirms its very identity (as ipse), through continuous acts of commitment. These acts ensure the coherence and credibility of interior and exterior images that form the cultural heritage (both material and immaterial) of a museum, as much as that of a memorial. Starting from this theoretical background, the essay discusses how these two very different spaces may activate the competences and attitudes of their visitor/Model User, that is, her knowledge, desire and possibilities to move, see and feel. The visitor here becomes the subject of a story within which she should, or must, perform certain type of actions, and experiences definite emotions. The museum and the memorial can be thus considered as particular kinds of device that manipulate all visitors, albeit with different effects: the Jewish Museum a very complex, highly regulated and prescriptive ‘affective’ machine; Eisenman’s memorial a more exposed and sober funereal maze. Both, however, devise a structured space that posits the bodily interaction with its visitors as an ‘inescapable assumption’, of its effectiveness as well as its interest as a place of remembrance. In Paola Sozzi’s ‘Making Space for Memory. Collective Enunciation in the Provincial Memory Archive of Córdoba, Argentina’, we enter another museum and audio-visual archive of testimonies, here about Argentina’s past, but one that tells another story, that of another time and another continent, but also that of a space that can be considered as a trauma site. During the military dictatorship that ravaged Argentina from 1976 to 1983 with its state terrorism, the museum now known as the Provincial Memory Archive housed the Córdoba police’s intelligence department, which operated as a clandestine centre of detention and torture. It is thus a place materially connected to the memory of the atrocities committed by the dictatorship, whose material traces are displayed; but it is also a public space that nowadays maintains deep bonds with activism, performative arts and social practices of elaboration of national and local collective grief. The article analyses all these peculiar past and present connections by focusing on how the museum ‘makes space for memory’, not just by giving a material, social and cultural visibility to a certain narrative of the Argentine past, but

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also by transmitting this past thanks to the implementation of a very specific enunciation strategy, in which what is said becomes significant in light of who says it, and how it is said. The chapter thus also problematises the very positions of the addresser and addressee of a space of memory, along with the – sometimes too static and homogeneous – figure of the victim. The Cordoba Museum is indeed envisaged by its public as a safe space, a secure milieu where many different voices and identities meet, giving birth to a dynamic, collective and inclusive recounting of the period also known as the Dirty War, which saw the disappearance of thirty thousand people labelled as supposed ‘enemies of the state’. In the Provincial Memory Archive, the relatives of the victims, the exiled and the survivors tell their stories from a different portion of space, providing not only different experiences and emotions for the visitors, but, considering this very polyphony of voices, also a sense of reliability and credibility. In sum, the museum, the way it has been designed –its ‘voice’, to use Mazzucchelli’s term – produces a powerful reality effect of both the inscribed memories and the space in which they are contained. ‘Ruins of War. The Green Sea and the Mysterious Island’, Gianfranco Marrone’s essay, brings us back to Italy, specifically to the sea front promenade in Palermo in Sicily known as the Foro Italico, where the debris of the Second World War’s first carpet bombing in Italy lay for six decades. The solution was meant to be provisional, but, as the author recalls, ‘there was simply so much rubble, and no one was concerned about moving it elsewhere.’ The rubble remained there as a weird and troubling extension of the city, an enormous new space with no specified use – a terrain vague – until the end of the twentieth century, when it was reinvented first by migrants in search of public spaces to gather and socialise, and later by the local government, which commissioned the intervention of the architect Italo Rota, who defined its borders by turning it into a green lawn next to the sea. In wondering how we can read and classify the space of the Foro Italico, Marrone reconstructs the complex genealogy of this ambivalent urban area in Palermo by utilising the semiotic square, an elementary structure of signification that, in this case, articulates and expands the semantic category that opposes nature and culture, the sea and the city: to which of these domains does the Foro Italico belong? Or was it neither culture nor nature when it was a mass of rubble? Can we today think of the green lawn as a continuation of nature into the urban space? In answering these questions, the essay explores how the invisible memory of war has been inscribed, or, better, concealed, and substituted by a different kind of cultural heritage, tracing all the phases through which a liminal space such as this one has

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been transformed both into a ‘natural’ place defined by culture, and into a cultural place that mimes the nature it borders. As it explores the semiotic operations at stake in each phase of the existence and use of Foro Italico up to the present, the author also meditates on how this former accumulation of rubble and ruins of war remains a sort of ‘mysterious island’, a third space that is not once and for all ‘closed’, and is not natural. At the same time, the Foro Italico is a space where peaceful co-habitation and dialogue between migrants and locals are now possible, and where a new culture of co-existence, and new memories, can find their place between the sea and the city, to which they finally start to belong. Cristina Demaria’s ‘Turning Spaces of Memory into Memoryscapes: Cinema as Counter-monument in Jonathan Perel’s El Predio and Tabula Rasa’, turns our attention from the investigation of actual and material spaces and their semiotic functioning to their mediation and remediation through languages and technologies of representation, such as those of documentary cinema. The essay questions not only how cinema can turn a space into a mediated landscape of memory, how it can interrogate what is remembered there, but also whether the role of cinema could be that of a monument or even of a counter-monument. Returning to post-dictatorship Argentina, the author analyses the ways in which the ESMA Space for Memory and for the Promotion and Defence of Human Rights, another former clandestine centre of detention and torture, located in Buenos Aires, is framed by two documentary films directed by Jonathan Perel. Both films stand as distinct recordings of the construction of ESMA as a space of and for memory, turning this loaded space into a perturbing cinematic landscape that in turn calls into question the identity of the place it depicts. In producing such a landscape, both documentaries represent a critique of monumentality in their very construction of cinematic time and space, depicting a milieu where affect becomes available, and where memory itself is displaced, questioned and dispersed, re-inscribed in small details and sounds; avoiding adding up its fragments to an easy ‘reconciliation’. As the author argues, this is why these two documentaries can stand as counter-monuments: not so much since they take their place in the landscape but because they provoke and challenge the very place they recount, interrupting its spatial continuity and the historical teleology of post-dictatorial narratives of transition. Testimonies of another nearby dictatorship – Chile – and its places of horror, gathered during a post-dictatorial transition thanks to the construction of a virtual environment through which they can be transmitted, heard and experienced, are at the centre of Patrizia Violi’s analysis of AppRecuerdos in Santiago, a challenging proposal for new ways to imagine and explore an

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urban landscape and its memories. The application contains 129 recorded files offering recordings of different kinds of narrative (songs and official speeches, personal and anonymous short narratives) of episodes from the years of Pinochet’s dictatorship, narrated in the first person by someone directly involved in the event. Every narrative is linked to a specific location in the centre of Santiago, and a recording of it is automatically activated as the user passes by with the app turned on. The app contains a map that shows where each recording can be listened to. This contribution deals not simply with a mediated space of memory or the recreation of an audio-visual landscape, but with the opportunities that contemporary digital devices present to turn places into virtual spaces – suspended between the past they recount and the present in which they are experienced – that literally start to speak their various embedded memories. Stratifying the temporalities of the urban space and mixing personal experiences and historical truth, the app and its voices re-signify the memories of Santiago’s many spaces of horror, thus creating an interstitial, transitional space, which does not correspond to any specific legal status, and whose truth escapes a strict verification criterion. Violi’s essay hence is also a meditation on how smart cities and the technologies on which they are built can be turned into actual political practices, into ways to unveil the dramatic memories that are hidden under the surface of an urban landscape such as that of Santiago de Chile. As the author argues, AppRecuerdos is a political and memorial creation that re-writes and enforces a new gaze on urban space, adding layers to what is visible and audible, opening it up to the intertwining of the private and the public, the personal and the political, individual experience and history, towards a form of social and political engagement with the past and the spaces – virtual and material – through which we re-live it. The volume concludes with Manar Hammad’s ‘500,000 Dirhams in Scandinavia, from Mobile Silver to Land Rent. A Semiotic Analysis’, an essay that differs greatly from the previous chapters in scope, object, the space it investigates and the kind of history it seeks to reconstruct and illustrate. It stands out therefore as an extremely well-informed example of how a semiotics of space can be thought of not only as a tool to describe actual sites of memory, but also as a sound method to develop an archaeology and a genealogy of past trajectories of migrations and exchanges between continents, cultures, costumes and religions. Hammad’s dense, detailed and meticulous essay originates in the author’s discovery that many Scandinavian museums had very large collections of silver dirhams minted in Dar al-Islam in their vaults, raising questions about the mechanisms and the

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actors responsible for the transfer and hoarding of such coins. Attempting to interpret the concentration of these coins and their hoarding, Hammad enlarges the domain of a spatial semiotics investigation, here supported by a large quantity of historical data (economic, numismatic, anthropological and political). The result is an accurate and ‘thick’ semiotic reading that sheds light on the correspondences between material spaces and cultural and social spaces. As the first semiotician to promote a variant of spatial semiotics based on the interaction of human actors with the built environment, objects and space of movement, Hammad proposes exploring yet another level, that of the formal syntactic symmetry of physical space and social space, and, in between, the economic space where objects circulated between subjects. All these spaces are characterised by imbricated and meaningful interactions and signifying practices related to deep values and to the transformations of Scandinavian society, which account for behaviours with respect to its lands and silver. The result of Hammad’s reading is a highly original and innovative study that raises questions on a continental scale, as it attempts to construct a semantic micro-universe in which groups of hoards and the maritime routes that permitted the accumulation of silver coins from Dar al-Islam are treated as a form of spatial enunciation, that is, a non-verbal enunciation involving the Scandinavian society in relation to both its internal territories and distant centres of influence. Although, as the author himself admits, his entire analysis remains a hypothetical construction that remains to be validated by comparison with archaeological and historical data, it nevertheless presents a challenging reconstruction of a social, cultural and economic space of inheritance and memory, stemming from the ‘voices’ and the narratives told by material objects and archaeological remains. Even though they are devoted to different kinds of case studies, to diverse typologies of spaces and to their varied forms of conceptualisation, mediation and re-mediation, all the chapters in this volume offer a detailed and coherent perspective on how memory is created, debated, mobilised and constantly challenged once it is inscribed into places. It is a semiotic perspective that may provide the practitioners of memory studies with apt and effective tools to enrich our understanding of the meanings – the narratives and the frames – that underlie memory sites: their design and the practices of their material and immaterial production and use, which point to diachronic and synchronic strategies of resemantisation and enunciation, to the working and re-working of specific ideologies and to the narrative structures that are inscribed in their itinerary or are re-invented by their users. Guided by a semiotic methodology, the reflections that follow show how every place

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is the result of stratified spaces and the interaction between many actors, logics and temporalities that play with its borders, with the values that it is designed to transmit, with the relationship that it establishes with its users and vice versa. From the transition camp of Fossoli (Italy) to the social and economic spaces of pre-modern Scandinavia, passing monuments and museums along the way, including their media- and new media-re-designed experience and representation, our ever-changing landscape of memory, with its links to national and international contexts, politics of memory and identity, is here interrogated, scrutinised and understood in new ways, as is the past that is remembered there.

Works Cited de Certeau, M. 1984 [1980] The Practice of Everyday Life, Berkeley, University of California Press. Eco, U. 1979 The Role of the Reader. Exploration in the Semiotics of Texts, Bloomington, Indiana University Press. Hjelmslev, L. 1953 [1943] Prolegomena to a Theory of Language, Baltimore: Indiana University Publications in Anthropology and Linguistics (IJAL Memoir, 7) (2nd ed. (slightly rev.), Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1961. Lévi-Strauss, C. 1955 Tristes tropiques, Paris, Plon. Lotman, J. 2005 [1984] ‘On the Semiosphere’, Sign System Studies, 33(1), pp. 205–29. Lotman, J. 1992 [1996] ‘El texto y el poliglotismo de la cultura’, in Semiótica de la cultura y del texto, Madrid, Cátedra, pp. 83–90.

About the Authors Cristina Demaria is Full Professor of Semiotics at the Department of the Arts (DAR) of the University of Bologna, where she teaches Semiotics of Conflict, Gender Studies and Semiotics of Social Sciences. She has worked extensively on traumatic memories and their representation, on visual culture and documentary films and on gender studies and post-feminism. Amongst her last publications Post-conflict Cultures. A Reader (London: PCCC Press, 2021). Patrizia Violi is an Alma Mater Professor at the University of Bologna and the founder of TraMe – Centre for the Semiotic Study of Memory at the same university. She was director of the Centro Internazionale di Studi Umberto

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Eco and principal investigator of various European-funded projects on trauma and urban space. She has published internationally on the relationship between trauma and memory, with a specific focus on Chile, Argentina and Colombia. Her latest book is Landscapes of Memory. Trauma, Space, History (Oxford, UK: Peter Lang, 2017).

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Stories that Shape Spatialities Lieu and Milieu de Mémoire through the Lens of Narrativity Daniele Salerno Abstract This chapter offers an examination of the nexus between space and memory by exploring the concepts of lieu and milieu de mémoire. My aim is to show how, in memory-making processes, these two semiotic conf igurations are not mutually exclusive, as Pierre Nora argues, but mutually articulated. In the first part of the chapter, I will discuss Nora’s definitions, comparing them to Michel de Certeau’s articulation of lieu and espace and through the lens of Algirdas J. Greimas’s model of narrativity. In the second part, I will translate theoretical and methodological reflections into a practical analysis, specifically through an exploration of the case of the Italian concentration camp of Fossoli. Keywords: Place of Memory; Fossoli; Algirdas Julien Greimas; Pierre Nora; Michel de Certeau.

Ever since the publication of Pierre Nora’s monumental collection (Nora 1996 [1984]), the category of lieu de mémoire – translated as ‘place’ or ‘site’ of memory – has offered one of the main conceptual prisms through which to analyse the space–memory nexus. In the introduction to the collection, Nora explains that ‘collective memory was rooted, in order to create a vast topology of French symbolism’, and that the aim of his work is to analyse how ‘the collective heritage of France was crystallised in places of memory’ (Nora 1996 [1984]: xv). According to the historian, the category of lieu de mémoire describes the way memory assumes and reaches a cultural and collective dimension in our times. Despite the focus on France, the category of lieu de mémoire has been used to interpret the meaning of tangible and intangible heritage in other, sometimes very different, national contexts (for Italy see, for example, Isnenghi 1996–1997). Demaria, Cristina and Patrizia Violi (eds), Reading Memory Sites through Signs: Hiding into Landscape. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2023 doi: 10.5117/9789463722810_ch01

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This chapter argues for a semiotic reinterpretation of the notion of lieu de mémoire in terms of a particular and specific way of – among others – forming space and memory, and the nexus between them. In fact, Nora’s concept ‘tends to emphasise one layer only, one point in the entire life cycle of a given location’, preventing any acknowledgment of ‘the coexistence of a plurality of meanings and experiences’ (Arrigoni and Galani 2019: 164) in the way we produce and connect spatiality and memory. Spaces are polysemic or pluri-isotopic, as Algirdas Julien Greimas (1966) and Umberto Eco (1979) would say, and their potential mnestic meanings are locally activated according to contexts, circumstances and frames that are at play in any given moment: a dynamicity that the concept of lieu de mémoire, as an interpretative category, somehow obscures. Semiotics investigates the multiple versions – and their articulations – that we can produce of the past, and the multiple ways of forming, interpreting and experiencing the presence of the past, also when the latter assumes a spatial dimension. This approach is consistent with the interpretative theory of memory that stems from Umberto Eco’s encyclopaedic model (Eco 2007): a global, rhizomatic space of numerous (but not unlimited) possible connections between cultural units that are pruned, shaped and actualised in local processes of interpretation (Salerno 2021a). Indeed, semiotics does not study what a ‘space of memory’ is and means, but how it may be and how it may give meaning to the past and co-produce its many (but not unlimited) versions. Drawing on this approach, the chapter will proceed as follows: first, I will reconstruct the conceptual and historical origin of the notion of lieu de mémoire, which emerges from the intersection between Frances Yates’s notion of locus and Maurice Halbwachs’s notion of collective memory. I will thus interpret the category differentially against the idea of milieu de mémoire, comparing the couple lieu–milieu with Michel de Certeau’s dichotomy lieu–espace, singling out the two logics – of location and of action – that are at stake in the two modalities. I will next unpack the different ways of forming a relationship between space and memory through the notion of narrativity. Finally, I will illustrate my findings through the example of the former Italian concentration camp of Fossoli and its configurations as a lieu and a milieu of memory.

Lieu and Milieu of Memory: Which Memory, Which Space? When Nora coined the expression lieu de mémoire, he defined it against the notion of milieu de mémoire: ‘Lieux de mémoire exist because there are no

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longer any milieux de mémoire, settings in which memory is a real part of everyday experience’ (Nora 1996 [1984]: 1). According to Nora, lieux de mémoire are ‘bastions’ that buttress our identities, ‘moments plucked out of the flow of history – no longer quite alive but not yet entirely dead’ (Nora 1996 [1984]: 7), whose fundamental purpose is, on one hand, ‘to stop time, to inhibit forgetting, to fix a state of things’ and, on the other, ‘to resurrect old meanings and generate new ones along with new and unforeseeable connections’ (Nora 1996 [1984]: 15). Here, I semiotically reframe Nora’s dichotomy lieu vs milieu, proposing an analytical approach that undo Nora’s binary definition and describe the polysemic nature of spaces. In this perspective, lieu and milieu de mémoire are not mutually exclusive, as they appear to be in Nora’s words, but are the results of the different ways in which we form the space–memory nexus – two modalities that discursively and culturally co-exist. Such a re-interpretation of the notion of lieu is actually a return to its philological root: the word lieu in lieu de mémoire does not stand for ‘place’, ‘space’ or ‘site’, but refers to the social, cultural and political dynamics that give an object or artefact a mnestic function. For this reason, lieux de mémoire are not only ‘museums, archives, cemeteries’, but also collections, festivals, anniversaries, treaties, private associations and so on (Nora 1996 [1984]: 6): physical places but also documents, commemorative circumstances, rituals. What makes a space a lieu de mémoire is not some intrinsic or ontological characteristic of the object, but rather the semiotic processes that give it shape materially, symbolically and functionally (Nora 1996 [1984]: 14), making the absent past present. As Nora says, lieux de mémoire are pure signs, which means that their nature is eminently semiotic. This notion of lieu de mémoire is not fully understandable unless we trace it back to Nora’s two conceptual sources: Frances Yates and Maurice Halbwachs. Nora took inspiration for the notion of lieu from the concept of locus, which Yates investigated in The Art of Memory (1966) by studying mnemonic techniques in Greek and Latin Antiquity and in the Middle Ages.1 Mnemonic techniques are part of the pre-printing media ecology, in which the scarcity of material means to exteriorise memory required more elaborate ways of memorising and recovering information on a cognitive and individual level: a locus is a place easily grasped by the memory, such as a house, an intercolumnar space, a corner, an arch, or the like. Images are forms, marks or 1 On mnemonic techniques in the Middle Ages, see also the earlier work by Paolo Rossi (1960) and the semiotic reading of mnemotechnics by Umberto Eco (1988; 2014 [2007]).

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simulacra (formae, notae, simulacra) of what we wish to remember. For instance, if we wish to recall the genus of a horse, of a lion, of an eagle, we must place their images on definite loci (Yates 1966: 6).

In Yates’s definition, loci are conceived spaces (Lefebvre 1991 [1974]) that work as a structure and a plan of expression for organising knowledge and information to be used in speeches. Hence, in Yates’s definition, ‘memory’ is not a discourse on, or a practice of the past but a cognitive competence that is used and exercised individually for the purpose of organising knowledge and information in the art of oratory. In order to deliver a speech, the orator imagines walking through the memorised place, following a path and thus transforming the paradigm (or … or, to be in a room or in the other) into a syntagma (and … and, the sequence and order of the speech), loci (places) into loqui (to speak). As Eco (1988) explained in one of his first semiotic works, which appeared in Italian in 1966 (but was only published in English more than twenty years later), mnemonic techniques are about the construction and the connection of a plan of expression – the organisation of loci – with a plan of content, that is, what is to be remembered and uttered in speech. Nora borrows this processual and constructive perspective from Yates; to study memory means to study the processes and rules by which we construct the mnestic function of an object, namely the relationship between an artefact and pieces of information we want to preserve, organise, recover and transmit. However, Nora does not focus on the individual and cognitive level (for example, the orator’s capacity), but on a more cultural and social level: how do societies remember a (supposedly) common past through cultural objects and artefacts made of different materials and semiotic substances? In this shift, a clear broadening of the very definition of locus occurs, which for Yates is mainly an architectural form, while for Nora it includes a vast array of – tangible and intangible – objects. Following Henri Lefebvre (1991 [1974]), we could interpret this transition as a shift from the representation of space in mnemonic techniques to the space of representation in collective memory: the spatialisation of memory is not the simple projection of the past onto a pre-existing physical space/object, but something that brings that very space into existence. In this conceptual shift, Nora looks at his second theoretical source: Halbwachs and the role of memory in collective identity-making. In this perspective, lieux de mémoire are epiphenomena of collective identities. However, while Halbwachs considers social groups (for example, the working class or religious groups), Nora aims at explaining the role of remembering and

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forgetting in the construction of a national identity (and, more specifically, French identity). Moreover, Halbwachs focuses on the milieux of memory as lived spaces in which people – by interacting with each other – agree or do not agree on a common past, whereas Nora focuses on lieux as artefacts that have the symbolic and material function of presenting and representing the common past of the nation as a political community. In the attempt to distinguish a historical from a sociological investigation of memory (that is, Halbwachs’s theory), Nora presents lieu and milieu binarily and as mutually exclusive: milieux no longer exist and are replaced by lieux as an effect of modernity. In other words, they are two mutually – and almost chronologically – exclusive systems of shaping the space-memory relationship. By limiting my scope to spaces in the strictest sense of the word, I depart from Nora’s position and argue that lieu and milieu of memory are two narrative modalities for shaping and articulating the space-memory nexus that are not mutually exclusive but actually co-exist. Indeed, space may be experienced as lieu and as milieu according to the socio-discursive practices and textual genre that form it locally and in any given moment. This implies that the very same space may assume the configuration and function of a milieu de mémoire in a given context and circumstance, and that of a lieu de mémoire in another context and circumstance. The configuration of a space as an institutionalised lieu de mémoire – like a former concentration camp, as we will see – can be re-shaped by putting memories into motion and undoing the ‘fixation of things’, which seems to be one of the fundamental semiotic operations that defines lieux de mémoire as such (as we will see further ahead). These possible mutual translations and transformations from lieu to milieu and vice versa are explored in greater depth in a work that preceded the first volume of Nora’s Les lieux de mémoire by just few years: Michel de Certeau’s L’invention du quotidien (1984 [1980]), where the notion of lieu (place) is defined against the concept of espace (space): At the outset, I shall make a distinction between space (espace) and place (lieu) that delimits a field. A place is the order (of whatever kind) in accord with which elements are distributed in relationships of coexistence. It thus excludes the possibility of two things being in the same location (place). The law of the ‘proper’ rules in the place: the elements taken into consideration are beside one another, each situated in its own ‘proper’ and distinct location, a location it defines. A place is thus an instantaneous configuration of positions. It implies an indication of stability.

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A space exists when one takes into consideration vectors of direction, velocities, and time variables. Thus space is composed of intersections of mobile elements. It is in a sense actuated by the ensemble of movements deployed within it. Space occurs as the effect produced by the operations that orient it, situate it, temporalise it, and make it function in a polyvalent unity of conflictual programs or contractual proximities (de Certeau 1984 [1980]: 117).

Although de Certeau’s dichotomy espace–lieu and Nora’s couple milieu–lieu are part of two different conceptual frameworks, there is a very evident similarity. In Nora’s terms, lieux ‘immortalise death’, that is, they are ‘no longer quite alive but not yet entirely dead, like shells left on the shore when the sea of living memory has receded’ (Nora 1996 [1984]: 15), whereas in de Certeau’s words a lieu is ‘a determination through objects that are ultimately reducible to the being-there something of dead, the law of a “place” (from the pebble to the cadaver, an inert body always seems, in the West, to find a place and give it the appearance of a tomb)’ (de Certeau 1984 [1980]: 118). It is in the idea of stability, linked to the fixation of a ‘state of things’ and even of ‘death’ as the final closing phase of a process, that the two ideas of lieu echo each other. Likewise, milieu and espace share some – although vaguer – characteristics. Nora links milieu to orality and peasant culture, which seems to connote mobility, dynamicity and connection, perhaps also in the nostalgic sense of an old lost world. Similarly, de Certeau’s ‘space’ is clearly and intrinsically constructed by movements and actions within it. However, unlike Nora, de Certeau argues that place and space are two co-existent modalities for understanding spatiality. What explains the relationship between space and place are stories that ‘carry out a labor that constantly transforms places into spaces or spaces into places’, thus organising the interaction between their changing relationships (de Certeau 1984 [1980]: 118). Hence, from a semiotic perspective, to investigate the place and space of memory means to understand the role of stories in the formation and interconnection of spatiality and temporality. How do stories spatialise memory or, in de Certeau’s words, ‘carry out a labor that constantly transforms places into spaces or spaces into places’ where the past is somehow inscribed? This is the central question I will address in this chapter, drawing in particular on a pivotal semiotic concept: narrativity. This will allow us to unpack the semiotic force of stories in shaping the relationship between spatiality and memory.

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The Logic of Location and the Logic of Action If we reinterpret Nora’s milieu vs lieu dichotomy using de Certeau’s theory, it reflects two semiotic models of spatiality: the spatiality of position (lieu) and the spatiality of situation (milieu; on the distinction between these two modalities see Cavicchioli 2002). The first model describes the relationship between elements whose position and mutual relationship is fixed, mainly in an objectivising modality, following a logic of location; the second is about ‘programs’, in de Certeau’s words, namely the relationship between a subject that moves within a space and thus becomes the pivot of its representation, following a logic of action. I argue that the difference between milieu and lieu as two different narrative configurations in the shaping of the memory-space nexus lies in these two different principles of organisation and formation of spatiality. Milieu draws on a logic of action and produces a spatiality of situation. In other words, it is about the movement of a subject that observes and experiences the space around him/her. Pragmatically and perceptively speaking, space is formed and oriented around the subject’s body schema (for example, left/right, up/down), and described and experienced through it; spatiality is organised according to the aims of the subject, the relationship between the subject and the different elements present in the space, and the way these elements are correlated by an action, on indexical, cognitive and affective levels. The representation and organisation of space (and time) is relative to the position of individual subjects, and it is coloured by their judgements, feelings and emotions. Lieu is the result of removing any traces of a subjective observer from the representation of space. This does not mean that the representation lacks a point of view but that such a point of view is somehow hidden and presented as natural and objective. This is the case of planispheres that are oriented on the north–south axis, which project a global schema. The orientation north-south does not come from the absence of a point of view but is the result of the naturalisation of a historically constructed vision of the globe in the representation; such a vision is somehow hidden and taken-for-granted, transmitting a sense of objectivation. In the first modality, the representation of the space is subject-oriented: we use relative references – because they are correlated to the changing position of the subject – such as ‘here’ and ‘there’, ‘behind’ and ‘ahead’ or – when talking about temporality – ‘yesterday’, ‘today’ and ‘tomorrow’. In the second modality, we use absolute references: toponyms, geographical coordinates or – when talking about temporality – chrononyms (for example,

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names of days, eras, etc.) and hemeronyms (names of events linked to dates, such as 9/11; see Calabrese 2013). These two ways of constructing space are mutually translatable. If I use a map in order to reach a place, I orient it in relation to my position, translating the global orientation of the cardinal points into the local orientation of my body: north/south/east/west is thus transformed into ahead/behind/left/ right. This allows me to move from a logic of location (where something is) to a logic of action (where I am and where I want to go): from place to space, from an object-centred representation or practice to a subject-centred representation or practice. According to Nora, the modern world deprives memory of its social environment – its milieu – and asks for a new configuration in the spatialisation of the past that is found in the lieu de mémoire as a system of absolute reference that frames the representation within a logic of location and a spatiality of position. But how is this semiotic work performed, and by whom? Who holds the power and knowledge to pluck out events from history, as Nora puts it, to stop time and fix things in a space, setting an absolute system of reference within a logic of location? Again, de Certeau offers good examples of this process as well as some answers to these questions. In doing so, he takes into account – better than Nora does – the mutual translatability between place and space, spatiality of position and of situation, the logic of location and the logic of action: In the traditional language of court proceedings, magistrates formerly ‘visited the scene of the case at issue’ in order to ‘hear’ the contradictory statements (dits) made by the parties to a dispute concerning debatable boundaries …. They combined together (the work of a scribe collating variants) the opposing stories of the parties involved: ‘Mr. Mulatier declares that his grandfather planted this apple tree on the edge of his field … Jeanpierre reminds us that Mr. Bouvet maintains a dung heap on a piece of land of which he is supposed to be the joint owner with his brother Andre …’. Genealogies of places, legends about territories. Like a critical edition, the judge’s narration reconciles these versions. The narration is ‘established’ on the basis of ‘primary’ stories (those of Mr. Mulatier, Jeanpierre, and so many others), stories that already have the function of spatial legislation since they determine rights and divide up lands by ‘acts’ or discourses about actions (planting a tree, maintaining a dungheap, etc.). These ‘operations of marking out boundaries,’ consisting in narrative contracts

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and compilations of stories, are composed of fragments drawn from earlier stories and fitted together in makeshift fashion (bricolés) (de Certeau 1984 [1980]: 117).

In his definition of what a place is and how it is produced, de Certeau stresses the role of a strong regulatory element; as this French theorist emphasises, a lieu is the result of a ‘law’ that localises and fixes the position of every element – a ‘law of the proper’. He takes the juridical and legal sphere as an example to demonstrate how a type of lieu can be exemplified.2 The judge collects the different stories linked to the ‘scene of the case’ in order to merge and reconcile them and thus fix the story that defines its ‘truthful’ configuration, its boundary and the location and identity of every element. The version of the story that the judge has produced will therefore shape, symbolically but also materially, the very nature and meaning of the space: for instance, through the judge’s authorisation to construct dividing fences. In sum, the story elaborated by the judge holds a ‘veridictory’ force – in the sense that it is the truth, at least at a legal level – but also a performative and normative force, because it brings about juridical and social effects: it becomes the law of the place, to use de Certeau’s definition again. What happens in the specific case of memory? What social or political actor has the power to transform a space into a lieu de mémoire? And how does such an actor fix a story that regulates its meanings? To answer these questions, we need to turn our attention to stories and their semiotic labour, that is, the formative power of a narrative over spaces and their connection to memory. In what follows, I will argue that the concept of narrativity allows us to unpack this issue and that it contributes to a better understanding of the relationship between space and memory.

Narrativity In order to introduce the concept of narrativity, let us start from some canonical examples. If we notice a footprint in the ground and this footprint interests us for some reason, we might decide to reconstruct its possible story. It may be a mark left by a person, whose identity, trajectory, intention and aim we will try to infer and reconstruct. This is also the modality of forensics. The investigator aims at identifying what story explains a given 2 The English edition uses the word ‘scene’, whereas de Certeau keeps using the French lieu: according to de Certeau, the way a judge decides over the status of a space thus produces a lieu.

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state of things: what is the past event that links and shapes them as a whole configuration of meaning? What is the object of the crime? Who did it and to whom? If we read these processes from a narratological perspective, the investigator first identifies a general narrative frame that may fit and explain the event, which implies a certain number of mutually related roles, which Algirdas Julien Greimas calls ‘actants’ (as the word suggests, actants are the elements that co-constitute an action). For instance, in the case of a murder with robbery, these roles may be: the person who carries out the action (the subject) and something of value (the object at stake in the action) to be taken from another person (the anti-subject). After having identified a general frame with different actantial roles, the investigator reconstructs the story by coupling such general narrative roles with the ‘real’ persons involved in the event, which Greimas calls ‘thematic roles’: the killer, the victim, the object at stake. Without being professional investigators, we generally understand the world in terms of ‘stories’, which at a deeper and more basic level are frames interconnecting different roles that co-constitute actions. Indeed, when Greimas talks about ‘narrativity’ (Greimas and Courtés 1982 [1979]: /narrativity/; Greimas 1987 [1969]), he considers it the organising principle of how human beings make sense of the world and their experiences in it, regardless of the semiotic substance involved (for example, words, images, sounds, rituals, daily behaviours …). Thus, narrativity is not a specific discursive genre (for example, fictional tales) or practice, but a deep anthropological principle according to which human beings understand and organise the world in terms of chains of actions. Beyond this more general and epistemological assumption, what is at stake here is the methodological relevance of the notion of narrativity for shedding light on the role of space in memory-making. Drawing on Greimas’s model, we could say that a space may have different narrative functions; it can be the background of an action (what Greimas calls ‘spatialisation’ as part of the discursive level in his model), but at a certain level it can also represent the very object (what Greimas calls ‘object of value’, according to its actantial model) of the process. These two narrative functions – background and object – can even co-exist in the same process and narration. For instance, in the case of the detective story, we have two distinctive and connected levels. On one hand, we have the story of the crime, in which the scene represents the final stage of the criminal event, its background. On the other, we have the story of the investigation; from this point of view the crime scene may emerge as an object of the narration – what the investigator

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is looking for – capable of hiding from or revealing the truth about what happened. As we know from detective stories, the investigator tries to find out and preserve the crime scene and to prevent other people from gaining access to it; delimited, marked out and protected, the space assumes an identity of its own and is therefore a real ‘object’ that the investigator fixes, freezes and – in some way – produces and locates in order to gain information from it. Reading this example through de Certeau’s model and the lens of narrativity, the crime scene may fulfil different narrative functions even within the same story, being shaped as both a lieu – the object at stake in the process and in the narration, as in the case of the investigation – and a milieu, the background of an action – its ‘environment’, as in the case of the criminal action per se. But what happens in the specific case of memory? What social or political actor has the power to transform a space into a lieu, that is, into the very object at stake in the narration? In Greimas’s narrative theory and actantial model, the task of setting values in a story or practice and to fix meanings and interpretations of what happens or may happen, is assigned to the so-called ‘addresser’. The addresser can assume different forms: a community, a political authority (for example the king in the classical Proppian narratological model [Propp 1928], one of the sources of inspiration for Greimas’s theory of narrativity), a society, the public, a figure of knowledge such as a historian or a witness, a deity, and so on. The addresser in some way pushes another actor (for example, the hero, again in the fairy tales analysed by Propp) to carry out an action, determining what is at stake in it. Thus, in a story as well as in a social practice (like a ritual), addressers fix values and indicate objects that are at stake in the actions. The shaping of spatiality in terms of a lieu de mémoire implies the presence of an addresser who – like the judge in de Certeau’s example – discerns, decides and marks the limits of what is remembered and what is not, what is proper to the place and what is not, which stories are coupled with the space and which are excluded temporarily or permanently, or have no legitimate power over it. In Nora’s work, and in the entanglement between knowledge and power, the addresser is the nation-state, with its various possible delegates – including figures of knowledge such as the historian, the witness, or f igures with a recognised authority – who can set up a dominant story by using specific discursive genres and linguistic acts. However, contrary to Nora, I argue that the transformation of spatiality into a lieu does not exclude practices and elements that locally allow experiencing a space as a milieu. Practices and narratives may dynamise and construct

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spatiality in different ways; they can follow established itineraries, paths and rituals (like following a particular street on a map so as to reach a place), but they can also propose new narratives, new practices and new paths, thus destabilising and disrupting the fixed and established order. In the last section we will see how this works in practice, focusing on a lieu de mémoire linked to the Holocaust and the resistance to Nazism-Fascism.

The Former Camp of Fossoli: a Methodological Case In this section I will present an exemplary case study, and in doing so I will adopt a methodological approach: to describe the possible operational steps for an analysis of the space–memory nexus as a result of the narrative roles that spatiality plays in processes of remembering and forgetting.3 I have chosen Fossoli because of its extremely rich and multilayered history, and because it covers a very emblematic position in twentieth-century Italy: from 1942, when it was created, to 1970, when it was closed, the camp was used for different purposes, mainly related to forced population displacements during and after the war. It therefore reflects the social, historical and political conditions of Italy in those decades. Changes in the use and organisation of the space created a stratification of architectural remains and stories (see on this Herr 2016; Luppi and Tamassia 2017; Ugolini and Delizia 2017; Cassani Simonetti, Mira and Salerno 2021); during subsequent memorialisation processes, these have been removed or magnified, sidelined or emphasised according to different contexts, circumstances and frames. This makes Fossoli camp an exemplary case study, capable of showing the different ways in which memory is spatialised. The camp is today considered as a lieu de mémoire, in Nora’s term, in particular with reference to the Holocaust and the anti-Fascist struggle of the Italian Resistance. However, as I will demonstrate, this does not exclude other narrative configurations and meanings that co-exist, consistently or in tension, with Fossoli as a lieu de mémoire for remembering the Holocaust and the Resistance. The Royal Italian Army built the camp during the Second World War, under Fascist rule. Its original function was that of a prisoner-of-war camp 3 For a more complete discussion of the memory of Fossoli camp from a semiotic standpoint, focused more on the object and the result of this analysis, see Salerno (2021b). Here, I will focus mainly on the way Fossoli emerges as a lieu de mémoire over the decades, that is, on the figure of the addresser and on the way meanings and narratives are somehow fixed by such narrative figures. I will also demonstrate that the shaping of Fossoli as a lieu de mémoire does not exclude other possible configurations.

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for soldiers of the British and Commonwealth armies who had been arrested by the Axis powers. Fossoli, a hamlet located in the province of Modena (Northern Italy), was chosen for its strategic position and socio-urban characteristics: it was a rural area, far from the most important urban areas but located in the middle of the Po Valley, close to the well-connected railway station of Carpi. This is also the reason behind its tragic future uses. After the armistice with the Allies on 8 September 1943, Italy was divided into two areas and a civil war started; the north fell to the Fascist forces of the Italian Social Republic, a Nazi puppet state, whereas the Kingdom of Italy in the south came under the formal rule of King Victor Emmanuel III. In this new geopolitical context, Fossoli – under the Fascist Social Republic – was converted into a national camp for Jews and political prisoners. In nine months’ time, from December 1943 to August 1944, a third (2,840 persons) of the Jews that were deported from Italy to death camps, as well as 2,700 political opponents, passed through Fossoli. In 1944, because of the gradual advancement of the Allies and the Italian resistance movement, Fossoli was transformed into a camp for civilians and for people to be deported as forced labourers in the German military industry. After the end of the war, from 1945 to 1947, the Allies and the newly founded Italian Republic used the camp as a prison and as a centre for ‘undesired people’ (Fascists, foreigners and displaced persons). From 1947 to 1952, the camp became known as ‘Nomadelfia’, a Catholic community founded by a historical religious figure – the priest Zeno Saltini – with the aim of taking care of orphans (on this see, in particular, Herr 2016). In 1954 the camp was transformed into one of the places in Italy that hosted refugees of Italian origin leaving Istria and Dalmatia following the London Memorandum, which stipulated that these areas should pass to the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. 4 Although the camp – which was renamed Villaggio San Marco – was meant to be temporary, the last refugees left only in 1970. This function represented its main and most durable use, namely as a place to contain and govern population flows caused by the Second World War. In my analysis of the camp and of the different meanings it acquired, I will adopt a multiscalar approach: I will trace a broader and general map of the 4 The history of Fossoli is linked to the ‘foibe massacres’ of the Second World War (see Franzinetti 2006). Foibe are deep natural sinkholes, typical of the Istrian peninsula. During the war, Yugoslav partisans used to throw ‘enemies’ (often still alive) into these deep chasms, targeting the Italian population in particular. The word ‘foibe’ thus came to indicate the persecution and killing of Italians in Istria and Dalmatia, and it was linked to the displacement of Italians living in the area.

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narratives of and discourses about Fossoli in the media, zooming in on the narrative role that the camp plays in such narratives and discourses. Next, I will describe how such narratives – and their interconnections – construct the memory–space nexus in the case of Fossoli. Tracking /Fossoli/ as a Signifier Where, when, how and for what reason did Fossoli appear in the public discourse? In order to answer these questions, I have used digital and analogue archives, in particular the digital archives of Corriere della Sera, La Stampa, L’Unità and La Repubblica (the main Italian newspapers in terms of daily circulation during the four decades under examination). Although as regards the newspaper reports I focused on the period from 1970 – the date of the closure – to 2010, I also traced the general trend in the use of the word /Fossoli/ from 1940 to 2020, using computational tools such as Google Ngram and Google Trends. Google Ngram shows a gradual increase in the mentions of the word ‘Fossoli’ from 1940 to the mid-1990s, with a peak in 1974. However, the year in which it recurred most frequently was 1997, with a second peak in the early 2000s. My first hypothesis is that these peaks correspond to what we may consider memorial turning points at a local, national and supranational level. At a local and national level, the president of the Italian republic inaugurated the Museum-Monument to the Political and Racial Deportee in Carpi in late 1973. Carpi hosts this museum because of the presence on its territory of the former concentration camp, which had then just been abandoned, following the departure of the refugees from Istria and Dalmatia. The other two peaks can be explained by the more general dynamics of Holocaust commemoration. As Robert Gordon (2012) explains, 1997 and 2001 represent two turning points in the memory of the Holocaust, the former because of the exceptional cultural production on the Holocaust (think of the release of La vita è bella by Roberto Benigni), the latter because Holocaust Remembrance Day was made an official holiday in Italy. Fossoli being the main concentration camp in Italy (along with the Risiera di San Sabba in Trieste), its visibility was very much augmented by these events. Google Trends, which makes it possible to track the frequency and dynamics of a term as well as the queries used to search for a term after 2004, clearly shows that the peaks of queries are always in January and April, corresponding with two yearly commemorative dates: Holocaust Remembrance Day (27 January) and Liberation Day (25 April). However, there are two exceptions: February 2009 also had a peak, probably due to

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10 February, the National Memorial Day of the Exiles and of the Foibe, which was established in the early 2000s, as did November 2013, because of a fire that broke out in a factory located in the hamlet (there was no connection with the camp). With the exception of this last case, the queries and the topics linked to these dates are predominantly connected to the camp. This shows how the use of the word /Fossoli/ changed over the decades, and that it was used not simply as a toponym but also as a metonymy: the name of this hamlet stands both for a part of the hamlet (the camp) and – depending on the different contexts and circumstances of use in discourse – for an event, or a group of events, that took place there. The study of newspapers yields similar results. Overall, of the 450 newspaper reports that I collected and analysed, some only mention Fossoli, while others deal extensively with its history. For the 1970s and 1980s, I collected and analysed 59 newspaper reports (none from La Repubblica) per decade; for the 1990s I gathered 86 newspaper reports, and 250 newspaper reports for the 2000s. If we compare timing, topics and circumstances concerning Fossoli during the 1970s and 1980s, we notice that these are extremely varied, irregular and heterogeneous: the reports rarely appeared on the same day in all the newspapers examined. It is not until the 1990s and 2000s that coverage of Fossoli gradually became routinised and synchronised, following the institutional calendar. The study of newspapers gives us the possibility to trace the discursive and cultural production around the camp. Thus, reviews of movies, shows, TV programmes, books and cultural activities in general allow us to clearly see and map the different discursive domains and social arenas within which the memory of Fossoli is elaborated. Fossoli as a Lieu and a Milieu In the 1970s, newspaper reports mentioned Fossoli mainly in relation to the trials of Nazis in West Germany (in particular of Friedrich Boßhammer), on the occasion of the inauguration of the Museum-Monument to the Political and Racial Deportee (1973) and of the broadcast of the American TV series Holocaust (1979). Furthermore, there were mainly local references during the commemorations of prominent figures from the Resistance (for example, reports on the Lombard partisan Leopoldo Gasparotto by the Milanese Corriere della Sera) and of the deportations (especially in La Stampa, the main newspaper of Piedmont, a region particularly affected by the deportation of its Jewish population, like that from the village of Saluzzo).

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There is a lack of synchronicity among the newspapers, with commemorative reports narrating the date of birth, death or deportation of partisans and Jews on a local scale but without offering a more general, national framework. The only two events that bring the camp’s memory to the fore on a more national scale –the inauguration of the Museum-Monument and the broadcast of Holocaust – still support the hypothesis that Fossoli is at this point not yet a lieu de mémoire. Like the German trials, the TV series is still a supranational circumstance, in the sense that it helps to shed light on the existence of an Italian concentration camp, but remains focused on the vicissitudes of those who passed through it. The broadcast of the TV series is the only occasion on which the newspapers examined mention the camp on the same day. Although the Museum-Monument refers to the camp, its aim in this dynamic is almost ‘reparative’, assuming the function of a place where to remember the deportations. The project for the Museum-Monument was officially presented in 1962 and implemented in 1963, while the camp was still functional as a village and refugee camp for Italians from Istria and Dalmatia; it was inaugurated ten years later, only a few years after the refugees had left the camp. Indeed, during the inauguration, the camp was defined as a wound and as a place of shame, not only for the Holocaust but also for the complicated history of the eastern border of Italy, which was recalled through the physical presence and the still evident traces of the refugees. In the heroic Resistance framework of the 1970s, the Museum-Monument almost replaced the camp as a lieu that could symbolise and embody the memory of the deportations. Hence, the camp’s narrative role in the media in the 1970s was mainly that of background to something else, both figuratively and discursively speaking. In other words, it was not the real object of the narration, which in some circumstances was assigned to the new Museum-Monument. Furthermore, a common framework of memory was still lacking; as the non-synchronicity of the newspaper reports demonstrates (except on the occasion of the broadcast of Holocaust), the nation did not look at Fossoli as a political community (not even when the president of the republic inaugurated the Museum-Monument), but in accordance with local dynamics and circumstances. Hence, the camp was not the object at stake in discourse and narration, but primarily the background – sometimes transitory and occasional – of a narration, whose focus was always on something else: the life of a partisan, the deportation of a prominent figure or of an entire local community, the Museum-Monument as a new lieu de mémoire, the TV series, the legal vicissitudes of perpetrators and survivors/witnesses.

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This dynamic started to change in the 1980s; despite the fading public memory of the camp, the process of its institutionalisation gradually began to gain ground. Thus, a national law of 1984 resulted in the camp becoming the property of the municipality of Carpi, in view of the construction of a Museum-Monument and a public remembrance park. In 1989, a number of public figures – including Primo Levi’s family, Norberto Bobbio and Giorgio Bassani – mobilised in order to preserve the camp’s ‘authentic aspect’, signing an appeal entitled ‘Salvate Fossoli, tragico documento’ (Save Fossoli, a tragic document), published in La Stampa on 8 August. Three semiotic aspects can be identified in the appeal, and in the newspaper article that announced it: the figure of the addresser, the process of naming and the discussion around the camp’s authentic aspect or meaning. In first instance, public figures from civic society spoke in their capacity of figures of knowledge (for example, Norberto Bobbio, Giorgio Bassani), witnesses or witnesses’ relatives (Primo Levi’s family), and prominent figures from Italian-Jewish communities addressing the institutional sphere. Thus, in the 1989 appeal, I found the element that I believe is central to the constitution of a lieu de mémoire: an addresser. Like the judge in de Certeau’s example, the addresser is able to mark out the boundaries of the place; to determine its defining narratives by discerning what is true and false, what is authentic and not authentic (a key term in the appeal), what belongs to the place and what does not, and where it should be. During the 1990s, institutional figures often acted as addresser during institutional visits to Carpi and to the camp. Such visits reveal the long process of definition and gradual construction of Fossoli as a lieu de mémoire. Suffice to think of the visit of President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro in 1993, in a moment of deep institutional crisis. In his discourse, the president evoked the image of the partisans in captivity in the camp barracks, envisioning a future after the war: a new, united and refounded nation, after the division of the country into two parts. Secondly, the word /Fossoli/ indicates the camp as such; it linguistically assumes a succinct and concise name and signifier. This process of naming is essential in that it allows the camp to gain a defined narrative identity as actor and object, which is at stake in stories and history. With a few exceptions, when the signifier /Fossoli/ appears in the examined newspapers, it always stands for the camp, even if the word ‘camp’ is not present. The third semiotic aspect that emerged from the 1989 appeal is the issue of the camp’s ‘authentic aspect’, that is, what is at its core, what it symbolises, witnesses and remembers (and what it does not remember). The historian Enzo Collotti offered a very clear and significant definition of Fossoli and

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its ‘authentic aspect’ as a lieu de mémoire on 27 January 2002, on the occasion of Holocaust Remembrance Day (instituted by law and added to the Republican calendar in 2000): The memory of Fossoli is bound to the political and racial deportation … and in its last phase also to the deportation of those who were raided to be sent to work as forced labour for the Reich. It is bound to the memory of the German occupation, but also to the complicity in this of the RSI. After the Liberation …, the Fossoli camp was used for emergency situations (the Istrian-Dalmatian refugees, the Nomadelfia community), contributing, on the one hand, to keeping the relationship with the area alive, while, on the other, destroying most of the original structures, making current recovery work more difficult.5

Collotti describes the forty-year history of Fossoli, but stresses that its ‘original structures’, the meaning and history that are important to transmit (its ‘authentic aspect’, to quote the 1989 document), are linked to what happened in the camp from 1943 to 1945. The different uses of Fossoli after those years ‘destroyed’ – to use Collotti’s exact word – what is ‘original’ and most important in the transmission of memory, making its recovery more difficult. In so doing, and aligned with a broader institutional effort, Collotti marked out temporal, spatial and narrative boundaries of a lieu de mémoire. Collotti ‘emphasises one layer only, one point in the entire life cycle of a given location’ (Arrigoni and Galani 2019: 164), which is consistent with Nora’s concept of lieu de mémoire and with the way spatiality as such is formed. Although the historian’s words sound purely descriptive, they actually have a performative power, as they fix a selection of the events that took place in the camp and establish a hierarchy of importance: what matters most for the camp’s collective memory and therefore, in de Certeau’s term, becomes ‘the law of the place’. This reflects what I called a spatiality of position and a logic of location, namely to fix where a certain portion of territory is and should be, spatially but also temporally – in the case of Fossoli, the years between 1943 and 1944. In 2004, a barracks was reconstructed to look like it did in the 1940s. If we read this architectural intervention through Collotti’s lens, we see how this modification implements the idea of ‘authenticity’ and ‘original meaning’ of the place as connected to the short – but historically and symbolically 5

‘Dare futuro alla storia: l’esempio di Fossoli’, L’Unità, p. 29, 20 January 2002.

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most significant – period in which it served as a concentration camp for Jews and political opponents. From a cultural semiotics point of view, the discursive articulation between different practices and socio-cultural domains (that is, historiography, literature, architecture and the legal, political and institutional spheres) is exactly what forms spatiality and temporality – the nexus between space and memory. Nevertheless, no configuration is definitive. In 2004, the inclusion in the Republican calendar of the National Memorial Day for Exiles and Victims of the Foibe, and its first celebration in 2005, again changed this semiotic dynamic and introduced new elements in the memory of Fossoli. In the 2000s, the camp became a place of memory on three commemorative days each year: 27 January, 10 February and 25 April.6 On each of these dates, different layers and different narratives are activated, while others are sidelined: the memory of the deportation of Jews on 27 January, the memory of the foibe and anti-communism on 10 February, and the memory of Italian Resistance and anti-Fascism on 25 April. In this sense, the polysemic and multilayered nature of the place is locally modulated according to the circumstances that are politically determined and institutionalised by the national calendar. Thus, on each occasion, some narratives are temporarily sidelined while others are magnified; some elements are silenced while others gain centrality in a narrative management of history in public memory that also reflects – in particular in the relationship between 10 February and 25 April – memories that are divided along the lines of different political constituencies. However, the gradual formation of Fossoli as a lieu de mémoire in the 1990s and 2000s does not exclude the narration of Fossoli as a milieu de mémoire, in which the logic of action and the spatiality of situation predominate over the logic of location and the spatiality of position. This is particularly evident if we consider the layers in the former camp’s history, which are somehow obstructed and sidelined by the establishment of Fossoli as a lieu de mémoire of the Holocaust and/or of the Resistance. The periods in which Fossoli hosted the Catholic community of Nomadelfia, or acted as a war camp, emerge particularly in biographical or autobiographical narrations: the life and death of Don Zeno Saltini and the stories of the prisoners of war are some of the circumstances in which other layers of Fossoli’s history gain public attention, although in a weaker and more sporadic way. In these 6 See Salerno (2021a) on commemorative dates as circumstances that filter and shape the narrative of Fossoli.

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narratives, the role of Fossoli is that of a transitory setting. This also keeps happening with events linked to the Resistance and to the Holocaust; if we talk about Fossoli during the commemoration of Leopoldo Gasparotto or specific local deportations, as in the case of the Roman neighbourhood of Quadraro, it is very likely that the camp will appear as the background to the lives and deaths of heroes and victims. Over the last decades, another practice explicitly framed Fossoli as a milieu, that is, as a space with vectors of direction, velocities and time variables, and did so in a logic of action and spatiality of situation: school visits. This relatively new pedagogical practice consists in organising trips for students that allow them to follow the traces and discover the paths of the deportations. If, for the victims, this was a path towards death, for students this experience is part of an educational itinerary – the transition to the status of young adult. As in the example of the forensic scene that I offered earlier on, the camp appears during these school visits in its double nature: as an object of value, which gives students knowledge and experience allowing them to grow as citizens and human beings; and as the setting of a lived experience with a spatial (the students’ trip) and temporal direction and orientation (the process that transforms adolescents into young adults and citizens). We have, then, a situation and an action, a location and a position, a place and a space, which are connected within the same process and narrative. In other words, something that shows how places of memory articulate different meanings and different practices that are not mutually exclusive, as in Nora’s definition, but that are mutually co-existent.

Conclusion The example of Fossoli has allowed me to analyse the long and complex processes through which a given space can be formed as a milieu and a lieu de mémoire. I have argued that the dichotomic and mutually exclusive way in which Nora frames the notion of lieu is at odds with the spatialisation of memory as it discursively emerges in public memory and as captured in media. Mapping and tracking the use of the signifier /Fossoli/ makes it possible to appreciate the cultural production around the camp. The naming of the camp – which went from ‘campo di Fossoli’ to simply ‘Fossoli’ – epitomises the gradual construction of a shared and widely recognisable identity of the camp in public discourse: the addresser figure, who marks the spatial and temporal characteristics of the camp and triggers the construction of the

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camp as a national lieu de mémoire, defining its meanings and its authenticity as contained in the layer linked to the Holocaust and the resistance. The other layers are mainly experienced within other narratives, which convey the camp as a setting of the stories. From a methodological perspective, it is important to stress that Fossoli is not uniquely a lieu de mémoire, but that it is experienced according to different modalities within the local discursive practice at play in a given moment, which assigned it a certain narrative role. In this sense, the concept of narrativity methodologically helps us to better understand how this happens. We have also seen that, in order to understand these processes, we must analyse the relationship with the interlocking semiotic systems (media, legal and institutional discourse, historiography, etc.) that culturally interact with each other. For instance, the addresser is an abstract narrative function that, as such, can appear in a movie or a novel, in a biography, in historiographical discourse, in a legal text or in an architectural practice concerning Fossoli. As it is a principle that organises all discourses, regardless of the substances and genres used, narrativity – and its methodological implementation – functions as a basis for mutual translation and comparison. This allows us to implement a cultural semiotics perspective that is capable of seeing how meanings emerge from the interlocking of different narratives and discursive practices, genres and media, each assigning a different narrative role, a different function and, ultimately, different forms and meanings to the place.

Works Cited Arrigoni, G. and Galani, A. 2019 ‘From Place-Memories to Active Citizenship: The Potential of Geotagged User-Generated Content for Memory Scholarship’, in D. Drozdzewski and C. Birdsall (eds), Doing Memory Research. New Methods and Approaches, Cham, Palgrave, pp. 145–67. Calabrese, L. 2013 L’évènement en discours: presse et mémoire sociale, Louvain-laNeuve, L’Harmattan-Academia. Cassani Simonetti, M., Mira, R. and Salerno, D. (eds) 2021 The Heritage of a Transit Camp. Fossoli: History, Memory, Aesthetics, Bern, Peter Lang. Cavicchioli, S. 2002 ‘Spazialità e semiotica: percorsi per una mappa’, in S. Cavicchioli, I sensi, lo spazio, gli umori e altri saggi, Milan, Bompiani, pp. 151–94. de Certeau, M. 1984 [1980] The Practice of Everyday Life, Berkeley, University of California Press.

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Eco, U. 1979 The Role of the Reader. Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts, Bloomington, Indiana University Press. Eco, U. 1988 ‘An Ars Oblivionalis? Forget it!’, Publication of the Modern Language Association, 103 (3), pp. 254–61. Eco, U. 2014 [2007] From the Tree to the Labyrinth, Cambridge, Harvard University Press. Franzinetti, G. 2006 ‘The Rediscovery of the Istrian Foibe’, JGKS, History and Culture of South Eastern Europe, 8, pp. 85–98. Gordon, R. 2012 The Holocaust in Italian Culture, 1944–2010, Stanford, Stanford University Press. Greimas, A. J. 1983 [1966] Structural Semantics. An Attempt at a Method, Bloomington, Indiana University Press. Greimas, A. J. 1987 [1973] ‘Elements of a Narrative Grammar’; ‘Actants, Actors, and Figures’, in A. J. Greimas, On Meaning: Selected Writings in Semiotic Theory, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, pp. 63–83; pp. 106–20. Greimas, A. J. and Courtés, J. 1982 [1979] Semiotics and Language. An Analytical Dictionary, Bloomington, Indiana University Press. Halbwachs, M. 1980 [1950] The Collective Memory, New York, Harper & Row. Herr, A. 2016 The Holocaust and Compensated Compliance in Italy. Fossoli di Carpi 1942–1952, Cham, Palgrave. Isnenghi, M. (ed.) 1996–1997 I luoghi della memoria, Bari and Rome, Laterza. Lefebvre, H. 1991 [1974] The Production of Space, Malden, MA, Blackwell. Luppi, M. and Tamassia, P. (eds) 2017 Il Museo Monumento al Deportato politico e razziale di Carpi, Bologna, Bononia University Press. Nora, P. 1996 [1984] Realms of Memory. The Construction of the French Past, New York, Columbia University Press. Nora, P. 1996 ‘From Lieux de mémoire to Realms of memory. Preface to the English language edition’, in P. Nora, pp. xv–xxiv. Propp, V. 1968 [1928] Morphology of the Folktale, Austin, University of Texas Press. Rossi, P. 1960 Clavis universalis. Arti della memoria e logica combinatoria da Lullo a Leibniz, Milan-Naples, R. Ricciardi. Salerno, D. 2021a ‘A Semiotic Theory of Memory: Between Movement and Form’, Semiotica, 241, pp. 87–119. Salerno, D. 2021b ‘The Afterlife of Fossoli’, in M. Cassani Simonetti, R. Mira and D. Salerno, D. (eds), The Heritage of a Transit Camp. Fossoli: History, Memory, Aesthetics, Bern, Peter Lang, pp. 245–64. Ugolini, A. and Delizia, F. (eds) 2017 Strappati all’oblio. Strategie per la conservazione di un luogo di memoria del secondo Novecento: l’ex Campo di Fossoli, Florence, Altralinea Edizioni. Yates, F. 1966 The Art of Memory, New York, Routledge and Kegan Paul.

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About the Author Daniele Salerno was Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellow (2019-2022) at Utrecht University, a member of the Utrecht Forum for Memory Studies and an associate member of the ERC project ‘Remembering Activism: The Cultural Memory of Protest in Europe’ (led by Prof. Ann Rigney). He holds a PhD in Semiotic Studies from the University of Bologna. He was a post-doctoral research fellow at the Umberto Eco International Centre for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and at the Department of Philosophy and Communication at University of Bologna.

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Interpretation and Use of Memory How Practices Can Change the Meanings of Monuments Mario Panico Abstract Every monument is designed with a specific meaning that seeks to define a system of values (institutional purposes, political reason, cultural self-celebration). In this chapter I will investigate how empirical users may choose either to conform to that ideological proposal or to reinvent it through multifaceted practices. Theoretically based on the ideas of the Model Reader and of interpretation and use as proposed by Umberto Eco, this essay proposes to consider the ways in which the ideal subject and the empirical subject can interpret and use the space differently. In particular through the analysis of two case studies related to the memory of Italy’s colonial past, I demonstrate how bottom-up protests and practices trigger a resemantisation and stratification of the space of monuments. Keywords: Model Reader; Interpretation; Umberto Eco; Semiotics; Monument; Practices.

Introduction (or Frozen Memories) These pages are devoted to the study of protest practices in relation to two monuments that represent figures tied to the Italian colonialist past, thereby affirming that they are worthy of being remembered. Drawing from Umberto Eco’s semiotic theory of textual analysis, the general aim of this chapter is to investigate forms of resemantisation of these monuments: actions of meaning and memory reversal by subjects that seek to undermine the celebrative representations otherwise ‘cast in stone’, which conceal Fascist Italy’s troubling past in Africa.

Demaria, Cristina and Patrizia Violi (eds), Reading Memory Sites through Signs: Hiding into Landscape. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2023 doi: 10.5117/9789463722810_ch02

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I focus on these kinds of ‘unpredictable’ practices for two main reasons: – they create the possibility to investigate different types of subjectivity that can be ‘activated’ by the monumental space. This includes, on the one hand, the expected audience whose specific beliefs are confirmed in the monument, and on the other, the undesirable audience, which positions itself as antagonistic to the narrative told in the urban space; – they help to understand the cultural mechanism of magnification of events which remain ‘unsaid’ by the monument, either because of the economy of the monument’s enunciation, or due to choices that lead to the ideological filtering of memory. As such, they also provide a greater awareness of the narrative make-up of specific memories. As they can activate or extinguish particular meanings related to certain past events, these practices fuel the reversal of the memories transmitted at an institutional level, instead turning the spotlight on frozen memories. I define these as potential but not proposed textualisations which, though excluded from the official narrative, are part of the culture: they merely occupy a peripheral position, almost forgotten since they are unused in public discourses. Frozen memories are not part of the mainstream narrative. They are dormant, on stand-by, waiting for someone to thaw them; to make them accessible precisely through enunciative contrast with official and shared narratives, therefore re-positioning them at the centre of the culture. The metaphor of freezing/thawing is an explicit reference to a passage in Umberto Eco’s From the Tree to the Labyrinth (2014), in which the semiotician, dealing with the (im)possibility of an ars oblivionalis as semiotics, investigates the cultural modalities of cancelation, cross-reference and latency of information. Reworking issues already mentioned in A Theory of Semiotics (1976), Eco illustrates how information considered excessive within an encyclopaedic network that characterises certain interpretative paths is ‘frozen’. ‘All the expert has to do is take it out of the freezer and put it in the microwave to make it available once again, at least as much as is needed to understand a given context’ (Eco 2014: 88). Following this line of thinking, it is clear that acts of forgetfulness are not always the result of political manipulation. They can also be practices of filtering, necessary to prevent cultures from being saturated with irrelevant details, that can otherwise be deduced at the contextual level or in the cooperation between addresser-addressee.1 This is what Eco calls ‘encouraged 1 For more details on this dynamic of actants in memory spaces, see Violi (2014: 56) and Violi (2017: 104-106).

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forgetfulness’ (Eco 2014: 91), which cultures need to survive and preserve themselves, to prevent the risk of remembering in an accumulative way, only to become exhausted and ‘die’, like poor Ireneo Funes. This mode of filtering proposed by Eco is produced by inertia, it ‘does not depend on the will of an individual or on a conscious act of the collective will’ (Eco 2014: 86). While keeping in mind this implicit structure and the safeguarding of cultures and knowledge, from the perspective of the dynamics of cultural memory the issue nevertheless takes on crucial ethical and political traits. In these cases, remembering (and consequent forgetting) is purposefully textualised by forms of power, which in turn can translate the past into a lighter version of itself, feeding revisionisms and removing responsibilities. A semiotic approach is therefore not only interested in the act of memory selection per se, but in how this implies a need to make choices, which may ultimately prove unsuitable from a critical and diachronic perspective. These choices – which could be aesthetic, political, geographic, etc. – generate mnemonic patterns, framing the event through a recognizable grammar that eventually comes to represent a historically specific power structure in itself. As a result, this produces what has been described as what ‘really happened’, specifically based on what aspect of the event is projected in the textual representation. In fact, on a cultural level, this process of selection and textualisation creates an unescapable homology between what is remembered as plausible and what exists, highlighting how, in its negative form, what is not remembered ends up being assimilated as never having been (Lorusso 2015: 102).

Semiotic Gaze on Monuments Before coming to the core of my two case studies, it is necessary to take a few steps back, to introduce some categories and concepts that are useful in the semiotic study of monuments. Monuments play a central role in this claim. Intended as ‘media of memory’ (Erll 2011: 116) but also as ‘media of power’ (Pavlaković and Bădescu 2019: 144), they are among the most explicit expressions of how, at the level of public representation, something is always voluntarily left in latency by an institution, serving a specific agenda that monitors the social balance between remembering and forgetting (see for example Forty 1999: 8; Connerton 2009: 99; Lotman [1985] 2019: 135). In this respect, monuments (like all texts, from the most innocuous to the most sectarian) are always partial viewpoints, the result of an operation of filtering-forgetting, which

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generates a manageable and ‘digestible’ version of the past. This is why the monument can be analysed as a ‘tool for forgetting, or at least for rendering something latent’ (Eco 2014: 89). It is a text that says ‘something more’, inevitably producing ‘something less’ (Eco 2014: 90) through a fixed and recognizable aesthetic. Insofar as it provides a translation/betrayal that leaves something behind in order to enhance and literally materialise a version of ‘what has been’, the monument’s enunciation is accountable and problematic to varying degrees, depending on the context. As such, monuments have a cultural responsibility that cannot be underestimated: they concede a narrative built around the historical truth, transforming the social knowledge, producing a believable common sense. A givenness that could be considered, following Charles Sanders Peirce, as a habit (Peirce, 1931-58, CP. 5.371), that is, a series of rules which predispose, shape and orient our actions and which we are willing to consider believable because they are recorded in our (cultural) memory. It is a form of stabilisation of semiosis that can, however, be challenged and changed by the so-called ‘explosion’ of culture (Lotman [1993] 2009: 57) that usually corresponds to a moment of value transformation. I will study specific instances of this process here: protest practices, which furnish new enunciations – and new texts – through their unpredictability, thawing ‘frozen memories’ in a way that contradicts the original ideology. Though they claim to deposit the past statically, monuments are of course fluid texts: their meanings are at the mercy of those who build them and those who interact with them. For these reasons, a semiotic study of monuments requires at least a two-fold approach: (i) an analysis of the formal strategies of figurative and plastic2 construction of the story in a specific context (Bellentani and Panico 2016: 36), and of its material ‘imageability’ (Lynch 1960: 108); but also (ii) a reflection on the pragmatics of reading, focusing on the ‘reception’ of the monument, that is, on the relationship between the intentions of what is manifested through the text and the possible responses by those who pass it, frequently or occasionally. As well as reflecting on the aesthetic and representational agenda of the design forms enunciated,3 a reflection which could use the tools of visual semiotics (see for example Greimas 1989: 627–649), it is necessary 2 In visual semiotics, figurative and plastic are two levels that serve the analysis of visual texts. The former refers in particular to the recognition of the object present in the text (people, landscapes, animals, etc. …); the latter is linked to the structure of the text itself, the distribution and articulation of the lines, colours, shapes. 3 In this sense we could answer these questions: what story does the monument tell? How are values expressed through forms? Where is the monument located? Why in that position

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to interrogate the reception proposed by the text itself and that relating to its use. The latter concerns the bottom-up vision of the monument which takes it as a living space: what is noteworthy there is the ‘new’ meaning which is inserted and produced within a system of practices (cf. Remm 2016: 39). In a general sense, the monument must be considered both as an act of enunciation and –above all – as a hub of pedestrian (citizens, bystanders, protesters, tourists …) enunciations (de Certeau 1984: 99). 4 These enunciations change the space, giving it a different life – even unintentionally – and moreover affects the memory invoked, putting its design meaning into doubt. This thought was usefully summarised by Francesco Mazzucchelli, who writes: We have, on the one hand, the notion of place (urban space, city, architecture, home, etc.) as enunciated, decomposable as a text, whose uses and practices are inscribed and expected; on the other, the attempt to analyse ‘in person’ the practices that occur in places. In both cases, we can resort to the semiotic notion of text: a place of memory is a text to the extent that it can be analysed as a semantic universe, within which values, attention, narrative programs, passions, distributions of knowledge and power circulate (Mazzucchelli 2010: 96, emphases in the original).5

Having considered the designed meaning conveyed by a monument, and the ideal (or, as we shall see, ‘Model’) reader implied by the cultural conventions within it, we can consider the practices (or, later, the ‘uses’) that set up a stratification of different meanings, contrasting or quoting the original one. At this point, the first question to ask is: how do you find the ideal reader of the monument?

The ‘Model Reader’ Theory So far, this essay has made consistent references to the area of ‘reading’. This has been done deliberately, to quote Eco’s theory of interpretative cooperation in literary texts. and not in another? What meanings does the usage of one material instead of another convey at the level of content? 4 For further discussion on de Certeau, see Daniele Salerno’s chapter in this volume. 5 All translations from Italian sources are my own.

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Eco began to work on this theory as early as 1962, in Opera Aperta,6 but it was in 1979 that the semiotician refined and perfected his argument in Lector in Fabula (1979a) – partially translated into English as The Role of the Reader (1979b) –, subsequently also in the The Limits of Interpretation (1990) and Interpretation and Overinterpretation (1992). The fil rouge linking all these works is the way in which subjectivities are structured within the text, and how they work in relation to the mechanisms of interpretation. In order to provide some elements of context, it is useful not only to frame the debate historically but also to follow the philosophical genealogy of Eco’s thought. The idea of the ‘Model Reader’ takes its cue from the academic and intellectual debate of the 1960s, when structuralist scholars analysed texts in their objective structure and in isolation, that is, without considering the interpretative role of the addressee – so much so that to speak of the reader triggered accusations of ‘methodological impurity’ (Eco 1979a: 6). Eco’s semiotic thought, strongly influenced by the philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce, made it possible to problematise this approach to the text, understanding it instead as a ‘lazy machine’ that requires the ‘interpretative cooperation’ of a subject that is culturally equipped to recognise and ‘to fill in a whole series of gaps’ (Eco 1994: 3) relating to what is left un-said. The Model Reader is not a subject of flesh and blood, but an abstract, ‘textually established set of felicity conditions’ (Eco 1979b:11), a set of cultural rules that an author produces, which must be shared by the possible real reader if he or she is to interpret what the text intends to say in order to be fully actualised. In Eco’s words: To organise a text, its author has to rely upon a series of codes that assign given contents to the expressions he uses. To make his text communicative, the author has to assume that the ensemble of codes he relies upon is the same as that shared by his possible reader. The author has thus to foresee a model of the possible reader … supposedly able to deal interpretatively with the expressions in the same way as the author deals generatively with them (Eco 1979b: 7).

In this regard, we can assume that the enunciation of a spatial text (such as a monument) is carried out by an actant addresser, who, to simplify, can be 6 The English translation of this book, entitled The Open Work, was published in 1989; it included other essays that were not in the original.

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understood as ‘responsible’ and the author of the story that is presented to the addressees. Obviously, the narrative itself is not a simple transferral of information, since the addresser – who may correspond to an architect or a designer, or to those who are in charge of setting up the space – in his or her choices foresees the spatial equivalent of a Model Reader. For the memory space to ‘function’, that is, to activate all its designed meanings and values, it is necessary for the Model Reader to become the ‘subject of deciphering’ (Hammad 2006: 276), equipped with a specific cultural background and episteme, so as to interpret and recognise the spatial enunciation correctly. In this sense, the Model Reader of space needs a series of cognitive and cultural competences that structure his or her ‘knowledge of the past’: a bricolage of information and understanding about the past coming from his or her social framework, which finds confirmation and synthesis in the monument. What happens when the reader becomes ‘real’ and does not have all the contextual competences of the Model Reader and to interpret the text as intended? This question gives rise to the substantial and theoretical distinction between the Model Reader and the ‘Empirical Reader’. The Model Reader is a purely abstract figure, while the Empirical Reader is a real subject who reads the text and poses as a ‘contrastive element’ (Alać 2017: 201), using the text according to his or her encyclopaedic skills, with the concrete possibility that he or she does not follow the ‘instructions’ of the text properly. The latter is a theoretical turning point that I return to in the analysis below. It may happen that a text is interpreted freely, through the summoning of codes and values that are different from those inscribed by the author in the text. This entails the risk of what Eco has def ined as ‘aberrant decoding’, a sort of interpretative mistake that can be caused by misunderstanding, disparity of code or contextual interference. The idea of aberrant decoding in memory spaces can be rehabilitated: from an interpretative error, it can become a tool for deciphering structures of power. Through this process we can understand how a monument text is misinterpreted (voluntarily or involuntarily), and for what reasons. In an investigation of the dynamics of spaces of memory, where power, representations and identity positioning come into play (cf. Demaria 2006), the ‘actualisation’ of the text with the cooperation of the Model Reader constitutes only a first, fundamental step. It is not enough just to decipher the ‘cultural life’ of a monument: it is also necessary to consider the ‘people’s willingness to re-invest [value] in it’ (Rigney 2008: 94) and the ‘state of health’ of the memory it conveys.

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A Theoretical Nuance for Spaces Dealing mainly with literary texts, Eco seemingly renounces the component of pragmatic action, focusing rather on a reader whose work is merely cognitive. As the following case study will demonstrate, Eco’s theory, when inflected in the analysis of space, demands a clarification regarding embodiment. Each monument, even at the level of design, envisages a subject who will occupy space in a way that allows him or her to contemplate, cross and see from the right distance what is represented. In this regard, there is an explicit role for a Model Reader in the space. The Model Reader can therefore be a ‘pragmatic subject’ (Hammad 2006: 278), who has the agency to perform actions in space (unlike the reader of a literary text, where the reading process is different). He or she is therefore part of the expression of the monument and is simultaneously situated within it: The act of reading is something wholly external to the text and entirely irrelevant to its constitution, whereas the act of visiting occurs inside the building and makes the visitor a constitutive part of it. In other words, while the Model Reader can remain an abstract strategy clearly separable from the empirical reader, in the case of a museum the strategy of use brings the real user directly into play, given the syncretic nature of its plane of expression, which … is made of ‘things and persons’ together (Violi 2017: 110–111).

Violi deals here mainly with museums, but the same reflection is also valid for monuments. Although certainly less syncretic than museums, they nonetheless inspire and enable different and unexpected forms of actions. The possible application of Eco’s thought to space has been raised and discussed on several occasions in the field of semiotics (see in particular Marrone 2001, 2013; Remm 2016). In particular, Gianfranco Marrone has developed and made ‘corporeal and in motion’ the concept of the Model Reader, specifically in relation to the analysis of urban space, referring rather to the ‘Model User’, a simulacrum of the real user that is given at the level of the enunciation of space. The general idea is that the Model User responds coherently to all the choices made by the addresser, both cognitively and pragmatically. Always following and accepting the narrative that is proposed, the Model User adapts perfectly to the ways in which the space is to be used, behaving in a way that follows the original strategies and maintains the values imposed by the designers of the space. As a concrete rather than abstract entity, who therefore has the ability to understand and want, the user could also adopt a different attitude, deciding

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not to follow the suggested path and therefore becoming an Empirical User. It is easy to imagine that designers/authors cannot always predict what the subjects will do; indeed, it would be naive to expect everyone to respect or share what is immediately translated into space. Only some real users conform to the model user, whereas more frequently, interpretations will diverge from the intentions of the space. These divergences, these ‘incorrect’ practices made by the Empirical User can be considered as enunciation strategies that allow the resemantisation of the space and the complexification of the memory it conveys.

Interpretation and Use The notions of Model User and Empirical User permit us to consider (and re-define) a classic distinction proposed by Eco (1979a, 1990) between the interpretation and the use of the text. For the semiotician, the text cannot be interpreted in an infinite number of ways, even when it comes to so-called ‘open works’ (Eco 1962), that is, those – often artistic – texts that do give the reader wider margins of interpretation. The text always proposes some coherences within it that direct its own ‘interpretation’. Related to this, Eco in The Limits of Interpretations (1990) defined the ‘intention of the text’ (intentio operis). This intention does not correspond with what the real author meant to say in the text (intentio auctoris) but what the text ‘communicates’ through its internal textual consistency. According to Eco, the search for the intentio operis stands for the proper interpretation of the text. When this does not happen, that is, when readers stray from the predetermined path of the text in an inventive way, Eco speaks of ‘use’. In this last sense, what prevails is the so-called intention of the reader (intentio lectoris). This refers to the reader who, using the text at will, does not seek its actual meaning but acts ‘in order to get something else’ from it (Eco 1990: 57). This reflection, which is part of a larger reasoning about the limits of interpretation and the concessions to be made to the reader of a literary work, problematises the idea that a pragmatic approach to reading is useful for interpreting the text. Looking at monuments au sein de la vie sociale, to quote Ferdinand de Saussure’s (1916: 33) def inition of sémiologie,7 this claim must be articu7 The quote I am referring to is: ‘On peut donc concevoir une science qui étudie la vie des signes au sein de la vie sociale, elle formerait une partie la psychologie sociale …; nous la nommerons

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lated differently, because interpretation and use are not arranged in an oppositional manner, as can happen in literary texts. 8 Rather, they are both configured as practices that together contribute to the stratification of the meaning of the monument and the acceptance/rejection of the memory that is conveyed. When it comes to monuments, then, it is less a question of coherent patterns of interpretation or aberrant decoding than of how specif ic uses of the text feed a critical and ethical scrutiny of memories. In this regard, inflecting Eco’s theory to encompass spaces of memory means never separating interpretation and use, or in other words, what the monument actually says to its ideal readers and the ‘field invasions’ proposed by the various real readers who contribute to a continuous struggle for the sense of the memory. By not considering both perspectives, but rather implementing a clear separation between them, the analyst risks adopting a partial vision both of the design meaning and of the ‘memory turbulence’ that diachronically animate a monument and transform it into a metonymy of more complex and difficult memories. In the situation where a memory textualised in a monument clashes with the Empirical User’s own encyclopaedia, two possible scenarios can arise: the first is apolitical use, when a series of quotidian practices are enacted around the monument by Empirical Users who do not, however, recognise or understand its narrative (this is particularly meaningful because it troubles the limits of spatial representation). An example of this could be monuments used as meeting points by people who (consciously or unconsciously) ignore its designed meaning. A famous instance is the 1954 Soviet Army Monument in Sofia that, after the fall of Berlin Wall, shifted from being a space of commemoration of the Red Army to a concert hall, a skate park, a place for Gay Pride marches, or somewhere to sit, chat and drink a beer, etc.: not for political or anti-ideological reasons but merely because of its geographical convenience: a large, open space close to the city centre. This second scenario, in which I am more interested here, is conflictual use. This occurs when the monument’s message is loud and clear for the real Model User, who has the encyclopaedic skills to interpret it ‘correctly’; nevertheless, her or she critically rejects the enunciation of the monument sémiologie’ (de Saussure 1916: 33) (‘One can therefore conceive of a science which studies the life of signs within social life, it would form part of social psychology …; we shall call it semiology’). 8 The difference that Eco proposes between interpretation and use is of course problematic in relation to literary texts, too, and indeed this element of Eco’s work has been subjected to criticism. As the cases here seek to demonstrate, the issues with this opposition are even more stark in the case of monuments and urban spaces.

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to such an extent of becoming a rebellious Empirical User, who voluntarily and actively subverts its designed meaning (cf. Eco and Fabbri 1978). Conflictual use can therefore unmask the choices made in the textualisation of memory through acts of protest (cf. Sedda 2021). In other words, this kind of use can modify the entire memory system, producing forms of counter-memory that contradict the institutionalised one because they come from below and generate a palimpsest that causes the monumentalised memory to be depowered and de-normalised. An example of this can be seen in certain uses of the same monument mentioned in the previous scenario, the Soviet Army Monument in Sofia. In 2013 the bas-relief on the monument (depicting Soviet soldiers defending Bulgaria from the Nazis) was painted pink, quoting the infamous tank monument in Prague that David Černý painted pink in 1991, to challenge the commemoration of the Soviet occupation. Written underneath in Czech were the words ‘Bulgaria apologises’, recognising the country’s role in the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia. The following paragraphs address further instances of conflictual use, in relation to monuments built in honour of people involved in a difficult and concealed past: Fascist colonialism in contemporary Italy (see in particular Del Boca 1989: 115–128; Taddia 2005: 209–219; Lombardi-Diop and Romeo 2012: 1–29; Grechi and Gravano 2016: 23–37).

When the Model User is Fascist In summer 2012, a monument/mausoleum was inaugurated in Affile, a small town 70 kilometres east of Rome, in honour of the Fascist gerarca (party official) Rodolfo Graziani, also known as ‘the butcher’ for his ruthless and cruel military methods used against African populations during colonialist campaigns. It was built with €130,000 of public funding from the then centre-right regional government (Wu Ming 2012).9 From its inauguration, 9 As the Italo-Somalian writer Igiaba Scego has written in her reconstruction of the monument’s history: ‘The funds were allocated to the restructuring of the Radimonte park. Not only did that not happen, but instead of having a renovated park Affile and Italy found themselves from one day to the next with a monument dedicated to a Fascist gerarca and a criminal …. A bit like if tomorrow Germany were to wake up and dedicate a monument to Himmler or Goebbels’ (2014: 117). In 2015, the newly elected president of the region revoked the funding of the monument. In 2019, the Court of Appeal in Rome sentenced the mayor of Aff ile to eight months’ imprisonment for promoting Fascism, confirming a 2017 sentence handed down by the court of Tivoli; nevertheless, to date the monument is still standing. In 2020 the Corte di Cassazione decided to cancel the judgment.

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it has been at the centre of numerous public manifestations and media debates. It has attracted the attention of many foreign newspapers, pushing the debate about the monument’s legitimacy onto an international stage (cf. Chalcraft 2018: 4 and Bartolini 2019). Rodolfo Graziani is an emblematic figure in the Italian memory of the twentieth century. Born in 1882, he joined the Fascist movement from the start, and was a commander during the colonial campaign. Specifically, he was vice-governor of Cyrenaica in Libya, and then viceré in Ethiopia. He was an active supporter of racial laws in Italy in 1938, who was always at Benito Mussolini’s side, and became minister of defence of the Republic of Salò from 1943. At the end of the Second World War he was declared war criminal by the United Nations Commission for having ordered the use of poison gas and the bombing of hospitals during the conquest of Ethiopia. He was sentenced to 19 years in prison in Italy for military collaboration with the Nazis but served only four months thanks to various amnesties. A few years before his death in 1955, Graziani joined the post-Fascist party Movimento Sociale Italiano, becoming its honorary president in 1953. To this day, Graziani is buried in the cemetery of Affile. This brief biography alone provides an idea of how problematic this case study is. The monument for this gerarca presents aesthetic codes that clearly evoke Fascist imagery. It is in the shape of a cube (Figure 2.1). The words ‘Patria’ (homeland) (on the left) and ‘Onore’ (honour) (on the right) are engraved on its main façade. In the centre, between these two words, there is a pole with an Italian flag, and inside the monument there is a sculpture that reproduces Graziani’s head. We can essentially identify three audience categories for this monument: (i) the Empirical User who does not know the context of the space and does not share the Italian encyclopaedia in which this combination of the components of the monument are easily connected to Fascist imaginary; (ii) the Model User who has the competence to understand the history and ideology of the space and agrees with them; (iii) the Empirical User who understands but refuses the history and ideology of the space. The first ‘morphological’ reading decontextualises the space as though it were a message in a bottle (cf. Eco 1990) on a deserted beach; this activates the model of the naïve user. He or she only grasps the literal sense of the space, interpreting the words ‘homeland’ and ‘honour’ in relation to a patriotic discourse. This is further sealed by the use of the flag, which could forge innocent and reasonable attachment to the nation. Of course, this represents a theoretical possibility, one that is perhaps unlikely given

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Figure 2.1 The Affile monument in honour of Rodolfo Graziani. Still from the documentary ‘If Only I Were That Warrior’ (2015) directed by Valerio Ciriaci and produced by Awen Films

Photo: Valerio Ciriaci

how closely this imagery is tied to Fascist ideology within Italian culture. For this hypothetical, naïve Empirical User, who does not have the right, presupposed knowledge about the gerarca and the context of his life and crimes, the monument (problematically) becomes a sign of national pride. However, all he signs on Graziani’s monument are of course open to other semantic paths, including at the level of its design. If it is true that monuments are always the imprint of values in urban space, then to understand those values it is necessary to shift attention to their source, to the person who has decided to shape them. In other words, this understanding can be assisted by starting to consider the actant addresser, in our case refers to those10 who transmit messages and values within the space using precise forms of manipulation (Greimas 1976: 151–153). The addresser’s modus operandi needs further context, which can be achieved by viewing the monument in the light of national and local politics, of Graziani’s biography and in particular of the nostalgic tourism that some locals in Affile have 10 It is therefore important to bear in mind that there can be a ‘hierarchy’ of addressers: from the political power that decides to build the monument to the architect who designs it, and so forth.

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sought to promote for years, taking advantage of the image of this Fascist official buried in the village cemetery. Long coveted and sponsored by the town’s mayor, Ercole Viri, the monument responds to a precise ‘form of memory’. It is a recognisable thematisation of the past that declares precise ideological positions and attaches positive and nostalgic values to a historical figure who was officially considered a war criminal. The designed meaning of the monument (which draws also from the Fascist aesthetic codes mentioned above) therefore guides an interpretation that sanctifies Graziani as a ‘soldier’, certainly not providing a space for critical reflection. With this information, one’s reading is filtered differently. The words on the top of the façade assume a different encyclopaedic ‘taste’, winking at Fascist slogans such as ‘Dio Patria e Famiglia’ (God, homeland and family) – which not coincidentally are also commonly used by many right-wing parties in Italy today. The flag in the middle is no longer a symbol of unity, but a tool that defines identity boundaries, creates enemies and categorises them as ‘not-Italians’ or ‘not-Italian-enough’ (such as migrants, second generation Italians or LGBTQIA+ people). Following this reasoning, the cubic shape of the monument becomes a (low-quality) quotation of Fascist architectural rationalism, and Rodolfo Graziani a ‘real Fascist’, to be honoured and remembered nostalgically. At a macro level, Fascism is endorsed as a positive ideology, to such an extent that it merits a monument in 2012. For all these reasons, the other possible Model User of the monument is a Fascist (an umbrella term, used here to indicate various identities and semantic possibilities: nostalgic people, neo-Fascists, sovereigntists …). With this iteration of the Model User, I refer concretely to those who, since the inauguration of the monument, have visited and used it as a sacred place of Fascist memory; this has occurred to such a significant extent that it has been nicknamed ‘the Predappio11 of Lazio’. It is important to specify that this Model User is created in an underhanded way, and not explicitly summoned at the level of expression. The monument has never been openly promoted as a Fascist space. In fact, the mayor of Affile has always dismissed any claim that it promotes Fascism, defending Graziani as a ‘fellow citizen worthy of being re-evaluated by history’ or even ‘an example of honesty and attachment to the country’. Considering the nuances of Model User alone is not suff icient. The space also hosts other subjects, who reveal oppositional perspectives and 11 Predappio is the birthplace of Benito Mussolini and the place where his body was buried in 1957. Nostalgic and neo-Fascist groups organise manifestations in honour of the former Italian dictator in this little village in the north of Italy every year, fostering Fascist tourism/pilgrimage.

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contribute to the stratif ication of the sense of the monument. How do their interactions with the monument express semiotic dissent against the designed meaning? More specifically in this case: how might the child of a victim of a Fascist massacre in East Africa react to this monument? How might an anti-Fascist respond? Ever since its construction, the monument has inspired protests, for example by a partisan association. Some of these actions have directly touched the monument: for example, in late 2012 three boys (later denounced by the municipality and then absolved in a trial) wrote proclamations such as ‘Chiamate eroe un assassino’, ‘No al fascismo’, ‘Macellai’, ‘Vile onore e patria assassina’, and ‘Per tuoi massacri compiuti, un monumento per le tue vittime’ on the facade of the monument.12 In the same year, another group hung human silhouettes on the monument. The bodies of these pieces of paper that stand for the victims of Graziani’s actions bore words specifying various crimes committed by this Fascist gerarca and the numbers of people he killed in Libya and Ethiopia. In 2013, the leftist organisation Roma Futura symbolically covered the monument with a red cloth and named the square in front of it after Sandro Pertini, a partisan during the Second World War and president of the Italian Republic from 1978 to 1985. All the examples mentioned here show how the uses of the monument generate a clash between encyclopaedias: between the Fascist one, mediated by the monument, and the one owned and claimed by Empirical Users. The shockwave of this clash contributes to a stratification of the meaning of the monument, as the introduction of counter-hegemonic repertoires overturns the syntax of memory. To put it differently, the monument takes on an ambiguous and fluid semiotic status. It is: – a space for remembering Graziani but also one for denouncing his crimes, for giving voice and public visibility to the victims and thawing frozen memories. These uses thus constitute a sort of spatial revenge, because they allow the presentification of murdered and oppressed African populations; – a space for protest and the fight against Fascism, therefore at the same time a space for anti-Fascist and post-colonial re-appropriation; – a space that recalls its own stratified uses, which collectively and gradually lead to the disuse of its designed meaning; – a text that is paradoxically ‘saved’ from oblivion through its uses. It is thanks to the contrasting power of these practices that the monument 12 ‘You call a murderer a hero’, ‘No to Fascism’, ‘Butchers’, ‘Shameful honour and murderous homeland’, ‘For your massacres, a monument for your victims’.

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has become internationally known – and rejected. Without protest actions the monument would not be known to most, given its location in the peripheral space of a small town. In relation to the final point, the challenged meaning of the monument also affects practices beyond Affile, in other cities and online. Around the world, its uses create textual satellites (documentaries, legal action, protests, conferences, books, social media discourses …) that convert the Graziani monument into a counter-monument of itself. An example of the consolidation of this ‘memorial boomerang effect’ is represented by what happened in a district of Bologna in 2012, when an anonymous group created a symbolic ‘twinning’ between the city’s public toilets and the monument. To create homology between the Affile monument and the toilet, two paper signs were placed on Bologna’s public toilets, with ‘Patria’ written on the left, and ‘Odore’ (smell, but also an assonance with the Italian word for honour, ‘onore’) on the right. The combination of ‘monument – toilet’ has also been adopted by some users on Google Maps. If you search on the ‘Mausoleum Rodolfo Graziani’ page,13 the image that appears at time of writing is a vignette in which the brick monument has the shape of a toilet, and the town of Affile is the drain. Breaking the irony and giving the image a bitter connotation, there is a trickle of blood over a stone slab bearing the name of Rodolfo Graziani.

Hypertext and the Pertinentisation of the Latent Another controversial example, one which again is connected with Italy’s failure to deal with its colonialist past, is related to the action of some activists belonging to the Italian transfeminist group Non una di meno in Milan during the International Women’s Day manifestation of 2019. The activists splashed washable pink paint over a statue of Indro Montanelli in the neighbourhood where the city’s Eritrean and Ethiopian community lives.14 Montanelli was a conservative journalist who participated in the Fascist conquest of East Africa as volunteer soldier. In the post-war period, he 13 Accessed 31 May 2020. 14 Many semioticians have analysed this monument and the events that made it a protagonist of the post-colonial reflection in contemporary Italy. See, for example, Corrain 2021 and Lorusso 2022.

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became an important journalist and writer and founded his own newspaper Il Giornale in 1974. He never hid his admiration for Mussolini, and in an interview in 1982 described the ‘early’ Mussolini of the 1930s as ‘a politician of great insight and formidable timing’.15 According to the activists’ declarations, published in a press release following the protest, the attack on the monument was a polemical and symbolic response to the statements Montanelli made during his life. The reference is to what the journalist said and wrote about his alleged marriage to an African child during his participation in the colonialist campaign, when he was 24 or 26. Specifically, in a television interview in 1982, Montanelli provided the following account of his experience: She was twelve years old, but don’t take me for a Girolimoni [an accused paedophile], at twelve years old girls there were already women. I had bought her in Saganèiti, in a village … I needed a woman at that age. I bought her together with a horse and a rifle, all for 500 lire. … She was a docile little animal …. Every fortnight she would join me wherever I was with the wives of the other ascari.16 … I gave her to a man who was much more important than me, General Pirzio Biroli. At that time becoming the favourite of a general was a very important step-up for her, they cared a lot about these things. The general had many of these girls. He was an old colonist, a very good and brave soldier who knew what he was doing. He was used to having his own little harem, a bit like everyone else. I was monogamous, for obvious reasons, I could not afford great luxuries.17

This was not the first time that he had told the story in these terms. Thirteen years earlier, in 1969, Montanelli responded on Italian television to accusations of violence against a minor made by a feminist of Eritrean origins, Elvira Banotti, declaring that his attitude had not been violent at all. He used the justification of African custom: ‘In Africa these things are commonplace … There was no violence. Girls get married at twelve in Abyssinia’. 15 The video of the journalist Enzo Biagi’s interview with Indro Montanelli (in Italian) is accessible in the digital archive of the Italian broadcaster RAI at this link: http://www.teche. rai.it/2015/07/indro-montanelli-racconta-il-fascismo/ (accessed on 20 December 2022). 16 Here the term ascari refers to the Eritrean soldiers who were recruited to the Italian colonial army during the occupation of Africa. 17 This part of the interview is accessible at the following link: http://www.teche.rai.it/2015/07/ indro-montanelli-racconta-il-fascismo/ (c. 7’43”, accessed on 20 December 2022).

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Montanelli returned to the matter again in February 2000, penning an article entitled ‘Quando andai a nozze con Destà’ (When I married Destà). Responding to the questions of a reader who was curious to know about his ‘adventure’ with a ‘faccetta nera’ (little black face) Montanelli detailed his experience with the Eritrean girl in a deeply misogynist and racist way.18 This historical contextualisation is necessary to understand the events leading up to the action against the monument. As with the case in Affile, this use of the monument created a significant impact in the media, clearly splitting public opinion. There were those who considered the gesture an unjustified act of vandalism and those who instead supported the post-colonial perspective raised by the activists. However, if we follow the aims of this chapter, what is interesting is not the intricacies of the media discourse linked to the event or the righteousness of the action itself. My reflection focuses instead on how the practice of the rebellious Empirical User has had two effects: – First, it has generated the pertinence of the frozen memories of Italian colonialism, of which Montanelli represents an unfortunate metonymy. From this point of view, the ‘pink practice’ constructs a new semantics of the monument, activating alternative, relevant features to those of its design. In other words, this practice calls into question two issues: first, the sexist and patriarchal culture that allowed Indro Montanelli to use words like ‘little animal’ about an African adolescent in the 1970s and 1980s; second, the behaviour of Italian soldiers during the various colonial campaigns, that is, committing crimes and massacring civilians, despite being typically mediated as a ‘good people’. – Secondly, it has created a form of ‘hypertext’ monument, that is – adapting an idea by Gérard Genette (1997) – a text that derives from a ‘hypotext’, an original and source text (in this case, a ‘zero’ monument) by transformation and ‘creative translation’. In Genette’s words, a hypertext is ‘any relationship uniting a text B … to an earlier text A upon which it is grafter in a manner that is not that of commentary’ (Genette 1997: 5). Hypertextuality is a particular kind of translation that is not based on the equivalence of meanings from one language to another, but on sense; a thematic metamorphosis (see also Dusi 2015). Genette offers a useful example to understand this mechanism: Homer’s Odyssey as 18 In this article Montanelli wrote: ‘It was struggle for me to get past the smell of goat fat permeating her hair; harder still to establish a sexual relationship with her because she’d been infibulated from birth. Aside from creating an almost insurmountable barrier to my desires …, it made her totally incapable of feeling’.

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hypotext and James Joyce’s Ulysses as hypertext. What is innovative in our case is that a connection is activated between text A and text B through the same substance of the expression, that is, the same bronze of the monument, without changing physical place. The pink practice unmasked the concealed memory by masking the monument. The political performance undertaken by the Empirical Users brought to light what the monument does not narrate, catalysing public opinion and the city of Milan, which had decided to construct the monument in 2006, thus narrating a mythologising version of Montanelli’s life. In fact, within the monument, the journalist is represented as the subject-metonymy of his work. Even his pose is not casual: Montanelli is seated on a pile of newspapers, bent over his typewriter. The design aesthetic and rhetoric specifically underline the ‘know-how’ of the journalist, not his misogynistic attitude or his Fascist and colonial responsibilities, neither of which he ever regretted. As well as recognising feminist agency, the paint also serves a function of ‘narrative judgment’ that incriminates the journalist. All of this is a result of the addition. In fact, to reactivate the frozen memories, the official imagery is sabotaged, but not through destructive subtraction, as in an act of classical iconoclasm. The activists add new levels instead of removing them, endowing the gesture with a ‘generative’ disposition – even if the aim was to demystify an historical stereotype. In other words, they enable a layered conversation and confrontation between two points of view on the same historical event, that ‘take place within the same text through conflict, clash, intersection and information exchange between different traditions, different subtexts and different interpretations’ (Dusi 2015: 121). As a result, the intervention by Empirical Users triggers a shift in the narrative roles: Montanelli is no longer a positive character, but a perpetrator and protagonist in a story of violence. The pink colour also gives new representability to the young Destà. She is ‘re-enunciated’ by the activists and symbolically removed from Montanelli’s gaze, which otherwise characterised the only point of view on his marriage and provided the ‘reliable’ voice that spoke about her (and for her). The narrative power of this use lies not in erasing the monument, which would have taken with it all its selected latencies and would probably have actorised Montanelli as a victim. On the contrary, this action both creates a new hypertext and critically immobilises the designed meaning of the hypotext monument. As Jurij Lotman ([1985] 2019: 136) wrote, these new texts produce ‘an explosive revolution in the “cultural grammar” of the system. This new grammar, on the one hand,

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influenced the creation of correspondingly new texts and, on the other hand, determined the perception of old texts’, imposing a cause/effect relationship between them. With the ‘new’ text – in this specific case, the repainted one – the encyclopaedic framework can be also modified, in order to interpret it in a more radical and just way. The activists shift from being Empirical Users of the zero monument to authors who advocate a defined memory, thus establishing yet another Model User. The new Model User can cooperate with the interpretation by linking the pink paint that ‘slaps’ the monument with a post-colonial and feminist code.19 The textual conditions of the ‘new monument’ envisage a Model User with specific encyclopaedic skills, who assigns a precise cultural and political code to the colour pink and is able to read the explanation and denunciation of the ‘unsaid’ of the ‘zero’ monument – that is, the version without paint that has not yet undergone any resemantisation. In addition, there may also be other possible Empirical Users. For example, some new Empirical Users might resist and disempower the pink translation as an act of vandalism, demanding and obtaining the cleaning up of the monument 20 so as to return it to its original memory stage, at least at the level of expression. The monument returned to the centre of public debate a year later, in June 2020, when it was again attacked by protesters as a symbol of colonialist racism in response to the Black Lives Matter protests against institutionalised racism which erupted across the world after the death of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. In particular, the anti-Fascist activists from the I Sentinelli movement asked the mayor of Milan, Giuseppe Sala, to remove the Indro Montanelli statue, and a group of students decided to cover it with red paint, writing ‘Razzista Stupratore’ (racist and rapist) on the pedestal.21 19 A street called Via Indro Montanelli in the Sicilian city of Palermo was temporarily re-named ‘Via Destà’ in March 2020 by activists who put up a sign with this name, in memory of the young Eritrean girl bought by the journalist in 1936. This re-naming is only one of the examples that has allowed the Montanelli/Destà narrative contrast (and in a more general sense the coloniser/ colonised one) to become a semantic invariance that helps to make the feminist demands culturally recognisable. In fact, most of the ‘pink paint actions’ on monuments and public spaces all over the world enable ‘urban isotopies’: a sort of repetition that can suggest and regulate the interpretations of practices themselves. 20 The statue of Montanelli was cleaned a few days later, so that the memory of this event is confined to videos, photos, social media posts and personal memories of participants and journalists. 21 As with the case in Affile, these protests against monuments spread beyond the physical space of the monument itself, creating textual satellites that correspond to layers of the zero monument. In fact, in June 2020, in the middle of the public debate on what to do or not to do with Montanelli’s statue, the street artist Ozmo posted the image of an African girl carrying water on a wall in Via Torino in Milan. The girl has her left fist raised and stands on a pedestal,

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A Matter of Audience At the end of this chapter, it is important to synthesise and emphasise the methodological strength of the Model Reader/Model User and Empirical User categories in the interdisciplinary debate of memory studies. As I have already underlined, with specific adjustments in relation to urban space, Umberto Eco’s theory can be a fundamental help to empirically investigating the audiences of monuments (or spaces of memory in general) and the reception of memory that is conveyed through them. The epistemological variation that differentiates the Model User and Empirical User from other sociological and anthropological categories that refer to audiences and practices, is that their focus begins with an analysis of the textual strategies of the monument itself. Indeed, the semiotician’s concerns are not (necessarily) oriented to observations of practices, as in an anthropological exercise, but to the syntax, semantics and pragmatics of the text that change in relation to the users’ interaction. In particular, integrating the interdisciplinarity of memory studies with this particular aspect of Eco’s semiotics can provide an efficient tool that can dissect common sense precisely by looking at how it is proposed to a specific, ideal audience, which, in practice, can decide to support and normalise it or desecrate it by proposing a different narrative. Because of this, Model User and Empirical User are ‘cultural thermometers’ of the state of health of a memory. Following this metaphor, the Model User’s respect for and the Empirical User’s subversion of monuments tell us about the emotional and political ‘temperature’ of a specific culture, as well as the scale of the memorial priorities in a given historical moment. These things show that semiotics can help to: – disambiguate the audience categories imprinted on or generated by monuments; – perceive and intercept all the ‘seasons’ of the monument’s meanings, which vary alongside changes in the user’s interpretative cooperation; – develop a diachronic and synchronic perspective on continuous rewritings of the monument, which reveals their palimpsestual consecutio and their position in a relationship of opposition to or completion of the institutional memories; as if she herself were a monument. The pedestal bears the inscription: ‘Monumento alla memoria della sposa bambina in Montanelli’ (Monument to Montanelli’s child bride). The interesting aspect is that with this last practice, an explicit overturning of the visual narrative is produced, playing on the change of memory that ‘monumentalises’ and therefore makes Destà visible and recognisable as a person, giving her specific ‘memorial agency’, that is, the possibility and capacity to be remembered. On the debate that the action generates see Panico 2021.

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– perceive the different semantic degrees of practices, in a spectrum of meanings ranging from those related to the thawing of frozen memories to apolitical meanings that are not related to a form of memory demand; – make clear and intelligible the spatial relationship between an institutional and often self-consolatory memory and an alternative, latent one that is potentially re-evocable and re-valuable; – open up new ways of producing polyphonic narratives on the same ‘difficult’ monuments, avoiding the harmful forgetfulness that simply destroying them could bring about. In other words, it could enable efficient comparisons between the perceived past represented on the monument and its critical revaluation in the eyes of the present.

Works Cited Alać, M. 2017 ‘The Model Reader and the Mundanity of Reading Practices’, in S. G. Beardsworth and R.E. Auxier (eds), The Philosophy of Umberto Eco, Chicago, Open Court, pp. 201–22. Bartolini, F. 2019 ‘Dealing with a Dictatorial Past: Fascist Monuments and Conflicting Memory in Contemporary Italy’, in A. L. Macaluso (ed.), Monument Culture. International Perspectives on the Future of Monuments in a Changing World, Lanham, Boulder, New York and London, Rowman & Littlefield, pp. 233–42. Bellentani, F. and Panico, M. 2016 ‘The Meaning of Monument and Memorials: Toward a Semiotic Approach’, Punctum. International Journal of Semiotics, 2, pp. 28–46. Certeau, M. de. 1984 The Practice of Everyday Life, Berkeley, University of California Press. Chalcraft, J. 2018 ‘Beyond Addis Abeba and Affile: Italian Public Memory, Heritage and Colonialism’, European University Institute Working Paper RSCAS, 69, pp. 1–23. Corrain, L. 2021 ‘The iconoclasm of the everyday’, in I. Pezzini (ed.), Paolo Fabbri. Unfolding Semiotics. Pour la Sémiotique a Venir – Punctum Monograph, vol. I, Thessaloniki, Hellenic Semiotics Society, pp. 49–65. Connerton, P. 2009 How Modernity Forgets, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Del Boca, A. 1989 ‘Le conseguenze per l’Italia del mancato dibattito sul colonialismo’, Studi Piacentini, 5, pp. 115–28. Demaria, C. 2006 Semiotica e memoria. Analisi del post-conflitto, Rome, Carocci. Dusi, N. M. 2015 ‘Don Quixote, Intermediality and Remix: Translational Shifts in the Semiotics of Culture’, International Journal of Cultural Studies, 18(1), pp. 119–34. Eco, U. 1962 Opera Aperta, Milan, Bompiani (English transl. The Open Work, Cambridge (MA), Harvard University Press, 1989).

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Eco, U. 1976 A Theory of Semiotics, Bloomington and London, Indiana University Press. Eco, U. 1979a Lector in Fabula. La cooperazione interpretativa nei testi narrativi, Milan, Bompiani. Eco, U. 1979b The Role of the Reader. Exploration in the Semiotics of Texts, Bloomington and London, Indiana University Press. Eco, U. 1990 The Limits of Interpretation, Bloomington and London, Indiana University Press. Eco, U. 1992 Interpretation and Overinterpretation, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Eco, U. 1994 Six Walks in the Fictional Woods, Cambridge (MA), Harvard University Press. Eco, U. 2014 From the Tree to the Labyrinth. Historical Studies on the Sign and Interpretation, Cambridge (MA), Harvard University Press. Eco, U. and Fabbri, P. 1978 ‘Progetto di ricerca sull’utilizzazione dell’informazione ambientale’, Problemi dell’informazione, 4, pp. 555–97. Erll, A. 2011 Memory in Culture, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan. Forty, A. 1999 ‘Introduction’, in A. Forty and S. Küchler (eds), The Art of Forgetting, Oxford and New York, Berg, pp. 1–18. Genette, G. 1997 Palimpsest. Literature in the Second Degree, Lincoln and London, University of Nebraska Press. Grechi, G. and Gravano, V. 2016 ‘Immaginari (post)coloniali. Memorie pubbliche e private del colonialismo italiano’, in G. Grechi and V. Gravano (eds), Presente Imperfetto. Eredità coloniali e immaginari razziali contemporanei, Udine and Milan, Mimesis, pp. 23–37. Greimas, A. J. 1976 ‘Pour une sémiotique topologique’, in A.J. Greimas, Sémiotique et sciences sociales, Paris, Seuil, pp. 129–57. Greimas, A. J. 1989 ‘Figurative Semiotics and the Semiotics of the Plastic Arts’, New Literary History, 20(3): 627–49. Hammad, M. 2006 ‘Il Museo della Centrale Montemartini a Roma’, in I. Pezzini and P. Cervelli (eds), Scene del consumo: dallo shopping al museo, Rome, Meltemi, pp. 203–79. Lombardi-Diop, C. and Romeo, C. 2012 ‘Paradigms of Postcoloniality in Contemporary Italy’, in C. Lombardi-Diop and C. Romeo (eds), Postcolonial Italy: Challenging National Homogeneity, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 1–29. Lorusso, A. M. 2015 Cultural Semiotics. For a Cultural Perspective in Semiotics, New York, Palgrave Macmillan. Lorusso, A. M. 2022 ‘Cancellare la memoria è un meccanismo ideologico’, Domani, 26 September 2022.

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Lotman, J. M. 1993 Kul’tura i vzryv, Moscow, Gnosis (English transl. Culture and Explosion, Berlin, Mouton de Gruyter, 2009). Lotman, J. M. 2019 ‘Memory in a Culturological Perspective’ [1985], in M. Tamm (ed.), Juri Lotman – Culture, Memory and History. Essay in Cultural Semiotics, New York and London, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 133–37. Lynch, K. 1960 The Image of the City, Cambridge (MA) and London, MIT Press. Marrone, G. 2001 Corpi sociali, Turin, Einaudi. Marrone, G. 2013 Figure di città, Udine and Milan, Mimesis. Mazzucchelli, F. 2010 Urbicidio. Il senso dei luoghi tra distruzioni e ricostruzioni nella ex Jugoslavia, Bologna, Bononia University Press. Panico, M. 2021 ‘Chi difende i monumenti? Appunti su retorica e congelamento della memoria’, Roots & Routes, XI (35) (https://www.roots-routes.org/chidifende-i-monumenti-appunti-su-retorica-e-congelamento-della-memoriadi-mario-panico/). Pavlaković, V. and Bădescu, G. 2019 ‘Urban Monuments and the Spatialization of National Ideologies’, in K. Zlatan and D. Stevenson (eds), The Routledge Companion to Urban Media and Communication, London, Routledge, pp. 143–55. Peirce, C. S. 1931-1958 Collected Papers of Charles S. Peirce [CP], 8 volumes, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press. Rigney, A. 2008 ‘Divided Pasts: A Premature Memorial and the Dynamics of Collective Remembrance’, Memory Studies, 1(1), pp. 89–97. Remm, T. 2016 ‘Textualities of the City – From the Legibility of Urban Space towards Social and Natural Others in Planning’, Sign Systems Studies, 44(1/2), pp. 34–52. Saussure de, F. 1916 Cours de linguistique générale, Lausanne, Payot. Scego I. 2014 ‘Affile: una vergogna nazionale’, in: I. Scego and R. Bianchi (eds), Roma Negata, Rome, Ediesse, pp. 117–22. Sedda, F. 2021 ‘The “posterior past” of the new iconoclasm’, in I. Pezzini (ed.), Paolo Fabbri. Unfolding Semiotics. Pour la Sémiotique a Venir – Punctum Monograph, vol. I, Thessaloniki: Hellenic Semiotics Society, pp. 167–74. Taddia, I. 2005 ‘Italian Memories/African Memories of Colonialism’, in R. Ben Ghiat and M. Fuller (eds), Italian Colonialism, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 209–19. Violi, P. 2014 ‘Spectacularising Trauma: The Experientialist Visitor of Memory Museums’, Versus, 119, 51–70. Violi, P. 2017 Landscapes of Memory. Trauma, Space, History, Bern and Oxford, Peter Lang. Wu Ming. 2012 ‘Affile, Grazianilandia. L’eredità razzista e il mausoleo delle sfighe’ (https://www.wumingfoundation.com/giap/2012/09/laguzzino-jettatore-e-ilmausoleo-delle-sfighe/).

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About the Author Mario Panico is postdoctoral fellow at the University of Amsterdam and teaches Communicative Processes at the University of Bologna. He deals with topics related to the semiotics of memory and the representation of the traumatic and nostalgic past in contemporary culture. He has published on the relationship between monumentality and conflict, nostalgia and urban practices, family memories and intersemiotic translation. His next monograph will be entitled Nostalgia, Spatial Consolation and Conflict Heritage (Palgrave Macmillan).

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Uncomfortable Memories of Fascist Italy The Case of Bigio of Brescia Anna Maria Lorusso

Abstract This chapter reflects on an emblematic sculpture of one of the most controversial Italian memories, that of Fascism: the so-called statue of Bigio in Brescia, a symbol of Fascist values. In particular, I examine – within the framework of a critical analysis of ideological discourse – the public reactions and the negotiation of meaning which, after Fascism, involved the legitimacy of the monument, between the desire for cancellation and attempts at historicisation. Keywords: Controversial Memory; Monuments; Ideological Discourse; Semiotics; Aesthetic Analysis.

The object of this contribution is an Italian monument: a sculpture emblematic of a controversial memory, Fascism. It is a sculpture that has characterised and marked a very significant public space: a square in the centre of Brescia in northern Italy. Due to its urban location and strongly connotative dimension, I consider it a relevant object for a volume on the spaces of memory. It is the so-called statue of Bigio1 of Brescia, made in 1932 by Arturo Dazzi, which was removed from Piazza della Vittoria in 1945 and has never since been returned to its place.2 I will look at the controversial events in greater 1 The nickname ‘il Bigio’ is the current, unofficial, name. Various hypotheses exist as to its origin; it could be from the local dialect, a distortion of a proper name such as Luigi an attempt at connoting foolishness, or more likely it could simply derive from the material, a ‘grey (bigio) marble’. 2 Violi has also written about this monument in Violi (2020).

Demaria, Cristina and Patrizia Violi (eds), Reading Memory Sites through Signs: Hiding into Landscape. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2023 doi: 10.5117/9789463722810_ch03

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detail below; it clearly represents a textbook case study on the problem of the legitimacy of monuments that were the expression of a particular regime, in this case Italy’s Fascist regime.3 There has been a very strong revival of this practice of ‘monumental aggression’ just recently, starting in the summer of 2020, when, following the killing of George Floyd, the Black Lives Matter movement called for the demolition of statues glorifying persons guilty of racism, slave ownership and other dubious acts, setting off an international tendency to de-monumentalise racist and Fascist symbols (so that in Italy, for example, the statue of the journalist Indro Montanelli was attacked, as he was guilty of having married a 12-year-old girl in Ethiopia during the Fascist colonial era, within the framework of the legal practice of the ‘madamate’ at the time).4 The case of Bigio in Brescia seems to be a textbook example of the polarisation of a debate between on the one hand the supporters of the cultural legitimacy of Fascist monuments, and on the other those who consider expressions of Fascist propaganda unacceptable.5 The reason why I chose this case from Brescia is that, if we look closely, it shows that the debate is not actually between two factions; this binarism in fact mirrors an ideological reduction of the positions in the field, which instead are more numerous and reflect different and more complex instances that are intertwined with various other value systems, beyond the pro-Fascist/anti-Fascist one. As we shall see, the category of ‘ideology’ as formulated by Umberto Eco in A Theory of Semiotics can be very useful in trying to bring order to the controversies of this debate. I will return to this in the final part of this paper.

The Complex History of the Monument In 1932, Arturo Dazzi received a commission from Marcello Piacentini to make a monumental sculpture. Piacentini was one of the most important 3 On this subject, the critical literature in the field of memory studies is now very noteworthy. To cite only the studies that I have used in this work, see: Tunbridge, J. E- G. J. Ashworth (1996), Huyssen (2000), Macdonald (2009). 4 The “madamato” was an authorised and regulated temporary “conjugal” union that, during the period of Italian colonialism in Ethiopia and Eritrea, allowed Italian men to cohabit with local women, usually very young, to receive domestic and sexual services. It allowed the man away from home, often already married, to recreate a domestic situation, and it could be interrupted at the man’s discretion, without any obligation. It was prohibited by Italian law in 1937. 5 In addition to the classic Gentile (2007), see also Carter and Martin (2017), Hökerberg (2017), Malone (2017), Bellentani and Nanni (2018), Levi and Rothberg (2018), the special edition of Modern Italy magazine, vol 24, 2019.

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architects of the Fascist period. Known internationally, in 1932 he had already designed such building as the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome, the Bank of Italy in the Piazza del Parlamento also in Rome and been superintendent of construction in the Cyrenaica region in Lybia. On the tenth anniversary of the Fascist regime, he was commissioned by Benito Mussolini to design and coordinate the construction of the university city in Rome. A commission from Mussolini is certainly not a neutral act. The Bigio sculpture was to be part of the Piazza della Vittoria, a square dedicated to exalting the new era and new ideals of the post-war world. Piacentini’s project required a strongly vertical element that would take on a leading role in the square despite its decentralised position. The initial idea of a winged Victory was thus replaced by that of a colossal statue (7.5 m) in white marble, representing in its ideal of youth both the vigour of victory and the new virile ideal of the Fascist regime. Even before seeing it in person, Mussolini appreciated its representation, christening it ‘The Fascist Era’. In general, the news of the monument preceded its installation due to its exceptional measurements, transportation difficulties and its symbolic charge, and so people began to talk about the monument: it was immense, and, one would say, corresponded perfectly to the Fascist ideal of man. When it was installed, alongside exaltation by the regime that saw it as a representation of its ideals, criticism began to be heard: the bishop and the mayor cried out in scandal because of the figure’s uncovered genitals. The statue, as well as being a triumph of the athletic and proud vigour of the Fascist man, was also seen as a triumph of hedonistic secularism. And it was difficult not to see all these things at once: youth, robustness, the pride of the pose (note – see Figure 3.1 – the closed fist and the inclination) and nudity. The generic nature of the features (without any attention to detail) and the affirmative absoluteness of the overall effect seem to present themselves as material traits of a humanity that does not accept nuances and details and resolves everything in its own affirmation. In 1933, that is a year after its installation, the church managed to have the statue’s genitals covered with an aluminium vine leaf, but the controversy continued: some complained about its anti-classicism, others began to spread the rumour that Dazzi had given Brescia a reject of his more successful statues for the Imperial Fora in Rome, others, following a night-time accident (when a boy who had climbed onto the statue as a prank died when he fell off) complained about the danger. Alongside Fascist exaltation, there was therefore, right from the beginning, also a reaction from the city: the statue with its extreme features did not go unnoticed, but provoked reactions. It can be said that it is part of the

84 Anna Maria Lorusso Figure 3.1  The Bigio sculpture

Image copyright: © Archivio fotografico Civici Musei di Brescia

sculpture’s intentio operis to evoke responses and debate. By intentio operis I mean, according to Umberto Eco’s definition (1979), the textual strategy within the work, beyond any conscious intentionality and any more or less divergent interpretative practice. I mean, therefore, that there are some semantic constitutive traits of the statue (haughtiness, ‘disproportion’, flaunted sexuality) that seem to draw a reaction, that function in some way as provocations. In my opinion, this is a first important point, which perhaps also explains the fact that this story is still not over and no definite answer has been found: Bigio, due to its intrinsic characteristics (its textual characteristics, we would say from a semiotic point of view) seems not to be able to go unnoticed and undisputed, for better or for worse (unlike other Fascist sculptures, such as those by Maraini, also in Brescia, which were equally Fascist and stood only a short distance away from Bigio) and so it constantly provides a range of interpretations.6 The statue, that is, in itself has characteristics which lend 6 Other memory scholars (such as Hokeberg 2017) have instead argued that ‘one-dimensional monuments’ are monuments whose ‘memorial fate’ is most controversial. I do not deny this

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themselves to divergent interpretations, features which solicit reactions, but which can be valued in different ways: vigour (patriotic vs. sexual), pride (warlike vs. hedonistic), youth (health vs. temptation), immensity (as a value vs. as excess). It is also worth noting, with regard to its ‘conative’ strength,7 that Bigio has literally taken on the role of interlocutory subject in the city’s dialogue twice in its history. While the second time occurred in recent years through a sort of city petition, to be discussed shortly, in which Bigio speaks in the first person, the first time was in 1939, when the magazine ‘Brixia fidelis’ published a curious anonymous poem written in dialect and signed under the pseudonym of Rasighì, that is, ‘seghetto’ (cutting tool, small sharp blade). The English translation is more or less as follows: Are you Model Reader. Bigio? Oh I say, what a manner to show your fists to those who pass by, and to stare at everyone with that ugly look! Is it our fault that you were naked in the square? Are you irritated because of that leaf, Which took away the best of your fame? Give yourselves a break! Because for people of good will, There is still the whole back of the view. Certainly they do you wrong to persecute you, When I think there are so many who would do well To go around with a leaf on their faces. Don’t stand there getting angry, that’s silly. When a few of the people I’m thinking of are in range, No punches; spitting is already too much.8 dynamic, but here I want to highlight the problematic nature of one-dimensionality: even monuments that have very marked and evident characteristics (which therefore seem onedimensional), can actually be open to divergent interpretative paths – paths not due to the creativity or strangeness of the interpreters, but to the semantic spectrum associated in the reference culture with those characteristics. 7 I refer here to the six functions that Jakobson (1960) identified as the basis of communication: referential, emotional, poetic, conative, metalinguistic, phatic, expressive. The conative function is that focused on the recipient, urging them to reply or to join. 8 The original text is: ‘Siete voi il signor Bigio? Oh dico, che maniere di mostrare i pugni a quelli che passano, e di guardare tutti con quella brutta cera! Abbiamo colpa noi se vi hanno messo nudo in piazza? Siete forse irritato per via di quella foglia

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Bigio is therefore a person to whom one turns: an interlocutor of the Brescian citizen. It is interesting to note the reference to the combative attitude of the statue (which was evidently diff icult to swallow for the citizens) and, above all, to note how this is ridiculed in reaction to the vine leaf, whereas it was supposed to symbolise the courage and strength of the Fascist era. Bigio, in short, solicits both admiration and scorn: it is both the Fascist Era and Bigio (officially ‘Fascist Era’, popularly ‘Bigio’), symbol of victory but also maximum exposure ‘de le ciape’ (Italian dialect for ‘the behind’), a simulacrum of the Fascist hierarchies and the common man.9 With the end of the Second World War, the statue became the object of multiple attacks: slashes, explosions, removal of the leaf … On 13 October 1945 it was removed and stored in a municipal warehouse, where it can still be found today. The Giornale di Brescia newspaper, a particularly authoritative voice in the city, greeted the initiative with relief: removing the statue was like removing a Fascist party official: ‘The trouble of the Fascist Era took was taken away from us at precisely 1.30 p.m. … It was treated with particular caution and concern like certain hierarchs known to us’. The statue was no longer spoken for many years, until 1953, when the first requests for reinstatement emerged. It was the magazine Terra Nostra that asserted its legitimacy that year: ‘this statue, not a despicable work by Dazzi, paid for with the city’s money, represents nothing political. It represented a fine example of a young man, an athlete’. As you can see, the claim is also one of belonging and investment: ‘paid with the city’s money’. And due to this sense of belonging, Terra Nostra organised a sort of referendum to sound out public opinion. The results were unreliable as the response was very limited, but it is the beginning of this practice that is relevant. Collections of signatures and petitions were organised on several occasions in the years to come (2013, 2015). People did not want the fate of Bigio to be decided from above, by institutional means, che vi ha tolto il meglio della vostra fama? Datevi pace! Perché per la gente di buona voglia, c’è ancora tutto il di dietro del panorama. Certo che vi fanno torto a perseguitarvi, quando penso che ce ne sono tanti che starebbero bene mandati in giro con la foglia in faccia. Non stia lì ad arrabbiarsi, che è una sciocchezza. Quando vi vengono a tiro alcuni di quelli che penso io, Niente pugni; è già troppo uno sputo.’ 9 These two expressions are reported in ‘L’Era fascista in magazzino. Funerali di 4ª classe’, in Il Giornale di Brescia, 13 October 1945.

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but rather attempts were made to organise and express a popular voice: Bigio belongs to the Brescians. The statue returned to the centre of the debate in 1970, when plans for the renovation of Piazza della Vittoria were presented. An underground car park was planned and the designer Bruno Fedrigolli, a socialist, expressed his opinion that the statue should be returned to its place. As he later declared in the Giornale di Brescia: ‘The removal of the statue is something the people of Brescia should be ashamed of. … Unfortunately, there are stone carvers. They are, in general, important cretins who believed they could erase uncomfortable periods simply by scratching out the inscriptions’ (Bruno Fedrigolli, ‘La statua del Bigio e i molti iconoclasti’, letter to the Giornale di Brescia, 27 February 1995). Another redevelopment project for the square attempted to bring the statue back to its original place in 1986. The motivation on this occasion was cultural and aesthetic: the distance in time made it possible to historicise the Fascist experience and read the project of Piazza della Vittoria as one of the most successful champions of an era of Italian urban culture. But the resistance continued, and the statue was even smeared with red paint on its face and neck in 1995, despite being locked away in a warehouse. Something very important happened in the same year, however: the FAI (Fondo per l’Ambiente Italiano – Italian Environmental Fund), not a local but a national body (although not a government body, as the FAI is a private foundation) organised a visit to the warehouse where Bigio is stored on an open day for buildings and monuments that are usually closed to the public. This was an important form of legitimation: a politically and locally impartial body selected the sculpture from among the country’s significant artistic heritage. FAI is certainly not on the level of UNESCO, but its decision was without any doubt important in terms of artistic and cultural heritage recognition. In the second half of the 2000s the debate became more heated (against the background of a general sensitisation of society to the problem of Fascist heritage). The left-wing council, with Mayor Corsini, declared itself willing to consider reinstating the statue, thus opening up a debate with the citizens. An important monograph by Franco Robecchi appeared in 2008 (with the support of the municipality) consolidating the aesthetic enhancement of the sculpture and framing the controversies as the ‘rhetoric of a policy based on the presumption of dominant opinions and shared clichés’, with the cliché being that Bigio was unacceptable as a Fascist legacy.

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With the next administration, this time right-wing, Bigio’s return seemed certain and, in 2011, the Architectural Heritage Superintendency also set in motion an urban recovery programme, returning the square exactly to its original appearance, including the reinstatement of Arturo Dazzi’s colossus. Restoration of the work began in 2013. But opposition grew, particularly on the part of the associations of former partisans. And yet even in this case there was no particular solidity: signatures were collected protesting against the return of the statue, but these were, all in all, insufficient; the left-wing opposition on the city council denounced the idea of its relocation as an act of revisionism, but the vice-mayor in charge of culture, Laura Castelletti, was not opposed to the operation if an appropriate explanatory plaque were to be placed on the statue. The mayor decided to suspend the plans to relocate the statue out of respect for the opposition and the voices of the partisans, but not to permanently shelve them: this suspension was to be a prelude to the resumption of the debate. The new left-wing mayor who was elected in 2013 and was mayor at the time of writing, opposes the relocation of the statue, with reasoning which is interesting for its ‘weakness’: the relocation project invokes ‘clashes, divisions and controversies’ and as such it is better avoided; it is a ‘marginal’ issue with respect to the problems of the city, and as such it should not be given priority; it is not an ideological choice, but a choice dictated by the need to protect the artefact from vandalism and respect for the victims of the (neo-Fascist) massacre of Piazza della Loggia (adjacent to Piazza della Vittoria). Negative motivations, in short, which do not take a strong position with regard to the political character of the artefact, but rather express the desire to avoid problems: social conflict, vandalism, even investment (we have other priorities …). And in any case, although these motivations are weak in terms of values, they hold back any initiative and begin to support the hypothesis of ‘filling the void’. The matter seems to have returned to the city’s consciousness in the years immediately thereafter. In 2015, a ‘Bigio Day’ was organised, on the day – 24 September –the sculpture was initially erected. This spontaneous city initiative was presented as an initiative for the liberation of Bigio. Once again, Bigio ‘took the floor’, with a new collection of signatures, and the semantic evaluation revolves interestingly around the word ‘freedom’: Dear Brescians, How is it my fault that my putative father renamed me ‘Fascist Era’, giving me, as a man, a (inauspicious) woman’s name? My real father, you should know, was called Arturo Dazzi, and therefore my real name at the registry

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office is: ‘the Colossus of Dazzi’. To my friends I am simply ‘il Bigio’. You call me whatever you want, but don’t call me: ‘Fascist Era’! The sins of the fathers must not fall on their children. Especially if the children are innocent. And I am innocent by definition, being a simple statue made by a man to his taste. Some people don’t like me at all, I know. But to others, I’m beautiful. In any case, I didn’t choose my shape. As I told you, I’m just a statue! For these reasons I ask those in charge to let me go home. I don’t want to holiday in Salò or in the beautiful Vittoriale degli Italiani. I want to go back to Piazza Vittoria! And I am sorry that someone – for ideological reasons – wants to leave ‘my’ space empty or, worse, to give it to those who have nothing to do with the architecture of that square (which even houses the Arengario)10. I am 83 years old, at 23 I was uprooted from my home and imprisoned in a municipal warehouse. Have I not paid enough for the sins of those who brought me into the world? Please release me, and let me go home. #FreeBigio Signed, Your Bigio (from his prison)

The ‘friends of Bigio’ (who have created an extensive and well-documented site: www.ilbigio.it) are keen to call themselves radically anti-Fascist, and, precisely for this reason, to be in favour of freedom of expression, historical conscience and the circulation of ideas. There is no lack of critical responses from those who claim that the return of the statue ‘must be a political act, it cannot be philological, because it was not philological but political to want it’ (see the letter of Flavio Pasotti, an entrepreneur from Brescia, published on the website bigio.it11) or from those who, more radically, list the reasons why Bigio cannot return to the square: ‘that statue cannot be in Piazza Vittoria. Precisely because of what it represents, the Fascist era. It cannot be in Piazza Vittoria precisely because it was demolished and removed in 1945 by the partisans who fought for the freedom of Italy from the dictatorship and Fascism. Which our constitution 10 The Arengario (present in Brescia but also in many other Italian cities) is a building, typical of northern Italy, with a balcony from which the people harangued, also used during the Fascist period with the same function. 11 http://ilbigio.it/2015/05/il-lelo-della-serenissima-lintervento-contro-di-flavio-pasotti/ (date accessed: 21 March 2020).

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forbids to celebrate and advocate again. It cannot be in Piazza Vittoria because Piazza Loggia is just a stone’s throw away from it. It would be a serious, unacceptable and offensive disfigurement to the victims of that neo-Fascist massacre’, according to a member of parliament of the PD12 in an article in Brescia News on 11 October 2016.13 And in the meantime, there has been no lack of proposals to define solutions both for and against: replacing the statue but repainting it in gold so that it is defined as kitsch,14 or returning it to the square but in a horizontal position, so that it is knocked down in some way, and not towering over the square.15 It was under this left-wing administration, which was apparently biding its time and cautious (I have spoken above of ‘weak motivations’), that a major solo exhibition of Mimmo Paladino’s work was held in 2017. Among the sculptures that Paladino ‘disseminated’ throughout the city was a sculpture in place of Bigio: a black marble stele (Figure 3.2), just as large as the previous one, on the same pedestal, also representing a man in an upright position. A true response, in short, which entirely references (in similarity and clear opposition) the previous one: both colossi, both on the exact same plinth, both full-length male f igures, both in marble – the f irst white, the second black – the f irst f igurative, the second geometric; the f irst rounded, the second angular; the f irst protruding, the second aggressive in a different way. Paladino’s sculpture was to be part of a temporary exhibition, but while the other sculptures were removed at the end of the agreed period, the black stele is still there, in place of the Bigio (literally: on the same base as where the Bigio originally stood). In the meantime – the last twist of an ongoing lawsuit – the final decision was handed down in 2019, although this was immediately denied by the vice-mayor, so that it is a potential but not a certain decision). Bigio will ultimately be put on display again, but not in the square, but in a new location – Musil, Brescia’s Museum of Industry and Work. Bigio will be placed there in a gallery that precedes the actual rooms, within a narration of the history of Brescia and its salient moments. It will be exhibited as a symbol of an indelible historical phase of the city, Fascism. 12 PD is the acronymous for Partito Democratico (Democratic Part, the most important centre-left party in Italy. 13 https://www.printfriendly.com/p/g/Hhj44B (date accessed: 20 December2022). 14 http://www.bresciatoday.it/cronaca/brescia-statua-bigio-piazza-vittoria-oro.html (date accessed: 20 December2022). 15 https://www.giornaledibrescia.it/brescia-e-hinterland/no-gormley-no-bigio-piazza-vittoriapunto-e-a-capo-1.1915665 (date accessed: 20 December2022).

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Figure 3.2  Mimmo Paladino’s stele

Image copyright: © Archivio fotografico Civici Musei di Brescia

Ideological Discussions Umberto Eco, in his A Theory of Semiotics (1976, § 3.9. ‘Ideological code switching’), sets out a real theory of ideological discourse. Eco leaves behind the vagueness of the positions that claim that any set of ideas and values in some way represents an ideology (whereby all thoughts are ideological in some way, expressing a vision of the world), the vagueness of theories that associated ideology with the generic deception of false consciousness (as in Marx), and the specificity of cases that can be traced back to a naturalisation of what instead has a historical and contingent nature (as in Roland Barthes). Instead, Eco develops an analysis of the functioning of ideology in two stages (ideological inventio and ideological dispositio) which is based on the idea that ideological discourse has a deceptive nature because it is partial. Firstly, for Eco, ideological discourse is a form of rhetoric, that is, a strategic organisation of discourse. It is therefore not a set of ideas, but a particular way of presenting and communicating certain ideas, according to precise discursive objectives. In other words, rhetorical discourse is an interested discourse. Secondly, ideological rhetoric is based on an operation consisting of the selection of arguments (inventio, according to the terminology of ancient

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rhetoric) and their presentation (dispositio), which has a precise logic: to hide the contradictory nature of one’s own semantic-cultural system (what Eco calls encyclopaedia). The structure of the cultural universe that Eco has outlined is an intrinsically contradictory structure: by recording the disparate semantic paths that the various cultural units have taken over time, keeping track of the various statements in the world as an immense register of registers, the Eco encyclopaedia is necessarily defined as a network of possible contradictions: it is up to the user, the individual enunciator, to build paths of coherence, by implementing the most ‘consequential’ and coherent semantic selections. These paths can only be local constructions of coherence, and for this reason, according to Eco, it is inevitable that each enunciation is partial. From this point of view, the problem is not constructing one’s own vision of the world (that is, one’s own paths of coherence), but how one presents it, how one justifies it. Ideological rhetoric is triggered when this vision of the world is rendered absolute, that is, is presented as the only possible vision, when, in short, instead of showing awareness of the partiality of one’s own enunciations, one makes sure to present them as the only possible ones: when, in other words, the contradictory nature of the system is hidden. From this perspective, ideological inventio is the selection of arguments that are functional to one’s own enunciative interests; dispositio is their concatenation with a persuasive effect – a concatenation that can be a pure strategic organisation of well-selected arguments or a real construction of faulty but apparently convincing reasoning, based on (false) premises that look like correct premises. Now, it seems to me that a real ideological competition has unfolded in the chaotic debate on Bigio in Brescia, in the sense that different rhetorical positions have been defined, each partial. But this competition has never been read to date as a plural interplay, but rather as a two-way competition (pro-Fascists vs anti-Fascists, or nostalgic vs progressive), squashing ideological rhetoric into a further reduced ideological scheme, which hardens the field by splitting it and thus driving it towards confrontation. What I mean to say is that ideological competition is not left to its plurality, but is continuously re-framed in a binary scheme, highlighting an aspect that perhaps Eco did not have time to focus on in his theory: the ideological discourses within the encyclopaedia ‘become ideological’ in turn, become new inventio material, in an increasingly polarised framework. The ‘great ideologies’ are perhaps nothing more than the ideological restructuring of the encyclopaedia in its local ideological plurality.

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The fact that we do not see the plurality of ideological competition leads, on a concrete level, to the deadlock of irresolvable opposition, where plurality could find an answer in a multi-lateral policy of taking charge of the discussion of the different positions at stake. But let me try to explain myself concretely. I would like, first and foremost, to organise the various arguments that we have seen emerge in the Brescia affair. I would say that the following have certainly been expressed at some stage in the Bigio affair (from its beginning, in 1932, up to the present day): – A political argument: the discourse of the Fascist regime, which ‘takes’ the work as its own and christens it ‘Fascist Era’, and subsequently the antithetical argument of the regime’s detractors, the discourse of the partisans, and of those who, both in 1945 and more recently (2015, for example, through partisan associations), have actively pursued the removal of the sculpture in the name of a precise political position. – An aesthetic-cultural argument: this is the discourse of those who, according to various parameters and theories, appeal to aesthetic values: it is the position of the magazine Terra Nostra or of FAI, who value the statue as a sculpture; it is the position of those attempting a counterstrategy through aesthetics with Paladino’s work; it is also the position of those who choose to display the Bigio in the Musil museum. There are reactions of “civic interest” around these two prevailing discursive fields. There is the discourse of the church, which was critical of Bigio from the very beginning in the name of a common conception of decency; there is the discourse of “taxpayers”, that is, citizens who emphasise that they have spent money on the statue (which was, in fact, built with public funds) and who therefore want to ensure that the investment is not wasted. These positions are not internally consistent; on the contrary, they reflect positions for and against Bigio, but I would like to note that they exist within different discursive spheres, centred on different axiologies, which organise their semantic space according to different values and passions. Political discourse oscillates between pride and shame; civic discourse appeals first to modesty (Catholic discourse), then to monetary value (an economic investment to be exploited), then finally to discomfort (of those who find themselves ‘stained’ by something without having chosen it); aesthetic discourse foregrounds first the expressive force (of the sculpture itself, regardless of who has claimed it as their own), then its symbolic force (which can be translated and driven also by another work in a similar way, that of Paladino), and then its cultural representativeness (like those who want to place it in a museum).

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These differences, which could be taken into account by and incorporated in one’s own arguments to enhance them, are instead systematically neutralised. According to the ideological scheme illustrated by Eco, each discourse proceeds to an interested inventio of the arguments (drawing on different discursive spheres, so that the aesthetic discourse draws on the political discourse, the civic discourse draws on the aesthetic discourse and so on), then to building a dispositio that neutralises the diversity of ‘vocation’ of those arguments and reorganises them into a coherent discourse with a claim to truth and justice (and therefore makes them absolute). I will now take this text from one of the many city petitions (on change. org) that have been organised: The ‘Stele’ is a sculpture by the well-known contemporary artist Mimmo Paladino which was recently installed on the base of Piazza Vittoria in Brescia, in the place where the ‘Bigio’ was once located. The latter is a Fascist symbol created during the Fascist period by Arturo Dazzi, currently removed from the square and kept in the archives of the City of Brescia. The Italian Republic is founded on a principle of anti-Fascism, so it is unacceptable that a symbolic statue like the one by Dazzi should be reinstated in Piazza Vittoria. Our organisation therefore asks the City of Brescia that Mimmo Paladino’s masterpiece be made permanent.

Here we find an unspecified civic subject (we could say a participative collective subjectivity, made up of the individuals signatories, but who count not as individuals but are functional to a collective subject in the process of formation); an aesthetic option (the appreciation and the request to maintain Paladino’s sculpture); a political criterion (Bigio is a Fascist symbol). There is no reasoning – within the aesthetic-cultural sphere – of the cultural value of Bigio; there is no reasoning – within the civic sphere – of the value ‘for the citizens’ of that sculpture; there is no reasoning – within the political sphere – of the historicisation of the Fascist period: everything is mixed up together and nothing is investigated in further detail. Therefore – as it is typical of ideological reasoning according to Eco – the contradictory nature of reality is never mentioned: the stele is Fascist but it is also a work of art; the stele is controversial but it is also a symbol of identity and belonging for all citizens. A sequence of well-chosen statements (‘the stele is …:’, ‘the latter is …’, ‘The Italian Republic is based on …’) lead to an inferential conclusion (‘therefore it is unacceptable’) based on certain premises that are not up for discussion, which conceal the debatable nature of the theme. I

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will also give an example of the opposite faction, with a letter that appeared in the Giornale di Brescia on 16 February 2019: I learn that the Dazzi statue, otherwise known as Bigio, will be placed in the new Musil location. Considering that if all goes well (the Council of State must also express its opinion) the work for the Museum of Industry and Work will begin in the spring, I feel I can say that this is not a decision but only a way to take up time. It is the ungrateful fate of a statue that has an indisputable historical value (the writer is anything but a Fascist), to which – in the recent past – ideological content has unfortunately been ‘added’ which is now out of place. I believe, however, that Dazzi’s statue should be placed in a location where it can be valued according to a precise philological and historical design. All the more reason to say that the Musil solution is not correct.

Here we have a private citizen, who appeals to what is, in his opinion, an indisputable cultural value and denounces the political nature of an apparently respectful decision. There is no trace of reflection on the political dimension of sculpture; there is no response to the legitimate civic unease that sculpture can bring about; there is no consideration of the various collective intolerances that have emerged over the decades. An argumentative chain full of evaluative expressions that do not express doubts is built up (‘it is not a decision’ … ‘it is the ungrateful fate’ … ‘it has an indisputable historical value’ … ‘anything but Fascist’ … ‘ideological content which is now out of place’) and that only give ‘one more reason’ for a conclusion that, precisely because it follows only ‘one more reason’, seems completely evident and not in need of support: ‘the Musil solution is not correct’. Every certain stance is evidently based on an ad-hoc selection from the different discursive spheres mentioned above, without taking into account that in each of these a range of positions was actually given and without ensuring that an answer to these positions is provided. The reduction is drastic, ‘pieces of reality’ are ignored, and it is thanks to this that the discursive outcome makes things absolute.

Conclusions The impression we take from this close-up analysis of the Bigio case is that, in the face of a particularly controversial case of difficult heritage, the responses in the field have not yet managed to process non-ideological

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reactions but have all proceeded in the direction of silencing something. And this is not due to a more or less creeping returning revisionism in Italian society. Unfortunately, even the speeches that wanted to distance themselves from revisionism, and that came from left-wing positions, have sometimes become entrenched in an absolutist position that is blind to the various examples of debate in the field. What I want to highlight is that in this case (and perhaps not only in this case; the question should be extended to at least the various cases of Fascist difficult heritage in Italy, and we can certainly extend it to what happened in June 2020 following the Black Lives Matter movement) it is not only the Fascism-anti-Fascism duo, nor solely the passions of pride and shame that is at stake, but a much more diversified range of values, passions and subjects of enunciation – brought on by the artwork itself – that should guide the policies of memory in a participative (civic instances, in our case, are fundamental), inclusive (in a cognitive and not a psychological sense: it is a matter of understanding the various ‘interests’ in the field), and multidirectional (questioning the different dimensions that such a sculpture expresses: political, identity-based, cultural asset-based, aesthetic, historical …) course. The three paths that Malone (2017) gives as options for the management of Fascist heritage in Italy – destroy, neglect, re-use – should perhaps be supplemented by a fourth option, which I would summarise (although one word is always inadequate) with the trivial verb ‘to re-present’ (which is also widely used in trauma studies) which, while it evidently excludes the option of cancellation in all its forms (both as destruction and neglect), is not synonymous with uncritical re-presentation à l’identique. The option of erasure from the semiotic point of view is to be excluded in all its forms because there is no evidence that can be erased in the encyclopaedic network. In the encyclopaedia there is only palimpsest, or at most narcotisation, but not erasure. Even the voids are signs (as Violi points out in Violi 2020) and therefore presentification of something. The ‘stands for’ at the base of the sign mechanism makes enforced forms of oblivion unworkable: the gesture of erasure is a sign of what it is going to erase, a bit like in Lakoff’s famous example of ‘Don’t think about the elephant’: if you mention the elephant, you are thinking about it. But, as I have argued, ‘re-presenting’ does not mean re-proposing. ‘Re-present’ implies bringing something back to visibility (and for this reason I prefer to use this term here – re-present – and not, as is more common in semiotics, resemantisation) – and therefore not to hide and not to destroy, in the name of respect for a historical givenness that is

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part of the past – but in a secondary way (re-presenting), with all the responsibility of contextualisation, reconstruction and discursion that this entails. Obviously, nothing forbids such second discourse being in turn ideological, partial or interested, but as such it would still enter the public arena, without detracting from the visibility of the object of the controversy, and would feed new discourses, in a normal, open (and unfinished) democratic dialectic. I would add that re-presenting is not re-use either, because it is not a matter of programmatically repurposing the artwork (be it a space, such as an ancient palazzo, or a sculpture, which can also potentially be re-used, or used for different purposes: from a celebratory statue to an element of a larger artistic or urban complex); on the contrary, it is a matter of giving it back as completely as possible. Thinking about definitive, defining and impartial policies of memory is perhaps a vice that the courts of justice and history (in the forms of national and supranational courts) have accustomed us to. I have the impression that the policies of memory can only be revisited, in an effort to take into account the contradictions and heterogeneity of a network of instances that changes over time, and can only be positioned, but hopefully clearly, according to a system of values that is aware of and knows how to respond to the values of others. To return to and conclude with Bigio, as long as politics ignores the collection of reasons that have driven a debate for almost 90 years, it will be difficult to make non-ideological choices. The history of Bigio is the history of a cumbersome and immeasurable monument (and I say this – I stress it again – starting from the internal characteristics of the text, typical of the artwork), that is as such uncomfortable from the beginning, Fascist and popular at the same time, loved and mocked, emblematic (of Fascism) and generic (of youth) at the same time. There is no memory policy that can be considered adequate if it does not take this contradiction into account. And there is no memorial solution that can be forever, because the life of a monument will continue, in the history of its city, even if it is inside a warehouse, fuelling new evaluations.

Works Cited Bellentani, F. and Panico, M. 2016 ‘The Meaning of Monument and Memorials: Toward a Semiotic Approach’, Punctum. International Journal of Semiotics, 2 (1), pp. 28–46.

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Bellentani, F. and Nanni, A. 2018 ‘The Meaning Making of the Built Environment in the Fascist City: A Semiotic Approach’, Signs and Society, 6(2), pp. 379–411. Carter N. and Martin, S. 2017. ‘The Management and Memory of Fascist Monumental Art in Postwar and Contemporary Italy: the Case of Luigi Montanarini’s Apotheosis of Fascism’, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 22 (3), 338–64. Carter N. and Martin, S. (eds) 2019 Modern Italy. Special Issue: The Difficult Heritage of Italian Fascism, 24(2). Eco, U. 1975 Trattato di semiotica generale, Milan, Bompiani (new edition Milan, La nave di Teseo, 2016). Eco, U. 1976 A Theory of Semiotics, Bloomington, Indiana UP. Eco, U. 1979 Lector in fabula, Milan, Bompiani (new edition Milan, La nave di Teseo, 2020; English transl. The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts, Bloomington, Indiana UP, 1979). Gentile, E. 2007 Il fascismo di pietra, Bari and Rome, Laterza. Hökerberg H. 2017 ‘The Monument to Victory in Bolzano: Desacralisation of a Fascist Relic’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 23(8), pp. 759–74. Huyssen, A. 2000 ‘Present Pasts: Media, Politics, Amnesia’, Public Culture, 12(1), pp. 21–38. Jakobson, R. 1960 ‘Linguistics and Poetics’, in T. Sebeok (ed.), Style in Language, Cambridge, MA, M.I.T. Press, pp. 350–77. Lakoff, G. 1990 Don’t Think of An Elephant! Know Your Values and Frame the Debate, New York, Chelsea Green. Levi, N. and Rothberg, M. 2018 ‘Memory Studies in a Moment of Danger: Fascism, Postfascism, and the Contemporary Political Imaginary’, Memory Studies, 11(3), pp. 355–67. Macdonald, S. 2008 Difficult Heritage: Negotiating the Nazi Past in Nuremberg and Beyond, London and New York, Routledge. Malone, H. 2017 ‘Legacies of Fascism: Architecture, Heritage and Memory in contemporary Italy’, Modern Italy, 22(4), pp. 445–70. Robecchi, F. 2008 Brescia e il colosso di Arturo Dazzi, Roccafranca (BS), La compagnia della Stampa. Tunbridge, J. E. and Ashworth G. J. 1996 Dissonant Heritage. The Management of the Past as a Resource in Conflict, New York, John Wiley. Violi, P. 2020 ‘Eredità difficili: i monumenti del fascismo nell’Italia di oggi’, in E. Garavelli, D. Monticelli, D, U. Ploom, and E. Suomela-Härmä (eds). Italianistica 2.0. Tradizione e innovazione. Atti del XII Congresso degli Italianisti della Scandinavia Helsinki-Tallinn, 13-14 giugno 2019, Helsinki, Société Néophilologique, pp. 185–200.

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About the Author Anna Maria Lorusso is Associate Professor at the Department of Arts of the University of Bologna, where she teaches Semiotics, Semiotics of Culture and Analysis of Information. From 2017 until 2021 she was President of the Italian Association of Semiotics. Her research is focused on Semiotics of culture, with three main fields of research: cultural memory, logic of information (post-truth, fake news etc.), models of common sense. Among her latest books are L’utilità del senso comune, Bologna, il Mulino, 2022; Post-verità. Fra reality tv, social media e storytelling, Rome-Bari, Laterza, 2018; MemoSur/MemoSouth. Memory, Commemoration and Trauma in PostDictatorship Argentina and Chile, edited with A. Sharman, M. Grass Kleiner and S. Savoini London, Critical, Cultural and Communications Press, 2017; Cultural Semiotics, London, Palgrave-MacMillan, 2016.

4

What Does Fascist Architecture Still Have to Tell Us? Preservation of Contested Heritage as a Strategy of ReEnunciation and ‘Voice Remodulation’ Francesco Mazzucchelli

Abstract This chapter attempts to revisit some issues related to the recent debate on so-called ‘difficult heritage’ (Macdonald) from a semiotic perspective. More specifically, the symbolic weight of the monumental (especially architectural) material legacy of past totalitarian regimes is examined in terms of a temporal transformation of its ‘ideological voice’. According to this theoretical proposal, the material changes induced by restoration and rehabilitation works can be analysed as operations of ‘remodulation’ of the voice of monumental architectures, which can be framed by a semiotic theory of enunciation. Through the analysis of a series of case studies of Italian Fascist monumental buildings and their subsequent material transformation over time, a typology of different possible forms of remodulation is proposed. Keywords: Difficult Heritage; Theory of Enunciation; Architecture and Ideology; Voice of Architecture; Semiotics of Architecture

Difficult Heritage and its Conflicting ‘Voices’: an Enunciational Approach to Contested Monumental Architecture The aim of this paper 1 is to test how analytic tools of narrative semiotics may help in framing and understanding some of the issues related to the 1 An earlier version of this chapter was presented at the Memory Studies Association conference in December 2017 in Copenhagen, with the title ‘Les lieux d’oubli? A semiotic approach to

Demaria, Cristina and Patrizia Violi (eds), Reading Memory Sites through Signs: Hiding into Landscape. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2023 doi: 10.5117/9789463722810_ch04

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preservation of controversial heritage. A semiotic approach2 will be used to account for the meaning effects determined by different solutions of transformation of architectural and monumental legacies originating from a problematic past, and whose collective perception (and meaning) has changed because they are associated with values which a society does not identify with anymore, such as in democratic countries that have experienced a dictatorship in the past. My case studies are examples of monumental architecture built in Italy during the Fascist period and restored or refurbished in the last few decades. More specifically, I shall try to describe some cases of ‘difficult heritage management’ in Italy, looking at some solutions of transformation or restoration of Fascist architecture, through the lens of the semiotic notion of ‘enunciation’ (as developed especially in Benveniste’s and, later, Greimas’s theories and by their followers).3 The choice of this analytical angle lies in the central hypothesis of my paper: any monumental architecture has its own ‘voice’, through which it ‘speaks’ in public environments. I understand ‘voice’ not simply in its recognised meaning, but also to the way this is expressed and conveyed through the establishment of an axis of communication between the monumental architecture and its ‘user’, these ‘enunciational positions’ being inscribed in the architecture itself (and derivable from an analysis) but also liable to alter through time along with public attitudes towards them. Indeed, the voices of monuments, especially in public spaces, are subject to change over time, especially in relation with the mutations of their ‘audiences’ and of the interpretative and cultural schemes to which they belong, which means that the shared meanings of cultural heritage uncomfortable heritage: the case of Fascist architecture in Italy’. The talk was part of a panel proposed by ‘TraMe – Center for the Semiotic Study of Memory’ (University of Bologna), together with other members of the Center, with whom I discussed the ideas presented here (Patrizia Violi, Cristina Demaria, Anna Maria Lorusso, Claudio Paolucci, Daniele Salerno and Mario Panico). I am indebted to all of them for the many suggestions and opinions that I received. The issue of a semiotic approach to difficult heritage (especially Fascist heritage) has already been explored in some of their writings; I limit myself here to referencing Violi 2020 and Panico 2020. This chapter refers also to those contributions and wants to be an ideal continuation of our many conversations on this topic with their authors. 2 Derived mainly from the narrative semiotics of Greimas and Courtés (1979) and Eco (1979), and their subsequent developments. 3 Benveniste (1966), Greimas and Courtés (1979). I will also refer to other semiotic theories that in my view complement Greimas’s theorisation, such as Umberto Eco’s concept of the Model Reader (Eco 1979), Bruno Latour’s philosophy of enunciation (1999) and Manar Hammad’s elaboration (2003) of Greimas directed towards a spatial enunciation theorisation.

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in public spaces change as cultures, collective axiologies and epistemes (in the Foucauldian sense) evolve. 4 In this context, I maintain that any operation of preservation, restoration or transformation of monumental architecture, especially when these are controversial or problematic, can also be considered as an attempt to re-modulate their ‘voice’ or, in other words, an act of re-enunciation.5 Semiotic theories of enunciation provide a conceptual framework that will allow me to compare the ‘re-coding’ of some buildings linked to Fascism, seen as semiotic operations working on the enunciational level, that is, the way they communicate themselves and engage in a ‘simulated dialogue’ with their audiences (I will elaborate on this point on section 2). The issue of ‘difficult heritage’ (Macdonald 2009), and the related processes of ‘negotiation’ of problematic pasts and their material remains, has represented one of the most scrutinised and discussed topics in the f ields of memory and heritage studies in the last few years.6 As is well known, this notion has been proposed by Sharon Macdonald to refer to that ‘unsettling and awkward’ heritage which evokes ‘a past that is recognised as meaningful in the present but that is also contested and awkward for public reconciliation with a positive, self-affirming contemporary identity’ (2009: 1). This concept correlates with a vast and articulated semantic field of notions addressing similar questions: from Turnbridge’s and Ashworth’s groundbreaking conceptualisation of ‘dissonant heritage’ in 1996 (to which Macdonald refers in her writings), to the ideas of ‘dark heritage’, ‘uncomfortable heritage’, ‘perpetrator heritage’,7 and so forth. Although each of these labels stresses different facets of the point at issue, all of them designate the same object: a material legacy which in the past had, or for some still has a meaningful character and which still represents a relevant historical 4 For the notion of episteme, see Foucault (1966). The transformations in the shared meanings of the built environment are effectively described by Umberto Eco: ‘history, with its voracious vitality, empties and fills the forms, deprives and enriches them with meanings’ (1968: 214, my translation). 5 I have written on architectural and urban restoration as practice of memory rewriting, especially in Mazzucchelli (2010). On the notion of re-enunciation as linked to remembering, Migliore (2021). See Sozzi, in this volume and 2017, for a semiotic theorisation on re-enunciation of traces of memory. 6 It would be impossible to provide here a comprehensive overview of the rich debate about this topic. For a recent contribution about the theoretical discussion, and an attempt to propose an advancement, see Wollentz (2020). 7 For a comprehensive review, Merrill and Schmidt (2010). For a semiotic approach to the topic, see in particular Violi (2014).

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document,8 but which is complicated to manage from a symbolic point of view, since it does not fit easily into current and prevailing collective systems of values and can hence generate conflicting, competing or discordant interpretations. In other words, such a legacy is a potentially negative heritage, a sort of anti-heritage. In their pioneering formulation, Turnbridge and Ashworth (1996) focus on the intrinsically controversial nature of the heritage creation process (Ib.: 20–21), introducing the notion of dissonance derived both from musical theory (dissonance as disharmony) and psychology (cognitive dissonance), and oriented towards the identification of best practices of ‘management of the dissonance’ (Ib.: 263). They propose a definition of heritage which distinguishes it from history: while history is a selective description of the past through documents and records, heritage instead is ‘a product of the present, purposefully developed in response to current needs and demands for it, and shaped by those requirements’ (Ib.: 6). And again: ‘all heritage is someone’s heritage, and that someone determines that it exists’ (Ib.). Heritage is then thought of basically as culturally constructed in the present. It could be interesting to connect this idea with the position of Laurajane Smith, whose performative and discursive theory of heritage (2006) has strongly influenced the recent debate in critical heritage studies: heritage is not a ‘thing’, but a ‘cultural and social process which engages with acts of remembering that work to create ways to understand and engage with the present’ (Smith 2006: 2).9 More importantly for what is discussed here, ‘in recognising the subjectivities of heritage, it becomes necessary to destabilise the idea of the “objectivity” of heritage’ (Ib.: 55). What is crucial, then, both in Turnbridge’s and Ashworth’s and Smith’s reflections, is precisely the ‘collective someone’ (singular or plural)who produces, consumes and ‘gives meaning’ to the heritage or, in other words, the ‘subject of the discourse of heritage’, meant as both the implicit ideological (and historically situated) subject who produces the heritage discourse and the implicit receiver subject who interprets and decodes it. These subjects produce different heritage discourses, with different weights, which are often in competition, with some of them ‘making it’ and becoming implicit in the ‘objective reality’ of the materiality of heritage. As previously mentioned, the theoretical contribution by Turnbridge and Ashworth was then taken up by Macdonald (2006, 2009), who restricts her 8 On the document/monument couple, see Le Goff (1978). 9 A key notion proposed by Smith is that of Authorised Heritage Discourse (AHD), to define the ‘dominant Western discourse about heritage … that works to naturalise a range of assumptions about the nature and meaning of heritage’ (Smith Ib.: 4).

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focus to a particular typology of dissonant heritage, in which the main issue is not simply that there are competing and discordant visions about what should be considered heritage, or how it should be presented or ‘exploited’ for economic purposes in processes of heritage commodification (all of which are some of the dimensions of dissonance considered by Turnbridge and Ashworth). Macdonald examines the physical reminders of the Nazi regime in Germany and the problematic task of coming to terms with the uncomfortable past that these traces embody. She studies the re-processing, in Germany, of the material legacy of the Nazi regime, presenting compelling research on Nuremberg – one of the German cities that is most linked to Nazism in ourmind– that is destined to influence further researches on this matter.10 Hence, her work pinpoints the complex re-negotiations of the meanings incorporated by the monumental legacy of a painful and ‘unbearable’11 past, when silencing or ignoring is not a viable option (Ib.:3).12 Carrying on with the idea of the subject of heritage introduced earlier and approaching the core concept proposed in this chapter, one could say that, in Macdonald’s idea of difficult heritage, the focus is moved to the clash (a vehement form of dissonance) emerging between the discursive subject that is still talking, albeit feebly, through the material remains, and the present subject of heritage (which redefines the sense and often transforms that materiality) whose identity and values are in contrast with the former. Recently, many scholars have looked at Italy and its relationship with Fascist material legacy using Macdonald’s approach (Arthurs 2010; Pezzini 2011;13 Carter and Martin 2017 and 2019; Leech 2018; Bartolini 2019; Panico 2020). Fascism has left imprints so strong and widespread in Italian public 10 A previous and innovative investigation into post-war memory in Germany and its relation to Nazi monuments and architecture was put forward by Rosenfeld (2000). 11 Macdonald herself uses the adjective ‘unbearable’ to refer to this kind of heritage. Indeed, it is possible to trace an evolution in Macdonald’s own theorisation of the notion, from the first idea of ‘undesirable heritage’ (Macdonald 2006), defined as ‘a heritage that the majority of the population would prefer not to have’ (Ib.: 9), to its last formulation, when she poses the question of whether difficult heritage is still to be called difficult (2018), since many countries have learned to deal with it and found solutions to critically engage with it. 12 Macdonald’s aim is ‘to identify a non-exhaustive range of negotiating frames and tactics through which some kinds of past are evoked and engaged within public culture’ (2006: 4). The titles of her book’s chapters each correspond to these negotiating frames: demolition/ cleansing, preservation/profanation/image-management, accompanied witnessing, production of cosmopolitan memories, negotiations ‘on the ground’ through guided tours, etc. 13 In the chapter devoted to the analysis of the transformation of Ara Pacis Augustae in Rome through the new building that contains the Roman monument, designed by Richard Meier (Pezzini 2011: 48–64), Pezzini also dwells on the symbolic relevance the monument had acquired during Fascism, and its subsequent de-Fascistisation.

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spaces that they still today permeate the current urban landscape. In an essay which is crucial for the topics addressed here, Joshua Arthurs poses a question that is difficult to answer: ‘What does it mean that so much of contemporary life [in Italy] – from morning commutes and football matches to the postal service and government bureaucracy – takes place against a backdrop designed during the fascist Ventennio?’ (Arthurs 2010: 116). Italian public debates about the role and ‘agentivity’ of this difficult heritage is highly polarised. For some people, Fascist monuments and architecture today are unable to fulfil any ideological effect: they ‘cannot speak’ anymore with their original voice and they should just be considered as historical and artistic documents. According to other positions, they testify how the memory of Fascism has never been really re-processed in Italy, and these remains constitute an embarrassing presence in cities’ public spaces, especially since they have undergone almost no adjustments to make their presence acceptable in the context of a democratic society.14 Moreover, any choice about what to do with those remnants – ignore, demolish, leave to decay, restore, transform, alter them – will result in different attributions of value and then in different spatial narratives telling how this dark page of history must be told and incorporated in public spaces. I have addressed this question in previous works by looking at architectural restoration as a semantic re-assembling of the materiality of the architecture as a way to rewrite the narrative conveyed by it (Mazzucchelli 2010); as mentioned, this paper will instead focus on the redefinition of the communicative relationship between architecture and its subject, entailed through works of restoration/refurbishment. The next section will briefly introduce the notion of enunciation in semiotics so that it can be used to account for this operation of ‘voice-remodulation’ of architecture.

Semantics of Heritage and its Voices: How do Buildings Speak? This chapter is based on an assumption largely accepted in semiotics: architecture (as well as spatiality in general and as any articulation of space) works as a language and, just like any other language, has the capability to ‘signify’, 14 The divisive nature of this heritage emerged, for example, on the occasion of a declaration by the former president of the Chamber of Deputies Laura Boldrini, who expressed sympathy with the positions of ex-partisans disputing the inscription praising Mussolini on the obelisk of the Roman Forum. See Mazzucchelli (2021) for an analysis of the public debate in Italy about this topic. A well-argued exploration of the role of Fascism’s legacy in Italy is also found in Malone (2017).

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that is, to convey and express meanings (Greimas 1976, Hammad 2003).15 In his seminal reflection on the semiotics of architecture, Umberto Eco (1968: 192) notes that architecture is only apparently built just to ‘function’ and not to communicate. Eco contradicts this idea and proposes looking at architecture as a form of communication, in which particular arrangements of space convey meanings, in accordance with anthropological and cultural codes. Moving on from the Barthesian category of denotation/ connotation,16 he distinguishes between ‘primary functions’ (the traditional functions recognised for buildings: offering shelter, allowing us to live together, holding public meetings etc.) and ‘secondary functions’, which convey mainly ‘symbolical’ meanings. These functions are interlaced and, sometimes, the secondary functions are more important than the primary (there are buildings which are more important for what they represent than for what they do). The emphasis on the semiotic dimension of architecture is also expressed in the works of other semioticians, like Jurij Lotman (1987), who stresses what he believes to be the main peculiarity of architecture: its ‘polyglotism’, that is, the fact that, just like any other ‘text’ circulating in a culture, architecture reveals an internal dialogue, typical of any cultural system, between successive traditions and generations. Notwithstanding this, unlike literature, art, or music, where previous cultural periods are not cancelled by the appearance of a new cultural style but persist in an extratemporal cultural memory, in architecture ‘old buildings are continuously and radically destroyed or reconstructed. Instead of a dialogue between the structures of different ages, the situation is similar to that of a museum object that is removed from its context’ (39–40 my translation). Moreover, what is interesting for the present chapter is that Lotman talks of an inner dialogue which can be incorporated within some buildings and which undergoes various transformations over time, being determined by a succession of styles, cultures, and ideologies, that leaves traces on the architecture itself. This dialogue is ‘performed’ ‘through the clash, the conflict, the overlapping and the information exchange between different traditions, between different sub-texts and architectural voices’ (39-40). In Lotman, this layered, 15 In a famous sentence, Greimas clarifies the specificity of a semiotic approach to space: ‘the spatial signifier is not just a way to categorise the world, to construct a world of objects … but it can become an authentic spatial language (with a “spatial logic”, both natural and formal), that allows one to speak “spatially” even of things not related to spatiality’ (Greimas 1976: 130, my translation). 16 Barthes derives the categories of denotation and connotation from the works of the Danish linguist Luis Hjelmslev, one of the fathers of structuralist semiotics.

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hyper-structured and polyphonic nature of architecture takes the shape of a dialogue/confrontation between ‘voices’, which is a point that I will expand on later. In some buildings, and in urban environments in general, different voices cohabit and collide, and the way in which the buildings are reconstructed, restored, or demolished transforms this dialogue, introducing new voices, or altering the previous ones.17 This is an important point, because it introduces a crucial analytical distinction made by standard narrative semiotic theory (Greimas and Courtés 1979) between the (internally articulated) meaning of a text (in our case, of a building considered as a text) and the way this meaning is inserted in a communicative structure between a ‘sender’ and a ‘receiver’. Semiotics looks at this communicative situation not as something external to the text itself, usually referred to as the ‘context’,18 but as its ‘presupposed act’, which is inscribed into the text (Greimas and Courtés 1979): the enunciational act leaves the ‘marks’ of the subjectivity that produced it on the text/discourse. Each text (and, again, a particular building considered as a text) exhibits the traces of the subject who has produced it (the ‘sender’) but also of the party to whom it is directed (the ‘receiver’).19 These enunciational positions take the form of textual simulacra of the subjects of enunciation (the enunciator and the enunciatee). This means that, for narrative semiotics, an enunciated discourse always presupposes an enunciational act, which can be expressed in different ways in the enunciated discourse: the subject of enunciation can be made present and explicitly manifested in the discourse, or, conversely, disguised, when every trace of the enunciational act is concealed. These alternative possibilities correspond to different discursive strategies in order to achieve different meaning effects. The different degrees of presence of the subject of enunciation in the discourse are determined by employing specific ‘markers’,20 which vary from one semiotic system to another: in verbal languages, the use of first-person pronouns is the most typical marker of the manifestation of the subject within the discourse, while the use of the 17 It is not surprising that Bruno Latour, in his ‘Short Philosophy of Enunciation’ (1999), provides an architectural example to explain his idea of enunciation, asking what a contemporary Panathenaic procession, like the one represented on the Parthenon frieze, would look like: who would be delegated (enunciated) by society to participate in that procession? 18 Latour (1999) defines ‘context as the ether for physicists, a pointless hypothesis’. 19 The issue of the inscription of the receiver as a textual strategy to interpret the text was developed particularly by Umberto Eco in his theory of textual interpretative cooperation, through the notion of the Model Reader (Eco 1979). 20 Benveniste (1966) talks of ‘formal apparatus of enunciation’. Manetti (2008) contains a documented exposition of semiotic theories on enunciation. A recent and compelling attempt to reformulate a theory of enunciation in semiotics can be found in Paolucci (2020).

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third-person pronouns usually hides the act of production of the discourse, generating an effect of ‘objectification’ of what is being said. Similarly, in other semiotic systems it is possible to find comparable ‘enunciational markers’: for instance, the use of the camera in films, which can install subjective or objective modalities in the scene, or perspectives and points of view in paintings.21 The same can be done also with space and built-up environments in general, including architecture. Marrone (2001: 320–21), drawing on Umberto Eco’s theory of the ‘Model Reader’ (1979), maintains that every space foresees enunciational subjects meant as Model User, that is, narrative figures that are in charge of inscribing the expected forms of behaviour and use/interpretation of such spaces in the spatial structures.22 This idea of the enunciational subject proves productive also in understanding the different mechanisms that regulate the manifestation of the voice(s) of an architecture, in the Lotmanian sense specified earlier, and the way they relate to the layers made up of previous voices. Indeed, this aspect is of particular interest when considering buildings that have been conceived within a totalitarian ideology (and were intended to speak with one single, undebatable and assertive voice) and their afterlife, when that voice is no longer accepted or acceptable (as in the case of the difficult heritage studied by Macdonald). The narrative theory by Greimas and Courtés (1979) offers applicable tools to discern the different enunciational processes through which the simulacrum of the subject is expressed in the enunciated discourse, and their diverse degree of presence within it. In particular, Greimas and Courtés talk of débrayage (which we could translate as ‘disengagement’), the act of projecting elements that give structure to the enunciated discourse, away from the source of enunciation.23 According to Greimas and Courtés, if the subject of enunciation is characterised by a syncretism of I-here-now, ‘the débrayage, inasmuch as it is a constituent element of the original act of language, projects a not-I, not-here, not-now which produces the enunciated discourse’ (Greimas and Courtes 1979, débrayage entry).24 Following Benveniste’s theory based on the category of 21 Louis Marin (1994) has proposed a significative reflection on visual enunciation. 22 In addition to enunciational subjects, Marrone (2001) identif ies enunciate subjects (as portions of space to which a particular narrative function is delegated) and social subjects (the real users that can more or less adhere to the expected use of the space suggested by the enunciational subjects). 23 See Marrone 2021 for an English-language account of Greimasian theory. See also Martin, Ringham (2000). 24 Martin and Ringham (2000) explain débrayage as a ‘change of gear’: ‘The moment we start speaking we shift as it were into a new set of actorial, spatial and temporal co-ordinates

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the persona (which is characterised by the pronominal axis I-you) versus the non-persona (he/she/it pronouns), Greimas and Courtés distinguish between the ‘enunciative débrayage’ (when the subjects installed in the discourse are represented in the third person, such as when we tell a story describing the actions of its characters) and the ‘enunciational débrayage’ (when the enunciated discourse is characterised by the manifestation of simulacra of enunciational subjects, the personas of the act of communication: for example, I tell you a story). By contrast, embrayage is the ‘return’ to the source of enunciation and the reaffirmation of the presence of the subject of enunciation.25 Both enunciational débrayage and embrayage express what Greimas and Courtés define as ‘enunciated enunciation’ (enonciation enoncé in French), that is, ‘the simulacrum that imitates, within the discourse, the enunciational practice’ (Greimas and Courtes 1979, enunciation entry). This means that building considered as a text not only conveys narratives through space but also establishes a ‘communication pact’ that is installed into the narrative conveyed through space and simulates a dialogue between the building as subject of enunciation and its user as receiver of the message. Totalitarian architecture usually makes ample use of a subjective enunciational strategy, establishing a direct enunciational pact with its user and talking in first person to its user/receiver (enunciational débrayage), with a manipulative and ideological intention. This enunciational contract is often explicitly exhibited in the architecture itself. One could say that totalitarian (and Fascist) architecture regularly resorts to what, in the theory of enunciation, is commonly referred to as ‘interpellation’, meant as a reciprocal positioning of the subjects that emphasise the direct connection that the enunciational (and, especially in this case, ideological) subject tries to make with the receiver, whom it addresses explicitly. I will analyse the dimension of enunciation in these difficult heritage buildings with regard to the simulacral communication axis which is constructed by our discourse. This “change of gear” or “disengagement” is called debrayage. The sentence “The government faces an angry electorate” sets up an actor (the government), a space (the whole country, i.e., the seat of the electorate) and a time (the present, as indicated by the tense of the verb) which are separate or different from the actorial, spatial and temporal co-ordinates that apply to the speaker’ (2000: 47). 25 Greimas and Courtés provide a clarifying example: ‘when General De Gaulle enunciates France is a “beautiful country”, he operates an enunciative débrayage that installs into the discourse a distinct and distant subject in relation to the enunciation. But, if the same character says, “General De Gaulle thinks that …”, it is still, formally, an enunciative débrayage, but completed by a set of procedures that we call embrayage and that, although implicit, are aimed at producing an effect of identification between the enunciative and the enunciational subject’ (Greimas and Courtés, 1979, embrayage entry).

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incorporated in these buildings/texts, looking at the transformation of the simulated situation of communication between the monumental building and the user due to restoration or refurbishment. The aforementioned pair of notions – débrayage and embrayage – will be applied below to account for the differing ways in which the ‘voice of the monumental architecture’ is, or is not, manifested, silenced, translated, modulated. A semiotic analysis of the enunciational level will highlight different ways to cope with the semantic tensions, which are internal to the architectural text, between a voice that used to speak in the first person and to express the presence of the subject of enunciation through a simulacrum (as totalitarian architecture usually does), and the subsequent acts of enunciational reframing of this first person that results from the restoration of Fascist architecture.

Restoration as ‘Remodulation of the Voice’: Semantic and Discursive Transformations of Fascist Architectural Heritage in Contemporary Italy Fascist architecture used to have an eloquent and powerful voice, during the regime. Many historians (Gentile 2007,26 Nicoloso 2008, Ernesti 1988, Kallis 2014) have pointed out that the regime considered architecture one of the most powerful media for communicating and transmitting its vision of the world. One could say that, if all architecture somehow speaks – to the extent that it signifies and express meanings – Fascist architecture does so all the more, along with other examples of totalitarian buildings (Hökerberg 2018, Sudjic 2005, Cervelli 2020).27 Regime buildings have a vivid, persuasive, voice, aimed at influencing their ‘users/recipients’ and conveying an ideologic and totalitarian weltanschauung. Indeed, the Fascist regime regarded architecture not just 26 ‘In monuments, buildings, streets, squares of both old Italian cities and new towns founded by Mussolini, a new conception of man, life and politics found a material expression. This vision seemed destined to become, in the modern world, the model of a new imperial civilisation, aiming to be universal like the Roman civilisation in the ancient world’ (Gentile 2007: V, my translation). 27 Sudjic’s book focuses on the political dimension of architecture, and how power uses architecture as a means of communication. In his insightful book, Pierluigi Cervelli offers a rich semiotic perspective to explore the transformation of Rome during Fascism and it is very much on the same line when he affirms that ‘Fascism … uses the space of the capital city as a weapon of mass communication’ (2020: 71, my translation).

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as a tool for communicating its presence in public space, but rather as an instrument to shape a new ‘lived space’ for the Italian people imbued with its ideology, to define the place of the ‘Fascist citizen’ in it.28 As Billiani and Pennacchietti state, ‘a generation of critics and relatively young architects explicitly argued that architecture had to be refounded and deployed in the service of building collective spaces for the New Fascist Man within a modernised social sphere’ (2019: 2). In the following, I will attempt to look at the transformations of the distinct ‘voice’ of Fascist monumental architecture in its afterlife. I will focus not on the period of the immediate aftermath of the fall of the regime, but mainly on the contemporary management of this controversial heritage. The very day after the liberation of Italy from Fascism, an iconoclastic fury targeted its most evident symbols in many cities: statues, ornamental fasces (fasci littori), plaques, monuments were torn down by cheering crowds celebrating the end of the regime. But the damnatio memoriae of Fascist symbols and monuments never gained real institutional momentum and was almost exclusively driven by popular tumults and isolated actions. With the notable exception of the most iconic buildings (such as the Casa del Fascio, which was the trademark of the regime and its territorial control), other Fascist buildings met with a different fate. Many buildings erected during the Fascist period were left almost untouched, except for some cursory ‘ideological cleanings’ of the most unbearable emblems and figures which recalled the regime. The resolute endeavour of the Fascist regime to reshape the Italian landscape through architecture in accordance with the Fascist totalitarian ethics and aesthetics had resulted in a pronounced transformation of all cities and towns (and many towns were founded from scratch in that period, the so called borghi fascisti).29 Nevertheless, in the post-war period, few Fascist buildings were demolished (except those heavily damaged during the war), also because Italy had to face the massive devastation of the national building stock, due to the heavy aerial bombings suffered in the final phase of Second World War. Unlike other countries – such as Germany, where the majority of Nazi buildings were demolished after the war (or had already been destroyed during it by the bombings) – many survived and simply 28 This was in accordance with the idea that Fascism was to pave the way for the advent of a New Man (this was, for example, the vision prefigured by Giovanni Gentile, one of the most influential philosophers of Fascism). 29 An interesting survey on this phenomenon is provided by the Italian novelist Antonio Pennacchi (2008), in his book Fascio e Martello (‘The Fasces and the Hammer’).

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underwent a change of use or, in other cases, were neglected and left to decay, following a destiny of ‘spontaneous oblivion’.30 The historian Elena Pirazzoli (2019) has discussed the issue of the problematic status of this difficult heritage, recalling a peculiar expression used by Italian journalist Giorgio Vecchietti to describe these ‘embarrassing remains’ that punctuate the post-war Italian landscape: ossame del regime (‘the bones of the regime’). As relics washed up on the Italian landscape by the tide of history, the destiny of this uncomfortable portion of heritage is problematic to decide on, and its meaning is, at once, faded, and present in undercurrents. Even when their materiality is well preserved,31 these remains have the property of presenting a sort of semantic ambiguity in common with ruins: they have the potential to activate different (and antagonistic, from the point of view of values) narratives. The undecided fate of the Fascist material legacy has periodically been a publicly debated issue in Italy and the polemics have been recently reopened by an article by the American historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat, who provocatively posed an embarrassing (and maybe superficial, at least in the way it was formulated) question, which was also the title of her article: ‘Why Are So Many Fascist Monuments Still Standing in Italy?’ (2017). I will not delve into this issue in this chapter,32 but it is important to underline that the vehement debate triggered by Ben-Ghiat’s article has once again demonstrated the problematic nature of this material legacy and the fact that its shared meaning is still unsettled. This negative heritage is in some way perceived as disturbing, but also as a historical document deemed necessary to comprehend a problematic chapter of Italian history and a cultural attestation of important Italian architectural and artistic movements that must be safeguarded and preserved. This ‘troubled materiality’ which is still scattered across many Italian cities, is rooted in their urban palimpsests and has in some cases become a defining element of their collective image and identity, occupies an undecided position, whose significance is still difficult to recode. With what voice should it talk then? How much of this voice can we still stand? How should it be translated to be meaningful once again in the discourse of heritage, which is one of the collective discourses expressing collective identity? 30 The previously cited works by Macdonald explore this phenomenon in Germany in depth. 31 This is not always the case, because sometimes it is preferred to leave them untouched to avoid controversies. 32 I will examine the public debate in Italy around Ben-Ghiat’s article from a discursive perspective in Mazzucchelli (forthcoming).

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Starting from this metaphor of the ‘vocality’ of monumental architecture, my analysis shall focus precisely on what happens to the once stentorian voice of these architectural relics once the whole semiotic system (the Fascist ideology) that used to legitimise them (and that represented its semiotic ‘condition of possibility’) fell into disgrace and was no longer current and accepted by the people. In semiotic terms, one could say that ideologies are cultural grammars that are expressed, embodied and signified (‘enunciated’ is maybe the right word) through different expressive substances, discourses and texts; what happens to such texts when the discourse that had produced it has lost its momentum? Can they still speak with the same ‘power of speech’ to those who may still recognise themselves in that ideology? Can they offend those who oppose the ideology they embody (given also that the Italian republic proclaims itself to be anti-Fascist according to the constitution)? Or do these monuments now emit just a feeble voice from a remote past, one that we cannot fully understand while everything else, in the surrounding environment of the polyphonic urban spaces, ‘speaks in a different tone’? But, above all, is their voice only an ideological one? Can we imagine preserving them as documents or artistic testimonies? Can this preservation be turned into an instrument to spread values of inclusiveness and democracy?33 Any change to these monumental buildings results in a transformation of their meaning and of the values that they embody. Assuming that any monumental building speaks with its own voice (or, at least, a prevailing voice), I will try to analyse the different choices of preservation/ transformation/demolition as attempts to ‘remodulate’ that voice. From a semiotic angle, this implies that my analysis will be directed towards the architecture not considered simply as a text, that is, an ‘enunciated discourse’34 (the building considered as a ‘message’ as such, an ‘entity endowed with meaning’), but from the point of view of the ‘enunciation’, as def ined in the previous section. The focus will be directed toward the so called ‘enunciated enunciation’, that is, the semiotic ‘situation of 33 The mere existence of these pieces of heritage is uncomfortable to, and hardly tolerated by, many, and in some cases engenders divisive responses. Moreover, Fascist heritage is often mobilised for ideological purposes by far-right nationalistic movements and used as a ‘figurative scenario’ in their rallies. Moreover, this architecture does not just consist of (anti-)monuments from an uncomfortable past; these buildings are, on the one hand, also key documents to understand our past and, on the other hand, they frequently have artistic relevance, to the extent that historians of architecture usually contest the label of ‘Fascist heritage’ and prefer the denomination ‘architecture between the two wars’. 34 Enoncé in Greimasian semiotics, a sort of ‘architectural utterance’.

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communication’ between the building as a sender/subject of enunciation and the user as receiver/enunciatee) produced by the architectural space. For the aims of this essay, I will not consider the pole of the Model User (Eco 1979), the receiver of the message, but will rather focus on these architectural structures as ‘speaking subjects’. Indeed, from a semiotic point of view, Fascist architecture can be seen as a particular ‘enunciated discourse’ that retains the traces of the subjectivity that produced it (the regime itself, considered as an ‘ideological subject’, to refer to the thought of Althusser,35 who describes this subject in enunciational terms): when looking at fascist architecture, one can (also) interpret it as a message produced by the Fascist authority itself and addressed to its ‘user’.36 Moreover, as mentioned above, Fascist architecture is particularly ‘vocal’ and explicitly ‘interpelling’ (in the sense of the notion of ‘interpellation’ by Althusser 1970). As noted earlier, it was used to resort to the ‘I-you axis’ to communicate and give a ‘figurative consistency’ to the regime, which in this way became a present and performing actor in the public space. In enunciational terms, it could be said that it is a piece of architecture speaking in its ‘first person’ (an énonciation énoncé and an architecture embrayé). This mechanism of enunciation will be clearer if it is explained through a diagram: if AT is the architecture-as-text (the rectangle, in the diagram below), S would be the ‘subject of enunciation’ – in this case, Fascist ideology, the ‘Spirit of Fascism’ itself, to use Giovanni Gentile’s terminology.37 Through enunciation, this subject is projected and ‘presentified’ (through an enunciational débrayage which simulates an embrayage) into the ‘enunciated-building’, making itself visible and recognisable. In Fascist architecture, Fascism does not hide itself, but shows itself, because it strives to directly ‘interpel’ the people, to talk with them in the first person.38

35 Althusser (1970) proposed a theory of interpellation in which ideology transforms individuals into subjects through its discourse (the ideological state apparatus), hailing and ‘capturing’ them in socio-cultural interactions. 36 This is clearly an oversimplification: who is the ‘author’ (that is, the subject of enunciation) of a building? It would be naïve to think that this is just the architect, or if we accept the idea of enunciation as actualisation of a system of virtualities (that is, what it is possible to express in a given semiotic system), to some extent an architecture is always the product of a particular episteme, in Foucauldian terms. 37 An idealist philosopher, Giovanni Gentile was one of the regime’s most prominent intellectuals, so organic to Fascism that he has been called the ‘Philosopher of Fascism’. 38 For an interesting semiotic interpretation about how Fascist architecture conveys its ideological messages, see Bellentani and Nanni (2018).

116 Fr ancesco Mazzucchelli Figure 4.1 Enunciational projection of the ideological subject in Fascist architecture. The rectangle represents the architecture considered as enunciated discourse (AT: architecture as text), while the circle is the subject of enunciation (S), that is present and actorialised in the architecture.39

Starting from this premise, any work of preservation/transformation/demolition can be framed as an operation of ‘re-enunciation’:3940 the architecture-asenunciated-discourse is re-enunciated by another ‘subject’, 41 that installs itself in a pre-existing architectural discourse, leaving its ‘marks’ (which may be more or less visible, exhibited or hidden, depending on the intentions of the restoration project) on the new architectural text, reconfiguring its overall meaning. In this regard, the work of preservation (or restoration, or alteration, etc.) results in the positioning of a new subject of enunciation, that is forced to engage with the previous one, conversing in various ways with this pre-existing ‘voice’. 42 This new subject can then relate to the previous one in different ways, aligning in different ways with or against it. The possibilities are multiple: the new voice can silence, cancel or substitute the original voice, but also alter it, weaken it, distort it, emend it, confute it, contest it, dispute it, as well as strengthen it, reinforce it, confirm it, etc. 39 For this and the following diagrams I have drawn on the diagrams used by Panosetti (2013) to explain enunciation in literary texts and by Manetti in his reading of Greimas’s theory of simulated enunciation (2006: 121). 40 See Sozzi (2017 and her chapter in this volume) for the idea of spatial enunciation (and re-enunciation of spatial traces). 41 I am using the notion of subject in a linguistic and semiotic understanding, as defined by Benveniste and Greimas, as a domain (instance, in French) of subjectivity that is presupposed by the ‘utterance’ (the enunciated discourse, that is, the message). 42 Obviously, the notion of enunciation cannot be reduced to that of ‘voice’.

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I will use this idea of voice-remodulation (through the tools of semiotic theory of enunciation) to analyse some different cases of restoration of Fascist architecture. Before that, two examples will better clarify how this issue can be framed in terms of enunciation. The two examples are positioned on the opposite poles of a continuum that embraces all possible modes of the re-enunciation spectrum: on the one side, the intervention consists of the radical silencing of the previous enunciation through the removal of the enunciated discourse itself; on the other side, it is a thorough re-enunciation, in which the pre-existing architecture (considered both as enunciated discourse and enunciation) is voiced into a different architecture, within another enunciational frame. The f irst case is very much obvious, and somehow banal, in that it consists of the eradication of the enunciation through the cancellation of the enunciate, that is, the silencing of the ‘heritage voice’ through the demolition of the architecture/monument. As has already been noted, few Fascist buildings were demolished in Republican Italy, with the exception of statues, monuments and decorations. A rare example of demolition is the Casa del Fascio in Bologna, which stood near the railway station at the beginning of one of the most central streets of the city centre, close to one of the historical gates of the city (Porta Galliera). Severely damaged during the Allied bombings of the city, it was demolished a few years after the war and the rubble removed. 43 On the other extreme pole, there are the cases in which the former building is somehow ‘referred to’ (or even ‘put in quotes’, thereby using specific enunciational markers) in another architectural text which has its own enunciation. An interesting example is the sculpture entitled L.O.V.E. (also known as ‘The Finger’), by Maurizio Cattelan, placed in front of the Milan stock exchange building (‘Palazzo Mezzanotte’). Palazzo Mezzanotte (from the name of its architect, Paolo Mezzanotte) is an iconic building of the Ventennio. 44 It is a still palpable testimony of the 43 While the forced erasure of this kind of heritage obviously results in a radical silencing of its voice, partial erasures may often produce various effects, leaving the old and new voice side by side, which is manifested by the attempt at erasure (see the example discussed in Panico 2020). On the other hand, lack of restoration also produces mixed effects: leaving something to decay marks both the unwillingness to attribute a positive value to that heritage and preserves the former voice, which evokes a faraway past, not assimilated in the present temporality. 44 Despite its neo-classical (rather than rationalistic style), it is testimony to the extent to which the architectural aesthetics of Fascism varied and took on very diverse stylistic features.

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regime’s architecture in Milan (along with many other examples, the most famous being the central railway station complex, where fasces and other ‘Littorian’ symbols are still clearly visible and have never been removed). In 2011, a statue by the artist Maurizio Cattelan was erected outside the building – initially designed to be temporary, but then left in place. The sculpture consists of an eleven-meter white marble middle finger, sticking up from a fingerless hand (the other fingers are cut off) directed at the Palazzo Mezzanotte. It can also be read as an amputated hand in the act of making a ‘Roman salute’, with the ‘amputation’ resulting in an offensive gesture directed against a building that is both an instance of totalitarian aesthetics and a symbol of the economic system (since it is today the stock exchange). 45 From an enunciational point of view, the sculpture is obviously in dialogue with the building, seemingly disputing its flamboyant monumentality. But that is not all: the sculpture talks to the building but also stages its ‘symbolic destructuring’ (the amputation of the Roman salute) without ‘touching it’. One could look at it as at an ‘act of architectural speech’ (Panico forthcoming) against that building. In other words, the enunciational structure of the sculpture becomes meaningful only in relation with another ‘architectural utterance’, that is, the Palazzo Mezzanotte. From the point of view of the ‘enunciation games’, these examples represent two extreme cases that affect the architectural text in different ways: in the first case, a nullifying of its voice through the material cancellation of the enunciated discourse produced by that voice; in the second case, an (ironic) quarrel over its voice through the insertion of a new separated voice, that is, a spatial artifact which is placed in relation with the building and redefines the enunciation on which the pre-existing architectural enunciated discourse is based. The following examples focus instead on re-enunciation mechanisms that characterise preservation choices when applied to problematic heritage (although, perhaps, they can be extended to heritage preservation in general). In the following pages, I will present some cases of modification of the enunciated discourse (the architectural text, in this case) which is reflected on the dimension of enunciation, altering it.

For this reason, many architectural historians do not favour the idea of ‘Fascist architecture’, but prefer to talk of ‘Italian architecture between the two world wars’. 45 It should be noted that Cattelan has confirmed none of these interpretations of his artwork.

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Figure 4.2 The Middle Finger (amputated Roman salute) directed against the Palazzo Mezzanotte in Milan

Photo by Guilhem Vellut –Flickr Account

Lowering the Voice: Ideological Cleansing of Architecture. The OND Building of Chieti In the immediate post-war period, the most common solutions for dealing with Fascist architecture could be labelled as attempts of lowering the voice of these unwanted landmarks. This usually happened through operations of ‘de-figuration’ of the architecture, that is, erasure of all the ornamental motifs and ideological figures typical of Fascist symbology, such as for example the fasci littori that epitomised the Italian totalitarian regime. As previously mentioned, numerous fasces and other regime emblems were destroyed and demolished in the years after the war, in a sort of spontaneous collective performance of ritual iconoclasm, to celebrate and mark the end of Fascism. This solution, which operated through the cancelation of specific ideological symbols, may differ significantly from case to case, especially in the way the removal of these decorative elements can be exhibited and claimed or rather dissimulated and conceived. In other words, some pieces of architecture were de-Fascistised, concealing the fact that they were once ideological architecture.

120 Fr ancesco Mazzucchelli Figure 4.3  The former OND building today. It is now a university museum

Photo: RaBoe –Wikipedia Account

The OND46 building in Chieti in the Abruzzo region is an interesting example of this. The building was originally conceived as an instance of ‘sculptural architecture’ celebrating Fascism with two symmetrical fasci framing the entrance staircase. Its present-day appearance has lost any direct reference to Fascism, since the two high fasces have been removed from the typical axes. At the present time, they simply look like two symmetrical columns, maybe still vaguely recalling the symbology of Fascism, but divested of any overt figurative character. The result is the same building, but stripped of any explicit sign relating to Fascist ideological iconology, through an operation of ‘narcotisation’ of the figurative ideological features and ‘magnification’ of its ‘plastic’47 essence, as geometrical elements. 48 An ideological cleansing that renders the architecture harmless but hides its past voice. The renovation of the OND building should be seen as a semiotic operation that also functions on the enunciation level. The previous building ‘spoke of Fascism’ to the citizens of Chieti in the f irst person – one 46 Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro, National Recreation Club. For historical information about this piece of architecture, see Giannantonio (2003) and Sciannamea and Pascetta (1999). 47 Please note that I use the notion of plastic as opposed to figurative, according to Greimas’s definition that distinguishes, in visual semiotics, between a deeper and more abstract (plastic) level and a more superficial and figurative one (see Greimas and Courtés 1979). 48 For the notion of magnification/narcotisation of semantic traits, see Eco (1979).

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could say that it was the regime itself, presentif ied as an urban subject and acting in the surrounding space, marking and territorialising it. The new – ‘ideologically depleted’ – version exhibits itself merely as an ‘architectural discourse’ expressed in a specif ic language and style, that of Italian Rationalism. In semiotic terms, while the Fascist palazzo involved an enunciational débrayage, projecting an ideological subject that used to take the floor and talk in the first person, not on behalf of, but as the regime itself – a particular spatial manifestation of it – on the other hand, its de-Fascistised refurbishment functions as an enunciative débrayage, inasmuch as it cancels that subjectivity and any particular historical reference in favour of an image of an ‘impersonal’ building, equating its voice to that of a particular architectural style. 49 It emphasises the aesthetics, toning down the ‘ethics’ that generated the building and coupled it with its appearance. In terms of Eco’s theorisation (1968), the ‘secondary function’50 of its symbolism is disregarded and mitigated, while its ‘primary function’ as a Rationalist building based on the functionality of its elements is accentuated.51 In a certain way, this is a strategy of weakening the original voice of the architecture through a desemantisation – obtained through the removal of all the ‘enunciational marks’52 that manifested the ‘Fascist subjectivity’ – and a consequent resemantisation, which consists of transforming the status of the architecture from an ideological to an aesthetic monument. The original enunciator –a voice explicitly present and directly ‘interpelling’ the subject53 – is cancelled (or better, enunciationally camouflaged), and the enunciatee is assumed simply as the realisation of a particular architectural style (a sort of third-person enunciation). The following diagram illustrates this enunciator substitution: the subject of enunciation (S0) in the Fascist architecture, that was present and talking in the first person through the utilisation of the regime’s iconological apparatus and 49 It is important to note that this does not mean that there is no subject of enunciation, but that it is implicit and not openly figuratively present in the transformed architectural utterance. 50 Eco defines secondary functions as the connotated meaning conveyed by the architecture, in contrast with primary functions, which regard the functional meanings. See section 2. 51 Since the symbolic connotations are still important also in the current version, we could talk of a remodulation of the secondary function, which now emphasises only the architectural stylistic features of the building. 52 In the semiotic theory of enunciation, the enunciational marks are the traces left in the enunciated discourse by the subject that have produced the discourse. 53 Althusser has proposed a theory of interpellation where ideology through its discourse (the ideological state apparatus) transforms individuals into subjects, hailing and ‘capturing’ them in socio-cultural iterations (Althusser 1970).

122 Fr ancesco Mazzucchelli Figure 4.4 Lowering the ideological voice of the architecture: while the enunciational marks that manifested the Fascist subject of enunciation are cancelled, the refurbishment does not project an explicit subject

typical architectural tropes, becomes an invisible, silently implied and less ‘figuratively eloquent’ (and not directly manifested), enunciator S1. The building does not narratively act anymore as a monument that directly addresses the user of the space and primarily transmits an ideological message, but, although evoking a particular architectural style (that is also considered somehow organic with Fascism), gives exclusive prominence to its functional and architectural features. Thus, the building limits itself to talking only as an architectural discourse, in the third person, and its ideological elements are disguised and not manifested. The relationship of the new voice with the original one is simply not thematised and the refurbishment does not critically address its relationship with its predecessor, which is disguised.

Re-Tuning the Voice of Fascist Heritage: Aesthetic Adaptation of Ideological Architecture. The WeGIL Building in Rome In other cases, the restoration does not cancel out the original voice of the architecture, but rather alter it through a re-codification, which can also be regarded as a re-enunciation of the architectural discourse, as it is assumed in a different cultural imagery and system of values. This is the case of the former GIL building in Rome, in the rione (city district) of Trastevere. This piece of architecture was designed by the architect Luigi Moretti (and then inaugurated in 1937), and it is universally considered a masterpiece of Rationalism (Salvo 2008). The building was conceived

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as a celebration of the Italian colonial empire, and suggested continuity between the colonialist expansionist plan of Fascist Italy in Africa and the ancient Roman empire.54 After years of abandonment, and other works that have consistently changed its appearance,55 a refurbishment plan was finally approved and, in 2017, the structure was re-opened to the public. For years, this building has been a matter of controversy between those who thought it should be preserved for its historical and artistic/ architectural importance and those who thought it should at least be stripped of its most visible totalitarian symbols. On the one hand, the refurbishment was driven by a restyling concept aimed at making it more compatible with contemporary tastes. On the other hand, in accordance with conservative restoration intentions, the original aspect of this political building was faithfully restored, including the many symbols of the regime displayed in the building. For example, unlike the example analysed earlier, neither the inscriptions nor the other Fascist decor (such as the marble maps displaying the colonialist conquests of the Italian empire, or the many Fascist mottos scattered inside the building and its façade) have been removed; instead, they have all been maintained and conserved where possible. Similarly, the monumental balcony in the main façade, which had previously been detached from the balcony after the war, has been reinstalled (after being found by accident in the basement). This balcony is composed of three bronze eagles alternating with fasces (and this was probably the reason for its removal after the war) and is positioned under the Fascist slogan ‘Necessario vincere, più necessario combattere’ (‘Winning is necessary, f ighting is even more necessary’), engraved on the white marble façade of the tower. It has been restored and returned to its place, but the fasces between the eagles have been removed. 54 Many decorations added to the building conveyed this ideological message. The most outstanding of these elements was the fresco by the Italian painter Mario Mafai, that represented the triumphal parade of a Roman conqueror followed by soldiers and a procession of slaves in chains. The painting, located inside the building, was visible from the outside through the huge stained-glass window. After the fall of the regime the fresco was covered with paint (the whole building was repainted in red, to attenuate the blank monumentality of its original appearance) and rediscovered only in 2007, but it was too damaged to be restored. 55 See, again, Salvo 2008 for a review of the state and the transformations of the building after the war. A synthetic description of the post-war life of building can also be found at https://www.rerumromanarum.com/2016/10/casa-della-gil-di-trastevere.html (date accessed 20 December 2022).

124 Fr ancesco Mazzucchelli Figure 4.5  A picture of exGIL (now WeGIL) building

Photo: Pierluigi Cervelli

Thus, a slightly less ideologically connotated version of it has been reinstated in the building. In this way, the overall appearance of the building re-acquires a strong ‘Fascist characterisation’. Moreover, even the colour of the façade – which had lost its original bright white colour and turned slightly red in tone over the last few decades – has been redecorated as it was, restoring it to its original typical Fascist appearance. In this case, a different enunciational mechanism is at work. On the one hand, all the figurative elements relating to Fascist ideology are preserved mainly for their aesthetic and architectural value, not only for their historical documentary character: the refurbishment only partially hides the previous voice of the building (for example, the erasure of the fasces), through a philological restyling which fails to completely convert the ‘first person’ of the Fascist architecture into an impersonal ‘third person’ (as in the previous example). The result is architecture that still speaks in the first person, although it is a different kind of first person, which has lost its more evident ideological features: an empty space that can be occupied by different

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subjects of enunciation, depending on how the building is used from time to time. However, the Fascist imprint is still undeniably pronounced (and visible in the many preserved inscriptions, colonial maps etc.). Eventually, then, former and newer enunciations partially overlap: a new, but somehow empty (as it can assume different characterisations) subject of enunciation, which is explicitly manifested (starting from its renaming: WeGIL), substitutes the former ‘full subject’. Nonetheless, being empty and not defined, this new subject of enunciation is not clearly disjointed by the previous one, and in some way the two voices now coexist undefinedly, in a sort of forced and schizophrenic co-habitation. The ambiguity of this mechanism is reinforced by the quirky renaming of the architecture, which is now a social and cultural centre called WeGil (a first – plural but undefined – person) in the attempt to renew its reputation and give it a more ‘cosmopolitan flavour’. Nevertheless, the new name associates an inclusive first plural person pronoun with GIL, which as mentioned is the acronym of ‘Gioventù Italiana del Littorio’ (Italian Youth of the Lictor, the youth movement of the Fascist Party). In doing so, it implicates a collective subject (whose nature remains unspecified, though) and activates the semantic potential of GIL (even though the word is conserved as pure denomination without other connotations, because everybody in Rome used to refer to this building as the ‘Palazzo GIL’).56 The result is a blurring effect, in which the current subject of enunciation takes an ideological distance but at the same time re-converges with the former one, through the mediation of a purely aesthetic level. As in the case of the OND building of Chieti, the Rationalist architectural style becomes the voice of the refurbished version of this building, with the difference that this aims to speak in the first person, but a first person which is not further specified. The diagram below illustrates this mechanism: the re-enunciation of the architecture (S1) does not renounce projecting a simulacrum of the subject of enunciation speaking in the first person (an enunciational débrayage) 56 The fact that the building still has ideological potential is demonstrated by the temporary occupation of the building by Forza Nuova, a far-right political party. The occupation took place in 2017, after the end of the works of refurbishment but before the opening of WeGIL, to protest the state of abandonment of the building. The occupation can be seen as an enunciational performance: the protesters used the balcony as a stage and adorned it with flags and other nationalistic symbols, re-activating some former enunciational marks of the building. See (also for the picture): https://www.iltempo.it/multimedia/2017/04/22/gallery/casapound-occupa-lex-gil-di-trastevere-restaurato-e-poi-abbandonato-1027484/ (accessed on 20 December 2022).

126 Fr ancesco Mazzucchelli Figure 4.6 Re-tuning the voice of ideological architecture: the new subject of enunciation, which is represented even in the renaming of the building (WeGIL), partially overlaps (at least aesthetically) with the simulacrum of the fascist subject of enunciation. The new subject, although present in the first person, is undefined

which, although from an axiology that is declared to be different, overlaps with (and feeds on) the previous simulacrum of enunciation (S0), which continues to be visible and ‘active’. It could seem that this restoration fails to clearly mark the distance taken from the previous subject, but it also opens an enunciational space that can be used to critically engage with that. These problematic aspects have been underlined by a performance/ installation hosted by WeGIL itself, named We (are not) GIL. The organisers57 of this installation proposed a feminist and decolonising reading of the architecture, intended as a ‘mural intervention’: all the spaces of the building were flooded with pink light, and some texts were projected on the walls, questioning the ideological messages of the architecture as well as its restoration (for example, can Fascism be restored? Who represents the coloniser? Is remembering a feminist act?). In this case, the empty first-person subject of the architecture is filled with a voice of contestation, that openly disputes the previous subject. 57 Serena Fiorletta, Isabella Pinto, Ilenia Caleo e Federica Giardini. The installation was inserted in the 2019 edition of the Short Theatre Festival, held at WeGIL, which explicitly addressed the problematic status of the building, also in other events. Some reflections by the organisers and artists (including a thought-provoking piece by Igeaba Scego on the presence of colonial traces in Rome and the necessity of decolonising this heritage) can be found here https://www. shorttheatre.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Inserto_weGil_IT_web.pdf and here https:// www.neroeditions.com/docs/decolonize/ (date accessed: 20 December 2022).

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Distancing the Voice of Fascist heritage: Selective Criteria of Restoration and Critical Preservation. Former GIL Building in Forlì A third example is even more revealing. In 2015, in Forlì (a town near Bologna) where the Fascist regime left a strong imprint on the architectural landscape, the palazzo of the GIL underwent a stylistic refurbishment. The building had been constructed in 1935 (the architect was Cesare Valle)58 and, like the GIL building in Rome, it housed the (cultural and sports) activities of the Young Fascists’ political organisation.59 Here too, with the exception of the most visible Fascist symbols (which had already been almost entirely removed), a decision was taken to restore its former appearance (although the architectural function of some of its parts has been changed).60 But there is a significant difference with the GIL building restoration in Rome with regard to the remaining ideological architectural element of the building. Indeed, like its counterpart in Rome, Forlì’s GIL building exhibited a still visible trace of the Fascist figurative universe: the inscription of an oath (the oath that prospective members of GIL had to take to join) at the top of the ‘civic tower’ of the building. The question was what to do with this? Would it be more correct to permanently delete that historical, but embarrassing and dissonant, trace of an uncomfortable past, or to maintain it, as an important testimony of that past? On the one hand, there would have been the risk of rehabilitating the original ideological voice of the architecture; on the other, the consequences would have been the permanent dismantling of a historical document. Eventually, and by contrast with the Roman case analysed in the previous section, the decision was made to maintain the inscription, but without renovating it: while the whole building was refurbished and redecorated, the part with the inscription has been left ‘as it was, where it was’, according to the classic formula of restoration – keeping all of the layers of coating and the other encrustations that the passage of time has sedimented onto it. In other words, the inscribed oath has been preserved along with its patina and all 58 Source: http://www.emiliaromagna.beniculturali.it/index.php?it/108/ricerca-itinerari/3/131 (accessed on 20 December 2022). 59 For an analysis of the ideological meanings of this architecture during Fascism, see Nanni, Bellentani 2018. 60 The meritorious role in the restoration of the building of the ATRIUM, Architectures of Totalitarian Regimes in 20th century Europe project must be acknowledged; it was coordinated by Patrick Leech: http://www.atriumroute.eu See also Leech 2018 and 2019 (date accessed: 20 December 2022).

128 Fr ancesco Mazzucchelli Figure 4.7 Critical distance from the ideological voice: the patina is preserved to mark the status of the monument as historical trace and document

Photo: Francesco Mazzucchelli

the signs of time and history (including the attempts to deface it after the fall of Fascism). This apparently simple choice actually produces elaborate meaning effects that an analysis of the enunciational level can help to disclose. In particular, the enunciational strategy employed here entails not just an actorial débrayage (the projection of a subject of enunciation), but also a temporal débrayage, that installs two distinct temporal lines in the same architectural text: one in the present, and a second one which is a sort of ‘textual wormhole’ that re-actualises a time layer of the building which, in accordance with the intentions of the last renovation, must be deemed no longer current, a sort of suspended time bubble. This discrepancy between the two temporal lines also changes the status of the inscription itself, which, in its decayed appearance, becomes, on the one hand, a historical remnant and a document testifying to the past, but also, on the other hand, a feeble voice speaking ‘from far away’, from a distant past which is today out of date. Moreover, the exclusion of this segment of the architecture from the renovation works somehow corresponds to a ‘degradation’ of its status. Hence, it is both a strategy of distancing (in the historic timeline) and demeaning its ethical value and ultimately weakening the original

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Figure 4.8 Distancing the ideological voice through enunciational encasing: the old enunciational structure is ‘put in quotes’ in the new text, in which the new subject does not speak in first person

(Fascist) voice of the architecture: like declaring ‘we preserve this remnant as a document, but we no longer recognise this message and then distance ourselves from that’. The diagram shows how the new subject of enunciation projects into a new enunciated architecture, in which the old voice (at least part of it) is put into quotation marks and taken into a larger enunciational configuration. In other words, the new enunciator S1 produces a new architectural utterance AT1, which is the same as the original one, but in which some parts (AT0) are ‘quoted’ as produced by a different subject of enunciation S0, from which the new one wants to distance itself.

Disputing the Voice of Fascist Heritage: Enunciational ReFraming of the Ideologic Architecture. The Installation BZ ’18-’45 in Bolzano The last example is a very famous one, and it has already been discussed and debated in many articles and essays (see, among others, Cento Bull & Clarke 2020, Bartolini 2019, Pintarelli 2018 and, for a semiotic interpretation, Violi 2020, Panico 2020): the ‘intervention of historisation and contextualisation’ (as it has been dubbed by the administration that created it) on the former Casa Littoria in Bolzano (Italy, South Tyrol). A short introduction is necessary (for a more precise exposé, I refer the reader to Soragni 2007). Casa Littoria (or Casa del Fascio, the seat of the local branch of the National Fascist Party) is a Rationalist piece of architecture

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by Guido Pelizzari, Francesco Rossi and Luis Plattner, that was constructed between 1939 and 1942 in the main square of Bolzano. Since the fall of Fascism and the birth of the Italian Republic, the building has hosted various state administrative bodies. The front façade of the building bears a bas-relief by the sculptor Hans Piffrader. The monument – entitled ‘The Triumph of Fascism’ – shows the visual story of the rise to power of Fascism. Its central figure is a sculpted Mussolini, depicted in the act of giving a Roman salute while riding a horse in a heroic pose, and an inscription of the Fascist motto ‘Credere, obbedire, combattere’ (‘Believe, obey, fight’) is clearly visible. As is easily understandable, the mere presence of this monument in a central building which figuratively connotates a space which was already considered ‘Fascist’, was difficult to tolerate after the war, especially in a region like South Tyrol which is characterised by internal divisions between linguistic minorities. Even more surprisingly, the bas-relief was not completed during the Fascist era, and some marble panels were not added before 1943, when the regime fell, and lay abandoned for years, on the balcony at the bottom of the bas-relief. Then, in 1957, the bas-relief was unexpectedly completed, during the Republican period and when Fascism was long out of rule.61 All these details explain a lot about the controversial nature of this piece of monumental architecture. After many discussions about the fate of this monument, a contest for architects and artists was launched in 2011, with the aim of restoring the façade of the building where the bas-relief was placed, to transform the site into a place of memory to critically reflect on that dramatic page of Italian history, as had similarly been done with the Monumento alla Vittoria in Bolzano.62 More than 486 projects and plans were presented. The winning design, by Arnold Holzknecht and Michele Bernardi, provided for an installation whose main element is an illuminated inscription of a quote by Hanna Arendt – ‘Nobody has the right to obey’, as a direct response to the motto ‘Credere, obbedire, combattere’ – present in the original bas-relief. In addition to this, other tableaux were installed in the building and nearby to explain the meaning of Piffrader’s work, framing it in both the ideological and historical/urbanistic context.63 61 Pintarelli (2018) explains that the panels had been put in position after official visit of the Italian President Gronchi: this decision probably had a political motivation and was addressed to the Tirolese minority of the region. 62 Detailed information can be found on the institutional website http://www.basrelief-bolzano. com/en.html (accessed on 20 December 2022). 63 The installation is ideally linked with the other permanent exhibition hosted in the already mentioned Monument to Victory (1928), a contested triumphal arch that displays all the panoply of Fascist symbology, including tall classical columns shaped like fasces, still the largest surviving

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Figure 4.9  The illuminated quote by Arendt superimposed on the bas relief

Photo: Bartleby08 – Wikipedia Account

This brilliant solution has been praised by many and welcomed as an intelligent and effective way to preserve an instance of difficult heritage in a critical manner, challenging the voice of the monument without removing it (Cento-Bull and Clarke 2020, Bartolini 2019). Indeed, the semiotic mechanism at the basis of the installation affects the enunciational level, as has been pointed out by Patrizia Violi, who talks of a ‘polyphonic text with two voices, in which neither completely erases the other’ (Violi 2020). Along the same line, Mario Panico has spoken of a ‘polemic spatial structure’ (Panico 2020). Cento-Bull and Clark (2020) elaborate on the polyphonic and plural character of these two installations. They answer Angelucci and Kerschbamer (2017), who had asked whether the installations/exhibition should be fasces in Italy today. The monument was commissioned from Marcello Piacentini at the personal instruction of Mussolini to celebrate the annexation of South Tyrol from Austria after the First World War. This monument too, like the architecture bearing Piffrader’s bas-relief, has always been very controversial and a source of tension between the Italian- and German-speaking communities of South Tyrol. In 2011, the announcement of a restoration plan for the monument sparked outrage among the population. So, a decision was made to intervene in the contested monument: in 2014, the monument was reopened to the public, with an exhibition – ‘BZ ’18-’45: one monument, one city, two dictatorships’ – to provide historical context for the interpretation and the monument. Moreover, a LED-illuminated ring was placed on one of the columns of the gate, with an electronic inscription bearing the name of the exhibition.

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considered as attempts to redefine the dialogic character of these monologic monumental spaces or, on the contrary, as producing new, monologic, counter-monuments.64 It is not surprising that the academic debate around this intervention therefore focused explicitly on the enunciational aspects of the new space produced by the installation on this piece of uncomfortable heritage, because what characterises the new configuration of this monumental space is its transformation into a ‘discursive arena’ where different voices interact. Is it a dialogue, or rather two monologues – with the newest one repudiating and taking over the pre-existing – that clash in this site, with the new installation? An analysis of the enunciational strategy shows a substantially different scheme from the previous cases: here the ‘semiotic activity’ of the new Subject of enunciation S1 is not limited to a re-enunciation of the pre-existing architectural enunciate AT0, but produces its own new enunciate AT1 (the illuminated installation), and while doing so, projects its subjectivity on AT0 (the Fascist architecture) through an embrayage (technically an enunciational débrayage), while ‘putting it into quotes’ (and, indeed, quotation marks are by themselves explicit enunciational markers). This can be seen as a value inversion, to the extent that it disputes the axiology of the Fascist architecture, opposing to it an antagonistic axiology: a new voice that does not dialogue but, rather, replies and denies the previous voice. The result is an intervention in the totalitarian voice of the monument through the superposition of a diverse voice that re-modulates and subverts. Frykman, in his studies on Istria’s post-conflict monuments, speaks of ‘bracketed heritage’ (2005), to indicate heritage which has been put in a sort of ‘waiting mode’ and whose intended meaning is then suspended; in this case, one could talk of a heritage that used to be bracketed (in a kind of latent waiting mode for years but still potentially capable of generating tensions) and that is now converted into ‘quoted heritage’ and becomes the object of a reflection conducted through a re-organisation of the architectural space of the square. Indeed, this contested piece of heritage is cited with the intention of questioning and opposing it. 64 ‘Is this a new, monologic, hegemonic reading, or an open and dialogic one?’: this is the question posed by Angelucci and Kerschbamer (2017: 62) and commented on by Cento-Bull and Clarke (2020). Cento-Bull and Clark instead defend the idea that the interventions should be considered both ‘cosmopolitan’ and ‘agonistic’, as demonstrated by the removable nature of the LED illuminated bands as opposed to the static character of both the monuments. The same point is emphasised by Bartolini (2019: 240), who insists on the removability of the intervention, which adds a new layer preserving the materiality of the monument, ‘working on the semiotic of the heritage discourse’ (Ib.).

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Figure 4.10 New text with a new manifested enunciational subject, that projects itself onto the previous text, disputing the previous voice

In the new topological system that results from the installation, the new voice is stronger than the original, because it has the right of reply and to speak the last word. This hierarchical superiority confers a character of ‘monumentality’ on the installation:65 as in the example of Cattelan’s sculpture, here a new enunciation produces a distinct ‘utterance’, which nevertheless refers to another ‘utterance’ (the Fascist building). The distinct voices of the two ‘antagonistic’ (Cento Bull and Clarke 2020) subjects are both present, but not in a dialogue: the new one takes on the first again, quoting it and subverting its message. The enunciational strategy therefore also affects the temporal dimension: the clash between the two voices is not concealed, but explicitly staged and mis en scène, conveying the complexity of the dynamics of memory/forgetting and showing how previous layers of a palimpstestual memory are eventually susceptible to a possible resemantisation.

Conclusions. Difficult ‘Voices’ and Their Remodulations: a Tentative Typology The analyses have demonstrated how the notion of enunciation (and of enunciational subject) can prove productive in understanding the transformation 65 It is worth noting that the two voices have different voiceprints as well: the monumentality of white marble and martiality of the bas-relief are opposed by a ‘softer’ voice, speaking through a tenuous light and a less invasive materiality. Also, the opposition between the permanence of marble and the temporary nature (its retrievability, Bartolini 2019) of the installation produces a meaning effect that simulates a critical voice opposing a totalitarian message.

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of diff icult heritage, that is, the way it is assimilated in the dominant paradigm of the heritage discourse. I have shown how any operation of restoring problematic heritage re-tunes the ideological voice that it carries (silencing, reinforcing, contradicting it, etc.). Given the ‘uneasy nature’ of this anti-heritage (as we defined it), the semiotic dialogue between these two voices is rarely ‘contractual’, and is usually ‘conflictual’. The notion of enunciation has helped to differentiate between different manifestations of this conflictual dialogue. Through the examples, I have shown some different enunciational strategies of voice re-modulating that can be summarised as concealing, covering, distancing and disputing. These four forms of ‘voice re-tuning’ entail four different strategies of apparition of the new subject of enunciation (that can be manifested or not, as has been shown), and four different manners of presence of the former subject of enunciation. However, these case studies do not cover the whole possible range of re-codification of difficult heritage. In order to pinpoint other possible cases, it can be useful to determine all the possible combinations with the help of a semiotic square, in which different combinations of presence vs. non presence of the subjects of enunciation are considered. The four positions found through this semantic method, in turn identify four different modes of semiotic existence of the relationship between current and previous subjects of enunciation (they are the result of these crossed possibilities of interactions between their presence in the enunciated discourse). I call these four positions: silencing, preserving, re-writing and engaging respectively.

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Obviously, this classification does not include all the possible meaning effects, but all of them can be generated by moving from here, once the semantic category continuity vs. discontinuity is superimposed on each term. This category considers whether the new subject of enunciation faces the pre-existing subject, posing itself in continuity (contract) or discontinuity (conflict) with it. According to this argumentation, for example, ‘preserving’ can be very different if the relationship between the old and new subject is contractual or conflictual: in the f irst case, the preservation will reinforce the original ideological message; otherwise, in the case of a conflictual relationship, the result will be a critical preservation that redefines the values expressed by the architecture (as with the example of Forlì). Similarly, it is possible to think of a ‘contractual engagement’, to be understood as a ‘renovation’ of the original message of the architecture, versus a ‘conflictual engagement’, meant as a contestation of the previous voice (as happens in the Bolzano example). None of the examples that I have analysed can be subsumed strictly under the label of re-writing, which foresees a radical resemantisation in which the Fascist origin of the building is completely eradicated in favour of the production of a new enunciation unrelated to the previous one, but this would be an interesting case to consider as well. In conclusion, I would like to express a doubt. In a documentary movie from 1974,66 Pier Paolo Pasolini talks of Sabaudia, a city founded by Fascism but that nevertheless, he argues, has nothing Fascist in it: although it was conceived according to Fascist ideology and aesthetics, Sabaudia is rooted in that ‘reality [the Italian vernacular culture] that fascism tried to tyrannically dominate but failed to obliterate’. If this is true (as is also argued, for example, in Pennacchi 2008), then it means that difficult heritage, and totalitarian heritage specifically, does not have a single voice, but multiple and dynamic voices, which change through time, depending on deeper changes in its cultural system. Moreover, if we accept that meanings are never a given, but always the result of complex and collective processes of production and re-negotiation, our attention should move beyond the simulated conversation implied in heritage, to consider the transformation of its simulacra through the action of processes of collective, and impersonal, enunciations (Fabbri 2020, Paolucci 2020). In this case, difficult architecture should not be feared for its supposed capacity of talking in ways we do no longer accept, but could instead be ‘used’, even exploited, to diffuse new 66 From the documentary film ‘Pasolini e la forma della città’, directed by Paolo Brunatto and written by Anna Zanoli, with Pier Paolo Pasolini and Ninetto Davoli.

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collective enunciations, also to spread values that are contrary to those which inspired these buildings.

Works Cited Althusser, L. 1970 ‘Idéologie et appareils idéologiques d’État (Notes pour une recherche)’, La Pensée, 151, pp. 3–38. Angelucci, M., and Kerschbamer, S. 2017 ‘One Monument, One Town, Two Ideologies: The Monument to the Victory of Bolzano/Bozen’, Public History Review, 24, 54–75. Arthurs, J. 2010 ‘Fascism as “Heritage” in Contemporary Italy’, in A. Mammone and G. Veltri (eds), Italy Today: The Sick Man of Europe, London, Routledge. Bartolini, F. 2019 ‘Dealing with a Dictatorial Past: Fascist Monuments and Conflicting Memory in Contemporary Italy’, in L. A. Macaluso (ed.), Monument Culture. International Perspectives on the Future of Monuments in a Changing World. Lanham, Boulder, New York and London, Rowman & Littlef ield, pp. 233–42. Bellentani, F. and Nanni, A. 2018 ‘The Meaning Making of the Built Environment in the Fascist City: A Semiotic Approach’, Signs and Society, 6(2), pp. 379–411. Ben-Ghiat, R. 2017 ‘Why Are So Many Fascist Monuments Still Standing in Italy?’, New Yorker. Benveniste, É. 1976 Problèmes de linguistique générale, Paris, Gallimard. Billiani, F. and Pennacchietti, L. (eds) 2019 Architecture and the Novel under the Italian Fascist Regime, London, Palgrave Macmillan. Bronwen, M. and Ringham, F. 2000 Dictionary of Semiotics, London and New York, Cassell. Carter, N. and Martin, S. 2017 ‘The Management and Memory of Fascist Monumental Art in Postwar and Contemporary Italy: the Case of Luigi Montanarini’s Apotheosis of Fascism’, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 22 (3), pp. 338–64. Carter, N. and Martin, S. 2019 ‘Dealing with Difficult Heritage: Italy and the Material Legacies of Fascism’, special issue of Modern Italy, 24(2), pp. 117–22. Cento Bull, A. and Clarke D. 2020 ‘Agonistic Interventions into Public Commemorative Art: An Innovative Form of Counter-Memorial Practice?’, Constellations, 27, pp. 1–15. Cervelli, P. 2020 La frontiera interna. Il problema dell’altro dal fascismo alle migrazioni internazionali, Bologna, Società Editrice Esculapio. Eco, U. 1968 La struttura assente: la ricerca semiotica e il metodo strutturale, Milan, Bompiani. Eco, U. 1979 Lector in fabula: la cooperazione interpretativa nei testi narrativi, Milan, Bompiani.

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Ernesti, G. (ed.) 1988 La Costruzione dell’utopia: architetti e urbanisti nell’Italia fascista, Rome, Edizioni lavoro. Fabbri, P. 2020 ‘Identità: l’enunciazione collettiva’, Aut Aut, 385, pp. 169–81. Frickman, J. 2005 ‘Bracketing’, Ethnologia Europea. Journal of European Ethnology, 35(1/2), pp. 47–52. Foucault, M. 1966 Les mots et les choses. Une archéologie des sciences humaines, Paris, Gallimard. Gentile, E. 2007 Fascismo di pietra, Bari and Rome, Laterza. Giannantonio, R. 2003 Tradizione e modernità. L’architettura del ventennio fascista in Chieti e Provincia, Chieti, Tinari. Greimas, A. J. and Courtés, J. 1979 Sémiotique: Dictionnaire raisonné de la théorie du langage, Paris, Hachette. Greimas, A. J. 1976 ‘Pour une semiotique topologique’, in A. J. Greimas, Semiotique et sciences sociales, Paris, Seuil. Hammad, M. 2003 Leggere lo spazio, comprendere l’architettura, Rome, Meltemi. Hökerberg, H. (ed.) 2018 Architecture as Propaganda in Twentieth-century Totalitarian Regimes: History and Heritage. Florence, Polistampa. Kallis, A. 2014 The Third Rome, 1922–43: The Making of the Fascist Capital, London, Palgrave Macmillan. Latour, B. 1999 ‘Piccola filosofia dell’enunciazione’, in Basso P. and L. Corrain, Eloqui del senso. Dialoghi semiotici per Paolo Fabbri, Genoa, Costa & Nolan, pp. 71–93. Leech, P. 2018 ‘Anxieties of Dissonant Heritage: ATRIUM and the Architectural Legacy of Regimes in Local and European Perspective’, in Hokemberg, H. (ed.), Architecture as Propaganda in Twentieth-century Totalitarian Regimes: History and Heritage. Florence, Polistampa, pp. 245–60. Leech, P. 2019 ‘ATRIUM: Heritage, Intercultural Dialogue and the European Cultural Routes’, Almatourism, 20, pp. 37–45. Le Goff, J. 1978 ‘Documento/Monumento’, in R. Ruggiero et al. Enciclopedia Einaudi. Einaudi, pp. 5-38. Lotman, J. M. 1987 ‘L’architettura nel contest della cultura’, in J. M. Lotman, Il girotondo delle muse, Bergamo, Moretti & Vitali. Macdonald, S. 2006 ‘Undesirable Heritage: Fascist Material Culture and Historical Consciousness in Nuremberg’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 12 (1): 9–28. Macdonald, S. 2009 Difficult Heritage: Negotiating the Nazi Past in Nuremberg and Beyond, London, Routledge. Malone, H. 2017 ‘Legacies of fascism: Architecture, heritage and memory in contemporary Italy’, Modern Italy, 22, 4, pp. 445–70. Manetti, G. 2008 L’enunciazione. Dalla svolta comunicativa ai nuovi media, Milan, Mondadori.

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Marin, L. 1994 De la représentation, Paris, Seuil. Marrone, G. 2001 Corpi sociali. Processi comunicativi e semiotica del testo, Turin, Einaudi. Marrone, G. 2021 Introduction to the Semiotics of the Text, Berlin and New York, De Gruyter. Mazzucchelli, F. 2010 Urbicidio. Il senso dei luoghi tra distruzioni e ricostruzioni nella ex Jugoslavia, Bologna, Bononia University Press. Mazzucchelli, F. (forthcoming) ‘Il patrimonio culturale sotto processo. Lo spazio discorsivo del difficult heritage in Italia: il caso Ben-Ghiat e le architetture fasciste’, Lexia. Rivista di Semiotica, 39/40. Merrill, S. and Schmidt, L. (eds) 2011 A Reader in Uncomfortable Heritage and Dark Tourism, Cottbus, BTU Cottbus. Migliore, T. 2021 ‘Réénonciation et remembrance’, in M. Colas-Blaise and G. M. Tore (eds), ‘Re-’. Répétition et reproduction dans les arts et les medias, Milan, Éditions Mimésis. Nicoloso, P. 2008 Mussolini architetto: propaganda e paesaggio urbano nell’Italia fascista, Turin, Einaudi. Panico, M. 2019 ‘Questioning What Remains: A Semiotic Approach to Studying Difficult Monuments’, Punctum. International Journal of Semiotics, 5(2), 29–49. Panico, M. (forthcoming) ‘Offended by Bronze. Monuments, Speech Acts and Memory Competence’, Lexia. Rivista di Semiotica, 39/40. Panosetti, D. 2015 Semiotica del testo letterario, Rome, Carocci. Paolucci, C. 2020 Persona. Soggettività nel linguaggio e semiotica dell’enunciazione, Milan, Bompiani. Pennacchi, A. 2008 Fascio e martello: viaggio per le città del duce, Bari and Rome, Laterza. Pezzini, I. 2011 Semiotica dei nuovi musei, Bari and Rome, Laterza. Pintarelli, F. 2018 ‘Quello che resta dei monumenti fascisti’, Il Tascabile (https:// www.iltascabile.com/societa/monumenti-fascisti/). Pirazzoli, E. 2019 ‘“L’ossame del regime” eredità da contestualizzare’, Il giornale dell’architettura (https://ilgiornaledellarchitettura.com/2019/07/24/ lossame-del-regime-eredita-da-contestualizzare/). Rosenfeld, G. D. 2000 Munich and Memory: Architecture, Monuments, and the Legacy of the Third Reich, Berkley, University of California Press. Salvo, S. 2008 ‘Il restauro dell’ex “Casa Gil” di Trastevere in Roma, Luigi Moretti 1932-1937’, in G. Carbonara (ed.), Trattato di restauro architettonico, Turin, Utet. Sciannamea, L. and Pascetta, P. 1999 ‘Il palazzo dell’Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro a Chieti: storia e conservazione di un’opera del ventennio fascista’. In: Opus. Quaderno di Storia, Architettura, Restauro, 6. Smith, L. 2006 Uses of Heritage, London and New York, Routledge.

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Soragni, U. 2007 ‘Spazi rappresentativi e spazi urbani tra le due guerre. Il monumento alla Vittoria e la pianificazione della nuova “città italiana” a Bolzano’, A. Caracozzi (ed.), L’architettura del Novecento a Foggia e in Capitanata, Foggia, Claudio Grenzi Editore, pp. 43–52. Sozzi, P. 2017 Per una teoria dell’enunciazione nella semiotica dello spazio. Teorie e analisi a confronto, PhD dissertation, Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna. Sudjic, D. 2005 The Edifice Complex: How the Rich and Powerful Shape the World, New York, Penguin Press. Tunbridge, J. E. and Ashworth G. J. 1996 Dissonant Heritage. The Management of the Past as a Resource in Conflict, New York, John Wiley. Violi, P. 2017 Landscapes of Memory. Trauma, Space, History, Bern and Oxford, Peter Lang. Violi, P. 2020 ‘Eredità difficili: i monumenti del fascismo nell’Italia di oggi’, in E. Garavelli, D. Monticelli, D, U. Ploom, and E. Suomela-Härmä (eds). Italianistica 2.0. Tradizione e innovazione. Atti del XII Congresso degli Italianisti della Scandinavia Helsinki-Tallinn, 13-14 giugno 2019, Helsinki, Société Néophilologique, pp. 185–200. Wollentz, G. 2020 Landscape of Difficult Heritage, London, Palgrave Macmillan.

About the Author Francesco Mazzucchelli is Associate Professor at the University of Bologna and teaches Semiotics of Memory and Semiotics of Urban Spaces. He is the director of TraMe – Centre for Semiotic Studies of Memory. His publications, many of which focus on the relationship between memory and spatiality, include the book Urbicidio. Il senso dei luoghi tra distruzioni e ricostruzioni nella ex Yugoslavia (Bononia UP, 2010) and the edited volume (together with Gruia Badescu and Britt Baillie) Transforming Heritage in the Former Yugoslavia (Palgrave, 2021). His research is mainly focused on practices of rewriting urban memory and cultural heritage (with a specific focus on contested, dissonant and difficult heritage in the South-Western Balkans).

5

Berlin, the Jewish Museum and the Holocaust Memorial Isabella Pezzini

Abstract In this contribution, I discuss two places of memory in Berlin: the Jewish Museum, designed by the architect Daniel Libeskind (2001), and the Holocaust Memorial, designed by Peter Eisenman (2005), that have become well-known landmarks of the German capital, both for the importance of the subject matter and for their decidedly innovative architectural quality. The comparative analysis I propose focuses in particular on the visitor paths that architectural morphologies prompt and at times prescribe. Where the Jewish Museum induces memory through an obligatory sensorial path, the Holocaust Memorial leaves the visitor freer to move around the large esplanade on which it stands, suggesting more general reflections on the communication strategies of spatial artefacts and on their effectiveness. Keywords: Places of Memory; Contemporary Museums; Urban Identity; Sensory Paths; Spatial Effectiveness; Free Interpretation.

The Places of Memory In this contribution, I will discuss two places of memory: the Jewish Museum1 and the Holocaust Memorial, both shrines to the same story, both in Berlin, both designed by two important architects: the first by Daniel Libeskind, the second by Peter Eisenman, with a very different slant, obviously linked to the specificity of the proposed theme and the personality of the two 1 For the website of the museum, see: https://www.jmberlin.de/en/libeskind-building (accessed on 20 December 2022).

Demaria, Cristina and Patrizia Violi (eds), Reading Memory Sites through Signs: Hiding into Landscape. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2023 doi: 10.5117/9789463722810_ch05

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designers, but also to the type of interpretation to which these places are subjected by the public. Both were inaugurated in the early twenty-first century (2001, 2005), and both have become well-known landmarks of the German capital, essential tourist destinations. In this sense, the absolute, disruptive novelty that they represented in many aspects has perhaps faded over time, and their very persistence has partly tarnished the strength of the architectural ‘gesture’ they represent. But this is probably the destiny of every monument, a sign of memory, a reminder of the past immersed in turn in the flow of time and its changes, as a recent book edited by Anne Beyaert also demonstrates with a wealth of examples (Beyaert-Geslin 2019). All museums are places of memory to some extent, but only a few are explicitly dedicated to the memory of a specific event. The construction of a monument or memorial expresses the need to identify ‘memory stabilisers’, which Aleida Assmann has broken down into the categories of affection, symbol and trauma (Assmann 1999). Memorials, as well as war cemeteries, are material places (‘the matter of which history is made’) in which memory is inscribed, true mnemotopes, as highlighted by Patrizia Violi’s semiotic study on the spatialisation of trauma in her book on the ‘landscapes of memory’ (Violi 2017). They express the coordinates of an enunciating instance: space, time, person. I will now look at these in this order. Very often, memorials are built precisely in the place where the event happened, or in a part of it, thus marking and signalling it. In ancient Greece, funerary stones were called sema, a sign, and vice versa the destruction of signs has always been a strategy of erasure from memory, of damnatio memoriae. And unfortunately, the choice to commemorate something through a place also generates arguments or even conflicts, often pertaining to the project, the architects and so on. Another common point of contention arises because places are palimpsests where memories are not necessarily shared but, to the contrary, often dramatically opposed, as in the case of dead soldiers from two sides of the same battle. Like emblematic yet contested places such as Palestine and Israel, and Jerusalem in particular, where the sacred memories of communities are always at war with each other because the same sites are an integral part of their respective and exclusive identities. In Europe, even the city of Berlin is considered a place of controversial memory, as confirmed by the endless debates that preceded the reconstruction of sites such as Potsdamer Platz, which after the Second World War became an icon of the complicated relationship between memory and oblivion. This kind of intervention began by evaluating the best way to harmonise the two cities, West and East Berlin, after the fall of the wall

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that separated them, without completely erasing the old identity of the two sides. The objects of analysis of this essay, with the complex events they preserve, are an exemplary manifestation of these challenges. Beyond the ‘territorial’ issue, the fact that collective memory is the result of one community’s decision in relation to other communities, and not something abstract or objective, a kind of archive that can be consulted when needed, is well known in the field of memory studies. But in order to deepen the reflection on the relationship between identity and memory, it may be useful to take up Paul Ricœur’s proposal (1990) regarding the narrative dimension through which that relationship can be re-articulated over time. Ricœur thinks that identity can be conceived on the one hand as permanence and the repetition of a more stable and static nucleus of characters, persistent and recognisable through time, what he calls the idem (the same), and on the other hand by a dynamic and contractual aspect which he identifies with the ipse (the self). This second aspect shows the need to reconfirm the being through commitments, which at the same time ensures the coherence and the credibility of interior and exterior images. The decision to remember something through a monument, a memorial or a museum, is in my opinion perfectly in line with Ricœur’s hypothesis. In addition to the external battle to have the right to memory recognised, it implies a pre-emptive discussion and agreement also within the community concerned. First, the community must agree on accepting a given event as pertinent to its history (idem), and secondly on the need to remember it and celebrate it publicly in the best way (ipse). In practice, this process involves a series of intricate steps, which bring into play different actors within the same community.

The Semiotic Approach The basic dictionary definition of the term ‘museum’ is, first of all, a ‘collection of objects’, and consequently, the building designed to preserve and display them to the public (Treccani online). The different qualities and types of objects (artistic, scientific or, more broadly, cultural) will determine the genre of the museum, which obviously will be decisive in the specific organisation of the place. This definition overlooks, or more accurately, takes for granted, the complex operations that lead to the result, and its meaning. From a semiotic point of view, the intended meaning manifested by the museum, its communicative status, is the starting point for its definition. The museum, as an inclusive term, as

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a complex cultural unit, is a significant object, it represents a semiosphere: one unitary place of knowledge and memory, which manifests certain values that characterise the cultural perspective of society, through its particular ‘discourse’. Jurij Lotman was the first to compare museums to a semiosphere: an organising form where dynamically different concretions are layered, where autonomous subjectivities come into contact and sometimes conflict, translating themselves to generate new signifiers (Lotman 1985). The ‘discourse’ of the museum is articulated through syncretic semiotics using multiple interconnected languages, including a very vast set of events: from the mission statement to its management, and therefore from the choice of the place to that of a particular building. Then there is the selection of the collection, and the gradual offering of services, brand identity, a programme, a marketing plan, and so on. And, above all, the discourse of the museum is targeted at a potential interlocutor, its audience, foreseen and imagined, that stands at the basis of its existence. Each of the components mentioned above is interconnected, and they can be considered in terms of textual form, an object of semiotic analysis (Pezzini 2021). The goal of such analysis is to understand its significant articulation, and verify its coherence and overall communicative effectiveness, to go back to the universal strategic competence at its origin. But where should the analysis begin concretely? The most immediate starting point – and the one I will adopt here, including as a strategy of presentation – is the museum or memorial building. I will then simulate a visit to these, in a receptive attitude oriented on one side to description, and on the other hand to its interpretation, following a textual analysis methodology, whose ‘toolbox’ is also explained in the introduction to this book. Some of the aspects that characterise a visit to the specific places analysed here concern their architectural structure in particular, since they are expressive, original and unique works, extremely far removed from any pre-existing typology. This architectural dominance is a characteristic of the new museums of our time, built by great architects, in which very often the structure rivals the content, rather than standing mainly at the latter’s service (Zunzunegui 2003; Pezzini 2011). For this reason, the description of the two case studies will be based initially and mainly on their spatial impact and organisation, including the buildings, access points, internal distribution and the connections between the various parts, which provide particularly significant paths. A fortiori, this approach befits memorials that were explicitly constructed to elicit a public disposition towards sharing and – eventually – mourning.

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In the transition from pure extension to semiotic substance, space takes on an articulated form. It becomes the object of syncretic semiotics, which includes organised spaces alongside the architecture, people and collection (Hammad 2001).2 The ‘discourse of the museum’ is thus the product of different languages of manifestation, made homogeneous in terms of content. Together they produce a specific effect of meaning on the subject, which at first glance experiences the result.3 As shown in the following case studies, a specific sense of closure, or angst, perceived by the visitor can be produced at a certain point of the museum itinerary by a set of expressive elements, such as a change of temperature, or the sudden shrinkage of space, the use of light and so on. In the same spatial arrangement, it is thus possible to recognise the imprint of a sort of ‘addresser’, who strategically inscribes and delegates his/her skills to the spaces. In this way, the addresser designs and to some extent predetermines the actions of individual and collective users, built as implicit or ‘model’ addressees, conceived of as such to be involved in a series of manipulations via the organisation of the space and its layout. By crossing the threshold of a museum, purchasing a ticket and being informed of the behaviours to adopt there, in exchange for the possibility to establish a relationship with its collection, visitors perceive the specificity of this kind of communication, that is, in semiotic metalanguage, the fiduciary contract. By organising itineraries, suggesting certain movements, indicating the works on display with directional lights, captions and panels, the museum as a device activates the various components of the visitor’s skillset, with the visitor considered the subject of a sort of narration, within which he or she should – or must – perform certain actions (the pragmatic component 2 Syncretic (or multimodal) semiotics is characterised by the implementation of different languages of manifestation. Syncretic texts can be traced back to a unitary act of enunciation, which generates a plane of expression characterised by a plurality of semiotic substances (verbal, visual, audio …) for a unique form. They are to be considered as a ‘totality of signification’, to be analysed initially from their plane of content. The architectural device typically reveals a syncretic semiotics: it comprises a volume whose complementary arrangement ensures the creation of an artificial environment that is conducive to the performance of human activities. It is realised on the one hand through a segmentation of the extension into distinct spaces and, on the other hand, through a qualification of these into places of social life, the result of attributions of complementary properties to the space, in response to the needs of use (programmes) and the constraints of the environment. 3 The expression ‘languages of manifestation’ refers to the dichotomy immanence/manifestation, that is, to the structural idea that language is articulated in different planes (expression/ content) and levels (depth/surface). Each plane is in turn inclusive of form and substance: the manifestation in one or more substances of an immanent form corresponds to the level of signs.

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of competence), develop certain forms of knowledge (the cognitive component), and experience certain emotions (the affective component). Because it is inevitable, this device manipulates all visitors, on the one hand in their pragmatic path, their movement in space, where the other paths interlace, and on the other hand, in prohibiting actions that would be normal elsewhere, or at least limiting them to specific spaces. It is not only forbidden to touch or move the works, but also to run, shout, sing, eat or sleep. Prescriptions and proscriptions regulate these places explicitly and implicitly, determining manners and events, and therefore partly influence their meaning (Foucault 1967). The visitor is a pragmatic subject because he or she performs actions, such as exploring places to look at the collections. Since, in general, the extension of the spaces and their topological arrangement allows for multiple visiting routes, there are as many linear paths that generate meaning. Besides, a visit to a museum rarely takes place in total solitude: the visitor must also deal with other visitors, adjusting paths and trajectories because of them. In this sense, besides being an observer subject, the visitor is also a situated subject. As a subject of museum decipherment, the visitor is then a cognitive subject, with a cultural background and therefore with a skillset that is variable, partially activated or even constructed by the museum layout itself, which makes all visits potentially different from each other. However, they are probably united by a common nucleus or pattern. This common frame of reference can highlight a semiotic analysis, because ‘empirical’ visitors stratify themselves according to their skills and the specific objectives of their visits (Hammad 2006). But knowledge (produced by and distilled from looking, reading, listening, etc.) and even the possible manipulation of objects or suggested performances are not the only elements with which an interpretation of the museum can be woven. In addition, a dimension more directly linked to the perception of a body in space does its share: the feeling, the aesthesis and the affects related to it. Visitors’ experiences are first of all perceptible, attributable to their exteroceptive and proprioceptive experience: they are bodies in space exchanging information with their surroundings, and they process meaning already at this level, even if only with simple thymic investments of euphoria/dysphoria compared to the qualities of the perceived world. 4 4 ‘Thymic’ derives from the Greek word thumos, which means ‘mood, basic affective disposition’. In structural semiotics, the thymic category of euphoria/dysphoria qualifies, either positively or negatively, the semantic qualities or traits that derive from the perceptual experiences humans have of their environment in relation to their bodies. The thymic category is at the basis of

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Visitors feel something different depending on whether they are standing, lying or crouching, and on whether they know where they are or are disoriented. The environmental characteristics (dimensions, orientation, temperature, lighting, materials, colours) can influence the state of the subjects, manipulating their feelings and causing them to oscillate between expansion and contraction, tension and relaxation, as the articulation on the thymic level between light and dark corresponds to their feeling safe or insecure, careless or attentive. As I have said, as soon as visitors enter a museum they accept the fiduciary contract stipulated via the enunciation of the museum, which they probably already know thanks to communication and advertising. It is also the reason why visitors arrive with specific expectations.5 As mentioned above, the specific possibilities of use that these environments presuppose can be investigated by considering the visitors as invited and involved subjects in a narration (or narrations) with stratified competences, routed along specific paths. With regard to the particular quality of the experience and the routes set up by spaces such as those described here, I want to emphasise the perceptive and thymic dimension, as the root of the possible different modalities of the relationship between subjects and objects, a dimension capable of accounting for the transformations that the subjects experience within the spatial device, and which unfold during their visiting practice (Fontanille 2008). On the one hand, therefore, there is a production device, organised through its various instances (narrators, exhibitors, guides, etc.), both on the side of the enunciators and on that of the enunciatees, including the virtual body of the visitor. On the other hand, in the actual visit with ‘real’ bodies, a semiotic function is created whose content plane is made up of affects, synaesthesia, bodily effects, sensations, emotions and thoughts. Yet it is always possible, finally, that the individual and/or collective visit of space gives rise to idiosyncratic forms of use, initially not foreseen by those who conceived or set up the museum-device, and which in some instances can even amount to resemantisation. the pathemic dimension of signification, the field of emotions or passions, interrelated to the pragmatic dimension (field of actions) and the cognitive dimension (field of knowledge). 5 To sum up, the ‘f iduciary contract’ refers to the set of preliminaries that underlie the intersubjective structure. Every activity develops on the basis of a prior agreement between subjects, often implicit, or preceded by a persuasive doing (making believe) on the part of someone and an interpretative doing (believing) on the part of the partner. The result is a set of mutual expectations guiding the correct implementation of that specific activity. It could also be said that those involved share the same framework of reference.

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The Jewish Museum After various vicissitudes, a competition to create a museum in Berlin which would emphasise the importance and contribution of the Jewish community and culture in Germany was announced in 1988 and was won by a Polish architect of Jewish origin, Daniel Libeskind, in 1989. The work, whose construction was interrupted several times, was concluded only in 1999. It remained without interior fittings for two years, although it was open to the public. It was then officially inaugurated on 9 September 2001, and opened on the fateful date of 11 September of the same year. In what seems to be a work of fate, Libeskind subsequently won the competition for the reconstruction of Ground Zero in New York. In any case, the Jewish Museum is indeed a connection between contemporary society, Judaism and the city of Berlin, embodying architecture that successfully expresses its main topic (Sacchi 1998). The architecture of the museum is a powerful expression of the assigned theme, which carries out a passionate discourse and at the same time prepares a path for the visitors that is strongly marked by the idea that the experience of the visit produces profound transformations, involving them across all levels. Above all, at the centre of the visit there is perceptive solicitation, originally entrusted only to architecture, and actually prepared and accompanied by verbal indications (signs, captions and warnings placed along the route, printed guides, audio guides). The meaning that the visitor should draw from the first part of the museum visit is configured as a form of semiosis in progress, that is, a perception-based relationship of the spatial forms experienced (expression) with the internal states of the subject (content). The reflexive competence of the visitor, who can relate to the feelings and emotions experienced through themes and topics addressed in the museum, should be more easily implanted on this type of semiosis. To some extent, the subject’s reactions in space are programmable and programmed. Umberto Eco, in his classification of modes of sign production, spoke precisely of programmed stimulations. In some cases, they are codified in a more or less explicit way, as always happens in religious architecture, which fully recognises the effectiveness of a spatial layout in producing specific effects for the addressees. Returning to Libeskind’s work, the visitor is struck on the outside by the original appearance of the museum, which detaches itself from the surrounding buildings. It consists of a pre-existing building, an eighteenthcentury structure, demolished in 1935 and rebuilt in the 1970s, intended to

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house the initial collection of the resurrected Jüdisches Museum. At first, the new museum was intended to be an extension of this building, and in fact its entrance is located there, although the connection between the two structures is underground and cannot be seen externally. Robust visual discontinuity highlights a series of oppositions between the two buildings, the epochs they represent and their relationships with their surroundings: dimensions, style, architectural typology, design, materials and colour. Yet, at the same time, they are placed in physical continuity. Discontinuity marks the distance, the temporal hiatus that exists between the ages, with all the tragic consequences that separate them. The foundations of a previous Jüdisches Museum dated back to the early 1900s, and in its short but culturally intense life, the institution had gone through all the horrors of Nazism: it was closed by the authorities and its collections were confiscated on 10 November 1938, the day following the infamous Kristallnacht. Later, starting in 1962, various initiatives were launched to raise awareness about Jewish cultural life and its role in the city, until the decision, in 1975, to revive the museum in this building (Sacchi 1998). The sense of ‘reconnection’ is therefore expressed by the underground continuity that the architect has created between the two buildings. Facing the Lindenstrasse, in the Kreuzberg district, Libeskind’s work has the appearance of a long monolith coated with zinc in thin diagonal cuts, folded in an unusual way, recalling a military construction, or an absolute institution: a bunker, a tower, but also a prison, an impression supported by the material of the external surface. The ‘skin’ of the building is made of zinc sheets (the same material used for the roofs of the surrounding buildings) lined with oblique joints: the openings are also small cuts, mostly diagonal so that edges and broken lines characterise and give rhythm to the project. The dark grey walls are reflective and therefore iridescent based on the weather. The mutability of reflected light rearranges and partly denies the building’s characteristics of fixity, solidity and even violence, like the threatening coldness that is usually associated with metals: sensitivity to atmospheric conditions is the bearer of a semantic trait of ‘animation’ which puts the building in contact with (rather than in opposition to) the sensitive constitution of the subject, even anthropomorphising it, denying the dryness of the animate/inanimate opposition, and introducing the possibility of a different interpretation: not so much a body that hurts, but a body that carries the signs of laceration. In fact, it is only from an aerial view, or by looking at a to-scale model, that one can embrace the entire museum complex, formed, to describe it in the right order, by the existing building with its large garden (by the landscape

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architects Cornelia Muller and Jan Weheberg), the building in the shape of a thunder bolt (or a broken star of David, a ‘zig-zag’), the Tower of the Holocaust and the Garden of Exile, dedicated to E.T.A. Hoffmann, who had his office here. The design of the zig-zag results from the intersections of the lines and trajectories of the places in the city where Jewish artists and intellectuals lived, through a complex mapping project, an ideal reconnection of places and people, but with a ‘fulminating and subversive sign, hard and violent, which abruptly changes direction and does not have a controllable shape, as uncontrollable and subject to continuous painful fractures as the history of man’ (Sacchi 1998: 50, my translation). As mentioned above, the entrance to the museum is incorporated into the eighteenth-century building. It is a vast and bright hall, carved out of the full-height glass roof of the former courtyard, with a motif of crossed cement pillars, which closes it on three sides, leaving it completely open in the summer. It is the real hub between the various components of the museum: from here the visitor can directly access the places of relaxation and refreshment, the restaurant that offers specialities of Jewish cuisine, and above all the large park-garden, a well-kept, protected space, divided into various areas. Facing the building from the road, the entrance gate of the new part of the museum, in raw concrete with deeply irregular edges and openings, is on the right-hand side. Marked by the presence of museum guards and other staff members as a passage point, it is perceived as a dark and restricted mode of access compared to the brightness of the hall. It is the entrance to a descending staircase, and when they cross the threshold, visitors become aware of the differences in atmosphere between the two environments, expressed by a series of oppositions. First, between the presence of natural and artificial light, between the diffused brightness of the exterior and the darkness crossed by blades of light of the interior. Then the descent actualises the semantic opposition between horizontal and vertical, flat and inclined; the colours focus on the clash between black and white, refined materials become unrefined, rough, and no longer smooth to the touch and the gaze. One of the peculiarities of the stairway is that the ‘foresight of spatial vision’ is impeded: the visitor is denied visual access to the path in front, he or she must walk along an obligatory route which, from the start, deprives him or her of the usual senses engaged and generated by movement in space, which normally require visibility and comprehension of destination. As such, the ‘pathemic’ effect produced by this dark and mysterious place is that of uncertainty.

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The stairway ends in yet a different space, a sort of long corridor in which the walls are now white. The floor remains black, like the ceiling, symmetrically cut across its entire length by a luminous groove, similar to those that constitute the handrails of the staircase, the only source of light, white and intense. It could be said that at this point the visitor is compensated for the deprivation of competence he or she suffered along the descent: some panels indicate his or her position on a map of the museum, explaining that his or her location is along the Axis of Continuity, below street level due to Libeskind’s decision to connect the existing building and its extension, which appear separate on the surface, via an underground passageway. Likewise, German and Jewish culture, while seemingly independent of each other, are deeply linked thanks to continuous reciprocal exchanges they have had for centuries. The architect’s name and the explanation of his intentions on the information panels draw attention to the quality of the museum’s architecture. In this way, its enunciation becomes explicit and manifests itself at the level of its discourse, which usually remains more in the shadows in the visitor’s eyes, namely the architectural one. Beyond verbal explanations, the building continually draws attention to itself. For example, the openings along the route to visit the upper floors, which mostly frame glimpses of the exterior of the building, exalt its basic motifs in an exercise in self-reflexivity. Moreover, due to its characteristics, this part of the museum is connotated as a memorial, generally defined as an expression of the desire to remember an event considered so significant for the community that it should be celebrated with a monument. The upper floors of the building, on the contrary, host an exhibition on traditional Jewish culture in Germany, which draws the attention of the visitor, leaving the architectural shell in the background. As the visitor continues his or her visit, the next part is the Axis of Continuity (two buildings, two cultures): a straight line intersected (or somewhat broken) by axes of discontinuity, which form a sort of broad and slightly skewed ‘X’. One of the two lower segments ends up ––in the Tower of the Holocaust, the other in the Garden of Exile; there is no exit at either end. The continuity of life and culture (a condition of survival) is broken by the discontinuity of death (the Holocaust) and non-life (exile). On the path, points of intersection between the different corridor-axes once again emphasise the sharp edges, and above, beams of light dramatise the burst of spatial-semantic discontinuities. To the right of the Axis of Exile, is the Rafael Roth Learning Centre, a memorial inside the memorial,

152 Isabell a Pezzini Figure 5.1  The Jewish Museum, plan of the underground itineraries

Image copyright: © Jüdisches Museum Berlin

a multimedia space dedicated to one of the main donors, financier of the work, which contains information on all aspects of the museum. Meanwhile, along the Axis, everyday objects, all belonging to victims of the Holocaust, are displayed inside special glass niches set into the wall. A passport, a cup, a toy, a book: they are relic objects, donated to the museum by witnesses eager to remember the tortuous paths of so many people forced instead to emigration and exile by Nazi persecutions. The inscription of the names of 37 cities where emigrants eventually found refuge and shelter, including Paris, Stockholm, Shanghai, New York, Tel Aviv, Lisbon, Buenos Aires, Liverpool and Buffalo, runs parallel to the ceiling on both the right and left walls.

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The museographic approach of this underground space is, therefore, biographical-individual, quite different from the thematic-collective one of the exhibitions located on the upper floors of the museum, as we shall see. The biographical approach draws the visitor’s attention to single shattered lives, starting from details full of pathos, designed to move him or her, to trigger identification and mourning processes within an individualising strategy. The thematic approach, while not eschewing experiential devices, is instead aimed at the passions of knowledge: curiosity, interest, desire for detailed study. The Axis of Exile is the first element that intersects the visitor’s path along the Axis of Continuity. Although it initially appears as a corridor identical to the previous one, as visitors move forward, they are forced to perceive the slight inclination of the floor, which increases progressively until it diminishes the englobing space. On the ceiling, a broken blade of light takes on the role of a guiding line, which ends against the bottom of the corridor, made of two-thirds of a trapezoidal piece of glass, with the inscription ‘Garten­des­Exils/Garden­of­Exile’, from which it is possible to see the garden, and, for the last third, of another trapezoid, this time upside down, consisting of a massive, always-open black metal door. Transparency, glimpses of what is to come and the open door simultaneously mark the separation and conjunction between the two spaces, acting as an invitation to the visitor to continue beyond the door, where the inclined plinths of the garden are visible. A panel once again explains Libeskind’s intention: a request to the visitor to reflect on the disorientation that exile brings. This is followed by a description of the work: 49 columns filled with soil on top of which grow olive trees; 48 columns contain the ‘land of Berlin and represent 1948’, the year of formation of the State of Israel, while the forty-ninth column, the central one, represents Berlin, and is instead filled with the ‘soil of Jerusalem’. In terms of their floor plan, the columns are arranged symmetrically within the square enclosure of the garden, consisting of a concrete wall stuck in the green area in which is located, higher than the Axis of Exile, but always lower than street level. Furthermore, the columns rise from the ground, cobblestones with pieces of different sizes, close together and set at a peculiar angle, some appear almost as cannons pointed towards the sky. A panel warns that a visit to the garden can cause discomfort: in fact, the sense of disorientation that visitors may feel inside the garden is translated or turned into the bodily experience of losing the usual parameters of orientation concerning the other bodies in a given space and of supporting the body on the ground, intensified by the labyrinthine effect of the way the

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columns are arranged on the ground, from the sense of constriction created by the narrow spaces between them, from the visual distance of the sky and the olive trees planted on top. Moreover, if visitors feel like they are losing their balance, they can lean on the columns, which will feel unusually cold, damp, rough: an intense sensation, perhaps also produced by the particular microclimate – colder than the surrounding environment – that is created. The impression is that of being in a deep, unnatural space, from which the visitor would like to rise ‘upwards’, as if he or she is underwater and has caught sight of the surface above. But in this case, this is not possible, creating a conscious sense of constriction and oppression. Naturally, this experience is subjective. In addition, it is not made explicit in the copious warning and explanation signs, which seem to respond to a detailed and conscientious information plan, compensating for the experience of the visitors with a framework of orientation and de-dramatisation. Passing through the Axis of the Holocaust and arriving at the tower that concludes it is a different experience entirely. This corridor is also slightly uphill, and has glass niches along the walls; but this time the objects, which belonged to victims of the Shoah, are visible only by approaching the opaque glass, and looking through the transparent porthole: a vision-regulating device that suggests a form of recollection and intimacy between the visitor and the exposed object. The inscriptions that mark the route are now the names of the concentration camps: Dachau, Auschwitz, Mittelbau-Dora, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, etc. Unlike the previous axis, which ended with a glazed and luminous wall, this corridor is closed by a black wall. Once again a panel on a wall explains to the visitor, who is perhaps shocked, that the Tower of the Holocaust is behind the wall: by closely observing the wall, he or she will discover a metal door, the twin of the one already crossed through to get to the garden, this time however slightly ajar and slightly set back from the wall, and above all guarded by an attendant wearing the black and red uniform of the museum, who will open the door to close it again immediately after the visitor has passed through. The procedure of opening and closing the door introduces an element of solemnity, an invitation to be aware of crossing a threshold beyond which the restless visitor does not know what to expect. Once inside, the visitor is in a space remarkably similar to a crypt: dark, completely bare, irregularly shaped, developed upwards. There is an only opening, a loophole, where light from outside shines downwards. A slender ladder extends upwards to the aperture, though it begins at the unreachable height of four meters. The

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Figure 5.2  The Jewish Museum, cross-section of the building

Image copyright: © Jüdisches Museum Berlin

tower is 24 meters high, quadrangular with a sharp edge as the glazed niches of the rest of the path, walls and floor are in raw concrete. The atmosphere is cold and damp, and the visitor within can hear the steps of other visitors, the slamming door closing and echoing in the space. The association that comes to mind – so obvious as to seem almost trivial – is with the chimney of the crematory ovens of the extermination camps, the feeling is of being inside. It is a feeling of angst and helplessness that is meant to physically induce a state of meditation and reflection, if not prayer, in the visitors, in this place, where people stop for some time, after entering with caution, some crouching down or even sitting on the ground, their heads bowed. The expectations and behaviours planned by the script of a usual ‘visit to the museum’ are completely subverted, even more radically so than when visiting the garden. Here, the bodily experience is not that of disorientation in space through movement, but that of a spatial obligation of the subject’s being, characterised by not being able to do and having to be. It goes without saying that the way out of this space is a moment of relief, of resolution of a state of tension, facilitated by the slight slope of the floor, this time upwards. At this point, the visitor is ready to face the 90 steps of the Stairs of Continuity, which will take him or her to the second floor, where the thematic exposition begins. The staircase is black, the unusually tall and narrow walls of the room containing it are smooth and white. It has recurring

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elements in other parts of the museum: the most singular detail is the motif of the concrete beams that pierce the walls, like blades, tree branches or collapsed beams, from one side to the other in an asymmetrical motif. The staircase is abruptly interrupted by a white wall, the inverse of the black wall that interrupts the first descent of the visitor, who in this case is not in a dead-end, since the entrance to the permanent exhibition is on the left, taking on the joyful shape of a pomegranate tree. Visitors can hang a note containing their thoughts or wishes at the tree, which is a symbol of honesty and fairness in Judaism. A relatively cheerful tone and consistent staging are maintained, with some didactic excess, until the last part of the path, that of persecution, in which the euphoric presentation of the events that German Jews were subjected to necessarily becomes serious, dramatic and gloomy, even extending to the contemporary period and Germany’s complex relationship with its Nazi past. The installation, by the New Zealander Ken Gorbey (creator of the Te Papa museum in Wellington, New Zealand, before the extension by UN Studio in 2005), was intended to constitute a ‘theatre of objects’, but in reality, the abundant presence of captions shows a lack of confidence that objects ‘speak for themselves’. The architecture of the museum exploits every element, such as the device of ascent/descent and the layout of the floors, to reinforce a recurrent code in all parts of the building, based on expressive oppositions that are combined with semantic oppositions. For this reason, they are open to the comprehension of the visitor, who could undoubtedly understand the macro-meanings of the different colours, materials, shapes and paths, even without having to resort to the didactic panels that explain them, in a calculated use of knowledge to control and reorient the feelings activated in visitors. In fact, some have noted that the building could have remained empty, so that its spaces would have witnessed very forcefully to the drama of its meaning (Marotta 2010).

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe It may be interesting to compare the device of spatial effectiveness at Libeskind’s Jewish Museum with that of the memorial to the victims of the Holocaust by Peter Eisenman, called the Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas in German, literally ‘Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe’. Also in Berlin, located next to the Brandenburg Gate (Pariser Platz 4, Mitte), close to what was Hitler’s headquarters and bunker, there is a large open

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area (19,073 m2) characterised by the theme of urban emptiness, determined by the destruction of the war, establishing its character as a mnemotope (a consecrated material place destined for collective memory) thanks to the construction of the monument. It is worth noting that the answers to the frequently asked questions in the monument’s brochure mention the distance from Hitler’s bunker (200–300 meters south of the memorial), and that Goebbels’s bunker was found in the northeast corner of the memorial site, all the while specifying that this proximity did not change the work. More precisely, the brochure states: ‘The location in the centre of Berlin and close to embassies, cultural institutions, commercial and residential buildings as well as the Tiergarten park underlines the public character of the monument. Its inclusion in the historic centre of the city and the parliament and government headquarters highlights the fact that the Memorial addresses both the State and civil society’, an interesting reference to how the buildings of the city, symbols of the functions performed within them, communicate with and control each other. Thanks to the efforts of the publicist Lea Rosh starting in 1988, the idea for the monument materialised in Eisenman’s project in 1998, and work finally began in April 2003. Once ground had been broken on the site, the discovery that the supplier of construction material had worked with the Nazis seemed to call everything into question. In the end, the principle that memory now serves to bring all people together under one set of values (and not further divide them) prevailed. Inaugurated in May 2005, the site looks like a vast undulating square, punctuated by 2,711 grey concrete ‘steles’, all with the same, rectangular footprint, but with carefully calculated, progressively different heights. The underground information centre is divided into seven main areas: the Room of Dimensions, the Room of Families, the Room of Names, the Yad Vashem Portal, the Federal Archive Portal and the Information Portal of European Sites of Remembrance. Along the guided tour, in a dark, glacial and very rarefied atmosphere, visitors can reconstruct the biographies of many of the victims of the Holocaust, through multimedia devices that are as moving as they are disturbing. The relationship between the upper, external part of the monument and the inner, underground part is very narrow on the emotional level; the lower part is the exact opposite of the space above, as the coffered ceiling underlines. However, I will focus in this article on the above-ground part of the site. Unlike the Libeskind building, Eisenman’s work is first and foremost a monument, a memorial which directly stimulates the senses, primarily touch and sight. It is a rhetorical machine in which the visitor is in constant motion – due to the effects

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produced by the arrangement of the steles – in a Kafkaesque world of its own that simultaneously absorbs the surrounding urban landscape as a constant presence. The immediate association is with a vast anonymous cemetery, in particular a war cemetery, one of those in which crosses or tombstones create ‘lines’ because of the fallen soldiers they remember, entirely lacking any form of figurative and individual identification, any personal testimony of affection, such as flowers, images, statuettes and so on. Seen from a distance, Eisenman’s monument is striking for the obvious geometric organisation that presided over its construction: the first feeling that it arouses is certainly that of admiration, understood in the Cartesian sense of ‘wonder mixed with respect’. The order and the calculation at the core of the project have something inhuman about them, referring to the Nazis’ systematic extermination, even if this connotation comes to mind only later. At first glance, the changing interplay of light on the grey steles produces aesthetically-important optical effects. Then, the visitor discovers it is possible to enter among the ‘tombs’. Indeed, visitors are even invited to do so, either to reach the entrance of the museum or to cross the large square. During the route, visitors will feel the effect of the perfectly-perceptible rhythm of the undulating cobblestone pavement underfoot. They f ind themselves inside a labyrinth, even if the arrangement of the steles, which sink into the ground at different heights, actually allows them to maintain their sense of orientation within the grid by looking towards the outer edges. The meaning provided for wanderers, who can follow a continuous zig-zag path, can also be found here (as in Libeskind’s Garden of Exile): that of disorientation and the feeling of loss, of a long journey to be made in a state of deprivation and a quest for direction before finding the usual coordinates. One heartfelt review of the monument published online express it as follows: The idea behind the project seems to shape a process that allows people to accept evil as an aspect of ordinary life. And that is why, in the new Berlin memorial, the line that separates life and death, guilt and innocence is almost imperceptible. As you proceed along the path, the land on which the columns stand slopes more and more. At the beginning of the path you can see the city, while the rows of pillars frame the Reichstag. Gradually, the surroundings begin to disappear, and the creaking of crushed gravel becomes noisier and noisier, until the unstable movement of the inclined columns becomes threatening and oppressive. Disorientation is an intended effect: the visitor finds himself alone, face to face with the memory of the Holocaust. Once out of the path, having

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returned to reality, all the sensations just experienced become clearer. In this way, the architect intends for visitors to experience chilling moments without any kind of sentimentality: ‘I don’t want visitors to be moved and then leave with a clear conscience’. (https://www.skyscrapercity.com/ showthread.php?t=211682)

But this is not the only use that the structure of the monument makes possible (apart from the fact that there is no gravel on the ground). Even a labyrinth can lend itself to different interpretations, being a spatial device based on rules that the user can identify only through an experience that should be a source of anxiety and frustration, but also of curiosity and a sense of discovery. Thus visitor behaviour does not always submit to the rules and obligations that the architecture suggests; indeed it is possible to observe resemantisation practices of the monuments in a tourist-ludic way: some sit on the plinths at elevation, others climb on the steles and photograph themselves cheerfully greeting each other, children chase each other among the columns amid cries of excitement. A plaque near the entrance to the information centre explicitly states that these behaviours are prohibited in the memory space, and a guardian, waving a white umbrella, will even anxiously correct any disobedient behaviour. One wonders if the architecture, because of its expressive nature, is not able to generate attitudes, behaviours and feelings in its visitors that are suitable to its content. Or indeed, if it can succeed in its attempt to the point of producing a sort of liberating catharsis among its guests. Perhaps this happens also via the placement of the monument in an open space, and its very extension. It is a square, without any form of fence or payment barrier; a space therefore that the public instinctively feels is its own, and in which it preferably adopts self-determined behaviours, expressing its freedom. Freedom is also a meaning-effect suggested by the character of non-semantic discontinuity exhibited by the Hippodamian grid. One might also ask, optimistically, if the affirmation of one’s own daily activities conducted in a place that recalls horror and death does not manifest the instinctive search for a utopian way out of the past. The possibility of this inversion would, moreover, be consistent with the ‘semantic undecidability’ which can characterise places of memory, due to their contemporary belonging to the two areas of history and memory (Nora 1984-92) and, I would add, of the everyday and the ritual. This also means the much-vaunted ‘flexibility’ of contemporary public space is affirmed as a value. Returning to the comparison between Eisenman’s memorial and Libeskind’s building, it would be difficult to argue that both are ‘open

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works’, unless in Umberto Eco’s famous formula of ‘nothing is more closed than an open text’ (Eco 1979). But there is no doubt that the Jewish Museum, which remained utterly empty for more than two years, is now a passionate machine that is much more complex and regulated, to some extent even traditional and prescriptive, than Eisenman’s much more exposed funereal maze. However, both are structures that posit bodily interaction with the visitor as a fundamental element of their design, as an inescapable assumption of its interest and its effectiveness. Aware of the fact that, as Benjamin wrote concluding his famous essay, ‘the public is an examiner, but an absent-minded one’ (Benjamin 1955, p. 234), visitors choose to start from their entrenched perceptive habits rather than accept to get disoriented and to attempt the difficult task of being redirected.

Works Cited Assmann, A. 1999 Erinnerungsraüme. Formen und Wandlungen des kulturellen Gedächtnisses, Beck, Munich. Benjamin, W. 1955 Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit (1936), Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main. Beyaert, A., Chatenet, L. and Okala F. (eds) 2019 Monuments, (dé) monumentalisation: approaches sémiotiques, Limoges, Pulim. Eco, U. 1984 The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts (1979), Bloomington, Indiana. Fontanille, J. 2008 Pratiques sémiotiques, Paris, PUF. Foucault, M. 1967 Eterotopie, Rome, Meltemi. Geninasca, J. 1997 La parole littéraire, Paris: PUF. Hammad, M. 2006 ‘Il Museo della Centrale Montemartini a Roma’, in I. Pezzini and P. Cervelli, Scene del consumo: dallo shopping al museo, Rome, Meltemi, pp. 203-280. Lotman, J.M. 1985 La semiosfera: l’asimmetria e il dialogo nelle strutture pensanti, Venice, Marsilio. Marotta, A. 2010 Atlante dei musei contemporanei, Milan, Skira. Nora, P. (ed.) 1984-92 Les lieux de la mémoire, 4 vols., Paris, Gallimard. Pezzini, I. 2011 Semiotica dei nuovi musei, Bari and Rome, Laterza. Pezzini, I (ed.) 2021 Paolo Fabbri. Unfolding Semiotics. Pour la Sémiotique a Venir – Punctum Monograph, vol. I, Thessaloniki: Hellenic Semiotics Society. Pezzini, I. and Cervelli, P. (eds) 2007 Scene del consumo. Dallo shopping al museo, Rome, Meltemi. Ricœur, P. 1990 Soi-même comme un autre, Paris, Seuil.

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Sacchi, L. 1998 Daniel Libenskind. Museo Ebraico, Berlino, Turin, Testo & Immagine. Violi, P. 2017 Landscapes of Memory. Trauma, Space, History, Bern and Oxford, Peter Lang. Zambelli, M. 2000 Museo ebraico a Berlino, Turin, Bollati Boringhieri. Zevi, A. 2014 Monumenti per difetto, Rome, Donzelli. Zuzunegui, S. 2003 Metamorfosis de la mirada: museo y semiótica, Valencia, Frónesis.

About the Author Isabella Pezzini is Full Professor of Philosophy and Theory of Languages at the Department of Communication and Social Research at Roma Sapienza University, Italy, where she teaches Semiotics. Her research focuses on the theoretical and methodological development of semiotics, with studies on contemporary forms of expression: narratives, audio-visual languages, urban spaces, museums, fashions and places of consumption. Her most recent publications include Semiotica dei nuovi musei Bari-Rome 2011; Introduzione a Roland Barthes, Bari-Rome 2014; Dallo spazio alla città. Letture e fondamenti di semiotica urbana, Udine-Milan, 2020 (edited with Riccardo Finocchi); and La moda fra senso e cambiamento, Udine-Milan, 2021 (edited with Bianca Terracciano).

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Making Space for Memory Collective Enunciation in the Provincial Memory Archive of Córdoba, Argentina Paola Sozzi Abstract This essay aims at showing how the concept of enunciation can be used to analyse places, by deploying it in the analysis of a museum in Córdoba, Argentina, located inside a former clandestine centre of detention and torture. The concept of enunciation will prove useful to look at two crucial dimensions of this place of memory: the multiplicity of voices and perspectives that it embodies, together with the display of many different traces of what happened in it. My hypothesis is that both these mechanisms are used to convey a stronger ‘effect of reality’ for the story told, reinforcing each other with mutual connections and shaping a precise narrative of the past. Keywords: Memory Places; Enunciation; Traces; Museum; Archive; Dirty War

Introduction The museum known as the Provincial Memory Archive in Córdoba, Argentina (Archivo Provincial de la Memoria, from now on: APM1) is located in a lovely building in the heart of the city’s old town. For decades, the building housed the intelligence department of the Córdoba police, also called D2, which in the 1970s worked as a clandestine centre of detention and torture

1 The names of the rooms and spaces of the museum will be directly translated in English, since most of them are highly significant from a semantic point of view.

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(from now on: CCDT). Nowadays, it hosts a museum and an audio-visual archive of testimonies about its past.2 As such, the place is connected to the memory of the atrocities committed by the civilian-military dictatorship that took place in Argentina from 1976 to 1983, enacted by a military council that reunited the chiefs of different armies, self-defined as the National Reorganisation Process. The period is also known as the Dirty War, named after the terrible methods used by the state to destroy any sort of opposition and stay in power for almost seven years. The most common of such means was the disappearance of people: 30,000 men and women were illegally and secretly killed by the state, after having been kidnapped, detained in inhumane conditions and then buried in common graves or thrown into the sea. In this context, in which the state put in place what can be called an invisibility strategy for its own actions (Violi 2015), the search for and discovery of the traces of what happened has been one of the constant objectives of human rights associations from the first days of the restoration of democracy. In their mottos, these associations have constantly stressed their need for ‘Memory, Truth and Justice’, a spirit that guided the recuperation of the places and traces of that horror as a way to establish the truth, guarantee legal justice in the trials, which have been reopened only in 2005, and build the memory of that tragedy. The APM was created in the same spirit of recuperation of traces and testimonies: in fact, located in the former headquarters of the D2, the museum is not only hosted in the very building where the traumatic events took place, but it is also characterised by a very ‘fluid’ layout, and the presence of a huge number of different traces of the past. They permit visitors to come in contact with something that is unique in Argentina, where the evidence of severe suppression of human rights has been systematically destroyed: an archive of mug shots of the prisoners taken by the police over a twenty-year period, found in a storage closet. The discovery is not only unparalleled, but also a concrete ‘appearance’ of a dark and invisible moment of Argentine history, something that is impossible to find anywhere else. The APM museum is also a peculiar place because of its deep bond with activism, performative arts and social practices of elaboration of collective grief. I will argue that all this can happen because the museum ‘makes space for memory’, not only, as many other places do, by giving a physical and social identity to a certain narrative of the past, but also by the way in which that memory is transmitted, implementing a very peculiar enunciation strategy. 2 My observation took place from February to July 2016, coinciding with the fortieth anniversary of the beginning of the dictatorship.

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The museum will in fact prove to be a safe space where many different voices and identities can meet, creating a collective and inclusive recounting of the past. A place where what is said becomes important and significant in light of who is saying it and how. For this specific reason, the concept of enunciation is useful to analyse this place. In fact, the concept was created and used for two main purposes: i) to refer to the act of ‘speaking’, and more widely to all implicit acts of production of anything that contains a message to be sent from an addresser to an addressee; ii) to analyse all the elements of a discourse that seem to refer to the subjects, place and time of their ‘production’. For example, in oral interactions, we make great use of words that refer to dialoguing subjects and that use the time and space of their interaction as a reference, something that usually does not happen in written texts. So, if we refer to the first point (i), we understand why saying that who is speaking, and to whom they are speaking, is highly significant to interpret the museum means dealing with enunciation strategies. It means, in fact, rebuilding the figures of the addresser and addressee as they are inscribed in the museum to fully comprehend the meaning of the place. The process of giving shape to the space around us can in fact be seen as an enunciation act, as it is another action of expression, a strategy of manipulation and creation of the meanings we share as a community. As we will see, this museum gives voice to a complex group of people, and lets them relate their own experiences and stories: the relatives of the victims, the exiled, the survivors, all of them set up a different portion of space, providing different experiences for the visitors. A ‘principal’ voice accompanies them (the ‘voice’ of the APM), a hierarchically superior voice that makes space for the others to emerge. Still, the story told acquires reliability in light of the polyphony of voices: since all these different subjects narrate a consistent story, the story can be perceived as true. A strong effect of reality is then created. The other characteristic of this place that reinforces this effect of reality of the story told is linked to how the museum narrates the past events, an aspect that has to do with those elements of the discourse that refer to the subjects, and the time and space of their enunciation (ii). In this museum, the narration of the past is strongly based on the display of different kinds of traces. Traces are objects or portions of the space that can be transformed into proofs of the past presence of something or someone; in this case, traces are displayed both to testify to how the police department worked and to the lives of the victims. When analysing places (and especially memory places), it is quite common to come across traces. In my opinion, this happens since the addresser and the addressee share the same ‘space’: the matter of

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expression that the addresser manipulates is the same matter of expression in which the visitors move. If not all places stress this continuity, some, like this one, create this specific effect of reality by highlighting it. In the APM museum, different subjects relate a story through the space that is consistent with the other stories and with the elements presented as traces of that story. My hypothesis is that this enunciation strategy, that we might call a polyphonic indexical enunciation, is precisely what creates a strong effect of reality for the story told.

From Police Department to Memory Site The department of information of the Córdoba provincial police or D2 was a division of the police force created to repress the ‘common’ crime defined as ‘subversion’. Subversives, those considered ‘dangerous’ to the social order due to their membership of political movements, trade unions or student associations, or their religious or sexual orientation, were interrogated and detained here starting in 1940. Between 1971 to 1982, almost 20,000 people passed through the D2 building. In the early 1970s, due to national political and economic instability, many riots took place in Córdoba (el Córdobazo, 1969; el Viborazo, 1971; el Navarrazo, 1974) and different political movements flourished, some of them supporting the idea of violent revolution, which caused different military chiefs to be sent to the province to ‘control’ the situation. Meanwhile, a paramilitary organisation known as the Triple A (Anti-Communist Argentine Alliance) had been acting in the city illegally by explicitly attacking some of the most important political and labour organisations in town, through abductions, executions, gun fights and terrorist attacks. The police did not explicitly intervene against them but, on the contrary, started a series of illegal and ‘secret’ abductions, inhumane detentions and interrogations, with the systematic use of torture to extract information considered essential for the ‘counter-revolutionary war’. First, in 1974–1975, in order to build an atmosphere of terror and confusion aimed at discrediting certain political organisations and justifying the planned coup d’état, the ‘subversives’ were kidnapped, tortured and killed, their bodies left along the sides of the road. Then, at least from December 1975, prisoners systematically disappeared: after being kidnapped, they had to pass through the D2 building to be photographed, recorded and ‘interrogated’. They would then either be held for some time in the department or be sent to one of the other clandestine detention centres in

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town. Once detained, they were kept alive as long as they were considered of some use, then executed and buried in common graves. Only with the restoration of democracy in 1983 did Argentinians slowly discover what had happened, while some traces of the military’s crimes were coming to light. A few trials were organised against the military forces, but everything was halted a few years later by two laws: the ‘Full Stop Law’ of 1986, which granted a sort of penal impunity for crimes connected to violent political actions that took place before the end of the dictatorship; the 1987 ‘Law of Due Obedience’, which prevented the conviction of subaltern soldiers in light of the due obedience they owed to their superiors; and finally, the amnesty granted by the Menem government in 1990, which also liberated those who had already been sentenced (Galante, 2015). In this general context, it was quite hard to understand, remember and process the huge tragedies that had occurred during the dictatorship. For years, a dense general silence fell over those events, broken only by the voices of the human rights associations. It was only with the twentieth anniversary of the military coup in 1996 that a phase of ‘production of “small memories” and “local markings” … aimed against various state policies clearly intending to erase and forget’ started to take place (Da Silva Catela 2015: 10–11). In 2005, finally, the laws that had stopped the trials were deemed to be unconstitutional and a new phase of trials began. In the meantime, a series of events had established the idea that the former clandestine centres of detention and torture ‘ought to be the nucleus of the institutionalisation of memories’ (Da Silva Catela 2015: 2). For these reasons, ‘the thirtieth anniversary of the coup, in 2006, was a moment of “monumental memories” …, including the creation of institutions such as archives, cultural centres, memorials and sites centring their narratives on state terrorism’ (Ib.). In March 2006, at the beginning of this third phase after the reopening of the trials, a provincial law called Ley de la Memoria (Ley 9286/2006) created a memory commission in Córdoba composed of members of different local human rights associations, the university and a representative of the provincial government. With the aim of rebuilding the memory of these facts and to facilitate the search for tangible proofs that could be used during the trials, the ex-D2 building was given to the memory commission, prescribing that it be preserved and turned into a memory site. It also established the APM, with the power to search for documents related to crimes and to collect victims’ testimonies.3 3 For more information on the Commission and the archive, see https://www.apm.gov.ar (accessed on 20 December 2022).

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From 2006 to 2008, the memory commission carried out investigations and collected testimonies. Those who were detained in the D2 building in the years of the dictatorship were invited to visit it. In fact, almost no sign of what happened there was still in place, and no official record could prove how it had been used. In this case, the space itself seemed almost unable to keep track of the past in the form of material traces; the only actual trace to be found was the smallest cell of the building, probably originally a storage closet: it is still possible to see names, dates and prayers engraved by the prisoners on the wall during their detention. It was only when the D2 survivors started moving around the building that they recalled details of their experience or unlocked hidden memories, making it possible to build a consistent story about the functioning of the CCDT from 1974 to 1982. For them, the new experience of the place triggered or reinforced memories, since places have the power to function as mnemonic activators of what we have experienced in them (Carruthers 1998). The accounts given then or previously by the survivors gained in reliability thanks to their correspondence with the features of the place and to their overall consistency. It was then decided to partially ‘rebuild’ the place as it was in those years, destroying a wall that had been erected later, but leaving a piece of it upright, and avoiding repainting the walls. Since it is probable that these modifications were made by the police to make it harder to recognise the place, it was decided to maintain the memory even of these attempts to erase it. Many of the survivors decided to participate in the creation of the archive of memory by agreeing to be interviewed and filmed. These first interviews make up the base of the ever-growing audio-visual provincial archive, providing the backbone of the transmitted information. By doing so, the commission was complying with the provincial law that granted it the use of the buildings of the D2, with the explicit mission of collecting testimonies and transforming it into a place of memory.

Visiting the Museum, Listening to Its Voices The buildings hosting the museum were once three historic aristocratic houses: nowadays, the left entrance leads to the offices of the Commission, the right one to the APM and the middle one to the museum. Since the layout of these houses has been changed many times, we shall not consider the architectural structure per se. Entering the museum, visitors can pick up a small flyer with a map of the museum. The museum is a continuous space that unifies courtyards

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(patios) and rooms (on the map, rooms with white on black writing are part of the museum), but no path of visit is proposed to the visitors. To describe the museum, we might start from those parts that are directly organised by the APM, the addresser of the museum: it is the subject that ‘speaks’ through the museum and tells the story from a sort of ‘neutral’ point of view, providing proofs and mimetic set-ups of the past police department, while giving space to other subjects to narrate their stories. Starting with the outside, we have the impression that it has been designed to highlight the presence of the museum (Figure 6.1): three giant fingerprints are drawn on transparent plaques affixed to its unrestored walls. They are composed of the names of all those disappeared and killed in the province, as another large red plaque from the APM explains. Many other elements make it impossible to pass by without noticing the museum (a national flag, a coloured tile, a big green door, etc.) and, additionally, every Thursday, the day of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo’s weekly parade, the association of the Madres (mothers) based in Córdoba hung the pictures of the desaparecidos of the province in the street. These consideration on the outside of the museum are particularly significant in light of the history of this place: in fact, during the years of repression, this very street was completely blocked off by the police, as happened quite often with many portions of the urban network that surrounded the CCDTs. These areas, if not blocked off, were at least transformed into local dead spots, public places that people little by little avoided for fear of becoming involuntary witnesses to crimes and, therefore, disappear themselves (Grass-Klein and Amieva 2017). In this case, this sort of urban necrosis occurred right in the heart of Córdoba, in a lovely pedestrian street located just between the cathedral and the cabildo [city hall]. By transforming this little street into an important extension of the museum, occupying the space of the city, the APM significantly underlies the mission of the museum as a living portion of the urban fabric. Indeed, not only do all these elements get people’s attention, they also create a contrast between the locked, inaccessible nature of the ex-CCDT and the public role and pedagogical mission of the museum nowadays. As has been mentioned, the inside the museum consists of a number of rooms and patios connected to one another without any specific path of visit. A significant part of the exhibition organised by the APM revolves around a photographic trail, organised in seven different points. In the first one, at the entrance of the museum, called ‘From negative to positive’, a case displays some of the boxes in which the almost 140,000 mug shots

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Figure 6.1 The outside of the museum, Thursday, 30 June 2016, with a photographic exhibition on the left

Photo: Paola Sozzi

were found. An explanation of how the images were found and how they were extracted from the negatives is provided, creating a sense of the reliability of their content. The photographic trail is based on the use of these mug shots, which provide evidence of what happened inside this very place. The second point, ‘Focus’, is a room that functioned as a D2 office and that now tries mimetically to represent what it would have looked like: a desk, some chairs, some paper sheets arranged across the desk and a tape recorder recall the room’s set-up as an ‘interrogation’ rooModel Reader. Plaques on the walls explain the history of the department and reproduce some of the pictures that accidentally captured an angle or a detail of the department. The third and fourth points are placed in spaces where prisoners were detained for long periods of time. Some mug shots taken of them in these very places are shown through photographic exhibitions or videos. In the largest patio of the museum, we find the fifth point of the trail, called ‘Moments of Truth, the ex-D2 in Pictures’, which is composed of a recreated dark room and an exhibition that reflects on some aspects of the D2’s use of mug shots and of ‘accidental’ shots found in the films: the start of repression in 1974, the torture and the

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beatings, the organisation of the space in the department. Then, in the same room, the exhibition ‘Pictures of my Parents’ presents two video interviews with children of desaparecidos who had received pictures of their parents from the archive. These images have a deep personal and social meaning as they show part of the invisible horror that the victims had to face; the interviews reflect on this too. The seventh point is composed of a mirror accompanied by a text that lists the different laws that, since 1910, outlined the crimes of subversion investigated by the department. It encourages visitors to think about ‘The Construction of the Other’, as this stop is called, and to reflect on the very idea of ‘subversion’ as something deeply connected to our political and cultural schemes. Providing a similar reflection with the use of very peculiar ‘traces’, a room called the Library of Banned Books recounts the severe cultural censorship exercised in Argentina in the 1970s by displaying some of the books, magazines and films that were banned, burned and confiscated during those years. The last room ‘organised’ by the APM is the smallest cell of the exDepartment, where engraved prisoners’ writings are still visible. As a sort of sancta sanctorum of the museum, it is the only place visitors cannot enter (Figure 6.3): a glass panel closes the entrance and keeps them outside, allowing them to see in but not walk in. A letter sent from a disappeared prisoner who was detained here and who managed to circulate information about the inhumane detention suffered is displayed outside the cell. All around the museum, many plaques with text written by the APM are arranged on the walls; the APM reflects in these on the reasons that led to the different choices of exhibition, providing a meta-reflection on the very act of preserving such traumatic memory. Moving to the description of parts of the museum where other voices emerge, we might start with the voices of the survivors who were invited to visit the museum. In fact, on the walls of the corridors and over the benches in the courtyards (the patios, Figure 6.2), seven different transparent plaques report small fragments of the testimonies given by them. These are the parts dedicated to their recounting of the story, since many of the victims’ memories were unlocked in the patios and the corridors. In fact, as they all testified, the prisoners spent many hours sitting on the benches, blindfolded, waiting to be ‘interrogated’. The testimonies are written in black handwriting, the sentences are in direct speech, using the

172  Figure 6.2  One of the patios

Photo: Paola Sozzi

Figure 6.3  Patio with the cells

Photo: Paola Sozzi

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first person, present tense, and a large number of deictic words, reporting memories, such as: I pass through this place, through this corridor, and by then I am completely hooded, then they bring me to that side and there they leave me on a cement bench … and I sit there and by contact with other compañeros [comrades] I know there are a lot of us there. Through the contacts and the cries, I know there were a lot … and here I sit for I don’t know how many hours, I don’t remember for how long, until they decide to take me, they bring me to the end of the courtyard and they make me go up the stairs (my translation).

The peculiarity of this discourse is that the speaker becomes the centre of reference: here is where the speaker is, now is when he is talking (Benveniste 1970). The reader has to put him- or herself in this centre of reference, which creates a feeling of proximity with the prisoners based on being exactly here, where they were. The use of testimonies like this one juxtaposes the victims’ experience and that of the visitors, and this is further heightened by a sense of disorientation for visitors due to the lack of signposting. Additionally, three rooms have been arranged by the APM with the contribution of the victims’ relatives. They are called the ‘Lives to be Told’ rooms and they all contain different kinds of objects: in the first one, photo albums tell the stories of some of the desaparecidos; in the second, many of the victims’ personal objects, such as shirts, books, records and much more, are displayed. The descriptions of the objects and the albums have been written by the relatives of the victims: families and friends can ask for the staff’s help in composing them or they can simply do it themselves; in any case, they are almost free to write and produce whatever they want. In the objects room, there is a plaque with a description of the room penned by the APM, which highlights the degree to which these objects are other traces of the event: with their materiality, they recall the tangible nature of those disappeared bodies with which they were in physical contact. In the third room, the walls are covered with framed everyday-life pictures of the victims, smiling, without names or descriptions. As with the three fingerprints on the outside (Figure 6.2), this room is also used as sort of memorial: it is common to find flowers on the corners of the frames. Even if these two memorials are quite different, they seem to work in a similar way: both of them recover only certain traits of the victim’s identity (their name or their face), while they compose the larger f igure of ‘the Victim’ of the historic trauma. It is interesting to note that fingerprints and

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portraits have been chosen as symbols of the two ‘memorials’ for those who were illegally killed by the state, while both fingerprints and portraits are legal tools used by the state to identify a person. Another room, called ‘Under a Foreign Rain’ is dedicated to those who exiled during the years of dictatorship. A wall-sized world map represents the most common destinations and a notebook in the centre of the room collects the stories of the exiled, showing their pictures. The stories have been handwritten in the first person by the exiled who decided to share their story. As happens at many other points in the museum, a red bookmark reminds visitors to contact the APM in case they were exiled too and want to add their story to the album. In the biggest patio, we f ind the Identity Room. This room was put together with the cooperation of the Abuelas of Córdoba, an association of grandmothers who are searching for their grandchildren: in fact, many women were pregnant when they were abducted and they were often kept alive until they could give birth. When it came to light that the children born in captivity were adopted under false identities by soldiers’ families or friends, the relatives and friends of those women decided to start searching for them. The walls of the room are covered in colourful wallpaper and a few silver silhouettes of toys recalling a nursery, together with framed pictures of the disappeared mothers. A white handkerchief, symbol of the Madres and the Abuelas, announces each person’s name, date of disappearance and the probable date of birth of the child. This room is an invitation to cooperate in the investigation: for this purpose, there is a mailbox and some postcards, each one dedicated to a different mother, giving useful information about them and their children. 4 The room opens onto the biggest patio of the D2, called the ‘Patio of the Lights’, which connects the museum with the archive area. The archive is usually closed to visitors, but it can be visited or consulted by anyone who requests to do so. The patio is often used for events, such as art exhibitions, photography exhibitions, performances and book presentations. Just in front of the door of the Identity Room there is another memorial, called the ‘Memorial of the Fireflies’: dozens of light bulbs suspended in the sky of the patio are lit up whenever one of the missing children is discovered or 4 For further information on the association of the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo and their role in the construction of a specific idea of identity and post-memory, we refer to Demaria 2017, where the author analyses a case in which direct interpellation of the addressee proves to be a distinct trait of the communication and action of the association, as it is here.

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‘returned’, as happened for the last time on 6 August 2019, when the 130th returned person celebrated the discovery of his biological identity. The operation of lighting the bulbs is an interesting metaphorical practice that recalls the idea of shedding light on an obscure past, connecting more and more pieces of an unsolved puzzle. Moreover, the museum comprises a small number of undefined rooms that continuously change over time. Some of these rooms were mainly used for torture, but today, in line with what is a common solution in many memory sites in Argentina, they are completely empty: torture is not represented. Temporary art exhibitions are hosted in them, as if any other sort of discourse would be inappropriate. Artists are selected by the commission, and the exhibitions usually last a few months. No unique representation of such rooms and what happened in them is therefore given, and this transforms these rooms from being the most terrible spots of the police department to the most open and variable parts of the actual museum.

The Addresser(s) and the Addressee It is possible to conclude that the part of the museum organised directly by the APM is dedicated to the reconstruction of the D2 and the experiences of the prisoners detained there, through images, historical information and mimetic set-ups, while the other rooms are more centred on different experiences of that same event. Survivors, relatives of the victims and exiles all relate the story from their own perspectives. If we consider who is the addresser of the museum and who the addressee, we can now understand why I described the enunciation strategy as a ‘polyphonic enunciation’: a diversity of perspectives and experiences of trauma finds its place in the museum, as if a choir of voices is singing a unique melody. In fact, it is precisely in light of their differences that these many voices reinforce the version of the story that results from their juxtaposition. The union of the different voices together with some common features of the set-up of the rooms contributes to breaking the boundary between the intimate, personal space of grief and the public interest of knowing what happened and remembering it. In the photographic trail, this reflection is openly offered to the visitors in different plaques presented by the APM and a balanced solution is found with regard to displaying the pictures of the prisoners. In fact, the pictures of the fifth room only portray survivors who have given their permission to display them, while at the same time

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the public is forbidden to take pictures, so that the ‘public interest’ is thus contrasted with the victims’ privacy. On this very point of balancing private and public, it must be noted that many rooms recreate a domestic atmosphere: on the one hand, they invite visitors to stop and feel comfortable; on the other, they depict the different victims (the disappeared and the murdered, the exiles, the ‘stolen children’) as normal, ordinary people. Once more, the barrier between domestic space and public space dissolves and the museum rejects a ‘heroic’ narration of the victims, proposing a common representation of their lives, with family albums, everyday objects, wallpaper and toys. It underlines the intimacy of their memories, while sharing them.5 Moreover, it is possible to understand that the different ‘addressers’ are all different victims of the events: they are los afectados, those who came in direct contact with them and suffered the dramatic consequences. This contact is precisely what lends them the legitimacy to speak. Different characteristics of the museum reproduce this idea of proximity and contact, informing a unique ‘regime of closeness’ with the visitors, brought about through the domestic set-up, as was said above, the display of different traces, the intimate and first-person narrations of the survivors, the use of deictic words, the sense of disorientation that draws the visitors’ and the victims’ experiences closer to each other. The decision to multiply the voices of who is telling the story and not to reduce them to one source of truth, at the same time keeping the visitors close and giving them the chance to add their experience to the collective retelling, allows us to infer that the polyphony is an enunciation strategy that is able to both give the story a stronger effect of reality and to highlight the importance of the very act of telling and sharing, which is at least considered as important as what is told and shared.6. If we then try to elicit the image of the Model Visitor (see Panico infra) from the space, we may notice that not all the texts are translated into English and that a proper reconstruction of the political-historical context of the events is not provided. Hence, the Model Visitor of the museum is a Spanish-speaking person with general knowledge about the 1970s dictatorship: most likely, an Argentine citizen. The primary objective of the museum then seems to be to create a place where a part of Argentine society can 5 ‘The human rights organisations restored the humanity of the victims and survivors … by strongly underplaying their political agency’ (Salerno 2017: 193). 6 On the construction of the legitimacy and authority to speak about the dictatorship, I refer Demaria 2017 and Violi 2017, who both focus on the specific role of families and direct victims (los afectados) in the social discourse of memory in Argentina, which is now moving to a wider and more broadly and shared representation.

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speak to itself and to the rest of society, reflecting openly and collectively on how to remember, as the plaques by the APM and the artistic exhibitions in the torture rooms often do. Those who helped rebuild this memory can meet each other here, grieve together and elaborate their different personal traumatic experiences by creating something that can be transmitted to the rest of society and to future generations as a proof of what happened. On an individual level, the enunciation of trauma is a crucial moment in the process of coming to terms with what happened; similarly, on the level of a community, the collective enunciation expressed through the manipulation of public space is an act of elaboration of collective trauma (Violi 2017b). Indeed, the preservation of the D2 building and the daily construction of the archive and the museum are transformational acts that allow Argentine society to move on, preserving memory but shifting from the perpetual presence of the past that is experienced in the state of trauma to the construction of a shared value. This process is part of a collective ‘path of trauma’ (Violi 2017b), which leads from the private experience of trauma to a collective traumatic heritage, to the point where it seems possible to define such memory as an exemplar memory (Todorov 1995). While a literal memory focuses on the individual level and tries to replicate the original event, an exemplar memory does not deny the singularity of the event, but uses it to create a general model for the future, in order to understand new situations with different agents. From this point of view, the value of this space can be found in the opportunity it grants to all the impacted categories of society to unify their experience in one unique story, without losing their independence and uniqueness.

Traces as Proofs of the Past We might now return on the second crucial aspect of the enunciation strategy put in place in the museum: how the story is told by the different subjects that compose the collective addresser of the museum. Our hypothesis is that the story is mainly told through the display of traces. The archive of mug shots will be considered as one of the main group of traces: in fact, APM’s introductory text for the photographic trail offers the following justification for the display, stating that ‘these images unequivocally prove what the testimonies and the survivors had been saying for years …. Now, it’s not only their testimony, it’s the force of the images that supports them’. The trail also works as a reflection on the same act of showing the images, representing the ‘horror’ and dealing with it. The debate on

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this matter is long and complex (Demaria 2012; Violi 2015, 2017a), but we must consider that these images are an exception in Argentina, since, as has been mentioned, the dictatorship adopted a sort of invisibility strategy (Violi 2015) that left almost no traces or images of its crimes. The choice of showing them is inherently linked with their status of ‘proofs’ of the past, proofs that are needed in a society that is still debating how to rebuild that memory and dealing with the trials of the perpetrators. Many other kinds of traces are exhibited in the museum: not only can the building of the museum be considered a trace itself, but most importantly the engraved walls of the smallest cell of the department testify to the past presence of people detained there. And then there are the objects belonging to the victims, their pictures, their mug shots. If the engraved cell or the mug shots can be considered proper signs left from the past presence of absent subjects, others, like the albums or the personal objects, are things that come into relation with a past subject only through mediation, by means of a discourse that puts that object in relation with the past. If the first groups of ‘traces’ might have an importance from a juridical point of view, the second group does not; still, they all contribute to creating the sense of proximity with the events described above that reinforces the effect of reality of the overall narration. As many have concluded,7 spatial traces are semiotic objects like other objects, since they can be used to lie: traces are semiotic objects built within the discourse, that recognises them as such. I would propose that they are built by a very specific enunciation mechanism which solicits a specific inference in the interpreter and which requires specific operations on three different levels. On the level of the relationship between the addresser and the addressee, it is fundamental that the addressee recognises the addresser’s legitimacy to speak about a certain past event. In this case, as said above, legitimacy comes from the direct involvement with the past events of those who convey their story. Secondly, from a narrative point of view, the place must tell a story that takes place in the past, and in which something that is no longer present came in contact with something that is still there. In the museum, part of this story is taken for granted, as it is enormously relevant in the cultural system in which the museum is inserted, and part of it is transmitted to visitors through pictures, texts and mimetic set-ups. Finally, on the level of sensorial experience, the place must allow the addressee to come in contact with something that can be recognised as an object or a place that formed part of the narrated, past story. 7 On this topic, see Mazzucchelli 2010; 2015; Sozzi 2015, 2017; Violi 2009, 2012, 2014a, 2014b, 2015, 2016.

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These three operations together are able to transform a place or an object, even if they do not retain any actual ‘sign’ of the past events, into a trace or proof of that past. The thing, person or event that is no longer here was in contact with something that is still here. And we believe in this past presence because someone that we trust tells us a story of the moment in which the present and the absent thing/person came in contact. The interpretative mechanism that the traces activate has been defined as retroduction (Peirce 1998). It is the epistemological scheme that we commonly use to infer the past presence of an animal from the hoofprints it leaves in the mud, making hypothetical deductions based on traces. This mechanism of interpretation, which Ginzburg called the indexical paradigm of knowledge (1979), is at the core of many different disciplines, such as geology or archaeology. In the light of the ‘physical’ contact that we infer has happened between two bodies, one absent and one present, we transform the present body into a sign of the absent one. Hence, our hypothesis is that many places of trauma or places of memory create spatial traces by deploying the specific enunciative strategy described above, because they trigger the one interpretative mechanism we have that can ascribe the highest sense of reality to the inferred past body. To conclude, if we look at the main characteristics of the act of enunciation (who is talking to who, where, when and how), we can appreciate that they all depend on the presence of some sort of contact with the past. We are facing what we have called an ‘indexical enunciation’: the contact with past events is what gives legitimacy to those who speak, as well as to what is used to speak, those concrete ‘traces’ of the past that are significantly present in the museum. Our hypothesis is that this polyphonic and indexical enunciation combines the multiplication of the voices with the exposition of a plethora of traces in order to create a narrative on the past traumatic events that can effectively respond to the human rights associations’ decades-long demand for memory, truth and justice by creating a strong effect of reality for the story told. It provides quite a strong and inclusive reconstruction of the past, which ensures no other ‘story’ could be accepted as the real one.

Works Cited Assmann, J. 1992 Das kulturelle Gedächtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen, Munich, C. H. Beck. Benveniste, É. 1970 ‘L’appareil formel de l’énonciation’, Langages, 5(17), pp. 12–18.

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Carruthers, M. 1998 The Craft of Thought. Meditation, Rhetoric and the Making of Images, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Da Silva Catela, L. 2009 ‘Lo invisible revelado. El uso de fotografìas como (re) presentación de la desaparición de personas en Argentina’, in C. Feld and Stites Mor, J. (eds) El pasado que miramos. Memoria e imagen ante la historia reciente, Buenos Aires, Paidós. Da Silva Catela, L. 2015 ‘Staged Memories: Conflicts and Tensions in Argentine Public Memory Sites’, in Memory Studies, 8(1), pp. 9–21. Demaria, C. 2014: Il trauma, l’archivio, il testimone. La semiotica, il documentario e la rappresentazione del ‘reale’, Bologna, Bononia University Press. Demaria, C. 2017 ‘Who Need Identity? Disappearances and Appearances in Argentina: The Abuelas de la Plaza de Mayo’, in A. Sharman, M. Grass Kleiner, A. M. Lorusso and S. Savoini (eds), Memosur/ Memosouth – Memory, Commemoration and Trauma in Post-Dictatorship Argentina and Chile, London, Critical, Cultural and Communications Press, pp. 73–92. Galante, D. 2015 ‘Los debates parlamentarios de “Punto Final” y “Obediencia Debida”: el Juicio a las Juntas en el discurso político de la transición tardía’, Clepsidra, Revista Interdisciplinaria de Estudios sobre Memoria, 4, pp. 12–33. Ginzburg, C. 1979 ‘Clues: Roots of a Scientific Paradigm’, Theory and Society, 7(3), pp. 273–88. Lotman, J. M. 2005 ‘On the semiosphere’, Sign Systems Studies, 33(1), pp. 205–229. Lotman, J. M. 2009 Culture and Explosion, Berlin, De Gruyter. Mazzucchelli, F. 2010 Urbicidio. Il senso dei luoghi tra distruzioni e ricostruzioni in ex Jugoslavia, Bologna, Bononia University Press. Mazzucchelli, F. 2015 ‘Abiti di pietra. La memoria architettonica tra indici, impronte e “invenzioni” del passato’, in Rivista Italiana di Filosofia del Linguaggio, 0(2), pp. 282–99. Peirce, C.S. 1998 The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, Bristol, Thoemmes Press. Robles, M. 2010 La búsqueda. Una entrevista con Charlie Moore, Córdoba, Ediciones del Pasaje. Rodriguez Amieva J.M, Grass Kleiner M. 2017: ‘Beyond the Walls: Campo de la Ribera (Argentina) and Villa Grimaldi (Chile) in the Urban and Social Fabric’, in A. Sharman, M. Grass Kleiner, A. M. Lorusso and S. Savoini (eds), Memosur/ Memosouth – Memory, Commemoration and Trauma in Post-Dictatorship Argentina and Chile, London, Critical, Cultural and Communications Press, pp. 181–94. Salerno, D. 2017 ‘The Closet, the Terror, the Archive: Confession and Testimony in LGBT Memories of Argentine State Terrorism’, in A. Sharman, M. Grass Kleiner, A. M. Lorusso and S. Savoini (eds), Memosur/ Memosouth – Memory,

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Commemoration and Trauma in Post-Dictatorship Argentina and Chile, London, Critical, Cultural and Communications Press, pp. 115–46. Sharman A., Grass Kleiner, M., Lorusso, A.M. and Savoini S. (eds) 2017 Memosur / Memosouth. Memory, Commemoration and Trauma in Post-Dictatorship Argentina and Chile, London, Critical, Cultural and Communications Press. Sozzi, P. 2015 ‘L’indice in Peirce: alcune riflessioni tra spazio e enunciazione’, in Rivista Italiana di Filosofia del Linguaggio, 0(2), pp. 90–101. Sozzi, P. 2017 Per una teoria dell’enunciazione nella semiotica dello spazio. Teorie e analisi a confronto, PhD dissertation, Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna. Todorov, T. 1995 Les abus de la mémoire, Paris, Les Editions Arléa. Violi, P. 2009 ‘Il senso del luogo. Qualche riflessione di metodo a partire da un caso specifico’, Lexia, pp. 113–28. Violi, P. 2012 ‘Trauma Site Museums and Politics of Memory. Tuol Sleng, Villa Grimaldi and Bologna Ustica Musuem’, Theory, Culture & Society, 29 (1), pp. 36–75. Violi, P. 2014 ‘Spectacularising Trauma: the Experientialist Visitor of Memory Museums’, Versus, 119, pp. 51–70. Violi, P. 2015 ‘Immagini per ricordare, immagini per agire. Il caso della Guerra Sucia argentina’, Lexia. Rivista di semiotica, 17/18, pp. 619–49. Violi, P. 2016 ‘Traumascape: The Case of the 9/11 Memorial’, LA+ Interdisciplinary Journal of Landscape and Architecture, 3, pp. 72–76. Violi, P. 2017a ‘Disappearance, Mourning and the Politics of Memory’, in A. Sharman, M. Grass Kleiner, A. M. Lorusso and S. Savoini (eds), Memosur/ Memosouth – Memory, Commemoration and Trauma in Post-Dictatorship Argentina and Chile, London, Critical, Cultural and Communications Press, pp. 35–55. Violi, P. 2017b Landscapes of Memory. Trauma, Space, History, Bern and Oxford, Peter Lang. Wagner-Pacifici, R. 2010 ‘Theorizing the Restlessness of Events’, American Journal of Sociology, 115(5), pp. 1351–86.

About the Author Paola Sozzi holds a PhD in Semiotics from the University of Bologna. She has mainly worked on the semiotics of spaces, memory places and the theory of enunciation. She was part of the IRSES project MEMOSUR – A Lesson for Europe, during which she spent a research period of six months in Chile and Argentina. She is now part of the research department of an integrated communication agency that work with public institutions, where she takes care of qualitative research methodologies, communicative and branding analyses and strategy design.

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Ruins of War The Green Sea and the Mysterious Island Gianfranco Marrone Abstract This chapter provides a semiotic investigation of an emblematic space in Palermo, the Foro Italico. After the Second World War, this space was occupied for many years by the ruins left when the city was bombed. Analysing the diachronic evolution of the Foro Italico, the author examines the semantic categories that have defined the space, exploring how the memory of the war has been concealed and inscribed in the post-war rewritings of the place. The chapter reads this space as ‘a mysterious island’, caught between nature and culture. Referring to different kinds of texts, Marrone illustrates how the practices of various local and migrant communities contribute not only to the resemantisation of space but also to the production of new memories. Keywords: Semiotics; Ruins; Terrain Vague; Semiotic Square; Foro Italico

Introduction: a Bombing In the spring of 1943, in the middle of the Second World War, the city of Palermo was subjected to a merciless aerial bombing campaign. The Allies had arrived in Africa at the end of 1942 and Palermo, whose port was of particular importance to the Axis powers, had become a crucial point in the anti-aircraft surveillance network organised in the Mediterranean by the Germans. By February 1943, the Allies, having established bases in Morocco and Algeria, were making their presence felt, and in April the destruction of the city began. Over the course of that month, ‘flying fortresses’ struck Palermo four times, using phosphorus and incendiary bombs. On 18 April, a

Demaria, Cristina and Patrizia Violi (eds), Reading Memory Sites through Signs: Hiding into Landscape. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2023 doi: 10.5117/9789463722810_ch07

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bomb hit an air raid shelter, indiscriminately massacring unknown numbers of people, women and children in particular. But it was on 9 May that the Allies unleashed hell on the city. It was a dark, tragic and unforgettable day for those who experienced the event first hand. Three air raids were carried out. During the first, at noon, 23 Vickers Wellington planes dropped 76 explosive devices, including two 4,000-pound high-capacity bombs that did not penetrate the earth but proved lethally efficient at destroying built-up areas. The incursion by another 90 attack bombers, escorted by 60 twin-engine fighters, came a few hours later. Another 100 Flying Fortresses with their fighter escorts came that same evening. Palermo was the test site for the first carpet-bombing in Italy. The city and all its military targets were hit by circa 1,110 227-kg bombs and another 460 136-kg bombs. Vast swathes of smoke rose into the sky from the fires caused by the highly destructive phosphorus bombs. The most extensive aerial bombing of the Second World War had been unleashed on Palermo, reducing the city to rubble with no means of communication. Chaos reigned supreme, and every street was blocked by collapsed buildings, requiring months of work to restore thoroughfares for its citizens. The ruins were disposed of along the seafront at the promenade known as the Foro Italico. It was meant to be provisional, but there was simply so much rubble, and no one was concerned about moving it elsewhere. And there it remained, forming a strange extension of the city, an enormous new space with no specified use (and therefore, no meaning) that was abandoned for the following 60 years, dramatically distancing the city from the sea. Today, this same space is occupied by the green lawn that runs next to the sea, finally redeveloped in the early twenty-first century. This strange new urban area is the subject of the semiotic analysis that follows. An analysis that, by reconstructing its complex genealogy, aims to reveal its underlying structures of meaning, both in a diachronic and synchronic sense. The central model that will be utilised is the semiotic square, an elementary structure of signification that, in this case, articulates and expands the semantic category that opposes nature and culture, non-nature and non-culture.1 These terms should be understood not as ontological realities, but as effects of meaning that are reciprocally constituted through their relationships (contrariety, contradiction, complementarity) and that follow one another using the two logical operations of negation and 1 Cf. ‘Semiotic square’ in Greimas and Courtés (1979). For a general introduction of the models of the semiotics of text, see Marrone (2021).

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affirmation in which, obviously, ‘culture’ refers to the city and ‘nature’ refers to the sea. Palermo’s urban space is constituted and transformed thanks to these relationships and their underlying semiotic operations.

Precious Vagueness Historical reconstruction always starts from a given point in time whose arbitrary nature should be sufficiently explained by the time the work is finished. In my reconstruction of Palermo’s Foro Italico as a place of identity socialisation, the starting point should be a consideration of the perception of this place by people of my generation, those born around 1960. For us, the Foro was an abandoned empty space, with depressing clusters of fairground rides, ever-changing nomad camps, hordes of drug addicts in search of pitiful solitude and swarms of inexperienced prostitutes. Why the choice of this arbitrary point in time? Partly because for the vast majority of people from Palermo who were born and raised after 1943, this is what they imagine when they think of the Foro Italico. But, more accurately, because the image of this space refers to an interpretive category that is capable of forming the basis for critical reflection on the space and for a preventive analysis of its formal structures: that of a terrain vague.2 Palermo’s Foro Italico is a perfect terrain vague and has been so for a long time, at least between the early 1940s and the end of the twentieth century. It ceased to be so (at least in appearance) only very recently, when it was reinvented first by migrants in search of public spaces to call their own, and later by citizens and local government as an extraordinary place for inter-ethnic socialisation, thanks also to the intervention of the architect Italo Rota, who aesthetically defined its borders. Premise As noted in the introduction, the lack of a plan for the city’s reconstruction following the Second World War meant that, between 1944 and 1945, the resulting rubble was hastily buried, essentially moving – or rather, eliminating – the city’s historic seafront. The enormous space subsequently created between the urban zone and the water generated two main changes. One is that the city of Palermo was no longer in direct contact with the sea. The sea was no 2 For a definition of this notion, cf. de Sola Morales (1995); for a semiotic interpretation of ‘terrain vague’: Cervelli and Sedda (2006).

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longer visible, and nor could it be perceived any longer by the other senses (cool air, smells, sounds, and so on). In short, the sea was suddenly no longer a part of the actual city. Already separated by the enormous fence blocking access to the port, docks and shipyards, distance was also created between the sea and the ancient part of the city which, situated immediately alongside it, had enjoyed close contact for centuries. With the emptying of the city’s old town, any interest in the natural space – the seaside that stood just beyond it, was lost. This meant that, save for a few sporadic attempts at partial recovery, the Foro Italico seafront was abandoned. Without any specific role in the city’s urban planning projects, it almost inevitably became a place for temporary nomad camps, drug dealing, prostitution, smuggling and much more. It was a terrain vague, an urban subconscious in which everything ends up. The place did not, however, lose the somewhat identity-creating role that the city’s ancient seafront had for centuries. It is no coincidence that the annual celebrations of the city’s patron saint continued to be held there, a terrain so very vague from all perspectives except for the historic memory of its inhabitants. So, for twelve months a year, the Foro Italico belongs to everyone and no one. Like every urban area left to its own devices, it ends up being ‘repressed’ by the city, with its murky, lawless areas, its base practices, and its episodic attempts at artistic re-appropriation. During the week-long celebration of Palermo’s patron saint (called the festino), these places are repopulated en masse as if by magic, bringing the repressed religious identity that is typical of modernity to the surface, manifested in the guise of a popular celebration, albeit secularised. It is an identity that is, in any case, embraced, experienced and participated in intensely. The enormous float carrying the saint crosses the heart of the old city from the cathedral to Porta Nuova and on to the sea, stopping at the Foro Italico, followed by a vast, diverse crowd of citizens of Palermo from all social classes. They wait for the fireworks that, marking the end of the official worship of St. Rosalia, effectively cancel any kind of collective identity. Once the ritual celebrations have come to an end, the Foro Italico is left alone once more. Deserted by both institutions and average citizens, but full of bodies, with their asocial and anti-institutional trades, and full of the leisure pursuits of the urban sub-proletariat that has not yet been entirely absorbed by television screens and satellite dishes. Very sporadically, one meets with runners and lonely walkers dodging syringes and stepping on condoms, or stubborn fishermen who cast their lines into waters darkened by waste pipes. Until immigrants slowly start to appear: first alone, nostalgically watching the sea’s horizon, then with a friend or two, and then in families

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or small groups that periodically try to reconstruct an ethnic identity that does not want to be assimilated. Not subjects but bodies in movement, people as invisible as the space they populate. Historical Oblivion and Fake Self-glorification Every terrain vague presupposes a different kind of past: there was a time when it was not like that. A terrain vague plays on the dialectic between oblivion of the ‘old past’ and the memory of a previous era that is entirely fantastical (in all senses). It is a negative term (non-culture) that owes its identity to the positive term (culture) that it denies: (Palermo1) urban fabric Culture non-culture terrain vague (Palermo2) As such, the deliberate forgetfulness of historic Palermo that led to the Foro Italico being abandoned collides with reminiscing about a Palermo felicissima, a rose-tinted view of the city’s supposedly blissful past that, lacking direct testimonials, is multiplied in different textual forms. And so, the myth is made miniature. Vintage postcards, traveller’s reviews, secondhand shops of all kinds, overly academic studies by provincial scholars – all reconstruct a pre-modern Palermo, a supposed paradise (Palermo1) to be hypocritically mourned by the same people who hurl insults at the remnants of the city’s identity that have fortuitously survived. ‘Ahh, the promenade along the seafront!’. Images (Figures 7.1 and 7.2) and, in particular, written texts speak to us of a Palermo in the throes of transformation from aristocratic rule to the ascent of a middle class, ready to declare how much there is still to be done, mimicking – as a screen – the airs of the idle class that preceded it. The city’s identity is systematically denied in such a way that, from the outside, it appears to be entirely incomprehensible unless one leaves the city itself and looks elsewhere, that elsewhere in which Palermo’s denied identity encloses itself.

188 Gianfr anco Marrone Figure 7.1  Palermo, a postcard from 1935: the sea waves almost reach the city

Figure 7.2 An image from the 1930s: the balustrade of the Foro Italico seafront is featured on a postcard from the early twentieth century

The Invention of the Park The logical connection binding Palermo2 → Palermo1 (the assumed existence of Palermo felicissima as asserted by the terrain vague) leads to the foreshadowing of Palermo3, halfway between nostalgia for the past and a projection towards a different kind of modernity: that is, in our specific case, the lawns of the Foro Italico. The Foro Italico was given a new lease of life in the early 2000s thanks to the unplanned conversion of two developments: the frequentation of various immigrant communities and the reorganisation project that the local administration entrusted after decades of debate and controversy to the architect Italo Rota. The lawns of the Foro Italico became the synecdoche of the city’s supposed rebirth: ‘Palermo, Italy’s coolest city’ is the slogan used on some of the posters that indirectly promote the

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mayor and his administration, while the 1,400 colourful ceramic statues that line its edges, acting as bollards to separate it from the road, have become the logo of the city. Beyond simplistic rhetoric about the city’s ‘rebirth’ and its ‘rediscovery’ of the sea, it is a fact that the lawns of the Foro Italico have become an extraordinary place for socialisation, the urban park that Palermo never had. A park whose rules Palermitans must slowly and mimetically learn from foreigners. The lawns of the Foro Italico are now Palermo’s garden by the sea, a place where anyone can go to get some fresh air on a Sunday afternoon, remembering the double past of a place that was at first meaningful (the mythologisation of Palermo felicissima) and then meaningless (the asemanticisation of the terrain vague), in the name of collective resemantisation that was almost entirely unforeseen by local institutions or urban planning projects. Creative deregulation? Let us take a closer look. The idea of regenerating the Foro Italico first appeared in the 1980s and began to circulate, provoking discussion, debate and controversy of all kinds. It questioned the future use of an urban site whose ownership was in no way clear, nor who was formally responsible for it (the city council? the port authority?). No one could consequently identify the urban planning project within which its regeneration should be considered (the extensive plan for the historic centre, or the strategic one for the waterfront). On one hand, there was the idea to turn it into a botanic garden (utopian valorisation), on the other, that of a series of docks (practical valorisation).3 In the middle were the citizens, relatively uninterested in a debate that they saw as the latest in a long line of localised political disputes. In the meantime, the problem arose of moving the people who, in the midst of general disinterest, had essentially occupied a vast area of the terrain vague (for example, the fairground ride owners), creating a significant amount of business activity, for themselves and for the mobile drinks and sandwich sellers, the unofficial ‘parking attendants’ and the stalls selling toys and sweets for children. Given the total lack of rules governing the Foro Italico, the ad-hoc fairground gave rise to a number of habits among the city’s residents. On Sunday mornings, many families headed to the Foro Italico and, with the excuse of giving the children a ride in the bumper cars or on the rollercoaster, they moved up and down the long pavements as if mimicking a long walk along the seafront, in the very site where the sea has been absent for years now. It could not be seen, its smell was as 3 Floch (1990, 1995) has distinguished between practical and utopian valorisation of consumer goods. We can use this model also for urban spaces.

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imperceptible as its noise and cool sea breeze. A stroll along the Marina, as this popular practice was called, thus became a Sunday ritual which provided the fairground owners with a robust argument against the city administrators, who wanted to send them elsewhere. As a consequence, whilst negotiations continued for almost twenty years, the city council attempted to clean up a number of smaller areas on the site that were not yet claimed by anyone, creating a palm grove close to the South Pier, right in front of Porta Felice, and a small garden with flowerbeds at the opposite end, in front of the old park, Villa Giulia, running parallel to a long terrace overlooking the sea, paved and finished with iron balustrades that have long run along the sea front. The problem was that, despite certain journalistic efforts to praise partial operations such as those promoted by the new centre-left administration, these small, seaside green spaces remained empty. Until, that is, little by little, with the creeping constancy that makes subtle changes invisible to the distracted observer, the new garden in front of Villa Giulia and the terrace running parallel to the shore began to fill with foreigners. Hundreds of immigrants from Tunisia, Morocco, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Mauritius, Ghana, Sudan and, much later, China, Romania, Albania and so on, progressively filled the city’s old town, with its decrepit baroque palaces, medina-like alleyways, its markets and contorted side-streets that modern ideology has ensured were entirely abandoned by Palermo’s original residents. These people did exactly what they would have done in any other city in the world to pass the time: they took walks through the park, met up with friends and took their children to play in places that cannot be described as a park in their material expression, but which signify one in terms of its cultural content. Two flowerbeds and the sea, albeit behind a long, tall hedge that hid it from view, were enough to create the idea of a city park and lead to its subsequent use, at least by those who, rightly, could not understand why on earth the locals did not do the same. The modern citizens of Palermo went walking elsewhere. They drove to Mondello, Monreale, to the stadium, to the unauthorised ‘gardens’ that sprang up like mushrooms along the coast between Capaci and Carini. So, thanks to the carriers of other cultures who went out in search of green spaces by the sea overlooking the city, the Foro Italico gradually began to attract more and more visitors, without any fixed rules, without public intervention, without long-term plans, but with a stubborn and silent insistence that almost no one saw (at least at the outset) and which, for this reason, wove its way into the social and sensory habits of the city. The invention of the Foro Italico thus began thanks to a multi- and inter-cultural system of social relationships that, through the

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dialogue with new values and other forms of life, almost casually recovers the identity of the city and its topical places. Finally, after a series of endless political and urban planning debates and an exceptional influx of EU funds that coincided with a UN meeting held in Palermo in December 2000, the fairground rides suddenly disappeared, the terrain vague was cleared, grass was sown, and the famous lawn was brought into existence. There, where the sea used to be, then the rubble of war, and then nothing, the city’s garden by the sea—just as the habits of immigrants had long predicted—came into being. Its existence was not easy at first. It seemed as if no one wanted to take care of the lawn, shadowy figures sabotaged its irrigation system, and the green gave way to yellow. A new city administration came in and immediately identified the yellowed lawn as a sign of their adversaries’ failure. Better, then, to take the situation in hand and entrust the entire regeneration of the area to an external architect unfamiliar with local controversy. This led to Rota’s radical project being inaugurated in October 2005, with its profoundly semiotic act of marking the site’s boundaries with a series of small, multi-coloured statues that run parallel to the road, protecting the green space from cars and motorcycles. Their role is, at first glance, purely defensive. In truth, as we will see, they provide a powerful modification of the area’s meaning in terms of identity creation, trying to diminish with veiled irony the great discussion about that site that went on for far too long. We can see there is a new operation at work in the semiotic square that articulates and deploys the semantic category that places nature and culture in opposition to one another: Palermo3 park by the sea nature (2)

Palermo1 urban fabric culture (1)

non-culture terrain vague Palermo2 ‘Palermo has re-conquered its sea’, Deputy Mayor Mario Milone proudly declared during the opening ceremony. ‘This is a victory for its citizens’ (La Repubblica – Palermo on 19 October 2005). The newspaper, whilst describing

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the ‘project led by Milanese architect Italo Rota’ (‘40,000 m2 of lawns, benches and ceramic ornamental decorations, such as the 1,400 bollards bearing the profile of Eleonora of Aragon’), was quick to point out its unfinished state, starting with the lack of public toilets, security measures and fencing to stop the flowerbeds from being trampled. ‘Within a month’, the architect explained in response to the article, ‘a stone border will be installed that will be able to withstand even the waves. It is a work in progress that, by next summer, will include other works such as a number of shaded areas, a play park, a jetty that will connect the city to Mondello and an extension of the cycle path as far as Cala and the bridge at via Messina Marine.’ The Near Future Many of the promised changes have yet to materialise. But this does not interest us. What does matter is the actual social use that is made of the lawn, thanks in part to the work done by Rota, as it continues to face endless debates in the newspapers, promises made by the administration and all kinds of vandalism. It always seems to return to a state of dilapidation— tramps, motorcycles, vagrants, and so on—linked to the new but relative abandonment of the site, regularly decried by local newspapers, particularly in the run-up to the city’s most important celebrations, such as Easter, the ‘Festino’ and Ferragosto.4 Yet here lies an interesting fact: in a very short amount of time, the lawn of the Foro Italico has become one of the ‘traditional places’ (as the newspapers frequently state) where people go for a day trip, a picnic, or simply to get some fresh air.5 The lawn is, therefore, immediately assimilated with places like La Favorita park or the beach at Mondello. Since it has become a part of the city, it has acquired signifying relationships with other places. It is an important element for the urban text and texture that contributes to the identity of the city.

The Princesses A long sequence of small statues called ‘princesses’ marks the boundary between the lawn and the road, and on a broader scale, separates the sea and the city. Where, before the war, there had been the balustrade that divided 4 Translator’s note: An Italian national holiday celebrated on 15 August, marking the feast of the Assumption. 5 See, for example, La Repubblica Palermo, 10 April 2008.

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Figure 7.3 Francesco Laurana, Bust of Eleanor of Aragon, 1471, Palermo, Palazzo Abatellis

Photo by: Maxnashville –Wikipedia Account

the road from the sea, now there is a new, highly visible artefact that, for 600 metres, marks the separation between the road (or, more precisely, the pavement) and the grass (Figure 7.4). It is worth taking a closer look at these objects, not least because they have become the most prominent symbol of Rota’s entire project, and more generally of the new Foro Italico, referred to in the city’s public discourse. The posters used by the administration to announce the opening of the new park by the sea featured the rows of ‘princesses’, causing them to become a sort of mascot of the site and, more generally, for the ‘Palermo, loved and rediscovered’ slogan of the administration’s discourse. But why are they called ‘princesses? The name comes from the famous bust of Eleonora of Aragon made in 1471 by Francesco Laurana, found today in the Sicilian Regional Museum (Galleria Interdisciplinare Regionale della Sicilia) in Palazzo Abatellis. This bust provides the double profile, a sort of two-faced Janus, for the park’s 50 cm tall statues (Figure 7.3), ensuring the aristocratic pedigree of the object in question, in keeping with the reference to the city’s historical and artistic past. However, the statues, made in brightly coloured ceramic (with a cement core), have turned this

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profile into an object of 1980s radical design, with all of the iconoclastic and ironic weight that it entails. If we reconstruct the semiotic device set in motion by Rota, a clear, primary semantic homologation emerges: bust by Laurana historical-artistic object past

Vs

princesses design object present

Here, the creative act that rotated the face of the original sculpture, doubling it (an act not particularly original in itself) serves to adopt the memory of an illustrious past to be proposed, bound both to the represented object (the Princess of Aragon) and the subject who portrayed her (the artist, Laurana). This first basic category is overlaid by other possible interpretations that are spatial and social at the same time, linked primarily to the object’s bi-frontality. Rather than the statue’s colour or its material, what most strikes the imagination is its shape, which is extremely accurate and, at the same time, very simple, highlighting the object’s figural level.6 As often happens with brands, thanks precisely to the simplicity of the figurative traits present within it, it lends itself to infinite possible interpretations. The various interpretations and denominations given to the statue—from Mussolini’s profile to an everyday garden gnome, but also a skittle, puppet, or small phallus—are justified by its shape, which make them all possible without providing any evidence for one reading being more ‘correct’ than another, and therefore allowing the naming habits of local speakers and the object’s social uses to baptise the object itself (albeit temporarily). If the princesses have become the logo of the lawn, and more generally of the ‘new’ city, it is thanks at least in part to their figurative abstractness. The fact that the princesses, in addition to having a significant shape, are made from a very particular material and boast equally unusual colours for bollards has remained somehow suspended in the dominant social discourse. The glazed terracotta, chosen to reflect local artisanal traditions, is not obvious at first glance, because it is an entirely unusual material for urban decoration (generally made of steel or stone). That leads to a certain tendency (somehow inscribed in the object) by passers-by to get close enough to it to touch it, in order to empirically verify what kind of material it is. 6 In the figural level, few figurative traits are drawn without yet taking on easily recognisable conf igurations. For the discussion on different degrees of abstraction/concretisation in the figurative dimension see Greimas, Courtes (1982, ‘Figurativisation’).

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Figure 7.4 The rows of princesses run along the edges of the pavement, suggesting a second threshold between the road and the park

Photo: Gianfranco Marrone

The princesses are made to be touched, caressed even, so that their delicate nature, fragility and smoothness can be appreciated. These features lead to the opposite practice of vandalism to which they are at times subjected, albeit rarely. Furthermore, the princesses can be used in a number of different ways, which – according to Lévi-Strauss’s classic definition of bricolage7 – though not foreseen by their primary practical destination, are made possible thanks to some of their sensory characteristics, such as their size and the relative distance between them. Thus, they can become stools to sit on, the legs of improvised tables on which to display wares of all kinds, from cold drinks to African sculptures, skittles around which to slalom when running or walking, and a place to hang plastic bags, to name but a few. The rows of princesses have set in motion a series of processes that have recontextualised the object at least three times, almost giving rise to a vortex of matryoshka dolls. Firstly, there was the movement that brought the statue from the museum to the street, turning the artwork into an urban bollard. 7

See Lévi-Strauss (1962).

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Secondly, this initial practical valorisation of an aesthetic object has been enriched by its further aestheticisation, which transforms the bollard, giving rise to a long line of quirks and surprises linked to its shape, material, colour and shininess, none of which are in any way typical of traffic directing elements. Finally, the aesthetic object is socialised in various ways, inscribing within it different ways in which it can be used (to sit on, as a table, to hang bags on) or, conversely, making it an object to be used as part of a game (to enjoy walking or running around). Each text, as we know, even when extrapolated from its original context, immediately creates another, inscribing itself in its adopted environment, producing new forms of relationships between itself and the socio-cultural world in which it finds itself.

The Green Sea Now that the site has been instituted and its borders have been semiotically marked out by the rows of princesses, we can examine its internal articulation, which is very simple, almost absent. First of all, the lawn is divided in two by a long, wide path that begins in front of the Porta dei Greci city gate, on the opposite side of the street, and goes all the way to the sea, where it opens up into a large area made of cement that has been painted blue. The meaning of the route marked by this path is that it opens the city up to what lies beyond it, thanks to the Porta dei Greci city gate, continuing along the path that cuts the lawn in two. The sea is chromatically extended as far as the path allows us to walk from the sea to the city and from the city to the sea. Nature and culture are mythically brought into contact with one another. The path, in green cement, was marked by a series of totem poles featuring traditional Sicilian figures, also made from brightly coloured terracotta, and a series of wooden poles on which canvas cloth could be secured to provide shade (both of these things have now fallen into disrepair). There are colourful sun loungers, also made from glazed terracotta, in the blue space, arranged as if in a solarium so as to create different spaces, underlined by the different hue of the pavement, a kind of red carpet that signals visual discontinuity with the blue floor. Not all loungers face the sea, and again the primary function to which they refer (lying out to soak up the sun) is denied both by their material (which, when it comes to lying down, is uncomfortable) and by their orientation (which gives the impression of a living room, a place for guests to engage in conversation). We will come back to this point later. Along the seafront, tall streetlights seem to recreate the shape of a sail, causing the light to be dispersed without producing an intense

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glare. There are a few trees, a couple of areas planted with flowers, generally with low plants and lights hidden beneath the surface, to allow a view of the sea from the road (and vice versa). There is only one area designated for use by peddlers right next to the road, another area for dogs, a few internal paths and a long, circular cycle path. The lawn is dominant. It is a lawn that lies almost empty and can therefore be used in different ways (walking, running, lying down, reading, playing, chatting) without any rules governing its usage. A wide, flat lawn which, as we have mentioned, the citizens do not at first know how to use, preferring long walks around its edges (the series of princesses, the cycle path), until foreigners (immigrants, but also tourists) who treated it like a normal expanse of grass in a normal city park, indirectly provided the Palermo natives with the necessary competence to use it in the same way. But, as the architect himself has repeated many times, this is a very unusual lawn, which, though it triggers the functions of a park on an expressive level, recalls something very different indeed on the level of content. It recalls what it was before: the sea. Rota’s work did not consist in simply regenerating an urban area and giving at a new use, but in inventing an urban use for an area that never had one before. It was not just a case of bringing back the old stroll along the seafront. It was, above all, a project to fill an area that had in the past been doubly empty: firstly, as terrain vague (the result of rubble thrown into the sea), and before that because it was the sea. A sea that had, furthermore, always been external to the city, due predominantly to the latter’s geographic configuration. It had never provided the city with a view of the sun rising and setting over the water; it is a sea that the people of Palermo have never loved. Palermo and its inhabitants instead turn their backs to the sea. How can all this be resolved? What can physically take the place of the sea? Given that, according to the committee’s rhetoric, it was necessary to give the sea back to the city, this could not be done materially, only symbolically, giving the sea meaning through something else, such as a vast, empty lawn. A text had to be invented that, with the sea on the level of content, could properly signify it on an expressive level. Thus, in order to comply with the ambiguous demands of a memory that is more mythical than historical, we have an intermediary space that has rediscovered the sea, maintaining the vagueness and emptiness of the terrain produced by materials resulting from wartime bombing campaigns. The park of the Foro Italico therefore ends up being a space between the sea and the city without ever truly being one or the other, constructing a process of signification in which there is a park on the plane of expression, and a sea on the plane of content.

198 Gianfr anco Marrone Figure 7.5  A ship sailing the sea’s green waters

Photo: Gianfranco Marrone

Figure 7.6 The same photo, now an indulgent cliché of the city, is used on the cover of a book listing the amusing oddities of Palermo

Image copyright: © Pietro Vittorietti Edizioni

This is where the idea of the green sea came from, quickly becoming the favourite epithet for the Foro Italico lawn, thanks in part to the ships that seem to be sailing over the lawn itself (when seen from the road as they enter and exit the port). It is an image forever immortalised by the cameras

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of visitors to the site, commented upon extensively by the blogs of local residents and even used to adorn the cover of a book by a well-known humorous journalist (Figure 7.6). Thus, in terms of its social uses, this intermediary space literally becomes a third space, as defined by post-colonial theorists (Bhabba 2004). It is a space that belongs neither to the motherland nor the colonies, but a mixture of the two. It is a site that belongs neither to the native people of Palermo nor the foreign immigrants, but one that is constructed, lived in, managed by both of these two groups, who meet in and co-inhabit the space peacefully, mixing among each other. This does not, in some deterministic way, mean that the semiotic configuration of the place has generated interculturality. It would be trite and simplistic to say this. What is certain is that intercultural processes are a part of its general semiotic configuration, contributing to its creation, articulation and preservation. The site in question is a space open to meaning, a text whose meaning is not consumed by a use pre-defined by city planners, but is created interactively, continually being constituted and reconstructed through the socialisation practices that, thanks to its material qualities, take place within it. The bifrontal nature of the place, foretold by the doubling of Eleonora’s bust found in the princesses, is the profound form that synthesises all of this.

From the Green Sea to the Mysterious Island If we look closely, the princesses are not the only element in Rota’s project to mark a separation between the lawn and the road. There is at least one more, a little less obvious at first glance but for this reason more powerful and, above all, more captivating. It is the circular cycle path that surrounds the entire park, framing it, very clearly marking it as distinct from the rest of the Foro Italico. The lawn is encircled by a strip of coloured cement (visible only from above) signalling the boundary between the homogenous expanse of grass and the shapeless soil that lies beyond it and affirms it in contrast. Thus the cycle path, like almost all of this text’s components, loses its supposed primary function in order to acquire another, of an eminently semiotic, communicative nature: that of acting as a frame, an enunciatory element that, separating it from what lies beyond, utters the text, produces it, turning it into direct discourse and thereby placing it between quotation marks. It is worth making a small theoretical digression here. What is a frame, exactly? As scholars of the semiotics of images have demonstrated, it is an

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enunciatory device that, by separating the painting from what lies outside of it constitutes the very field of the image, its institutional support for visual representation. Furthermore, the frame does not belong to the image represented within the painting and should therefore be ascribed to whomever has produced it. It is the clearest sign that someone, before even starting to paint, has defined the space of the painting itself, separating that which will be painted from that which cannot and must not be. In our culture today, the frame is taken for granted as a device, something that must be silently present so that there can be something like a painting. And even when it is not there, its absence is represented by the straight edges of the canvas or other possible support (cf. Marin 1994). There are a number of important considerations here. First, the frame of the image arises in the same way as the walls of the city, as they essentially share the same primary semiotic action of textual enunciation. To say that a certain place has a frame is not therefore simply an easy metaphor. Secondly, even if the shape of the painting acts as a kind of absent frame, it is interesting to distinguish between implicit frames and explicit ones, in order to reconstruct whether and how the enunciator of the framed text (be it a space or a painting) desires to show him-/her-/itself in the text being enunciated. Thus, every image, even before it represents anything, presents itself to its observer, it says something about itself and its mimetic work, providing instructions for the use of its own vision (Ib.). Consequently, there are frames that dominate paintings and others that accentuate them, frames that stand out, and others that silently stand back in order to allow the image to emerge. As it is an enunciative mechanism, the frame not only asks who the observer is, but also ‘who is talking’ in the painting (or in the space): is it the enunciator speaking directly or a delegated figure? Does the enunciator ascribe to themselves what is represented in the text, or do they prefer to allow other figures (to pretend) to represent the image? In this sense, it is possible to see a kind of parallel between the mechanism of the frame and that of quotation marks, a dispositif that frames elements of the verbal flow, using them to create a referred discourse. This gives us the following kind of formula: (I say that) he says:‘xyz’, in which the parentheses and the quotation marks stand in a tense relationship, each one counter-balancing the other. The more the enunciator claims the word for themselves, the less value the quotation marks have, and vice versa. We place something between quotation marks in order to attest to the presence of another enunciator, and therefore to detach ourselves from what is being said. As a result, the quotation marks create ‘little islands of citations’, detached portions of

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language belonging to others and surrounded by the sea of our own word. This gives us the ironic function of quotation marks, their function of casting doubt on, or making fun of, what is being said. Something like ‘…’ = as it were. So, even a frame can have an ironic function, it can represent something whilst distancing itself from it by saying as it were. We can argue therefore that a frame, whether of a painting or a place, can have an ironic function, as it is the action of an enunciator who, constructing a certain space, distances him-/her-/itself from it, creating a space as it were, an island of space belonging to others in the middle of a sea of its own space. This idea may negate many previous theorisations of irony, even within semiotics. The Foro Italico cycle path (in coloured cement and decorated by abstract curved figurines) around the lawn could be interpreted as its frame, something that, by representing it within itself, is presented as a specific operation of textual production. So, we have the act of urban enunciation that produces both the subject that enunciates and the enunciated subject, both the image of the producer and the ‘message’ it carries. As if the city (its government, its administration) were saying to its citizens something like: ‘Here is the much-desired lawn, we have f inally made it, not only have we made it but we accentuate its actual existence by highlighting it, presenting it to you all.’ The lawn says it is a lawn, or rather, says the lawn is there. It has no need for promotional or marketing support in order to disseminate its meaning. The space speaks for itself; it presents and represents itself. Up to this point, we have been faced with a rather weak level of ironic enunciation. The irony becomes much stronger, however, if we consider that in this case (as in the famous painting by Magritte ironically entitled La Représentation) the edge of the painting/the location and edge of the figure/lawn coincide perfectly. Just as in the work by the Belgian painter, the edge of the woman’s body and the edge of the artwork itself, its frame, have the same shape, in our site the shape of the lawn coincides exactly with the cycle path, its frame. The thing that is represented is, as such, its representation. To further accentuate this irony, we must ask ourselves what relationship there is between the lawn, the frame marked out by the cycle path, and that which lies beyond it. Let us consider the figurality and the materials of the elements. First, the decorations of the cycle path, of a f igurative nature, can be interpreted as bollards, objects that are placed right next to the sea, or even as waves, real marine elements. However, these waves are of different colours: blue on the side where the sea is, green everywhere

202 Gianfr anco Marrone Figure 7.7  René Magritte, La Représentation (1937)

Photo by Rosa Menkman – Flickr Account

else. This is a dispositif that picks up the idea of the green sea, yet denies it. The chromatic semisymbolism, ‘blue : green = sea : lawn’, is neutralised by the same eidetic feature of the decorations. It is as if to say: even though the colours are different, they are still waves, waves that can be either blue or green. It is not, therefore, the lawn that becomes the sea, but the marine elements in their entirety that completely surround the land. So, by continuing to play the semiotic game by which some physical elements that are present remind us of other elements that are absent, although they can be traced conceptually, the waves painted on the cement—blue or green, it does not matter—no longer surround the green sea (which can only be found on the level of enunciated discourse), but the lawn itself. The lawn, on the level of enunciation, is therefore surrounded by waves, while the f igure of the island emerges from the sea. The green lawn is an island surrounded by coloured waves that, by framing it, bring it into existence as an artwork to be admired, whilst separating it from everything that lies beyond it: that is, the city and the sea which, on the level of the enunciated discourse, Rota’s project had mythically connected.

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The bifrontal nature that we had located at the heart of the constitutive mechanism of the green sea (the connection between water and earth), is now doubled, at an enunciative level, by a second dimension, that of circularity, which tends to deny the bifrontality. The mysterious island takes the place of the green sea, locating itself as a secondary element of the city. No longer a factor of continuity but an island, an autonomous element, a fragment of a totality that never was and that is now pointed out, hypothesised as being possible. The mysterious island that emerged from the nothingness of the terrain vague is always ready to sink once more into the sea that formerly occupied its space. The phantom of dereliction is just around the corner. However, this second discourse, which the lawn contains at its enunciative level, is accentuated by the materials of its urban terrain, be they those provided by the project or those that, by chance or through a lack of care, are found on the site. Within the island, the opposition between the expanse of grass (soft, cool, inconsistent) and the cement of the cycle path (hard, warm, consistent) is evident. Outside it, the cycle path stands in contrast to the dusty earth of the residual areas of the terrain vague, or to the paving of the terrace overlooking the sea, or the large breakwaters that hold back the sea. The ring that frames the lawn is thus accentuated by that which lies outside it, signalling its non-belonging to the site’s textual system. The text once more creates its own contextual beyond. The issue of the lawn being placed within quotation marks, of its ironic, vertiginous, oblique enunciation is in turn taken up and accentuated by much of the furniture on the site, starting with the colours of the princesses themselves, continuing with the sun loungers whose material denies their function as artefacts on which to lie down and sunbathe. In fact, almost no one, except for the odd confused tourist, utilises them in this way; instead they are used as places to sit down for a chat or a rest. An even clearer example is that of the dog area, whose white fencing is decorated with scattered black dots, giving the impression of Dalmatian fur, or rather, the fur of Disney’s 101 Dalmatians. Seen from above, as we (only) see in Rota’s plans, this area takes the form of a cartoon dog, very much resembling Pimpa, the character of an Italian comic strip.8 There is formidable irony in the regeneration of this garden by the sea, if not of the site itself then certainly of the vast number of discourses that have been constructed upon it. The operation of the mise en texte of the 8 Translator’s note: Pimpa is a very well-known cartoon dog recognisable by her red spots, created by Italian illustrator Altan.

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urban site over two levels—the enunciated and the enunciation—directing itself, as is typical of irony, towards two types of enunciator: one that sees, and uses, the green sea (enunciated) and one that also catches sight of and understands the mysterious island (enunciation). The site, having brought together both locals and foreigners on its green lawn, is now attempting to divide its most cultured public, not by ethnicity or culture, but by the public’s specif ic interests, or rather the different possible valorisations of the same place: utopian passions for the green sea, ludic passions for the mysterious island, urban passions linked to a rediscovered urban identity, aesthetic passions linked to the idea of post-modern architecture (arriving a few decades late in Sicily) which Rota’s project seems to want to furtively fulfil. The discursive regime within which the entire system is held is therefore that of an oblique enunciation, meaning that is given in a mediated, almost hidden way, demanding interpretative action by the addressee.

Towards Culture We find a new movement here in the semiotic square that opposes culture and nature. The conquering of nature is apparent, or at least momentary: the lawn is not entirely a lawn, the sea is not in any way a sea, the waves are not waves, the loungers’ sun is forgotten. There is a clear negation of the pole of nature, on which we had dwelled, and a repositioning on that of non-nature: Palermo3 park nature (2) non-culture terrain vague Palermo2

Palermo1 urban fabric Culture

(1) (3)

non-nature mysterious island Palermo4

The site’s textual system allows for two movements within the square. The first is a moment of re-naturalisation, the production of an effect of nature: nature in the city in the form of a park (non c → n). However, at

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this level already, the lawn as a green sea does not seem to be so natural with the intervention of the enunciative dimension of the cycle path-frame and, more generally, of the oblique enunciation, which causes a negation of nature (n → non n). Thus, the lawn proves to be a zone in the city that is in no way natural; it does not position itself as a garden but, if anything, as its negation, a garden presumed by its ironic denial, a park that is wanted but not actually realised. It is framed, and for this reason, it exists and is f ictional, at the same time, it is given and imaginary, designed and dreamed. Precisely because it is a negative trait, however, this last pole is not considered to be a definitive stage but rather a form of openness towards further transformation, as a possible timely arrival of culture. It is Pa4, the normal city, no longer simply yearned for but alluded to at least. As the wait continues, the mysterious island remains a third space, not closed and not natural, where there is peaceful co-habitation, but where encounter and dialogue are made possible. We do not know if this is integration, but it is undoubtedly socialisation.

Works Cited Bhabha, H. K. 2004 The Location of Culture, Abingdon, Routledge. Cervelli, P. and Sedda, F. 2006 ‘Zone, frontiere, confini: la città come spazio culturale’, in G. Marrone and I. Pezzini (Eds), Senso e metropoli. Rome, Meltemi. de Sola Morales, Ignasi. 1995 ‘Terrain Vague’, in C. Davidson (ed.) Anyplace, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp. 118–23. Floch, J. M. 1990 Sémiotique, marketing et communication, Paris: PUF (English trans. Semiotics, Marketing and Communication, London, Palgrave, 2001). Floch, J. M. 1995 Identités visuelles, Paris: PUF (English trans. Visual Identities, London and New York, Continuum, 2000). Greimas, A. J. and Courtés, J. 1979 Sémiotique. Dictionnaire raisonné de la théorie du langage, vol. I, Paris, Hachette (English trans. Semiotics and Language: An Analytical Dictionary (II vols), Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1982). Lévi-Strauss, C. 1962 La Pensée sauvage, Paris, Plon (English trans. The Savage Mind, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1966). Marin, L. 1994 De la représentation, Paris, Gallimard (English trans. On Representation, Stanford University Press, 2002). Marrone, G. 2021 Introduction of the Semiotics of the Text, Berlin and New York, De Gruyter.

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About the Author Gianfranco Marrone is Full Professor of Semiotics in the Department of Cultures and Society at the University of Palermo, Italy. He taught Semiotics of Food at the University of Pollenzo, and Semiotics at IULM (Milan). He has also lectured in many other universities, such as Bologna and Milan (Italy), Paris and Limoges (France), São Paulo (Brazil), Bogotà (Colombia), Madrid, Meknès (Maroc), and Jyväskylä (Finland). He is the Director of the Centro internazionale di scienze semiotiche, Urbino, and the Circolo semiologico siciliano, Palermo. His research interests include mass-media studies, aesthetics as well as literary theory from a semiotic perspective. His research in the field of semio-aesthetics primarily deals with the nexus between signification/perception. His most recent work has made an innovative contribution to the field of socio-semiotics applied to food, brands, cities, journalism, space, politics, advertisement, fashion and TV. Among his last books are Introduction of the Semiotic of the Text (2021), Gustoso e saporito (2022), La fatica di essere pigri (2020).

8

Turning Spaces of Memory into Memoryscapes Cinema as Counter-Monument in Jonathan Perel’s El Predio and Tabula Rasa Cristina Demaria

Abstract How might cinema turn a space into a mediated landscape of memory? How can it interrogate what is remembered in a lieu de memoire? Could the role of cinema be that of a monument or, even, a counter-monument? I address these questions through the semiotic analysis of the ways in which ESMA – Space for Memory and for the Promotion and Defence of Human Rights in Buenos Aires has been framed by two documentaries by Jonathan Perel: El Predio (2010) and Tabula Rasa (2013). Both films deal with the large, stratified trauma site of the former ESMA compound – the Escuela Superior de Mecánica de la Armada the most notorious clandestine centre of detention, torture and extermination that was operational in Argentina during the military regime. Keywords: Documentary Cinema; ESMA – Space for Memory and for the Promotion and Defence of Human Rights; Jonathan Perel; CounterMonument; Desaparecidos.

Landscape is a complex bearer of the possibilities of a plastic interpretation of emotion. Sergei Eisenstein

How might cinema turn a space into a mediated landscape of memory? How can it interrogate what is remembered there, and intervene in the porous borders that, simultaneously, separate and connect an event, its experience

Demaria, Cristina and Patrizia Violi (eds), Reading Memory Sites through Signs: Hiding into Landscape. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2023 doi: 10.5117/9789463722810_ch08

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Cristina Demaria

and its representation – that is, the multiple temporalities defining the very act of media witnessing? Could the role of cinema be that of a monument or even a counter-monument? These questions guide my analysis of the ways in which ESMA-Space for Memory and for the Promotion and Defence of Human Rights, a memory site located in Buenos Aires, has been framed by two documentary films directed by Jonathan Perel: El Predio (“predio” means the “site”, the “place”, 2010) and Tabula Rasa (2013). Both films deal with the large, stratified and troubled trauma site of the former ESMA compound – the Escuela Superior de Mecánica de la Armada (Naval Academy of Mechanics) – arguably the most notorious of the clandestine centres of detention, torture and extermination that operated in the capital during the military regime’s ‘Dirty War’ (1976–1983) (on this, see Sozzi supra). In this place, over 5,000 prisoners were detained, 90 per cent of whom were murdered. The ESMA compound was also the departure point of the aeroplanes from which drugged prisoners were thrown – still alive – into the River Plate. The area covered by the site is huge (about 17 acres) and it contains numerous buildings with a similar architectural structure, separated by green spaces and wide avenues. It is nowadays not only the largest, but also the best and widely known memory site of Argentina’s dictatorship period. The transformation of the ESMA compound into a space of memory is the outcome of a troubled history, strictly linked to the turbulent and divided post-dictatorship period in Argentina. During the first years of democracy, as the country suffered a time of imposed amnesia favoured by the promulgation of laws such as the ‘Ley del punto final’,1 ESMA still functioned as a military area into which ordinary citizens could not trespass. In January 1998, the Menem government decided that ESMA had to be demolished so that ‘a monument’ could be erected in its place to mark the ‘democratic co-existence among Argentines and their will to be reconciled with one another’ (Da Silva Catela 2015: 9). Yet, with no admission of guilt from the perpetrators, no public trials and no collective processing of the trauma caused by a conflict that brought the military junta to ‘disappear’ 30,000 people, there was no process of reconciliation at work and, consequently, no will to co-exist peacefully; as a consequence, a heated battle for memory began with the passing of this presidential decree. Human rights 1 The ‘Ley del punto final’ (the Full Stop Law) was declared in 1986 by the then President Raul Alfonsin, and was followed, the year after, by the ‘Ley de obediencia debida’ (Law of the Due Obedience). Basically, they were promulgated to grant amnesty for all the crimes committed during the dictatorship and were revoked by President Kirchner. On this see also Crenzel 2012.

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groups – including the Madres and the Abuelas de la Plaza de Mayo,2 resorted to legal recourse to stop the demolition, and, thanks to the intervention of the municipality of Buenos Aires, it was first suggested that ESMA should become ‘a space for memory’ in 2000. However, it was only in 2004, under the government of Néstor Kirchner – a president who embraced the cause of memory and justice as one of the central tenets of his political agenda (Andermann 2012a: 78) – that the ESMA site was proclaimed a ‘Space for Memory and for the Promotion and Defence of Human Rights’. Different proposals were sought from human rights organisations, artists, activists and intellectuals (see also Brodsky et al., 2004) to answer questions such as: how could this former site of state terrorism be ‘adequately recovered’? In a still divided Argentine society, what could its ultimate purpose and function be? As Patrizia Violi summarises (2017: 255): Various issues were the cause of disagreement, all of which mainly concerned the extension, and consequently the function, of the site. Should all of the enormous area of the ESMA be turned into a museum or only the clandestine prison? Should the presence of other military and government installations inside it be permitted or should it strictly exclude any activity? And again, should it be solely a memory site in the strict sense of the term, connected with the memory of that place of detention, or admit other more committed social and artistic activities?

What was in play was not so much ‘an operation of material restoration as the reconstruction of a knowledge and a discourse that constitute the very conditions of representability and narratability of memory, a semiotic marking that attributes a signification to the place, symbolically restoring the indexical connection with the event’ (Violi 2017: 256). Then again, the debate on the conditions of representability and narratability of this memory did not stop in 2008, when the ESMA site officially opened as a space of memory. For example, it took several more years to turn the Casino de oficiales, that is the actual trauma site (the building where people had been ‘disappeared’ and tortured) into the ESMA Museo Sitio de la memoria, which was inaugurated only in 2015, its walls and rooms now tangible ‘evidence’ of the crimes perpetrated during the Dirty War. 2 The Mothers and the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo were the first to denounce, during the dictatorship, the disappearance of their sons, daughters and grandchildren through their peaceful rounds on the Plaza the Mayo in front of the Casa Rosada, the seat of the government of Argentina: see Demaria, Lorusso 2012; Demaria 2017.

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El Predio and Tabula Rasa had been shot before the opening of the museum, and both focus on the overall grounds of the former ESMA, two and five years respectively after it was opened to the public, as the first tentative re-occupations and re-appropriations of its buildings by artists, human rights organisations and governmental institutions were occurring. Hence, both films stand as peculiar recordings of the making of ESMA’s new ‘identity’, and the many layers it is composed of, thanks to a challenging cinematic ethical gaze (Nichols 1991, see also Nichols 2016) depicting the transition from a space of suffering, torture and extermination to, supposedly, a landscape of remembering. In adding two films dealing with a trauma site to the case studies analysed in this volume, I wish to describe how such a loaded space can be transformed into a perturbing cinematic landscape that, in its turn, calls into question the identity of the place it depicts. After an introductory part on the relationship between cinema, semiotics and spaces of memory, I shall move to the analysis of the strategies at play in both documentary films, concentrating on how they weave the audio-visual texture of a troubled space of memory without using footage, a voice-over, testimonies/witnesses, or, apparently, any other kind of explanation (graphic or otherwise). In filming a space that is allowed to ‘speak for itself’, Perel inaugurated what María Guadalupe Arenillas (2016) labels a new paradigm that has emerged in several films dealing with spatial inscriptions of Argentina’s recent past. Allegedly, El Predio and Tabula Rasa represent two seminal examples of a ‘non-discursive turn’ in Argentine documentary cinema; a turn that I would rather label a non-verbal one since, from a semiotic perspective, both films mobilise enunciative strategies that define a very specific discursivity, as they re-interpret a space and recompose its spatiality and temporalities. From a semiotic perspective, a discourse is that level of textual organisation whereby any language – verbal, visual, sound – participates in the overall construction of the spatial and temporal coordinates expressed by a text, and within which both the subjects and objects of its narrative are inscribed. Moreover, with their non-verbal filming, both documentaries not only distance themselves from post-dictatorship testimonial cinema, which has mainly focussed on familial relationships and the human suffering experienced throughout the dictatorship, but also aim at constituting an example of counter-monument cinema. Yet, how do they do it? More generally, how can a film become a counter-monument? In Perel’s own questioning: Space can be regarded as a testimony. Cinema can be regarded as a cartographic work, a cadastral job. Cinema as a device to create space, a

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true fieldwork, on the field, in the field. … How do you break the didactic logic of a monument, the rigidness that condemns the viewer to a passive observation? How do you draw up a memory that won’t stay fixed and stable, once and for all? A memory that won’t try to endure, pristine/ ignored, but will instead demand attention, incite its violation, regard the territory of memory as an unstable, weak, swampy topography.3

Moreover, how can space be turned into a testimony recreated by cinema on the field, in the field, in order to demand attention to the very construction of a post-dictatorship traumatic memory?

Cinema and Spaces of Memory Contemporary audio-visual representation of spaces of memory participates in a media environment – a mediascape – whereby different kinds of texts and genres intertwine, from photographs displayed throughout a site, to snapshots visitors post on social media during or after a visit. Concrete spaces of memories, such as museums or memorial sites, often display footage or visual testimonies of victims and survivors in order to enrich, support and, at times, stand as evidence of the events whose history they are supposed to tell. Out of the many semiotic layers and signifying practices that constitute a space of memory, its visual archive and the way it is displayed are part and parcel of its overall ‘communication’. This is different from the case of documentary films choosing to interrogate a space independently of the ‘museological’ discourse designed by the addresser in order to predetermine the performances of individual and collective users (see Pezzini infra). With El Predio and Tabula Rasa we enter the realm of the relationship between cinema, space and memory, that is, we address the question how a film interprets a space defining one form of its possible experience, or how it intervenes in the construction of the memories of events the viewer did not experience but nevertheless feels and remembers as if they belonged to their past – as Allison Landsberg’s (2004) notorious category of prosthetic memory implies. 4 3 This quotation is taken from a printed document written by Perel – and sent to me by Perel himself – for which I have not been able to find the appropriate references. 4 Landsberg work questions the ways in which ‘modern technologies of mass culture’, such as cinema, may challenge the distinction between individual and collective memory and introduce the ‘experiential’ as a mode of knowledge acquisition. Also, she discusses how might individuals be affected by memories of events through which they did not live, that is by a prosthetic memory.

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As a semiotics of media suggests, a film fits into the design of our experience, transforming the knowledge of the direct world through the mediated world it depicts (Eugeni 2015). On a more general level, from Walter Benjamin’s (1939) theory of cinema as a medium capable of producing new forms of modern subjectivity, to Gilles Deleuze’s (1986) reflections on cinema as a technology of memory,5 to give but two seminal examples, the role of moving images in the shaping of an imaginary of the past and its figuration has been repeatedly evoked and its power to project images unavailable to consciousness – through devices such as slow motion and close-ups – has been regularly investigated. Cinema as an optical unconscious mediates between the intimate and the public, between subjectivities and the cultures into which they merge and from which they emerge. As Susannah Radstone underlines: For at moments, the figuring of memory by media, including the cinema, and of the cinema by memory have become key sites within which to explore, map, and radically critique the changing relationship between the inside and the outside, the personal and the social. Always at stake in discussion of the cinema’s relation to memory is the question of memory’s transindividuality: the social and the cultural, as well as the individual and personal aspects of memory, for cinema – along with television and digital print media – has been central to the development of the concepts of cultural, social, and public memory. (Radstone 2010: 326; my italics).

What emerges from Radstone’s statement is the importance of cinema, also as a particular semiotic space of cultural and historical translation and transformation of narratives of the past, along with its forms of visualisation and enunciation, to which I shall soon return. Moreover, cinematic imaginaries of spaces have played a crucial role in documenting memories of traumas and collective violence, that is, once the problem at stake was not only that of representing what had really happened, and where, but also to articulate a memory archive through the accumulation and filtering of the visual knowledge of a trauma site.6 From 5 See Benjamin’s (1939) essay on Baudelaire, where he maintains that cinema not only provides a technological support for memory, extending the range of the mémoire involontaire, but also that the exposure to cinematic images might enable the spectator to withstand better the shocks of modern city life. 6 For a definition of trauma site see Violi 2017. More generally speaking, the debate on trauma as a crisis of representation has a long and controversial history that it is not possible to summarise here: for its early formulation see Caruth 1996; for criticisms of Caruth’s position and more recent

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the first motion pictures of the concentration camps liberated by the Allies and their re-appropriation as footage in many films afterwards, what has been offered as a way to remember has been repeatedly both revealed and guarded by specific images, by what they show but also by what they omit, in the haunting of the same or similar images, and in questioning to whom or to what they give a voice or a gaze. Testimonies of traumatic events seem thus to be dependent, at least in our contemporary transmedia culture, on recurring and comparable narrative and semiotic strategies centred on the power of images not only to represent the past but to evoke it within the present from which it stems (Guerin and Hallas 2010). The images of films such as Night and Fog and Shoah have become part of a shared inter-visuality (Mirzoeff 2002) of locations of terror, of an encyclopaedia (Eco 1984) made of powerful iconographic sedimentations that have marked the building of a visual cultural memory of places of violence. However, El Predio and Tabula Rasa depart from this shared inter-visuality and, distancing themselves from the already mentioned Argentine ‘testimonial cinema’, attempt to create a signifying space that is able to function as a counter-monument that questions the kind of place a site of memory is (see Salerno supra) by turning it into a landscape which potentially contains a deterritorialising force (Andermann 2012b). As counter-monuments, both films try to illustrate, to use James Young’s (1992: 268) formulation, the ‘possibilities and limitations of all memorials … In this way, [they function] as a valuable “counter-index” to the ways time, memory and current history intersect at any memorial site’ (see Panico supra).

Enunciation and Aspectualisation: the Semiotic Gaze of Cinema From a semiotic point of view, the counter-indexicality of a film, the ways it creates its ‘traces’ and connects its spatial and temporal coordinates to memory and history, have to be contextualised within issues posed by the category of enunciation once it comes to audio-visual texts. Amongst the first scholars who applied the formal apparatus of enunciation to cinematic language is Francesco Casetti (1998) who, to describe how a film orients itself towards the actual viewer, proposed a semiotic framework of analysis involving three deictic categories: an I (the enunciator/addresser); a ‘you’ (the addressee) and a ‘she/it’ (character or the film itself). From this he derived a indications for the future of trauma studies, see Buelens, Durrant and Eaglestone 2013; Elsaesser 2013, Bond and Craps 2020.

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typology of shots indicating how a film can say ‘you’, demarcating a place to be filled by the spectator. However, the recent tendency in both film studies and semiotics is to problematise the centrality of vision and voyeurism, in order to move towards attentiveness to perception, the body and embodiment. The cinematic is not only visibility but also its affective, embodied, haptic appeal. A film presents us with traces of a sensorial material that may take the shape of a subjective presence which depends not only on the type of shots and points of view, but also on camera movements, angles and points of sound, on its rhythm and overall montage, that is, on the basis of its diverse substances of expression. The unravelling of an audio-visual discourse is, in other words, an oriented process that shows the world directly, albeit from different ‘points of perception’: it ‘monstrates’ it; it does not ‘say’ it, to recall André Gaudreault’s (2008) term monstration. In doing so, it performs both a cognitive doing – a focalisation as relative to the circulation of knowledge – and a perceptive doing, which Jost (1987) divides into two instances: that of ocularisation (the visual anchoring) and auricularisation (the auditive anchoring).7 By embracing such a perspective, we can further specify the sometimes excessively broad category of gaze, which, in its turn, encompasses the category of point of view. Indeed, we can think of a cinematic gaze as semiotic processes of focalisation, ocularisation and auricularisation that depend on the textual inscription of an actant observer. Hence, when considering the gaze of a film, it is not only a matter of how it might install an objectifying gaze, as if an ‘impersonal’ and abstract eye depicts a space and a time; or a point of view shot, a subjective camera, but also, thanks to the overall act of discursivisation, how each text becomes a process the meaning of which is organised depending on a perspective that regulates how we perceive and interpret it: the syntax and semantics of its spatialities and its temporalities. Moreover, if we consider the temporality of a text, the actant observer is closely linked to how a text displays its aspectualisation, that is, how filmed actions are looked at: are they seized in their continuity and duration, or as they begin or end? Or, to put it even more simply: do we see an action as repeatedly performed or in its completion? To consider the effects of 7 On this, see also Spaziante (2017); Armenio (2017:61), who rightly states: ‘The formal apparatus used to analyse enunciation mediating structures must be specific. It is necessary to identify how an audio-visual discourse puts the time, place and subjects of the experience in relation with the time, place and subjects produced by the text. In other words, when we come to audio-visual texts, to reduce enunciation to a formal simulation of the production of meaning is reductive’.

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aspectualisation is to look at how a process is observed, determining the rhythm of what we see, its overall meaning and value: as continuous or discontinuous, as iterative or punctual. The actant observer is thus a category that mediates between enunciation and aspectualisation, its role being that of determining the overall gaze of a text, as the textual expression of a lived phenomenological time. With the categories of the actant observer and that of aspectualisation as specifications of the category of enunciation, it is easier to understand how a filmed space can become a processing of a traumatic past as it is framed and contemplated, walked through and interrogated. The effects of a film, along with the semiotic competence it provides to its audience – what it makes us see, and therefore know, through its focalisation, ocularisation and auricolarisation – derive from the power images have to figure and display a cartography of a particular time/space, one that is able not only to turn spaces into places and sites, but also at times into a troubled landscape of memory. A semiotic gaze, the inscription of a peculiar actant observer, is what turns a concrete space into a landscape, since the very concept of landscape, which was first conceived within the history of painting and its techniques and was then transformed by photography and cinema, implies that there is a gaze framing it. In sum, the way a visual experience of a space may turn it into an emotional landscape lies in how a gaze and a viewing subject-position are inscribed, displayed and, also, displaced by the audio-visual text. Visibility is not only the field explored by the gaze (the ‘as far as I can see’) but also the network of perception and knowledge, the examination and the selection of the ‘screen images’ that organise vision: In itself, the cinematic experience lies in the interval between the illusion of a practicable, accessible space – given by the movements of the camera, and the actual distance from that landscape observed by a subject-spectator, as in the case of pictorial spaces, a process that refers, also, to the wider and even more complex idea of territory. Cinema can be thought of as a practice of archiving places. (Minuz 2010: 14–15; my translation).

Filming a Site: El Predio In an essay that Perel wrote together with Daniel Feierestein (Perel and Feierestein 2014: 111, my translation), simply titled ‘La Esma’, the authors,

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along with many other artists and scholars confronted with the trauma of desaparecidos, wonder: What to do with those bodies of the disappeared that seemed to escape any possibility to be represented? How to make one see (hacer ver) what is par excellence un-representable? How to put in a productive tension the dichotomy between what is tellable and what is un-tellable? How to make present (hacer presente) what is un-imaginable, the extermination?

And in ‘Cinema as counter-monument’ he somehow answers his own questions: It’s not about showing – shooting – what is invisible, but to reveal what is missing and will be missing forever. What seems to escape language can be reconstructed by besieging what is missing and thus providing a meaning to absence.8

I am quoting Perel’s own writings as meta-texts that produce the complex textuality I am analysing here (Marrone 2010). As a semiotician, I am not specifically interested in what Umberto Eco (1990) called intentio auctoris, that is, what the author intended to say, based on his or her poetics and his or her own personal biography. I am interested, though, in how Perel’s own reflections participate in the re-creation of the ESMA as a semiotic textual object. In the quotations above, for example, he reveals the main narrative programme that the gaze/observer inscribed in the text maintains, defining its object of value, that is, to make one see ‘what is missing’. Here, the actant observer acquires the narrative role of the addresser who ‘manipulates’ what we see and the way we see it. Yet, how does the actual film provide meaning to absence, or, better, how is absence signified? As a non-verbal documentary, El Predio explores an apparently depopulated space – that of the ESMA grounds – that in itself becomes an archive, probed and surveyed by what first appears to be a visual ‘composition’ that tends towards extreme naturalism, rendered through a supposedly distant and detached objective point of view, with no filming subject ever visible or audible within the shots, either as an actor or as a voice-over. The film consists of fixed shots in natural daylight and deep focus of protracted duration: all of them of about 30 seconds, depicting the architectural spaces, buildings 8 This quotation is taken from a printed document written by Perel – and sent to me by Perel himself – for which I have not been able to find the appropriate references.

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and rubble of the ESMA grounds during the process of its transformation, and very few subjects, with whom there is no direct engagement or relation, as if the very act of filming passes undetected (Geraghty 2018). Points of view and points of audition seems to be synchronised, with little, and often time-distant and barely discernible, speech. However, from its first shots onwards the documentary reveals the strong presence of an observer/gaze that slowly determines what we see of the filmed space, at what distance or closeness, and at what rhythm, carefully selecting the ways it creates not only its effect, but also its affect, making us see, feel and ponder the images we are shown. The very first shot, what the film begins to monstrate, is of a totally black screen: on one hand, as a still undetected frame, it works as a threshold between the cinematographic space and the diegetic one, as if the viewer must pause and mourn before entering el predio as a place and as a film, all light and reflections absorbed by the non-colour that is black, the black screen also becoming a blank screen. On the other hand, the screen as the frame (see Marrone supra) within which the space will be represented stands as a warning for the kind of experience it is going to provide to the viewer: that of a mediated world contained within a screen and its imagining. The black/blank image ends with a jump cut, a visual punctuation of discontinuity that characterises – as I shall later argue – the montage of the whole film, followed by the only camera movement of the film, a travelling shot lasting more than three minutes, that places us directly inside the ESMA compound, moving along its alleys and tree-lined avenues, as we perceive muffled sounds of distant work in progress, of a lawnmower and of birds chirping. The sound then slowly recedes until it stops, as this ‘introduction’ ends again with a jump cut to another completely black screen, on which only the title of the documentary is displayed: El Predio. Only through the next prolonged shot, framing an information plaque located on the outside of ESMA’s enclosing wall, the viewer receives the first clue, albeit not a very direct one: the sign is meant to be read by people walking along the outside part of the wall, yet it is filmed from the inside, so that one is forced to decipher it back to front. It is thus that we learn that: ‘Working for all Argentines – Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s Administration – Works: National Memory Archive – Former building of the Naval War College – Cost of the works: dollars 14, 763, 721.08 – Argentina is all of us’. The inclusive nation-building rhetoric exploited by Cristina Kirchner’s politics of memory is not immediately readable from within the place we have been brought to: the ‘us’ inside a still uncertain collective subject. The first six minutes of the 48-minutes-long documentary determine how the

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whole text plays with the distribution of both cognition and perception – with the semiotic competence favoured by its focalisation and ocularisation – provided to the viewer. We will have to wait until the final credits, projected yet again on a black screen, to learn that ‘The ESMA was used by the last Argentinian dictatorship as one of the main clandestine centres, for detention, torture and extermination. In 2004 The Space for memory was created on these grounds. It is open to the public since October 2007 – Filmed within March and November 2009’. Up until this last remark, the film avoided any explanation except for the information provided by what the viewer, at times, manages to read on the signs and plaques that punctuate the filmed space, through an institutional, and most of all disembodied, ‘writing’. As the film progresses, a select few human personages do emerge into the visual field, their activities not so much catalogued, but briefly registered, and not in their entirety: the work of a visual and plastic artist, a theatre production, several film screenings and a debate. Yet, there are important places that are absent, like the already mentioned Casino de oficiales, the actual trauma site within the ESMA grounds, and a general external overview of the whole compound. This type of filming makes it is difficult for those who do not know the place to ‘recognise’ it, to pin it down. What place is it? Where are we? Also, alterations in light level make temporal identification challenging as the time of day or year appears to vary sporadically. Yet, there is a rhythm, an overdetermination of the film’s temporality (the already mentioned strategy of aspectualisation) that creates the effect of a slow transformation of a space into a landscape that we are maybe not permitted to fully comprehend, but to apprehend. In the first part of the documentary, for example, the emptying of one the buildings is shown through the objects that were once inside it, but now lie discarded outside, amongst the weeds: sinks and flakes of plaster, rubble and iron ventilation pipes. Later on in the film, which has been edited in a manner that does not follow a chronological order or a cause-and-effect logic, we are presented with the beginning of a visual artist performance – a drawing on a wall, a first step into the re-appropriation of the building; towards the end of the documentary, the film explores the installation once completed. Yet no action or performance is followed in its precise and linear development, and very seldom with the full presence of the actors involved, as when a shot focuses on the details of a hoe and a rake ploughing a tiny plot of land: and again first we are shown minor details of the action that is being performed, and only later – after several other shots of different corners of the ESMA grounds – we are able to read a sign that informs us that ‘action through

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art’ is taking place in that tiny plot of land: ‘To harvest/To multiply – Action through art –to build a memory and create a future – Sowing potato into the soil of ESMA – Reproduce and harvest energy by Marina Etchegoyhen’. With each frame, the viewer is invited to examine the tactile qualities of the objects, the texture of the interior chipped walls, with their holes and scratches; the brown colour of the soil into which the potatoes are sowed. This way of showing, accompanied by a very fragmented telling, is used also to make us read and learn about the narratives the agents of memory that now inhabit ESMA are trying to inscribe in its space. This happens, for example, during a sequence filmed inside a spacious room turned into a cineforum where – with a mise-en-abyme – another screen is framed, projecting images of an unknown film whose soundtrack is a very popular song that condemns Argentina’s recent past, affirming the persistence of its traumatic memory. What we are made to hear is not the complete song, but the following words: ‘The illusion of those who lost; all the vanishing promises; and those who fell in one war or another; all is kept in memory; Dream of life and history; the lies and complicity; of the genocidaires still free; the Pardon and Full stop ….’ The same strategy is used in another sequence, where several sheets of printed paper pasted to a wall of yet another unknown room, in another building, are eventually shot in a close-up (the previous shot was a medium shot that did not allow us to read their content): they reproduce the text of the sadly famous ‘Open letter from a writer to the military junta’ by Rodolfo Walsh, of which only the first sentence is made visible/readable: ‘Press censorship, the persecution of intellectuals, the raid of my house in Tigre, the murder of dear friends, and the loss of a daughter who died fighting you; some of those are ….’ A jump then cuts the frame, moving us to yet another corner of el predio. The film thus finds its ‘space’ in a fold, in a crease of time that allows the showing of interstices, before its complete institutionalisation, as it registers the on-going life of a space of memory in the making. El Predio thus became an audio-visual reasoning about the very possibilities of a space of memory, its meanings, functions, ways of transmission, education on and of memory. This overall effect is obtained through the intertwining of the kind of filming examined so far, and the montage of its protracted shots. Montage, as Eisenstein theorised, is productive not only as a way to compose the frames, but also within a frame, as a principle of composition of any image. The process of editing can be seen as general semiotic dispositif that is responsible both for the syntactic structure of moving images, and for their reciprocal articulation (see also Casetti 1999). In El Predio – but also in

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Tabula Rasa – a pragmatic montage (Lancioni 2019), which consists in the selection and combination of shots within a narrative logic, is superseded by a cognitive montage, that is, the way a narrative logic is dealt with and sometimes disrupted. These two kinds of montage could be linked, Tarcisio Lancioni suggests, to the division between optical values and haptical values, which, in their turn, define two different forms of vision. With the optical vision the eye immediately catches the whole – the unity and integrity – of the framed phenomenon, while in the haptic one the eye has to move continuously, as if touching the object of perception. With the haptic vision, the total image of a compound like ESMA is the result of different and partial images, of parcels and details revealed by different points of view that will find their unity only once the viewer has engaged with of all the elements adding up to the final composition of the film. While the optic montage values forms of narrative continuity, the haptic one plays with a discontinuity that rejects the logic of the chronological successions of images. This is what happens in El Predio, since it is only at the end that the viewer gathers an image – albeit not a ‘whole’ image – of this ground, the haptic effect further accentuated by Perel’s use of deep focus. However, El Predio’s cognitive montage and haptic vision are a trace of an active subjectivity which, with its argumentative connections, acts as a powerful configuring intentionality that, together with its strategies of ocularisation, determines the ways knowledge and affect are distributed throughout the text. The film thus creates a powerful effect, a particular kind of overall image/ imagining that we could call an ‘image-time’, in Gilles Deleuze’s words (1989), of any place whatsoever: a shooting that makes us feel/perceive the duration, as opposed to the image-action typical of a more classic cinema, where the mise-en-scene is entirely built around the continuity of movement. To perceive the duration, to make time something we feel, means to connect cinema to thinking, in order to reveal ‘fragments of time in its pure state’, to quote Perel again. El Predio’s images oblige us to think, to meditate, to ‘listen’ to these spaces/corner, walls, trees, and to use our own imagination to provide meaning to absence. With this technique, El Predio makes the place ‘talk’. Yet, as I have already underlined, its speech is not fully and immediately understandable. As Niall Geraghty (2018:1) observes in his own extremely detailed analysis of this film: ‘Point of view and point of audition are reconciled throughout, but there is incongruity between what is seen and what is heard: stasis in the visual field, activity in the soundtrack. This disjunction between visual emptiness and sonic plenitude opens a space for the viewer to reflect on the process which is underway’.

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This semiotic strategy produces another important effect, if we think of the ‘sinister methodology’ employed by the junta, which found its apotheosis in ‘the “disappearance” of mortal remains’ which denied ‘even the possibility of a posthumous reconstruction of subjectivity through mourning and remembrance’ (Andermann 2012a: 79–80). El Predio, with its immobile gaze, the lack of soundtrack and active human subjects, re-projects into its landscape what many survivors of the dictatorship’s clandestine detention centres described when telling their experience of captivity, marked by ‘darkness, silence, and immobility’ (Calveiro 1998: 48). The film thus appropriates, and at the same time inverts, several of the techniques employed by the dictatorship during its regime of systematic state terrorism, since its silence has a very distinctive quality, as Geraghty (2018: 4-5) affirms: ‘the apparent “emptiness” of Perel’s films is a mere illusion, a method of demonstrating that “[t]here is no such thing as silence”’, as John Cage (1961: 191) suggested. In his analysis, Geraghty demonstrates how El Predio could be thought of as a uniquely musical work, where ‘rather than containing the image, the atmosphere created by environmental sounds adds depth and draws the audience into the shot’. Moreover, as Geraghty (2018: 5) points out, ‘The disconcerting arrangement of both sound and vision reflects the fact that the brutality of torture and rape was accompanied by techniques designed to further defamiliarise the space of incarceration, such as blindfolding prisoners and leading them on different routes around the prison to enhance disorientation’ (see also Scorer 2016). Perel, too, defamiliarises ESMA and disorientates his viewer. However, whereas such techniques were utilised by the dictatorship as part of ‘the pedagogies of disposal, destruction and reconversion of people’ (González 2005: 71), Perel exploits them to record the same pedagogies being applied to the site itself.

Tabula Rasa Tabula Rasa is a documentary that forms a sort of diptych together with El Predio. Yet, as it resorts to many of the semiotic strategies deployed in El Predio, Tabula Rasa testifies not to a construction but to a particular destruction, a ‘ruining’ of memory for another reconstruction, that of the museum dedicated to the Falklands-Malvinas war as one of the memory sites of the ESMA compound. It films the demolition – the erasure (tabula rasa) – of housing modules (módulos alojamientos) erected at the rear of the compound during the dictatorship, in order to hide the view of what was

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happening inside ESMA. Instead of a wall, the military chose to build a block of buildings, supposedly for people to live and work in. No one ever actually lived in this block, and it has been abandoned and decaying since then. Between 2012 and 2013 it was erased to provide space for a museum dedicated to the memory of a war that is still ‘unfinished business’ (McGuirk 2007), and whose outcomes accelerated the end of the dictatorship. Despite the still on-going debate sparked by the museum’s very nationalistic interpretation of the Falklands-Malvinas war, the story of what once stood in its place is little known, even among Argentines. Tabula Rasa not only shows this story, but also tells it, and in so doing makes the ‘presence’ of an observer, who at times inscribes himself as an author/witness in the text, more tangible than El Predio. Even though Perel still refrains from being part of the frame, traces of his work as a documentarist – not simply as a ‘director’, but as a researcher – who has investigated the history of the module whose destruction we, in turn, shall witness, is more pronounced here. The bodiless and silent observer here leaves his enunciative traces not only in the ways the gaze of the film makes us ponder and look again at what is already there to be read and looked at, but also in the documents selected to be shown before the camera, marked by his own handwriting and underlining. The competence we slowly acquire is thus not limited to information plaques and signs already located within the space: it comes from different sources that have been collected and studied, their information exploited to make us not only see but also learn about the purpose behind the building complex behind ESMA. It is therefore more of a silent dialogue between an enunciator and his addressees that begins from the first sequence, when the shot of a completely black screen – which, like in El Predio, points to the screen as a space of composition – is followed by a frame depicting a desk on which a computer screen shows different pictures of the modular building: architectonical drawings and two photographs taken during the time ESMA was still operational. The technique of the jump cut is used again and the next shot is that of a printed transcription of a testimony that is a quote from Claudio Martyniuk’s book ESMA Fenomenologia de la disparicion (2004), although we only learn this at the end of the film, in the ‘bibliography’, as Perel calls it. In what therefore becomes a mediated and belated interaction with the viewer, the traces of enunciation lie in the underlying marks, comments and notes made on the printed quotation, which bear witness to a subject who has studied it. We learn the following from the writing of a still anonymous witness, who used to commute on a train that passed behind ESMA, just along the block of building:

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The train came out of the tunnel from the Del Valle station, and then after crossing over the avenues of Libertador and General Paz, it passed behind ESMA. The Lugones highway was the only thing separating the train from ESMA. On the other side of the train there was an athletics field where the soldier of ESMA could be seen as they arrived …. Beyond that, the murky river. From the window of the train, over and again, I saw construction work progressing on ESMA, new construction of an ugliness that is difficult to describe. Cube-like structures were built one next to the other, covering the back part of ESMA. It was a strange mass. As soon as they finished the cube structure, the workers slowed their pace, as if the only thing that had mattered was raising this concrete curtain that blocked the view of the building inside, which covered up something worse, a view of a dreadful emptiness. They did not raise a wall in ESMA that would have shown they were hiding something. They raised barracks in order to show something else, using concrete to make invisible the kidnapping, pillaging, tortures, births, and nightmares. The factory of pain. Today, looking at these buildings from the train, the anguish and uneasiness persist.

After this rather protracted first sequence, which places the viewer in an emotionally charged position evoked by the isotopes of anguish, dread and pain that permeate the witness’s words, we enter our ‘predio’, dwelling on its borders only now. What we learn about the place comes from the shot of a panel with a map of the compound, and the information: ‘The ESMA Clandestine Centre for Detention, Torture and Extermination operated on this site during the last military dictatorship (1976–1983)’. After these first two long sequences, Perel films the destruction of the building by concentrating on the bulldozer with ‘tedious and long shots of the production of rubble’ (Arenillas 2016). He apparently ‘simply’ shoots the very process of ruination. The slow and pensive visual framing and montage of this whole process starts with two shots of the still-intact buildings, and of Avenida Lugones with passing trains, probably a landscape very similar to the one described in Martyniuk’s quotation. The next shot informs us of their fate, with a close-up of a document of the ‘public tender’ – we read – for the ‘complete demolition of the precast building’. And then a jump cut places us once again within the grounds, with a sign on a fence surrounding the block warning us: ‘Danger demolition site’. The ambient sound of the demolition comes before the actual images of a demolition carried out by bulldozers and cranes which, for the next twenty minutes of the film, become its main ‘actors’.

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Even though there are rare glimpses of the human subjects who operate them, it is the machinery’s mechanical arms, dozers, buckets and grabbers looking like a large animal’s talons and jaws that dominate the frames: dogging cranes whose plier resembles the claws and pincers of huge and scary dinosaurs, or big bird predators. Shot after shot – some lasting more than 60 seconds – we are almost hypnotised by these machine-figures that incessantly and implacably attack and destroy the block of buildings. Thanks to camera angles from below, the use of deep shot and of a light that softens the contours of the filmed objects, the tower crane demolishing the walls with a boulder, and the dogging crane’s pliers removing the debris, are trans-figured, turning the very act of demolition into a ritual of powerful and definitive ‘natural’ erasure. This almost ‘photographic’ way of filming plays with the (im)personal, whereby a machine, a ‘bird’ creature, but also a ‘dinosaur’ – as the dinosaur that was the dictatorship – is subjected to an erasure, also emphasising the ephemerality of construction. These long sequences of demolition are then followed by a series of ‘still life’ shots: medium long shots and close-ups of steel planks jutting out of broken blocks of concrete, of scattered debris and rubble. However, the still life depicted here is not so much that of a natura morta (still life being the English rendering of the Italian expression, literally ‘dead nature’), but of a cultura morta (dead culture), as the animal-like machine destroys human work. Tabula Rasa’s landscape is thus the juxtaposition of the stillness of death and of movements: movement in nature (trees, birds in flight, birdsong); movement in culture: traffic, routine, everyday ‘norms’; trains both viewed and offering views, shuttling between visibility and invisibility. Dealing with a destruction, Tabula Rasa contrasts the suspended temporality of the photographic image, that of a past returning to the present but always punctuated, in Barthes’s terms, by the future preterite of a death that will have already occurred, with the mobile take of cinema, which is not so much temporal but spatial (Andermann 2012b). Yet, if we follow Avery Gordon (2008: xix), the film ultimately provides a now ‘free’ vision of the inside, the spectres that inhabited ESMA as a factory of pain now roaming freely into the emptied space: ‘spectres and ghosts appear when the trouble they represent and symptomised is no longer contained or repressed or blocked from view’. The film allows us not only to spectate, but to speculate on the spectral effects; on the flattening (demolition), the erasure, the deconstruction, of Place, of Memory. And again, as in El Predio, the very I that is filming is dislocated and silenced, although the silence is once more very loud.

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What is at stake in Tabula Rasa is the constitution of an ‘ethical gaze’, as Bill Nichols discusses in his reflections on the relationship between ethics and film. In trying to describe the moral implication of the diverse ways of looking inscribed in, and solicited by, non-fiction film, Nichols proposes the category of axiographics, which derives from the semiotic category of axiology, that is the study of values. The axiographics is ‘the attempt to explore the implantation of values in the configuration of space, in the constitution of a gaze, and in the relation of observer to observed’ (1991: 78). I have already pointed out how in the configuration of space, and especially in the relationship between observer and observed, El Predio makes us not only see, but also feel the absence that is at play in the memoryscape it visually reveals. Yet Tabula Rasa digs even deeper into how an historical space might be turned into a cinematographic ethical landscape that makes space for the dead and for the pain they suffered. However, these values – in this case, the very value of memory, its truths and the ways it mixes with the building of a national identity – are not discussed or debated: they emerge from a style of filming and a point of view; in sum, they are revealed by the way the film makes us see and not see, with its haptic gaze and montage, as did the buildings under demolition, that, blocked the view of a factory of pain that served values such as Patria and order, along with their contemporary trans-valuation within a space of memory. Not by chance, after the sequence of a ‘still life’ with rubble, with a long travelling shot of the now empty grounds, cleared, levelled and ready for the new construction, the viewer is able to stare not only at an erased space, but also at the ruins of a past that still needs to be disposed of. The curtain made of concrete has been ‘disappeared’, crashed and mashed, to make room for a new place that will soon be inhabited not only by the spectres of the desaparecidos, but also by the ghosts of the young soldiers that died in the Falklands-Malvinas conflict. Ultimately, and in contrast with what happens in El Predio, in Tabula Rasa the time and tempo of a demolition is followed throughout its progress, in its beginning, but most of all in its completion. This process is briefly and ironically re-performed in the last sequence of the film, where we are shown Lego bricks scattered on a desktop back in the filmmaker’s studio Using an animation technique, the next shots first show the bricks re-arranged in the shape of the buildings and then, fading, only the green base with no blocks, the tabula erased for the second time, as a writing on the screen informs us, to make space for the museum: ‘The Malvinas Museum and Memorial will be constructed on this site – Filmed between July 2013 and January 2013’. What is being eradicated ‘becomes’ a reconstructed sign of

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the museum dedicated to a war. The ephemerality not only of memory, but also of any construction, is thus evoked in the ludics of Lego, in the legacy of textuality, of constructivity on a tabula always potentially rasa.

To Conclude I shall end as I started, with a quotation from Perel’s essay ‘Cinema as a counter-monument’: If monument-cinema creates a map, counter-monument cinema proposes a journey … A map refers us to that omniscient, distant, fixed point of view of static visualisation that tends to unification – which corresponds to monumentcinema. But the journey of counter-monument cinema challenges this map with the notion of an itinerary, a tour that creates space as it goes along, in the diversity and multiplicity of its possible orientations.9

The journey envisaged by El Predio and Tabula Rasa does indeed distance itself from the ‘omniscient … fixed point of view of static visualisation’ of the map, and it takes shape as we follow an invisible, yet embodied, observer’s itinerary into a fragmented landscape of memory. As Andermann (2012: 166) notes – writing about recent films from the Cono Sur –, it is a landscape that is not exhausted by a merely rhetorical or figurative dimension: the movement in space it offers us, which is a movement that is given in both documentaries by the composition of the images and by montage, ‘is also the concrete, tangible form taken on by the work of mourning’. Andermann himself comments on how films such as El Predio and Tabula Rasa maintain an interest in the present of enunciation that points to the ‘nomadic tendency’ in new Argentine cinema. In producing such a landscape, both documentaries represent a critique of monumentality in their very construction of cinematic time and space, depicting, again citing Deleuze, any place whatsoever, where affect becomes available, loaded with an investment that is at once emotional and political. Any place whatsoever is the opposite of a monumental place bearing clear markings and an everlasting inscription of ‘the past’; and it is so not because it erases the marks of violence and loss that happened there, but because it radically questions the ways in which they are rendered visible and public. Memory itself is displaced, 9

See footnote n. 3.

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questioned and dispersed, re-inscribed in small details and sounds; its fragments resisting being added up to form an easy ‘reconciliation’, instead tending to ‘perambulation and dissent’. In sum, these two documentaries stand as counter-monuments, to return to James Young’s formulation, not so much since they ‘take their place in the landscape’ but, as they provoke and challenge the very place they recount, they interrupt its spatial continuity and the historical teleology of post-dictatorial narratives of transition.

Works Cited Andermann, J. 2012a ‘Returning to the Site of Horror’, Theory, Culture & Society, 29(1), pp. 76–98. Andermann, J. 2012b ‘Expanded Fields: Postdictatorship and the Landscape’, Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, 21(2), pp. 165-87 Arenillas, M.G. 2013 ‘Hacia una nueva ética y estética de la memoria en el cine documental argentino: El predio (2010) de Jonathan Perel’, Contracorriente, 10(3), pp. 371–88. Arenillas, M.G. 2016 ‘Toward a Nondiscursive Turn in Argentine Documentary Film’, in M.G. Arenillas and M. J. Lazzara (eds), Latin American Documentary Film in the New Millennium, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 275-89. Armenio, E. 2017 ‘From Audiovisual to Intermedial Editing. Film Experience and Enunciation Put to the Test of Technical Format’, Versus, 124, pp. 59–74. Benjamin, W. 1972-1989 [1939] ‘Über einige Motive bei Baudelaire’, in R. Tiedemann and H. Schweppenhäuser (eds), Gesammelte Schriften, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp Verlag. Bond, L. and Craps, S. 2020 Trauma, London and New York, Routledge. Buelens, G., Durrant, S., and Eagleston, R. (eds) 2014 The Future of Trauma Theory. Contemporary Literary and Cultural Criticism, London and New York, Routledge. Brodsky, M. 2005 Memoria en construcción: el debate sobre la ESMA, Buenos Aires, La Marca. Brodsky M, Jitrik M, Guagnini N, Groppo B and Llanes L. 2004 ‘Las cartas de la memoria’, Ramona, 42, pp. 52–64. Caruth, C. 1996 Unclaimed Experience. Trauma, Narrative, and History, Baltimore and London, The Johns Hopkins University Press. Casetti, F. 1998 Inside the Gaze. The Fiction Film and Its Spectator, Bloomington, Indiana University Press. Casetti, F. 1999 Theories of Cinema, 1945-1995, Austin, University of Texas Press. Colombo, P. 2012 ‘A space under construction: the spatio-temporal constellation of Esma in El Predio’, Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, 21, 4, pp. 497–515.

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Crenzel, E. 2012 The Memory of the Argentina Disappearances: The Political History of Nunca Mas, London and New York, Routledge. Deleuze, G. 1986 Cinema 1: The Movement Image, London, Athlone Press. Deleuze, G. 1989 Cinema 2: The Time-Image, London, Athlone Press. Da Silva Catela, L. 2015 ‘Staged memories: conflicts and tensions in Argentine public memory sites’, Memory Studies, 8(1), pp. 9–21. Demaria, C. and Lorusso, A.M. 2012 ‘A Ritual to Deal with an Unspeakable Trauma. The Case of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo’, Lexia. Rivista di semiotica, 11/12, pp. 327–56. Demaria, C. 2017 ‘Who Need Identity? Disappearances and Appearances in Argentina: The Abuelas de la Plaza de Mayo’, in A. Sharman, M. Grass Kleiner, A. M. Lorusso and S. Savoini (eds), Memosur/ Memosouth – Memory, Commemoration and Trauma in Post-Dictatorship Argentina and Chile, London, Critical, Cultural and Communications Press, pp. 73–92. Eco, U. 1986 Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language, Bloomington, Indiana University Press. Eco, U. 1990 The Limits of Interpretation, Bloomington, Indiana University Press. Elsaesser, T. 2013 German Cinema – Terror and Trauma: Cultural Memory Since 1945, London and New York, Routledge. Eugeni, R. 2015 La condizione postmediale. Media, linguaggi, narrazioni, Milan/ Brescia, Editrice La Scuola. Geraghty, N. 2018 ‘Sonorous Memory in Jonathan Perel’s El Predio (2010) and Los Murales (2011)’, Memory Studies, 13(6), pp. 1256–83. Gaudreault, A. 2009 From Plato to Lumière. Narration and Monstration in Literature and Cinema, Toronto, University of Toronto Press. Gordon, A. 1997 Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press. Guerin, F., and Hallas, R. (eds) 2007 The Image and the Witness. Trauma, Memory and Visual Culture. London and New York, Wallflower Press. Jost, F. 1987 L’oeil-caméra: Entre film et roman, Lyon, PU. Landsberg, A. 2004 Prosthetic Memory. The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture, New York, Columbia University Press. Lancioni, T. 2019 ‘Montaggio. Per una sintassi dell’immagine’, Carte Semiotiche, 5, pp. 11–18. Marrone, G. 2010 L’invenzione del testo, Bari and Rome, Laterza. Minuz, A. 2010 La Shoah e la cultura visuale. Cinema, memoria, spazio pubblico, Rome, Bulzoni. Mirzoeff, N. 2002 Introduction to Visual Studies, London and New York, Routledge. Nichols, B. 1991 Representing Reality. Issues and Concepts in Documentary, Bloomington, Indiana University Press.

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Nichols, B. 2016 Speaking Truth with Films. Evidence, Ethics, Politics in Documentary, Oakland, University of California Press. Perel, J. and Feierstein, D. 2014 ‘La ESMA’, in S. Tonkonoff, A.B. Blanco and M.S. Sánchez (eds), Violencia y cultura: reflexiones contemporáneas sobre Argentina, Buenos Aires, CLACSO, pp. 109–35. Radstone, S. 2010 ‘Cinema and Memory’, in S. Radstone and B. Schwarz (eds), Memory: Histories, Theories, Debates, New York, Fordham University Press, pp. 320–33. Scorer, J. 2016 City in Common: Culture and Community in Buenos Aires, Albany, State University of New York Press. Spaziante, L. 2017 ‘The Logic of Sensorial Effectiveness. Amateur Videos, Media Witnessing, Global Crisis News’, Versus, 124, pp. 17–40. Violi, P. 2017 Landscapes of Memory. Trauma, Space, History, Bern and Oxford, Peter Lang. Young, J. 1992 ‘The Counter-Monument. Memory against Itself in Germany Today’, Critical Inquiry, 18(2), pp. 267–96.

About the Author Cristina Demaria is Full Professor of Semiotics at the Department of the Arts (DAR) of the University of Bologna, where she teaches Semiotics of Conflict, Gender Studies and Semiotics of Social Sciences. She has worked extensively on traumatic memories and their representation, on visual culture and documentary films, and on gender studies and post-feminism. Amongst her last publications is Post-Conflict Cultures. A Reader (PCCC Press, London, 2021).

9

Voices from the Past: Memories in a Digital Space The Case of AppRecuerdos in Santiago, Chile Patrizia Violi

Abstract In this paper I analyse an ‘imagined space’, based on an application – AppRecuerdos – that involves installations in the centre of Santiago, Chile. The application contains 129 recordings of short narratives in the first person, told by someone directly involved in episodes referring to the years of Pinochet’s dictatorship. Once it is downloaded on a smartphone, the app is automatically activated when the user passes a location where the narrative was originally recorded. In this way, the location is simultaneously the place of a past event from the dictatorship, the place of its enunciation and the place where it is listened to. AppRecuerdos is a political and memorial creation that re-signifies urban space, and is a testament to the capacity of digital devices for political engagement. Keywords: Chile; Pinochet Dictatorship; Digital Device; Enunciation; Imagined Space.

Memory, Space and Technology What happens when new technologies allow us to construct a virtual space in our imagination that is somehow suspended between the past and the present? When places literally start to speak their various embedded memories thanks to digital devices? When technology allows contrasting narratives from the past to reach our present, involving our senses and shaping our movements in the public space, forcing us to confront unexpected narratives?

Demaria, Cristina and Patrizia Violi (eds), Reading Memory Sites through Signs: Hiding into Landscape. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2023 doi: 10.5117/9789463722810_ch09

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These are among the many questions raised by AppRecuerdos in Santiago, a work that is at once an artistic installation, an anthropological experiment, an unusual archive of ‘minor memories’, both personal and anonymous, and a challenging proposal for a new way to imagine and explore an urban landscape. From a technical point of view, AppRecuerdos is an application that can be downloaded onto any smartphone without the need to connect to the internet. The app contains 129 recorded files – 33 songs and official speeches, and 96 short personal but anonymous narratives – that can be listened to once the app has been downloaded. Every narrative is recorded in a specific location in the centre of Santiago, and is automatically activated as the user passes by with the app turned on. All the recordings are represented on a map that shows the locations where they can be listened to. The recordings last a maximum of 15 minutes and can be listened to within a few metres from the source. Outside that area, the recording cannot be heard anymore; a new recording can be listened to when the user approaches a new transmitting position. In some areas, the recordings are very close to each other; in others, the distance is larger, and without the map, the user cannot know in advance when and where she will meet another recording. This implies that sometimes new recordings can be heard without the user having intentionally planned to listen to them, in a sort of a casual, unexpected meeting. All the recordings contain a short account of a more or less relevant episode related to the years of the Allende’s government and Pinochet dictatorship, narrated in the first person by someone directly involved in the event; different perspectives are presented, and users are exposed to a plurality of voices, interpretations and subjective positions with regard to historical events. The narratives were recorded in exactly the same place where the users listen to them, and refer back to an event that happened in that place. In this way, the same physical and material place becomes a multi-layered semiotic object where at least three spatial dimensions meet and overlap: the space of enunciation, the space of past events and the space of listening. Work on AppRecuerdos started in 2015 with a collaboration between the German theatre company Rimini Protokoll and the Colectivo Sonido y Ciudad, an interdisciplinary group of the Universidad de Chile. During a visit of Rimini Protokoll to Santiago in 2015, the Goethe Institute contacted Mauricio Barría, a professor at the University of Chile and the head of ‘Sonido y Ciudad’, to produce a project similar to the one Rimini Protokoll had previously created in Berlin’s Mitte district in 2012 called ‘50 Aktenkilometer’

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(‘50 kilometres of files’). This was a ‘walk-in’ radio play, based on the Stasi archive that had been finally made accessible to the public, with its records of actions, meetings, and conversations of thousands of people controlled by the Stasi. Rimini Protokoll developed a radio drama out of this material, in which former observers and the formerly observed engage with their files, delving into ‘assessment reports’, intercepted letters and photos never seen before. They are bemused, disgusted or they laugh, and wonder at the diary that the state was keeping on them in parallel to their own lives. (https://www. rimini-protokoll.de/website/en/project/50-aktenkilometer-1).

Although the two works share the same general inspiration and technical devices, there are relevant differences. The files recorded in AppRecuerdos do not come from a pre-existing archive but are all personal micro stories, told in the first person, and related to the period of Allende’s government and the two decades of military dictatorship in Chile that followed it (1973–1989).1 The narrators are all people who were subjected to different experiences in those terrible years of Chilean history, people sometimes selected by the staff, often after a casual encounter.2 All the stories refer to personal events that happened to the narrators between 1970 and 1989.

From History to Stories and Back What kind of stories does AppRecuerdos tell us? Who are the enunciators and to whom do they intend to speak? Before discussing this issue, I would like to consider the name AppRecuerdos itself. Spanish, like other Romance languages, has two different words to refer to the content of the act of remembering: memoria and recuerdo,3 1 A military coup d’état overthrew the democratically elected government of Salvator Allende in Chile on 11 September 1973. This created a ferocious repression with over 5000 victims, thousands of incarcerations and many people forced to leave the country. The military dictatorship led by General Augusto Pinochet lasted until 1989, when a referendum was won by the democratic forces of the opposition. The new democratic government of Raul Alfonsín was installed in 1990. 2 The working group that produced AppRecuerdos included: Mauricio Barría, a professor at the Department of Theatre of the University of Chile; Verónica Troncoso, a visual artist; Gonzalo Dalgalarrando, an actor; Valeska Navea, an art theorist; Javiera Bustamante, an anthropologist; and Marsida Lluca, a German journalist. 3 Italian has ricordi, French souvenirs, and Portuguese recordaçoes.

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whereas English has only one word: memory. Roughly speaking, recuerdos are more individual and personal, linked to a direct, idiosyncratic experience, less stabilised and less collectively shared than memorias. 4 The semantic fields of the two words in Spanish could be represented as follows: Recuerdos

Memorias

Individual Personal Occasional Private Idiosyncratic Always linked to a direct experience Embodied experience

General Collective Official Public Shared by a community Encyclopaedic Cultural experience

The choice of the word recuerdos instead of the more general memorias already suggests a first isotopy, which is to say a thread of semantic elements that will be repeated across the whole AppRecuerdos corpus: personal memories, directly connected to a very idiosyncratic and individual experience, where the embodied and affective dimensions play a major role. We encounter the autobiographic dimension of memory here, anchored in the first-person enunciation and in the life stories on which oral history is also based. However, memorias and recuerdos are far from being two dichotomised polarities: quite the opposite, they intertwine and overlap: individual recuerdos are soaked with historical memories, and collective memories are also based on personal recuerdos. The opposition between individual vs collective memories is no a radical contrast between private and official memories, but a dynamic and moving balance; it is precisely upon such dynamics between the two oppositions that AppRecuerdos is based. The same is true for a second opposition that parallels the first one, semiotically definable as factual vs semiotic knowledge. Eco (1976) proposed a distinction between two different kinds of knowledge, semiotic and factual.5 ‘Let us call semiotic a judgment which predicates of a given content (one or more cultural units) the semantic markers already attributed to it by a previous code; let us call factual a judgment which predicates of a given content 4 The distinction seems similar to the one suggested by Assmann between communicative and cultural memories, but this is not quite so, since recuerdos also activates a semantic component of a highly individual and not completely transmittable memory. 5 The distinction only appears to be close to the classical dichotomy between analytical and synthetic judgment; in reality, it is more dynamic and opened to cultural transformations.

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certain semantic markers that have never been attributed to it by a previous code’ (Eco 1976:159). So, for example, if the statement /every unmarried man is a bachelor/ is a semiotic judgment, /John is a bachelor/ is a factual one. If we apply such a distinction to memorial processes, we contrast a generalised, collective and shared memory with the more idiosyncratic and individual memories (recuerdos), the latter often marginal and based on a direct, embodied experience. For example, all Chileans who were alive and old enough during the 1970s certainly have a strong memory of Pinochet’s military coup d’état in 1973, but they might have had very different experiences of this crucial event, and therefore very different memories, or recuerdos, or factual rather than semiotic knowledge of it. Some people might have followed the attack on the Moneda, the government palace, on television – the event was broadcast live all over the world – while others might have run immediately to the place, witnessing the bombing, the shooting and the soldiers’ military trucks in person. What for the former was semiotic knowledge, and subsequently a collectively shared memory, was a very different embodied and individual experience for the latter. The ‘same event’ turns out to be subjectively quite different, depending on the modalities of our experience of it. Our spatial location and the point of view in which we are situated also affect our experience to give us a different emotional perspective. Indeed, the experience of the military coup was different for each individual or group of individuals, and thus its narratives can vary greatly, from very impersonal reports to highly individualised and idiosyncratic testimonies. What is interesting for our purposes, however, is that knowledge, and memories, do not fall into one or the other category according to some presumed natural properties of the elements, but on the basis of a cultural mechanism of selection and inclusion. In this way, something that is originally factual, individual and idiosyncratic can become part of a semiotic shared competence. This holds for judgments as well as for memories: a circular movement connects individual and collective memories. AppRecuerdos plays on this circularity between the idiosyncratic side of memories and the shared historical memory of the events, transforming one into the other. Individual stories become shared in the community, but at the same time, the collective dimension of memory permeates and shapes the individual one. AppRecuerdos could be seen as a transitional space – to use a psychoanalytic expression6 – between the public and the intimate, in Bustamante’s and 6 I am referring here to the well-known notion of a transitional object used by the psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott. See Winnicott 1971.

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Navea Castro’s words (2018). Indeed, there are no individual and intimate narratives that are not at the same time crossed by history. ‘History marks our lives’, as Mauricio Barría (2017:2) claims (la historia marca la vida). Our everyday experiences always take place within a more general historical and cultural frame, on which the criteria and hierarchy of memorability are established, regulating the dynamics of memory and oblivion. This is even more true of narratives of highly traumatic and relevant historical events. The stories told in AppRecuerdos are ‘small stories’ of everyday experiences; nevertheless, they are also part of the main history of a country, which they enlighten from a variety of heterogeneous perspectives and singular points of view. The potential tension existing between personal individual memories (inherently private) on the one hand and official historical memory (shared and public) on the other fades into a dynamic movement that could be represented in the form of a semiotic square:7 Private

Non-public

Public

Non-private

The semiotic square is a tool that allows us to represent the deep semantic structure of a given text or larger corpus (as in the present case) by putting the semantic categories underlining the text in oppositional relationships. The square is a static representation, but it also accounts for the narrative transformations that the structure can undergo. In our case, the arrows show how a private memory can turn into a public memory, while allowing the opposite move from the public to the private. The first movement goes from one term – for example, private – to its contradictory term, non-private; subsequently, once this semantic component is ‘narcotised’,8 its meaning can be transformed into public. Being inscribed in a public space and made accessible in the urban landscape to a larger audience, the private character of the individual memories in the app is suspended or narcotised, as shown in the direction 7 On the use of the semiotic square, see in this volume Marrone. 8 The term ‘narcotised’ was introduced by Umberto Eco (1979) to describe semantic components, or content elements in a text, but also in a given culture, that can become marginal and almost forgotten for a certain time, while remaining available for future reactivations.

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of the arrow from left to right. But at the same time, the public aspect of the app never entirely overcomes the private, intimate nature of the memories, which can always reappear in the foreground, in turn transforming the public into the private, as shown by the direction of the arrow from right to left (from public to non-public and then to private). In this way private and public – as well as individual and collective, personal and general, idiosyncratic and shared – are polarities coexisting in a non-stable and a fixed balance. The testimonies recorded in AppRecuerdos oscillate between these two polarities, never completely overlapping: personal stories are part of a more general common history, while at the same time they keep the irreducible singularity of their unique experiences. Close to forms of oral history, the testimonies of AppRecuerdos are quite different from the juridical testimonies in official archives, such as the Rettig and Valech reports.9 Between personal experiences and historical truth, they occupy an interstitial, transitional space, which does not correspond to any specific legal status, and whose truth escapes any strict criterion of verification. These testimonies are stories to be listened to for their narrative strength, for their engrossing structure, for their emotions and human details. Rather than historical documents, they are fragments of individual experiences, ‘units of lived human experience’, as Mauricio Barría put it. As such, these memories shed a different light on the very image of memory: not as a single unif ied narration resulting from a process of normalisation and generalisation of different experiences, but rather as a set of ‘experiential narratives’, in which the validation of a historical truth is less important than the emotional effect on the listener. ‘Experiential narratives’ have this emotional effect both for the addresser, who remembers a very intense event or moment of his or her life experience, and for the addressee, who is expected to become emotionally involved in the narration, participating in it. The performative aspect of the stories implies a form of emotional involvement on the part of the addressee, rather than a purely cognitive attitude of belief and truth evaluation. All the audio recordings of AppRecuerdos share the common feature of being ‘minor’ stories, referring to marginal events, unimportant if judged in the light of the official historical narrative of that period, but relevant in 9 The Rettig report (Informe Rettig) is the first report of the National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation (Informe de la Comisión Nacional de Verdad y Reconciliación), established in 1990 to investigate human rights abuses during the military dictatorship of Pinochet in Chile. A second report (the Informe Walech) was published in 2004.

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the larger picture of the concrete lives of real people. If we apply Lotman’s notion of semiosphere (Lotman 1984) to the set of narratives from the years of Allende’s experiment and from those of the military dictatorship, we can distinguish between a centre and a periphery. The centre is represented by the main dominant and official narrative that followed the dictatorship and initiated democracy in Chile, while the periphery is made up of idiosyncratic and individual experiences, a variety of marginal and non-standardised life stories. AppRecuerdos chooses to represent the periphery rather than the centre of the semiosphere, a very precise political, aesthetic and ethical choice. If it is true that history marks our lives, AppRecuerdos reminds us that the forms of such marks can be very different.

Different Voices, Different Audience, Different Stories The recordings, with only one exception, are generally very short, four or five minutes and anonymous: narrators do not introduce themselves, do not speak their names, do not qualify their stories or explain their position in detail, which is instead inferred by the listeners in the course of the short narrative. Unlike witnesses in authorised archives or official reports, these enunciators10 can be considered non-official voices, in the sense that they do not aim to provide any form of representativeness, or authority. They were casually chosen, by word of mouth or as friends and previous acquaintances of the authors, without any strict selection criterion. As Mauricio Barría explained to me,11 this choice involved the explicit distancing from and a reaction to the officialised memory of the trauma, a memory often administered by memory sites, museums or archives, which can hide vested interests in a certain form of past reconstruction and selection of witnesses. AppRecuerdos particularly aims to address the new generations, young people who were born after the military dictatorship of Pinochet and who know very little about the period.12 Despite their brevity, all the recordings exhibit a narrative structure and tell a story, although a minimal one, with a beginning, a central event and an ending. From a semiotic perspective, narrativity is the basic organisation 10 I am using the term enunciator to refer to the voice that speaks within the text in the first person, a form of the linguistic enunciation inscribed in the discourse, rather than the more generic addresser of the communicative process. 11 Personal communication. 12 See on this Barría (2017).

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of meaning, the form through which human beings give sense to their experience. To simplify, narrativity in its abstract form is structured in four steps: the first is what semiotics theory calls ‘manipulation’, not in the usual meaning of the term, but as the action of some human beings over other human beings in order to make them do something, that is, perform a given plan of action. In other words, manipulation is what motivates to perform a given action. In order to act, the subject generally has to acquire a certain ‘competence’, which enables her to accomplish her ‘performance’, the core action of any story. Finally, there can be a fourth stage, called ‘sanction’, in which the ‘performance’ is approved (positive sanction) or condemned (negative sanction). The same very abstract schema can obviously generate an unlimited number of stories that differ from one another and could be seen as too simplified and impoverished. However, it is useful in that it shows the deep structure underlying all forms of narratives, providing an ideal grid to analyse and compare different stories. Most of the narratives of AppRecuerdos describe small actions or minor events that constitute a particular vivid memory for the narrator. These events are not necessarily highly representative per se, or relevant in absolute form, rather they represent a particularity in the life experience of the subjects who chose them, and they often refer to everyday aspects of life, marginal details left out of the more official archives. A noticeable feature of AppRecuerdos is that is not centred, as post-dictatorship archives generally are, on victims and victimisation. Testimonies of torture were purposely avoided, precisely to make the archive focalised on different elements of experience. If there is direct reference to imprisonment, it is not the focus of the story. All stories have a fulcrum, a focus, or a punctum, to use the concept adopted by Barthes (1980) in relation to photographic images, a point of central climax that could be defined as a sort of a main attractor upon which the whole narration seems to converge. The punctum can be of various kinds: sometimes it is the performance of the main action; sometimes it coincides with its effects, or the feelings and emotions connected to it; sometimes it exists in a very small detail, as in the dramatic recording of Cercados. The story is recorded by Milena, a former militant of the MIR,13 and narrates her reencounter with Fernando, her former partner and the father of their daughter, after her return from exile. They meet at a book fair to buy a book for their child, who is in Cuba. She describes her feelings of nostalgia while 13 The MIR (Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria, Movement of Revolutionary Left) was a leftist movement active in Chile until the 1980s.

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they go to Fernando’s house together. There she listens to radio reports of arrests being made by the police and they run outside. A a police car starts following them, and the police shoots Fernando, who falls down. Milena remembers her last image of that moment, Fernando’s twill jacket already on the ground, the same jacket that will be found on his body years later, when the body is recovered. In this story, the punctum is the jacket, the last thing Milena saw of Fernando, and the last image in her story. Although all the recordings are related to the period of Allende’s government and the subsequent military dictatorship, not all of them are so tragic. Often they tell much lighter stories, sometimes stories that are almost funny despite the dramatic situation. This is the case with the story told by a man who was a young boy at the time of Pinochet’s coup. Active in left-wing opposition movements, he was stopped one day by the military while carrying flyers and other anti-regime propaganda materials. Very scared, he started talking with the soldiers, some of whom were very young boys playing football, and after a while, he ended up playing with them. The whole narrative in this case is characterised by a strong ironic isotopy, in which the speaker turns his heroic image of a militant into that of a football player, and the ‘enemies’ turn out to be young people having fun. For just a short moment, the dark world of the dictatorship seems to disappear, and a lighter, almost caricatural, picture emerges. Some of the narrators were just children at the time of Pinochet’s dictatorship, and their memories are broken images of a difficult childhood, where parents were often absent or in hiding. It was very difficult for these young children to form a coherent picture of what was going on, and their narratives often contain the details of an unusual life remembered, without the historical underlying reasons for it, which became clear only much later. There is another very interesting feature of AppRecuerdos: its narratives give voice not only to the left-wing opposition to Pinochet’s regime, but also to people who were supporters of it. Although they represent a minority, they are not absent from the overall picture that the app presents; moreover, their stories can be very engrossing and thought-provoking. A good example is the recording of a woman who does not voice her political position at the beginning of her story but rather explains the very difficult situation in which many people found themselves during Allende’s period. At that time, due to United States’ boycott and the truckdrivers’ strike stirred up by the right, it was very difficult to find essential goods, such as flour and milk. The woman is a mother of two young children and a new-born, and she cannot find food to feed them, since stores and supermarkets are empty. During most of the recording it is difficult for the listener to identify her political

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position with certainty: the story could very well have ended with a criticism of the boycott of Allende’s government, since that boycott played a major role in the economic crisis of the period. The listener cannot but empathise with this young woman’s difficulties, the impossibility to find food for her children, her lack of money and help. Only at the end of her narrative does she say that she took part in the demonstration against Allende, the so-called ‘demonstration of empty pots’, where a large number of women, mainly from higher social classes, took to the streets to protest against Allende’s government. At least for me, this ending came as a surprise, since I implicitly assumed, without even realising it, that the woman held left-wing views. It could be interesting to speculate a bit more on this assumption, which is probably due to the general left-wing orientation of AppRecuerdos, which tends to overdetermine our reading of the recordings. If it were not for the final declaration, this text could have remained quite open as far as its interpretation was concerned. When the listener finally understands the young woman’s political position, a certain empathy for her, if not identification with her problems, has already been activated and produces a shift in the understanding of the overall episode, and a more inclusive view of all the different perspectives of that historical period. If AppRecuerdos resembles a mosaic, not all its tiles combine to reflect a uniformed image; rather, they suggest a multiplicity of different perspectives and points of view. In this way, AppRecuerdos challenges the existence of a collective memory as a unitary whole, problematising the very possibility of one singular and common memory. The so-called ‘collective memory’ turns out to be a plurality of many different and even opposed memories, a multiplicity of often contradictory fragments. We can view AppRecuerdos as a work based on a unitary project – endowed with a unitary narrative programme and a single collective addresser, that is, the group of people who devised and carried it out. It does not, however, provide a unitary narrative; the variety of the voices of individual narrators and their points of view contributes to a deeper and more faceted understanding of the complexity of a tragic historical period. AppRecuerdos does not give us the memory of Chilean dictatorship but rather multi-perspectival memories of a highly conflictual time, where opposing memories coexist as antagonistic narratives.

The Voice of Places Perhaps the most important and innovative aspect of AppRecuerdos is its unusual inscription of its fragmented archive onto space. As mentioned

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before, each story was recorded in a specific place in Santiago, the location where the event reported in the story took place. A first overlap is thus established between the place of the past event and the place of the recorded narration. A third space collapses into the other two – the place of the listener. While listening to the app, users are precisely in the same place where events happened and where their narration was recorded. The intertwining of three different function-places is established in one and the same physical space. I am using the expression function-places to allude to the different semiotic functionalities that the same physical space might cover. Space, taken in itself, could be looked at as just a physical entity, but as soon as it is associated with a given content, it acquires another dimension, and becomes a semiotic entity. In other words, the same portion of space, while remaining the same from the point of view of its materiality, changes its semiotic value when it is correlated with different contents. The semiotic function composed by the conjunction of an expression and content changes when one of the two elements is modified: an anonymous apartment does not have the same content, and is not the same semiotic entity it was before, when used as a clandestine centre of torture and imprisonment – as it often happened in Chile and in other Latin American countries during the period of military dictatorship – even if nothing has changed in the physical structure of the place. In the case of AppRecuerdos, what appears to be the ‘same’ physical space turns out to refer to three different ideal places, with different meanings, values, emotions and temporalities. The three function-places – place of the past event, place of the recording, place of the listening – while being the same expanse of material space, imply different semantic and pragmatic dimensions: the memory of the past during the dictatorship, with the frequently painful emotions connected to it; the performative recall of the past, which implies a reacquisition and elaboration of that past; and the choice to communicate and share it with a new audience, a form of social and political engagement with the past as well as a pedagogical task. Three different actions intertwine in this way: the act of remembering a traumatic past, the act of narrating it and the act of transmitting and communicating its meaning to people who do not know and did not experience it. Each of these different actions is linked to a different temporal plan establishing a coexistence between three different time references: – the time of the past events, the time that the recordings refer to, the period between 1970 and 1990; – the time in which the story was effectively narrated, which coincides with the moment of the recording of the app in 2015;

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– the time in which the story is listened to, which is obviously variable. Of these three temporal references, only the first has a real semiotic status, since it refers back to a time which is inscribed in the textual structure of the stories and their raison d’être, which is to document this historical period precisely. Considering that AppRecuerdos was produced in 2015, the time of the narrated events is located in a distant temporal dimension from that moment: it is the past of Allende’s government and Pinochet’s era, which ended in the late 1980s. This time has a real semiotic status since it has a textual dimension, being the time of the narrated stories. The other two times belong, although in different ways, to an extratextual dimension without any semiotic relevance. The time of listening is just the open and ongoing present, the moment in which the recording will be heard, a time that keeps moving, following the endless flow of the present. We could think of it as an undetermined present, such as it is in any kind of text: it is the time of the effective reception – the moment a written text is read or the time a visual text is viewed. In principle, this time is not relevant, although, as we will see, things are a bit more complex in our case. Generally, this time of the reception is not taken into account because it does not affect the semiotic functioning of a text, given its extra-textual nature. This is the intuition at the base of Umberto Eco’s notion of the ‘Model Reader’.14 Eco (1979) distinguishes between the abstract concept of the Model Reader and the empirical readers, the real people who read the text. The Model Reader is a textual strategy embedded in any given text, a sort of implicit ‘set of instructions’ for its correct interpretation, and, as such, it is independent of the effective acts of reading that may or may not follow the interpretation foreseen by the author. This distinction can be easily extended to any kind of text; visual, audio or audio-visual. Since the Model Reader is a textual strategy, the question of the ‘real’ reading – or listening – time cannot be posed, since it is totally irrelevant. For similar reasons the time of the recording of AppRecuerdos is not semiotically relevant and can even be totally unknown to the user-listener: it is not necessary to know that the recording was actually done in 2015 to fully understand its meaning. Obviously, the production time of a text might be a central concern from other points of view, such as the perspective of a literary historian, or to reconstruct the cultural background of a given time, but it does not directly affect the semiotic structure of a text. We generally 14 See Mario Panico infra.

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do not worry too much about exactly when and where a given text was produced; it is enough, for a general understanding, to know approximately when an author lived or where. It does not affect the overall interpretation of the text to remember, for example, when exactly Joyce wrote ‘Ulysses’ or if he was living in Dublin at the time. A parallelism between space and time is established here: the three temporal dimensions described above correspond to three virtual spaces – the space of the past event, the space of the recording and the space of listening. They can also be correlated with the three different dimensions inherent in the analysis of all texts: enunciated discourse (from now on simply discourse), enunciation15 and reception. The two concepts of discourse and enunciation in particular are relevant here.16 With discourse (énoncé in French) we mean the text produced by an act of enunciation; in our case, for example, the various narratives that can be listened to in the app. As we just saw, these refer to the past time of the dictatorship and are related to the place where the app can be listened to. Each discourse is the product of an act of enunciation that leaves some traces in the text itself, for example, in the use of pronouns (first vs third person), or in the temporal structure, in the choice to narrate a story in the present tense or in the past, and so on. It is important to remember that enunciation is a semiotic dimension of any text that is inscribed in its discourse, and not the material production of a text, which could be the utterance of a sentence, the writing of a text or the technical recording of a story in our case. According to Émile Benveniste (1970), who first elaborated this notion, enunciation in natural language is the formal apparatus that allows the abstract system of the langue to become an act of parole. Such a notion, however, is not limited to linguistic productions: in all texts, whether they are a simple sentence, a novel, a scientific article, a film, an audio-visual product, an image or an audio text as in the case of AppRecuerdos, traces of the enunciation process are left in the text itself. What is most noticeable in the enunciation process in AppRecuerdos is the use of a first-person narration, which makes communication more personal, direct and engrossing: all narrators tell stories about themselves 15 On the use of enunciation, see also Sozzi and Mazzucchelli in the present volume. 16 Reception in itself is only interesting when it is related to the interpretative processes. I will not deal here in detail with interpretation; as has already been mentioned, from a semiotic perspective, interpretation should not be taken as the singular individual act, with all the empirical variables that such an individual process might imply. Rather, it refers to the more abstract interpretative function virtually embedded in any text, through the notion of the Model Reader.

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and do so by using the ‘I – You’ pronominal configuration, which is the prototypical form of the dialogical, face-to-face interaction. The addressee is directly appealed to in the very formal structure of linguistic enunciation with a strong effect of subjectivising meaning. Although the voices are all different, they speak of their direct experience and involvement in the first person, recounting different aspects of a memory, which is at the same time individual and communal. In a way, we could say that AppRecuerdos, taken as a global text, exhibits a distinct form of enunciation – the sum of the many different voices and perspectives that can be found in that period of Chilean history. Since each voice keeps its individual colour and tonality, it would be inappropriate to speak in this case of a ‘collective enunciation’; I would rather call it a choral or polyphonic enunciation, where each voice combines its singularity with other voices, as happens in a choir.17 The result is an unusual combination of different registers; if the app, taken as a whole, plays the role of the main addresser in the form of a shared common archive, each recording at the same time represents a single addresser, expressing his or her individual experience.

This is the Place The most original feature of AppRecuerdos is undoubtedly the complex system of spatial rooting, so that each story is narrated, and listened to, in the very same place where it happened in fact, creating an overlapping between the place of the event, the place of the enunciation and the place of listening. The addresser, who is present only in his or her recorded voice, speaks in the same physical space where the addressee actually is – although not at the same time – and often refers to that place. The addressee-listener is physically present in the place, thus perceiving not only the recorded voice of the app, but all of the surrounding environment. I will return later to this unique embodied involvement on the part of the users. Another feature to be considered is that the spatial coincidence just described is responsible for a specific indexical component of the overall meaning of the work. The notion of indexicality, derived from Charles Sanders Peirce,18 is what characterises some particular places of memory 17 A very similar idea is developed in Sozzi’s contribution in this volume. 18 The American philosopher and semiotician Charles Sanders Peirce distinguishes between three different modalities of semiotic signif ication: index, icon, symbol. It is important to emphasise that these are not signs but different ways to signify that all signs maintain.

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that I have called ‘sites of trauma’ (Violi 2012 and 2017) – places which were previously theatres of traumatic events, such as mass murder, imprisonment or extermination and that have been transformed into memorials or museums. Such a transformation activates a particular meaning effect that is precisely connected to the indexicality of the place and its semiotic functioning. The traces of the former use of these places remain within the transformed site of memory, with a strong emotional component and a specific ‘effect of authenticity’.19 Obviously, the case of AppRecuerdos is different, since there is no material site of memory, but the link with the place of the past event produces an analogous indexical meaning, with its distinct effect of authenticity, duplicated here by the co-presence in the very same place of speaker and hearer. Indeed, it is very common to encounter direct references to the space of enunciation in the narratives of the app through deictic spatial expressions such as here, in this place, in front of, behind it, and others, which inscribe the past event (the object of the story) into the actual place of the enunciation. Moreover, the addressee is often directly involved in the discourse: in sentences such as ‘here you can see a small square where we used to go …’ ‘I was running in the street in front of you’, ‘behind the building you can see to your right …’, the first-person enunciator directly addresses a ‘you’ who becomes part of the spatial structure of the discourse. A sort of short-circuit is therefore established through space between the two actors of the communicative act: sharing the same space, being located in the very same place of the – often very dramatic – past event produces an emotional participation in the narrative, a particular ‘effect of presentification’. As mentioned before, these narratives are not just testimonies; they are more interactive: they co-construct an emotional and affective space where both addresser and addressee meet, mixing real with virtual presence, through the sharing of place. The addressee not only comes to ‘know’ some particular events of the past but also experiences a particular involvement in the recount she is listening to through its physical and material positioning in space. A performative effect is thus constitutive of the efficacy of AppRecuerdos, an effect that is particularly powerful since it not only exploits the emotional power of the story but also brings into play the materiality of the indexical 19 I prefer to speak of effect of authenticity, rather than authenticity tout court, because trauma sites do not need to be completely authentic in order to produce this kind of meaning effect. Actually, trauma sites are almost always partly, or sometimes totally, changed from their original use, so it would be misleading to speak of complete authenticity. From our point of view, however, this is not an issue, since a semiotic analysis is not concerned with what things ‘really’ are but with what they mean, and how they mean it.

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component of meaning: being in the very same place and seeing the same environment which was the theatre of the past event produce a sort of scenic and theatrical performance. It does not matter that the ‘theatre’ in this case is somewhat virtual, since the performing actor does not really appear: the absent body is present through its voice, which is there, with its own phonic materiality, the voice of a woman, a man, a young person or an elderly witness. Voices and memories are what AppRecuerdos is made of: memories constitute the content of the ideal semiotic system of the work, and voices are the expression. Memories are reconstructed through space: what is shared, reconstructed and communicated are spatialised memories embedded in space, which is at the same time public and private, past and present: on the one hand marked by personal memories but on the other performed in the urban space of the city, evoking the past time of memories but being actualised in the present of the listening. The memories of the app are localised in some particular urban place – a building, a street, a park –, marginal places of everyday life, very different from the off icial sites of institutionalised and public memory, such as memory museums or memorials. The choice of public but marginal places parallels the marginality of the memories recalled, minor memories scattered in the urban landscape. These memory processes are rarely present in the traditional forms of memorialisation or in the official narrative of the post-dictatorship. Such places, as observed by Bustamante and Castro (2018: 112 my translation), ‘subvert traditional meanings and open a door to think and work memory from an unusual, delocalised and trans-disciplinary perspective.’ Lugares perdidos, lugares olvidados, (‘lost places, forgotten places’) as the authors call them, are lost and forgotten both because they are marginal, everyday places and because of the effects of time, which transforms and modifies the urban landscape. Thirty or forty years, or more, may have passed between the time of the event recalled and the recording of its narration, and most of the places have deeply changed appearance or purpose, while some might not even exist anymore. All changes in space produce a change in meaning, a resemantisation of the environment. What is unusual in our case is that these transformations are directly thematised inside the discourse of the app, contributing in an important way to the effect of presentification that has already been mentioned. Quite often, the narrator refers directly to the surrounding space, describing the transformations that have intervened since the time of

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the event or the focus of the narrative: for example, the place where the public prison was located during Pinochet’s dictatorship turned out to be a bank at the time of the recording. In one of the texts, the narrator mentions that a group of prisoners escaped from this prison through a tunnel, saying that ‘now’ it is impossible to identify which of the present buildings corresponds to the old prison. In this case, the ‘now’ is the time of the recording of the app (which is obviously different from the ‘now’ of listening). Evoking the differences that have occurred in the place, the narrator invites the user to imagine its previous appearance: ‘we are now on the side which was the back of the prison …’; ‘now you cannot see the street as it was at that time …’. In other sentences, a strong effect of presence is produced by the frequency of deictic expressions referring both to the two actors of the communication and to the ‘here’ and ‘now’ of the situation of enunciation. As far as personal pronouns are concerned, if the ‘you’ always unambiguously refers to the addressee, the ‘we’ can be more ambiguous, shifting between an inclusive ‘we’ in which addresser and addressee are co-present – sharing the same space although not the same time – and an exclusive one, referring to a plural subject present only in the story. It must also be noted that if the ‘here’ of addresser and addressee is the same – that is, the location where the app can be heard, which coincides with the recording location – the ‘now’ is obviously different, since the times of recording and listening do not coincide. The difference in time might correspond to changes in the environment that happened during the interval, and the landscape at the time of the recording might be different from what can actually be seen at the moment of listening. In such a case the ‘now’ will remain, so to speak, ‘suspended’ in an indefinite present, which cannot possibly be precisely situated. Generally, the real times and spaces of the production and reception of a text are not relevant for its interpretation and do not play a role in the dynamics of discourse enunciation; in our case, on the contrary, they play a very central role, being inscribed as such into discourse. This peculiarity in the enunciation system of AppRecuerdos depends on the extra textual dimension of being in the same place at different times. Space acquires an unusual multi-layered depth, being simultaneously the real space of the present time of the actual reception of the app, and the virtual space of the past. Again, we can think of a transitional space shifting from present to past and back; memories move along such spaces, becoming inscribed into them as imaginary maps evoked by voices and narratives.

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Moving Bodies Through Space and Time Space is not just an abstract and static entity; it is something to move in, to cross, to walk in and traverse. Space is, first of all, movement. According to Michel de Certeau (1984 [1980]) there are two ways to look at space: on the one hand, as an abstract and geometrical dimension; on the other, as an anthropological practice, a living reality inhabited by people who walk in it.20 A similar double nature can be found in AppRecuerdos: the map with all the locations where the recordings can be listen to represents the structure of the app, which is a way of marking the territory by ‘points of memory’. Each dot corresponds to a recorded file, and the set of all the recordings constitutes the global text of the AppRecuerdos or, in other words, the virtual possibilities of the app. This is not, however, the installation of AppRecuerdos: users do not have access to the complete set of all recordings as these are not available outside the context of their locations and can only be listened to one by one. More importantly, the files are not texts to be read, but recordings to be listened to in the specific places where they were recorded. The localisation of the recordings in given places is the crucial point here: AppRecuerdos is a set of recordings scattered across a map that has to be travelled by the users, moving from point to point in different ways that are not pre-established. AppRecuerdos is a path to be traversed by going from the map to the walked territory, a territory lived in through movement, with all the possible variations that the action of moving in space implies. From a semiotic perspective, the passage from the map to the territory could be described in terms of different modes of semiotic existence: from the virtual text of all the recordings, to the actualised map, to the realised path of each user. The form, the order and the sequence of this path are not pre-determined. Each user will construct her own path, different from any other with respect to the number of recordings and the order in which they will be heard. Each person has a different user experience, depending not only on the length and direction of the path, but also on the speed of movement. The user can stay still while listening to a whole story from beginning to end, or move from one place to another; sometimes she may even unintentionally encounter a new location in the app while casually walking close by. 20 Michel de Certeau called the abstract and impersonal dimension lieux (places), and the lived-in dimension espace (space). While I am not following this terminology here, I am referring to the distinction he made. For a more detailed discussion of de Certeau’s position, see Daniele Salerno’s article in this volume.

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The movement too can vary: the experience will be different whether the user is walking or cycling, riding a car or a public bus. Moving around in a taxi, as I have done for example, creates a very particular experience of a sort of ‘patchwork’ of different stories, narratives merging into one another before they can end naturally, male voices vanishing into female ones without interruption. AppRecuerdos is a variable, almost living user experience that changes according to the different ways it is used and walked. To use one of de Certeau’s expressions, we could say that there are many different pedestrian enunciations of the same abstract spatial system. A pedestrian enunciation is the individual way in which each person goes through space, giving meaning to it, analogous to a verbal enunciation being the individual articulation of the general linguistic system. No two people have exactly the same exposure to AppRecuerdos, and there is no ‘standard’ way to use it. Each user will have her own particular experience of the pp, combining a given number of recordings in different ways, depending on the paths travelled. Given the total of 129 recordings and corresponding places, no one is likely to listen to all of them at once, so each ‘visit’ will touch only a limited number in an indefinite set of possible combinations. The potential system of AppRecuerdos can produce an almost unlimited number of actual realisations, similar, in this aspect, to the functioning of the linguistic system. As Ferdinand de Saussure (1916) has shown, the langue – that is, the abstract and virtual system – can generate an unlimited combination of sentences (the level of parole in Saussure’s terminology). A similar articulation can be found both in language and in AppRecuerdos, based on two levels of structuring: system and process. While the system refers to the set of all possible options, the process is responsible for combining some selected elements into a sequence. In language, the sequence will be a meaningful string of words, that is, a sentence produced by a speaker; in AppRecuerdos, it will be the actual path taken by a user. There is, however, an important difference between the two systems: while in language we have a set of rules of different kinds – syntactic, semantic, pragmatic – that have to be followed in order to produce an acceptable combination (which is to say a meaningful sentence or a meaningful text), AppRecuerdos does not have any rule or fixed order to combine its narratives. All depends on the different path chosen by the user, and there is no pre-established hierarchy. Not only can the number of stories vary, but also, more importantly, there is no pre-given order in which the sequence is listened to. I evoked the image of a mosaic above, but if we look

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at the dynamic multiplicity and variability of its directions, it is in fact a kaleidoscope, where the single parts are in continuous changing movement. AppRecuerdos is an installation with a variable palimpsest; its structure is similar to a rhizome that can be traversed in infinite ways without any linear sequence. But since the order of elements affects the global sense of any text, each user may end up reconstructing an overall meaning of the app that is quite different from the one reconstructed by other users. It is therefore difficult to foresee a Model User for AppRecuerdos to correspond to Model ReaderEco’s Model Reader mentioned above: the modality of the use of the app, its timing and length make it impossible to sketch a standardised interpretation. Rather than a single Model User inscribed in the text, each empirical user will become her own model.

The Embodied User There is another factor that collapses the Model User into the empirical user, at least partially, and this is the living materiality of the body. If AppRecuerdos is an experience that can only exist through movement in space, its user cannot be anything other than an embodied user, a subject with a body that walks, sees and hears; a body with sensorial impressions, emotional reactions and feelings. All senses are activated in the embodied experience of the app, a complex polysensorial experience that is not limited purely to hearing a voice. Hearing is certainly the first sense involved, since the app is based on a voice that comes from the past and reaches our present with the materiality of its tone, rhythm, inflexion, accent and all the individual features that mark each human voice as unique. Voice is the first medium of human language, but, at the same time, it is rooted in our physical materiality, and can be considered an organ of our body. Far from being just an abstract form of communication, oral discourse carries more than pure informational content; its phonic sonority is an emotional device, charged with affects, feelings and sensations, capable not only of re-signifying space, but also of re-pathemising it. And it is not only a voice which is heard in the app: testimonies were recorded exactly in the same place where they will be listened to, and this has created a double sound effect. In the background of the recording, we can hear a range of sounds: voices, cars and the noises that were part of the ‘sound landscape’ (Battistini 2020) of the time of the recording. These sounds of the past overlap with what users hear in the real world during the actual

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time of listening. Hearing the background sounds of the recording obliges them to become aware of a double sound landscape: the one recorded in the app and the one of the time that they listen. The two sound landscapes might be similar or different depending on circumstances: a discrepancy in the time of day or a difference in the surrounding space, for example, when what was then a very quiet street might have become noisy and busy, and so on. The coexistence of the two sound environments again superimposes past and present, producing another effect of that temporal depth that characterises the overall user experience. Hearing voices literally makes visible what is not there and not visible anymore, producing a synesthetic transition from one sense to another, from hearing to seeing. The visual component plays an important role in the app. While listening, users look around the surrounding space, which is almost always evoked explicitly in the recorded narrations. As I have already observed, however, this space may not be the same as what the users see; thus, it is not only vision that is activated, but the power of imagination as well: through the description of what the place was, users are asked to imagine the past and confront it with the present reality of what they see. Imagination becomes a central component of the sensory experience of AppRecuerdos, one that is sometimes even more powerful than the images present in front of our eyes.

Conclusion Memory is not only a matter of time; it is first and foremost a matter of space: this is the first lesson that AppRecuerdos teaches us. We know that memory is always inscribed into space: all places bear countless traces and remnants of the past; their very materiality is soaked in historical memories. However, memories are often concealed in space, hidden by too many other different signs, voices or inscriptions. AppRecuerdos brings at least some of them to light, while simultaneously achieving something more relevant. AppRecuerdos is a multi-faceted object: it is a walk-through historical archive and a collection of individual life experiences, an artistic work and a particular theatre performance, an ethnographic inquiry and an anthropological work of research, a form of oral history and a new ‘sonic and invisible museum’ (Bustamante and Castro 2018: 114). As it recovers a traumatic past experience, AppRecuerdos can also be seen as a form of processing, a mourning process not only for the people who took active part in its production, but also for the larger community of users.

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Apart from this, AppRecuerdos is primarily a political practice, a way to invest a public space with a political sense, inscribing the dramatic memories that are hidden under its surface into the urban landscape. AppRecuerdos is, literally, a talking space that does not give us History, but a multiplicity of different stories that inhabit it, without a hierarchy or a prefixed meaning. Each user can traverse the public space of the app constructing a different path, through the multi-directionality of its different memories. There is not one single past or one shared memory; instead, there is an open and rewritable set of contrasting and competing personal memories and experiences. AppRecuerdos is a political and memorial practice that rewrites and forces a new gaze onto urban space, intertwining private and public, personal and political, experience and history; it is a form of social and political engagement with the past as well as a pedagogical endeavour. New technologies play a special role in this process, allowing a temporal short-circuit between past and present, presence and absence. This is may be the most productive and fruitful second lesson of AppRecuerdos, a lesson to be remembered and practiced in our future.

Works Cited Barría, M. 2017 ‘Recuerdos en transito (App/Recuerdos). La recuperación politica de la experiencia’, in L. Proaño-Gómez and L. Verzero (eds), Perspectivas políticas de la escena latinoamericana, Buenos Aires and Los Angeles, Argus-a, pp.177–97. Barthes, R. 1980 La chambre claire. Note sur la photographie, Paris, Gallimard Seuil. Battistini, E. 2020 ‘Tra Soundscape Studies e semiotica: dall’effetto sonoro agli effetti di senso dell’ambiente sonoro’, E/C, XIV(28), pp. 1–19. Benveniste, É. 1970 ‘L’appareil formel de l’énonciation’, Langages, 5(17), pp. 12–18. Bustamante, J. D., Castro, Valeska P. N. 2018 ‘Entre lo público y lo íntimo. El lugar del proyecto AppRecuerdos en las propuestas de memoria colectiva – Chile’, Antipoda. Revista de antropología y arquelogía, 33, pp. 105–23. de Certeau, M. 1984 [1980] The Practice of Everyday Life, Berkeley, University of California Press. Eco, U. 1976 A Theory of Semiotics, Bloomington and London, Indiana University Press. Eco, U. 1979 The Role of the Reader. Exploration in the Semiotics of Texts, Bloomington and London, Indiana University Press. Lotman, J. 2005 [1984] ‘On the Semiosphere’, Sign System Studies, 33(1), pp. 205–29. Saussure de, F. 1916 Cours de linguistique générale, Paris, Payot.

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Violi, P. 2012 ‘Trauma Site Museums and Politics of Memory. Tuol Sleng, Villa Grimaldi and the Bologna Ustica Museum’, Theory, Culture & Society, 29 (1), pp. 36–75. Violi, P. 2017 Landscapes of Memory. Trauma, Space, History, Bern and Oxford, Peter Lang. Winnicott, D. 1971 Playing and Reality, London, Tavistock Publications.

About the Author Patrizia Violi is an Alma Mater Professor at the University of Bologna and the founder of TraMe – Centre for the Semiotic Study of Memory at the same university. She was director of the Centro Internazionale di Studi Umberto Eco and principal investigator of various European-funded projects on trauma and urban space. She has published internationally on the relationship between trauma and memory, with a specific focus on Chile, Argentina and Colombia. Her latest book is Landscapes of Memory. Trauma, Space, History (Peter Lang, 2017).

10 500,000 Dirhams in Scandinavia, from Mobile Silver to Land Rent A Semiotic Analysis Manar Hammad

Abstract The absence of written chronicles in Scandinavia during the period in which Islamic silver dirhams were brought from afar and hoarded in pits, necessitates the interpretation of non-verbal data (caches, emission dates of coins, cache distribution in space) and the restitution of actions (maritime and river travel, economic exchange) that produced such results. The interpretation process also needs the consideration of other caches containing precious objects and written sources from the East and the West. The data give us back the of a Scandinavian society in transformation. This chapter presents this study in three phases: physical space (from the Baltic to Baghdad and Tashkent), economic space (predation and/or exchange) and social space (differentiation of society according to collective actors defined by action). Keywords: Scandinavia; Silver; Dirhams; Dar al-Islam; Frankish Kingdoms; Expeditionary Society.

Archaeological Facts Worthy of Attention During my study of Umayyad epigraphic coins (Hammad 2018), I was stunned by the discovery that Scandinavian museums kept more silver dirhams, minted in Dar al-Islam, in their vaults than all the countries that minted them in historical times. There are almost five hundred thousand such coins. They were dug out of agricultural lands in the nineteenth century, when technical progress produced ploughshares that could reach new depths. More

Demaria, Cristina and Patrizia Violi (eds), Reading Memory Sites through Signs: Hiding into Landscape. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2023 doi: 10.5117/9789463722810_ch10

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Figure 10.1 Dirhams found in the hoard of Stora Velinge (Gotland Island, Sweden), with a silver arm ring (after Stenberger 1947)

recent discoveries, made possible by metal detectors, often reveal hoards shattered by the accidental passage of ploughs. The hoard of Stora Velinge, dug up in 1936 on the island of Gotland (Sweden), contained 2,674 dirhams and a silver arm ring (Figure 10.1), with a total weight of eight kilograms; the Spillings hoard (found in 1999) contained 67 kilograms of silver made up of 14,200 dirhams and various ingots and jewellery. 350 dirham hoards have been recorded on Gotland alone, an island located in the Baltic Sea 80 kilometres off the Swedish coast. The coins were first credited to have been brought there by the famed Viking plunderers. But the continued discovery of dirham hoards scattered around the Baltic Sea, along the rivers flowing north into Baltic, or along rivers flowing south into the Black and Caspian Seas, needed another interpretation, that is, the existence, between the eighth and eleventh centuries, of regular commercial routes between the shores of the Baltic and Baghdad, Samarqand and Al-Shash (Tashkent). These facts call for an explanation. The presence of such quantities of coins far from their home raises questions, in particular about the mechanisms and the actors responsible for the transfer and the hoarding. For a semiotician of space, the enquiry begins with two different questions. First, if the deposition in the ground conceals the coins, the sheer number of hoards and their distribution discredits any interpretation that focuses on the avarice (Greimas and Fontanille 1991) of a hoarding subject, while the archaeological context disproves the interpretation that they represent funerary practices (the hoards are not placed in or near graves). Secondly, how is it possible to interpret the concentration of these coins in Scandinavia and their distance

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from their original sources? Some coins come from the Near East (Syria, Iraq), others from North Africa, others again from Transoxiana.

Methodological Questions The search for answers enlarged the domain of my spatial semiotics investigation: research began with small places, then moved to more extensive spaces: university meeting rooms (Hammad 1977), tea ceremony pavilions (Hammad 1987), monastery cells and rooms (Hammad 1989), temples and sanctuaries (Hammad 1988), cities (Hammad 2010), urban territory (Hammad 2014), paths or processes (Hammad 2008). With the Scandinavian dirhams, the question extends to the scale of a continent. Two questions are raised, at different scales. They involve spatial configurations that have one thing only in common: hoarded coins. The first has a condensed punctual aspect: dirhams have been gathered in a given place and hidden away from view. Their vertical recess in the ground is not irrelevant. The second has a scattered areolar aspect: hoards are dispersed around the Baltic Sea and down to the Black and Caspian Seas. These questions are treated by archaeologists and numismatists using the methods of their discipline. Their interpretations are akin to pre-semiotic analyses, while a methodological semiotic approach may offer an advantage. For this, I have inserted the figures under analysis in syntactic chains where meaning becomes explicit. Analysis details paths or processes, a third variety of spatial configuration (Hammad 2008) followed by the coins. These are linear discontinuous figures, that bridge the gap between punctual hoards and areolar scatters. Since 1972, I have promoted a variant of spatial semiotics (Hammad 1979, 1983, 2013) based upon the axiom of integration of human actors interacting with the built environment, objects and space of movement, in order to interpret the syncretic phenomenon that traditional approaches fragment into domains of different expressions, where isolated architecture appears devoid of meaning. This axiom is needed more than ever for the corpus of this research. I propose to add to it here the practical consequence of a result obtained a couple of times, that is, the formal syntactic symmetry of physical space and social space, both imbricated in meaningful interactions (Hammad 1989, 2008, 2017). I shall start with the analysis of physical space, where the dirham hoards are found, in order to make its semantic presuppositions explicit. Subsequently, I shall examine the social space of the Scandinavian subjects presupposed by the dirhams, in order to make explicit meaning

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effects related to deep values and transformations operating in society. Between physical space and social space, I shall consider the economic space where objects circulated between subjects. The distinction of three spaces (physical, economic, social) has not been devised to break the unity of the syncretic global space, which remains the ultimate object of my analysis, but to highlight three perspectives on the same facts, in order to organise meaning for the totality. Things are not limited to this. Dirhams that were in circulation, were gathered then hoarded, pertain to the economic isotopy: these are high-value coins, devised to pay taxes and/or to facilitate mercantile exchange. The question raised is not limited to its spatial dimension: it implies economic isotopy. This constitutes another difficulty, one that is new for the discipline, because semiotics has not yet ventured into the domain of economics. Last but not least, there is a methodological difficulty: the facts that are studied are spread out over longue durée (Braudel 1979) (more than three centuries), with slow transformations that are continuous or discrete, while ordinary narratives deal with quick and short transformations. The results that will be obtained are no more than interpretive hypotheses that must be verified, that is, checked whether they are true or false. We can therefore consider them as scientific hypotheses in the sense defined by Karl Popper. In the current initial phase, the proposed mechanisms are plausible, while the validation pertains to another, later, phase. We may also consider a future amelioration of these hypotheses. If the semiotic approach is able to provide an answer that raises interest within archaeological, historical and numismatic circles, it will have proved its efficiency, and necessarily, its utility in the role of ancillary discipline.

The Physical Space: Around the Actant Object The Valued Object: Dirhams or Silver Metal? Dirham hoards contain almost no gold. Considering that ninety per cent of the coins that reached Scandinavia between 800 and 975 are Islamic, and that Dar al-Islam issued gold dinars, silver dirhams and copper fals, we may conclude that those who managed these hoards had a clear preference for white metal. The numerical dominance of dirhams, easily recognisable by their Kuf ic epigraphy even for somebody who does not read Arabic, proves the existence of a fiduciary relationship with objects coming from Dar al-Islam. The conservation of large quantities of intact

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coins, not melted down, while the minting date1 is well before the date of hoarding (tpq = terminus post quem, date of the last coins included in the hoard) means that these coins were treasured for themselves, in their minted form. This conclusion is confirmed by the presence of imitations of Islamic coins, minted by the Khazars established between the Caspian and the Black Seas. The hoards of the eighth and ninth centuries contain a high proportion of coins minted in North Africa, a value higher than their ratio among Islamic coins (Noonan 1980). Studying them reveals that they are slightly lighter than the dirhams minted in the Near East, and that their fineness (silver content) is inferior. The combination of these two factors means that North African coins contain less pure silver, and that their intrinsic value is lower. Their presence in high proportions during the initial phase (750-820 CE) suggests that they were accepted for their nominal value. The further diminution of their number in Scandinavian hoards testifies to a modification of the fiduciary relationship towards them. The hoards contain plied or scratched coins: this is the result of two procedures carried out to test the metal to discover false coins. We may then conclude that there were testing procedures for the quality of the valued metal. A few Scandinavian graves, contemporary to the hoards, contain scales and weights adapted to the weighing of dirhams, which suggests that the quantity of silver was valued by weight, constituting another verification procedure pertaining to worn or clipped coins. The presence of dirham fragments in the hoards, together with ingots and jewellery, supports the idea that silver was weighed for its intrinsic value, not accepted for the nominal value of coins. The comparison between the early and late situations warrants the conclusion that the f iduciary relationship between the Scandinavians and dirhams changed over time. Beyond the dirham as a valued object, the fiduciary relationship (and its change) is established with a distant subject, identified by his scripture and his language, an addresser-subject who issued the dirhams. Sometimes there are ring bracelets (ex.: Stora Velinge) or twisted braids over the dirhams placed in a hoard. Similar jewellery is also found outside monetary hoards, in graves of women, which has made some authors suggest that such items stand in place of a feminine body (Myrberg 2009). Nothing confirms this hypothesis. Whatever the interpretation is, the change of silver form (from dirham to ornament) manifests its resemantisation. Silver kept its weight, but it acquired another semantic value. 1

The issue date is clearly inscribed on all Islamic coins.

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The Dirham Hoard and its Semantic Presupposition A hoard is nothing but the final state of a spatial process of privatisation (Hammad 1989). The private quality is not naturally inscribed in coins or in silver metal. The operation of burying it in the ground realises two varieties of privatisation, signifying the private and exclusive character of the hidden object to third parties: a cognitive privatisation (visual access suppressed), a pragmatic privatisation (physical access rendered more laborious). The hoarder is the single holder of the knowledge necessary to recover the content of the hoard. This supposes that private property was practised and widespread in Scandinavian society,2 distinguishing it from communitarian societies where this notion was absent or attenuated. If there was private property, we logically suppose that the notions of theft or robbery were known (negations of the exclusive character of access to the object). In other words, the use of hoards as a means of preventing theft virtually positions the valued object between a subject owner and an anti-subject predator. Many hoards suppose many potential predators. In other words, they presuppose a turbulent uncertain environment, that is, a polemical and non-contractual context. The Hoard Between Archaeology and Anthropology Archaeologists know of metal hoards dating to the Bronze Age, in Scandinavia and elsewhere in Europe. Bronze hoards contained two main object forms, axes and ingots. Such practices testify to continuity in a millenary tradition, inscribed in collective memory. However, there is change against the background of continuity: the hoarded precious metal was no longer bronze, but changed to silver, and the monetary form supposes a fiduciary relationship. The utilitarian character of bronze, which was used to make weapons and tools, disappeared because silver metal has no utilitarian use, its physical qualities being insufficient to make tools or arms. Nonetheless, there remains in silver a semantic investment (wealth) and the possibility of exchange against an array of other things. Silver is not a utilitarian object, but a symbolic matter invested with meaning. In other words, silver is present for something that is not itself. Kufic scripture identifies dirhams as coming from afar. In all narratives, physical distance separating the subject from the object of his quest is 2 We will see in the section ‘The Social Space’, below, that this notion has a particular economic relevance for the identification of the semantic mechanisms underlying Scandinavian societies.

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used as a figure expressing the intensity of desire, that is, the subject’s desire for the object. It follows that dirhams, brought in from afar, were strongly desired. When the hoarder preserved the initial monetary form of dirhams, he was keen to keep the idea that they were strongly desirable. In these terms, silver was desirable in and of itself, not for something else. In short, the silver dirham was the object of a double desire, for itself and for something different than itself. Anthropologists know the use of hoards in other contexts, by hunters in cold countries. On a hunting expedition, men who wish to avoid being slowed down by heavy food provisions hide (hoard) meat under heavy stones, to return to it in the future. The presupposed anti-subject is not another hunter, but carnivore animals who might devour the meat. In such a context, it is the weight of the stones, and their disposition, that hinders access to the meat: the obstacle is adapted to the supposed anti-subject. Carnivorous animals have an excellent sense of smell, they can dig in soft soil to extract hidden meat, but they cannot move heavy stones that have been arranged artfully. The valued object put in a hunting hoard is supposed to be eaten at a later date. Even though silver metal is not edible, it is consumed in some way when it is exchanged against other objects (it is spent). Deferred use is semantically interesting: the hoard is not reduced to a spatial configuration, it presupposes a deferred use, postponed in time. The hoard projects a future use, a narrative programme inscribed on the economic isotopy, virtually present in the hoarder’s mind. The development of this programme is not inscribed in the hoard, but the hoard configuration leaves a minimal inchoative trace of it. I shall try to identify this programme, starting from its traces, like a hunter. I shall build a more precise idea of this in a following paragraph. Reflexive (Non-Transitive) Character of the Hoard Whether they contain bronze, silver or food, hoards have a reflexive character. If the hoard device is directed against an anti-subject, predation by whom is to be avoided, it remains directed towards the subject hoarder himself: a hoard is meant to be reopened by its depositor. If this subject is able to find it again, then he is a cognitive subject possessing memory. Existence of large numbers of monetary hoards testifies that the practice was widespread. If bad memory made hoards untraceable, people would have ceased to hoard, while the persistence of the practice over centuries proves that the process is efficient. Nonetheless, when we discover an ancient hoard, it means that its reflexive programme did not work well. All hoards that fulfilled their

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reflexive programme have disappeared, were emptied by their owner, and we are not aware of their past existence, as we do not know their number (probably greater than the number of known hoards). The non-recovery of a contents of a hoard by its depositor has two possible explanations: the loss of knowledge about the location (memorial default, disappearance of material marks), or loss of the subject holding the knowledge. In all cases, there is an objective loss of knowledge. The large number of hoards that we find, that is, that were never retrieved by their depositors, implies two conclusions: first, hoarders were numerous; second, those who had knowledge about the existence and position of the hoard did not share it, and their knowledge was lost. It follows that the hoarder is an individual suspicious actor. If silver were not a final object valued for itself, but had been an intermediate modal object carrying the capacity to realise an ulterior project, we would not know. I shall attempt to reconstruct such projects here. Multiple hoards imply multiple individual projects, similar in content and rivals to each other. In the absence of coordination, they implement one single logic. This hints to the ambient social structure, made up of independent individuals, who share a number of practices, but act in competition and do not form a common project. This picture changed with time: the formation of cities and states prove the possibility of collective coordinated projects. But this did not happen early in the process we are studying. There are no material indications allowing us to suppose that the Scandinavian hoards had been destined for third parties, to whom depositor subjects would have transmitted the knowledge necessary for retrieval. There are no indications either allowing us to suppose that hoards were destined for subjects presumed to be in a world beyond or hereafter. These hoards were not offerings presented to a deified earth or to invisible powers. The Space of the Individual Monetary Hoard From a spatial perspective, the main characteristic of an isolated hoard is its vertical recess in the ground that ensures invisibility. A similar procedure is ascribed by mythical narratives to Oedipus who blinded his eyes and went down into a well, to avoid further travel and encounters (on the contrary, Daedalus and Icarus took flight in the air in order to escape from the labyrinth and return to society). The vertical recess secures a local anchorage for the hoard here: its content can no longer go elsewhere. In other words, this is tantamount to a reinforcement of localisation: a hoard is bound to a local space.

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In contrast to dirhams acquired afar, in an elsewhere space, the hoard is here. The earth that receives it and tightens its grip around it is opposable to the waterways (seas, rivers) that were followed during the subject’s quest. In the Balto-Pontic land isthmus between the Baltic, the Caspian and the Black Seas (the Greek tradition called the Black Sea Euxinos Pontos or ‘welcoming sea’), hoards are placed near the waterways used for travel. The opposition earth/water corresponds with the oppositions here / elsewhere, fixed / mobile and permanent / transient, inscribing the monetary hoard in a marked semantic configuration (here, fixed, permanent). If attention is restricted to the dense space of Gotland Island, we see some regularity in the spatial distribution of individual hoards: they are positioned away from settlements, away from seashores and riverbanks; some extensive areas of the island are devoid of hoards: they are f illed with lakes and bogs. In brief, the creators of dirham hoards had a clear preference for dry solid land. Monetary hoards have been discovered in agricultural land, at least, in land today used for agriculture. Nonetheless, the exploration of the area surrounding hoards reveals that there were sometimes utilitarian buildings or houses in the vicinity (this is the case for the Spillings hoard). The Scandinavians did not adopt the custom of burying their treasures under their houses until later (Thordeman 1948). The agricultural land, producer of edible crops or used as grazing for cattle, was not chosen for the hoard because of its productive role (economic isotopy), but because it served as a protective mask, inserted in a presupposed polemical interaction. In semiotic terms, it does not appear as an addresser, but as an object invested with modal values. Before the silver metal was minted, it was a mineral, extracted from the earth. The fact that it was cached back in the earth could therefore be invested with a meaning akin to the inhumation of the dead, by which what came out from earth goes back to it. This interpretation would inscribe monetary hoards in a religious isotopy. But no religious symbols known in Scandinavia have been found near the dirhams deposited in hoards. No addressee divinity is signified by any object or inscription, and this interpretation cannot therefore be retained. In brief: strongly marked by its spatial expression, the earth of monetary hoards is invested with two actantial roles: it represents a stable here, permanent, unmovable, whose cognitive component is reassuring (the monies will not move); as a masking object, it holds the modality of knowing (it prevents the anti-subject from knowing). Earth inscribes its action on the economic and military isotopies (keep wealth, protect it from predation).

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The Temporal Structure of a Hoard If the place of a monetary hoard is a spatial feature, its content drives various temporal aspects. Before they were collected, the hoard coins had been dispersed. They were transported over a distance, accumulated, then hoarded and immobilised. Stratification analysis of coins deposited in a bronze cauldron (Stumle) (Jonsson 2009) that was found undisturbed, allows us to distinguish two acquisition periods in the same hoard, differentiated by the distribution of minting dates on the dirhams. The coins were collected in two operations separated by an interval of six years. With similar procedures, date analysis of hoarded dirhams on Gotland (Jonsson 2015) allows us to distinguish between two categories of hoards: those that were collected during a single lifetime (one generation) and those that were collected during many generations. The single generation category is dominant in hoards deposited after 875 CE, the multiple generations category is dominant in hoards deposited before 875 CE. From an economic-numismatic perspective, the change points to an acceleration of coin circulation. From a semiotic perspective, it introduces the difference between an individual actor hoarder (single lifetime) and a collective actor hoarder accumulating dirhams over many generations. This presupposes the notion of hereditary transmission in Scandinavian society.

The Distribution of Dirham Hoards The Spatial Distribution of Dirham Hoards There are few Scandinavian monetary hoards found west of modern-day Denmark. None have been found in Francia3 nor in Aquitaine, regions attacked and pillaged by Vikings. This can be explained by the fact there was almost no local coinage, that Islamic coins were rare in those areas, 4 and that pillage was centred on jewellery and precious table ware. The economy of these regions had no commercial character but a feudal one (Wickham 2005, Fournial 1970, Spufford 1988): exchange in kind (barter, 3 France was not known as such at the time we are considering. We call France the region dominated by Francs in the Merovingian and Carolingian periods: the name of the population is projected onto the physical space. 4 There were, of course, exceptions: see Morrison 2015.

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deferred payment, services) dominated a sluggish monetary exchange. In other words, if trade was not absent, it was not important in that area. In Frisia, England and Ireland, monetary hoards have been found but they are from later dates, their content following the practices of local minting. In England, monetary issue began with Offa, king of Mercia, around the middle of the eighth century (Wickham 2005), who even minted an imitation of the Islamic gold dinar. But repeated minting at short intervals imposed the use of recent issues and discouraged any hoarding in England. Norway (Kaupang excepted) and Iceland are almost devoid of monetary hoards. It follows that the practice of monetary hoarding is cultural and spatially marked, characterising the populations of eastern Scandinavia. These people who did not mint coins went afar to collect silver dirhams and hoarded them in caches that were not dug in all the regions they roamed. Monetary hoards are concentrated on the east coast of modern-day Sweden (Figure 10.2), around Lake Mälar and on Gotland. Some are also found in modern-day Denmark, in lesser quantities than in Sweden. We must recall that the Scandinavian countries that are familiar today were not so designated at the time. Regions were called by the name of the population who controlled them, meaning that social space was more important than physical space. The formation of territorial states gained momentum during the tenth century, and the names of Denmark, Sweden and Norway took hold with the formation of monarchies. The high concentration of dirham hoards on Gotland (350 hoards) is often considered as a given, as if it were a natural fact, not a cultural feat that needs explanation. This density may be due to some particular feature proper to an insular population prone to maritime expeditions. It may also be the result of military caution, an island being more difficult to attack than a site on the mainland. But the high density of hoards on this island, around Lake Mälar (Hedenstierna-Jonson 2006 & 2009a) and on the Danish island of Bornholm (Ingvardson 2012) designates those regions as areas of competition, where people in ancient Scandinavian society vied for reputation or power through the accumulation of silver. Comparable to today’s sporting exploits, a fleeting event that leaves a durable imprint, the return of an expedition laden with silver gave its members a moral capital inscribed in memory. Reputation, glory, merit, power are approximations for an archaic Scandinavian value (Baug & Al. 2019), akin to Roman virtu, whose name or variants we do not know, but whose effects can be identified. Let us note here a narrative type of meaning: the fact of bringing back booty (physical, valued object) proves the moral value (modal quality) of the

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Figure 10.2 Distribution of dirham hoards in relation with Scandinavian activity, eighth to eleventh centuries. Note the concentration on the southeastern coasts of today’s Sweden, along the Baltic coast and the rivers of the drainage basins of the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. There are no hoards on the lower course of Volga River (after Kilger 2008)

Image copyright: © Aarhus University Press

subject. Value is quantified or aspectualised, because competing subjects acquire more or less value. The quest for goods in faraway places allows us to reduce the local violence of rivalries, replacing physical combat with symbolic competition. In other words, the acquisition and accumulation of silver dirhams allowed Scandinavian subjects to modify their hierarchical position in a competitive society where equilibrium was a dynamic affair. If we consider the class of dirham hoards dated (tpq) between 770 and 1050, it is distributed across an immense geographic area, almost flat, extending between three seas: the Baltic in the north and the Black and Caspian Seas in the south. Westwards, the mountainous masses of the Harz and the Carpathians form a barrier; eastwards, there is no mountain or limiting sea, and hoards becomes scarce beyond the basin of Kama River, an eastern tributary of the Volga River. The large plain forms an isthmus divided into three drainage basins evacuating the water to the seas. The Baltic basin, oriented towards the north, concentrates hoards in Pomerania, in the Baltic countries and along the Gulf of Finland. The drainage basins of the Black

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Figure 10.3  Distribution of minting places emitting dirhams (after Kilger 2008)

Image Copyright: © Aarhus University Press

and Caspian Seas are oriented towards the south. There, hoards follow the waterways (Don, Dniepr, Volga). The Volga River rises very far north near the Baltic, and its course is navigable. The Kura River drains the Caucasus passes towards the Caspian Sea (Noonan 1980 Map 1). Between the drainage basins, watershed lines divide rainwaters and impose portage zones on river navigation, but portage distances are shortened at high water periods. The vast distribution in space, extended over time, rules out all the hypothesis that all the hoards were secured in fear of a specific invasion or one particular danger. The frequency of hoards in Scandinavia and in the Balto-Pontic isthmus suggests that insecurity was semi-permanent everywhere, and that predatory raids were a common practice. If a hoard near home was easily retrievable after a respite, the retrieval of a far-flung hoard depended upon travel difficulties. It was meant to be retrieved, and if it was not retrieved, this was because some problem prevented this from happening. The quantity of hoards found far away from Scandinavia is indicative of the insecurity of the environment.

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It is not sure that all hoards found in the Balto-Pontic isthmus were placed in the ground by Scandinavians. Nonetheless, the similarity of the dirham contents, and the positioning of hoards between two poles, one representing their origin and the other their destination (that is, the minting lands of Dar al-Islam on one side, the concentration of Scandinavian hoards on the other), invite us to consider all the hoards of this extended area as the traces of a single mass transportation process, to which many actors contributed. The concentration of 500,000 dirhams in Scandinavia is a powerful argument for affording this area a driving role, the quality of attractor, akin to what economic studies call demand. By way of symmetry, the role of offer (or supply) falls to the rich monetary societies of Dar al-Islam. In short, I am examining the distribution of dirham hoards tracing the existence of a monetary flow from Dar al-Islam (Figure 10.3) into Scandinavia. The phenomenon has left traces in the vast Eurasian plains that form the Balto-Pontic isthmus, today occupied by Poland, the Baltic states, Russia and Ukraine. The events involved were possibly not all Scandinavian deeds, but the movement was without doubt oriented towards the Scandinavian peninsulas. The distribution places demand in Scandinavia, the supply in Dar al-Islam, and travel routes following the water network of the three drainage basins. It was a single economic phenomenon on a vast scale. The Temporal Distribution of Dirham Hoards and Dirham Flow Dispersion of monetary hoards is spatial and temporal, each hoard having its place and its burial date. In the Balto-Pontic isthmus, the dotted line of hoards follows waterways that reconstruct the continuity of routes connecting the discontinuous dot groups. Some hoard concentrations signal crossing zones, portages or settlements installed along waterways in order to control navigation and trade. The representation of all hoards on one map (Figure 10.2) gives a fixed and cumulative idea of the silver flow that drained various provinces of Dar al-Islam towards the Scandinavian coasts. Hoard concentration in that region forms a flow accumulation, that is, the equivalent of a landlocked lake in hydrography. I will try here to reconstruct the driving components of this kind of gravitational force, economic and not geological in nature, that maintained the commercial dynamics and made silver dirhams flow north. I will also look for the reasons that caused the flow to dry, leaving a static accumulation in space. If the spatial distribution of hoards is dependent upon the network of navigable waterways, it is not totally determined by it because some

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anthropic factors overdetermine the situation. Two configurations illustrate this fact: the Transcaucasian route in the south and the Transoxiana route in the east. The earliest dirham hoards destined for Scandinavia are dated 770 CE in the Caucasus region. We know of previous Byzantine hoards in that area, which are traces of older flows. Between the two monetary circulation periods through the Caucasus, there is a total interruption of hoarding from 630 to 770 CE (Noonan 1980). While many reasons are possible for this, historians think it was due to the war that prevailed north of the Caucasus between the Arabs and Khazars who controlled the plain west of the Caspian Sea. When the practice of depositing dirham hoards resumed, related to the flow towards Scandinavia, hoards are observed at very short intervals in two distant places: in the Caucasus (along Kura River) and far away from there, in Staraja Ladoga near the Gulf of Finland. The road in question is paradoxical, because it crosses a mountain, while there are other routes across the plain. But these are the facts. They impose the consideration of an anthropic factor that overcame natural factors. Plain roads were formed later. The monetary composition of hoards in the Caucasus and in Staraja Ladoga (described by the criteria of issuing dynasties, dates and places of minting) is very similar, testifying to the existence of a single flow and a common geographical origin identified in the Near East (Syria and Iraq) (Noonan 1980: 408). The presence in these hoards of dirhams minted in North Africa, in large quantities, is due to the tax centralisation reform introduced by the Barmakid viziers under the first Abbasid caliphs: instead of the early administrative use of taxes in their collection provinces, as practiced during the preceding Umayyad period, Ifriqiya taxes reached Baghdad in the form of dirhams, where those coins were put into circulation as central state expenses. The importance of the Transoxiana Road imposes itself by the mass presence, in the Scandinavian and Balto-Pontic hoards, of huge quantities of dirhams minted in Samarqand, Balkh, Bukhara and Al-Shash (= Tashkent). These cities of Transoxiana were governed by the Samanids, a family that enjoyed caliphal favour starting in 819-820 CE. Its members succeeded each other as an autonomous dynasty for over two centuries. The territory under their control grew remarkably in extent and wealth. They started minting coins in 892-893 CE, culminating around 945 CE in phenomenal quantities. The economic decline of the Samanid territories was followed by the decline of their monetary issues, which had dried up by the end of the tenth century. Ninety-seven per cent of all known Samarqand dirhams have been found in the hoards of northern Europe. Some coins reached their hiding place less than

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a year after being minted (Bolin 1936, Kovalev 2002). While there were many Samanid dirhams in Scandinavian hoards, it seems that the Scandinavians did not themselves go to Transoxiana. Local caravans (Sogdian) bridged the junction with the middle basin of the Volga River and its Kama tributary, where the Scandinavians (called Rus’ in written sources) and their monetary hoards are attested in a territory controlled by Bulgars. The lower course of the Volga River (before the Caspian delta) remained without hoards for a long period of time: the Scandinavian silver roads passed elsewhere. The middle and lower courses of the Volga River did not merge before 980 CE. While the Scandinavians did not take the land route to Transoxiana, they did go to Baghdad, by the network of the Tigris and Euphrates, and by the eastern road that ran alongside the Caspian Sea. Their presence in Baghdad is mentioned in Arabic literary and historical sources (Al-Istakhri, Al-Jahiz, Al-Mas’ Udi, Al-Muqaddasi). In parallel, Byzantine sources and the Primary Russian Chronicle mention the Black Sea routes, where the Don and Dniepr rivers flow. Oriented towards Byzantium, these routes seem to be more military than commercial: in Constantinople, texts mention raids, sieges, ransoms, treaties of non-aggression (in 907, 912, 945, 971) (Jansson 1997) and refer to Varangian mercenaries after 978-1054 CE (Jansson 1997, P. 52, Humbert 2019). The dirhams originating in west Syria and found in the hoards of northern Europe are attributed to booty brought back by Scandinavian soldiers engaged as mercenaries5 in the Byzantine armies that raided Syria seeking reconquest. This mode of acquisition is not commercial but martial (Kovalev 2018, Jansson 1997, Hedenstierna-Jonson 2009c). The study of hoard data does not allow us to retrieve all the paths that the dirhams followed. Nonetheless, we may conclude that these paths were relatively independent from each other (there are no Samanid dirhams in the Caucasus road hoards, there are no Iraqi dirhams in the Transoxiana road hoards), and that they were active at different periods, in relation to political and military constraints. Circulation Conditions, Waterways Network, Trade Cities The dirham circulation network, as determined on the basis of hoard distribution, is dominated by navigable waterways, both maritime and fluvial. This dominance is strong in the Scandinavian peninsula and in the 5 One of the most famous Varangian warriors was named Harald Sigurdarson. Later he became king of Norway with the name of Harald Hardrada (Blöndal 1978 apud Hedenstierna-Jonson 2009c).

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Balto-Pontic isthmus, while it gives way to land relays on the margins of the steppes. Considering the harshness of Nordic winters, navigation must have been seasonal, that is, confined to the spring and summer. In this respect I must mention a number of climatic studies based on the analysis of ice cores (bored in Greenland and Switzerland), with studies of annual growth rings on trees (dendrochronology) that point to a general warming of the climate in northern Europe during the period under consideration. The elevation of mean temperatures would have been one to two degrees between 800 and 1400 CE (Mann and Jones 2003). A study concentrating on volcanic ash emissions that were likely to have caused climatic cooling (climate forcing) (McCormick, Dutton and Mayewski 2007: 874) concludes that a climate warming event encompassed the period 748-950 CE, during which the northern hemisphere may have known its most temperate period of the two last millennia. The warming period coincides with the principal periods of dirham inflow. I regard this as a favourable natural factor that added to determining cultural factors (Barrett 2020). At the beginning of this warming period, the Scandinavians devised a new type of ship that was able to navigate in open seas and on river courses, propelled by oars and by sail (Rosedahl, Mohen, Dillmann 1992). This technical achievement, coupled with natural climatic factors, gave the Scandinavians new means to travel long distances at sea and on rivers. In semiotic terms, these conditions gave the subject (the collective actor, the Scandinavians) the actualising phase of its competence (power to do, knowing how to do). Around the middle of the ninth century, the Balto-Pontic isthmus saw the emergence of a new type of settlement that reorganised its space in the longue durée: trading cities. The isthmus had been a non-urbanised area, dotted with villages whose light remains tell us very little. Before, there were no cities providing special services. This absence was related to the level of economic development of the entire region and to its degree of political organisation. The localisation of proto-cities on the roads of Scandinavian trade, as well as their internal structure (known through some excavations) show that they did not serve the needs of their respective hinterland, but the necessities of long-distance trade. These cities commanded the development of their territory, not the other way around (Hedenstierna-Jonson 2009:17). The emergence of proto-cities shows an evolution of physical space, related to the Scandinavian-Islamic economic flow (some of the funerary goods in their tombs are Scandinavian). The relationship is confirmed by contraposition: those proto-cities withered and were abandoned when the Scandinavian trade ended. The cities that were built later did not occupy the

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same positions but were implanted in proximity (Jansson 1997, HedenstiernaJonson 2009:169). While the proto-cities lived from trade and war, the later cities lived from the agriculture of their hinterland. Four proto-cities must be mentioned as illustrations: Staraja Ladoga (near Lake Ladoga), Novgorod (near Lake Ilmen), Timerëvo in the area between Yaroslavl and Vladimir, Gnezdovo. Staraja Ladoga appears in Icelandic sources under the name Aldeigjuborg (Jansson 1997:27). The city is contemporary with the trading cities of Birka in Sweden, and Hedeby and Ribe in Denmark. It was the city nearest to Scandinavia in the eastern Baltic region, and was accessible through the Gulf of Finland and by sailing (or rowing) up the Neva. It is also the oldest city known to archaeology in the Balto-Pontic isthmus (mid-ninth century by dendrochronology). Starting from Staraja Ladoga and following the network of interconnected rivers and lakes, it was possible to join Lake Ilmen, the Volga and the Dniepr rivers. Novgorod (= the new city), built on the Volchov river near Lake Ilmen, is known as the city of Rjurik (Rjurikovo Gorodisce) in the narrative of the Russian Chronicle. Its origins also date to the mid-ninth century, then it became one of the Varangian activity centres. Timerëvo, Sarskoe and Rostov, built near each other on rivers that are navigable between Yaroslavl and Vladimir, seem to have functioned together. Their necropolises attest to a polyethnic society connected with Scandinavians. Gnezdovo is built on the upper course of the Dniepr, at thirteen kilometers from today’s Smolensk. It was the major strategic site in the area during the Scandinavian period. The urban or proto-urban phenomenon is one of the major spatial indicators of the regional economic evolution. It commanded the trade flow which extended between Scandinavia and Dar al-Islam.

The Economic Space of Object Circulation In their minting areas, dirhams served as counterparts traded against objects flowing in the other direction. The meaning effects invested in dirhams are not limited to what has been determined based upon the examination of hoards where they have been found. It is necessary to widen the study to include the subjects that were engaged in the exchange and the values they conferred upon the objects exchanged. In semiotic terms, we must explore the virtualisation of subject in action; in economic terms, we must define the impulses behind observable activity. A dozen Arabic authors (geographers, historians, literati), contemporaries of Scandinavian activity in the Balto-Pontic isthmus, tell us that these

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travellers (called Rus’ in these writings) were traders arriving in Baghdad. One author, Ahmad Ibn Fadlan, was a jurist. In 921 CE, he was sent by caliph Al-Muqtadir as an envoy to the Volga Bulgars to dispense knowledge and advice through their conversion to Islam. He spent the winter near the confluence of the Kama and Volga rivers. On his return, he wrote an epistle to the caliph (Ibn Fadlan 1979, Hraundal 2013), in which he gave a detailed description of the Rus’ present among the Bulgars. He described them as if he were an ethnologist: physical appearance, weapons (some had Frankish swords), clothes, hygiene, alcohol consumption, sexual habits and quarrelsome customs. The idolater Rus’ traded furs and young slave women. They amassed large quantities of dirhams. Ibn Fadlan detailed the unfolding of a princely funerary ritual (cremation in a tent pitched on a boat placed on a pyre, followed by erection of a tumulus). His description has the quality of a direct observation of events. We would have appreciated a description of the Rus’ language. In brief, the Rus’ people came from the north, they were armed for war, but they travelled for trade. Their customs are those that we read in other sources describing Scandinavians. It is necessary to make an observation here. Between 1922 and 1935, the historian Henri Pirenne promoted the hypothesis that Arab conquests broke the economic relations between the Near East and Europe, while the Roman empire had developed them. But the intensity of trade between Scandinavian countries and Dar al-Islam proves the contrary (Bolin 1936; Bouard 1959; Noonan 1980; Wickham 2005). In fact, Pirenne had no idea about the existence of the considerable flow examined here. He looked towards the Mediterranean Sea, oblivious to the waterways traffic through the Balto-Pontic isthmus. Supply and Demand When economic activities attain enough volume to last through time and extend in space, they imply many actors. Economic theory considers the phenomenon globally when it talks about supply and demand, these two theoretical constructs being the main components of what is called the market. Any durable economic activity means that there has been a match between supply and demand. The liberal theoretician Adam Smith maintained that prices are fixed by the invisible hand of the market that balances supply and demand (Smith 1776). A contrario, if supply does not correspond to demand, transactions cease and the market collapses. In semiotic terms, supply and demand are operations through which economic subjects (sellers, buyers) propose objects for sale, which comprises

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their offer, or declare their desire to buy objects, which comprises their demand. Ordinary language uses the term supply to designate the offering subjects as well as the objects offered and the operation by which the offer is made, the context making the difference. The same remark applies to demand. In Adam Smith’s discourse, the market appears as a meta-subject, akin to a semiotic addresser fixing the value of value, since it determines the prices. The situation considered here may, hypothetically, be called a particular configuration of this general scheme. The Scandinavian Demand: Silver Metal and Dirhams Price is a notion that presupposes a reference standard against which the goods are compared. In monetary economies, this standard is money. Within Dar al-Islam, dirhams circulated with the role of reference standard: they were used to evaluate goods and services. But they were not alone in fulfilling this role: gold dinars and copper fals (plural fulus) served as standards adapted to more or less expensive goods. When the Scandinavians selected silver dirhams to be among the monies constituting the monetary offer in Dar al-Islam, they dispelled gold and copper. In so doing, they overvalued dirhams and modif ied their meaning: they did not consider them as standards for the measure of value, but as objects valued for themselves. No other European population had such a passion for silver, no other area collected dirhams with such intensity. Silver dirhams acquired the status of an in-demand good, a commodity. In other words, the Rus’ were asking for silver metal, a commodity whose price was liable to rise or fall on the market. Against which unit could silver price be valued? In the perspective of Scandinavians who were behind the demand for silver, gold was not used to appreciate silver. Silver was valued by the units of Scandinavian supply: furs and slaves. Pragmatically, silver metal could be quantified in weight dirhams, official ponderal units in the Arabo-Islamic system (Fakhoury & Khawwam 2002), to which money dirhams originally minted to that norm corresponded. This is one of the reasons why dirhams were kept in monetary form: this allowed the quick quantification of silver metal, even if the fineness of the coins made the operation a mere approximation. Dar al-Islam Demand: Slaves and Furs From the perspective of Dar al-Islam, the intensity of Scandinavian demand for silver dirhams modified market conditions, especially those of local symmetrical demand. Between the eighth and eleventh centuries, Dar

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al-Islam was prosperous, possibly the most prosperous economy of that period. We cannot relate the demand of its market in any better way than to examine the traces of its trade. A large part of the demand, the best informed, was for products from the Indian Ocean, rich in spices, timber, and manufactured goods. The demand for products from the Rus’, as it appears in written sources, seems to have been as selective as the opposite silver demand, for it was restricted to furs and slaves. In value terms, the slave trade had represented hefty amounts for centuries. Around 130 CE, during the Roman period, customs tariff of Palmyra started its tax list by the category of imported slaves, which leads us to suppose that it was the most important. The question of slaves is semantically complex, and we shall consider the Islamic demand starting with the category of furs. Arabic sources say that furs were in large demand during the Abbasid period. Fur was much in fashion in the Baghdad court, and frequent trips by the caliphs to Central Asia played a certain role in this process. Every person with social status wanted to have a fur cap and a fur caftan. It is a cultural fact, but there was also a factor depending on nature: in steppe and desert countries, especially on high plateaux, daily temperature variations reach high values, often exceeding 25° C. Light clothes are convenient for daytime heat, but fur is best suited for the sudden night-time cold. Today, Syrian bedu use capes made of sheepskins. What has changed between the uses mentioned is the quality and price of the furs in question. Sheepskins are acceptable to ordinary people; furs from the north mark the difference in financial means and social class. Furs pertain to the category of luxury items, feeding long distance trade. Arabic authors are not very effusive about fur varieties brought by the Rus’: a few terms (sammûr, qâqem, sinjâb, fenek) recur to designate products translated as marte, sable, ermine, squirrel, and canids (fox). The zone of fur acquisition lies in the cold north forests and steppes. The method of acquisition is hunting. Arabic texts do not say if the Rus’ hunted by themselves or bought furs from third-party hunters. Arabic authors are no more expansive about the slaves sold by the Rus’, even if we find recurring mention of Saqalibat, the plural translated as Slaves (Latin sclavus – French esclave – is derived from Slavic; the term was introduced in Germany during the tenth century, at a period when Germans reduced many Slavic people to servitude [Verlinden 1942: 125]). The vast plain of the Balto-Pontic isthmus, almost non urbanised, was sparsely populated. We know little about its natives, no more than that they were peasants and not organised into political states. This sedentary mass was crossed by mobile groups identified by their dominant language, even though they drew with them aggregated groups who spoke other tongues.

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The Finno-Ugrians were already near the Baltic Sea, Slavic groups were heading away from the Black Sea towards the North-West, that is, the Baltic and Pomerania; Turkish-speaking Bulgars occupied the middle basin of the Volga River, Khazar Turkophones and various Pecheneges roamed between the Caspian Sea and the Dniepr River. All these groups were mobile and had not yet found their final place. The Scandinavians passed these people while travelling along navigable waterways. We do not know if they picked up some slaves in passing to sell further along the way. What the Arabic sources say is that they arrived in Dar al-Islam with Slavic slaves, but we do not know where they acquired them. The Scandinavians may have captured them or bought them from people who did. Arabic texts mention that there was continuous low-level warfare among the people of the Balto-Pontic plain, and that they reduced their prisoners to slavery6. If this description is exact, the slaves brought to the Dar al-Islam market could have been acquired in any of the groups named above. In their historical recapitulations, McCormick and Wickham insist (Mccormick 2001, Wickham 2005; see also Verlinden 1942) on the important part played by the slave trade in the restarting of European economies after the collapse of the Roman empire: Europe financed part of its economic rebound with the sale of a fraction of its population. Venice and Genoa took part in this trade, delivering to the Mediterranean basin, while the Scandinavian supply operated in the east. There was no slave breeding (reproduction) by the Scandinavians nor in Dar al-Islam. Natural death of slaves or their manumission created a void that had to be filled, that is, a demand for new slaves. There was therefore need for commercial acquisition or recourse to abduction. Such had been the case already in classical Antiquity. War customs gave abduction a legitimate character (right of the captor over the captured) and prisoners were a good prize. This was followed by a sale transaction that had all the characteristics of a contractual process. Thus, the acquisition chain was not semantically homogeneous in today’s terms, for it concatenated polemical and contractual operations. This forces us to rethink abduction and the slave trade in categories that are no more familiar. We do not know how things were verbalised in Scandinavian languages, but in his analysis of the vocabulary of Indo-European vocabularies, Émile Benveniste (Benveniste 1967: 125-147) establishes that the verbs that designated the act of buying in these languages derived from the act of buying a man, a slave. Or to buy back his liberty when he had been captured prisoner. The Scandinavian Wergeld (Skre 6 In particular Ibn Rusteh.

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2017) is nothing but a particular expression of that. The Danegeld (England between 991 and 1018) and the Heregeld (1012-1051) are preventive forms of the same, prepaid ransoms, given in advance to avoid pillage and capture (Jonsson 2015:13). In this linguistic group, buying objects was preceded by buying people. The fate of slaves in Islamic countries was quite unlike that in the BaltoPontic isthmus, or that in classical Antiquity or later on the plantations in America. As soon as a slave converted to Islam, his or her servitude became illegal, and his or her liberation mandatory. Manumission made them indebted towards their former master, their dependence keeping them low on the social scale. Starting in 836 CE, the armies of Dar al-Islam had become strictly salaried, made up mainly by Turkish recruits, to which were added more and more slave soldiers acquired in Central Asia. Five centuries later, the multiplication of slave soldiers allowed them access to the throne of Cairo under the name of Mamluk (literally, owned by someone; in fact, manumitted soldiers who had known slavery). Starting from 840-850 CE, all Baghdad caliphs were born to slave women, because the Abbasids no longer married their Arabic cousins because every succession to the throne launched fratricidal wars between familial pretenders. This practice illustrates the fact that the son of a slave woman could reign, as long as his father possessed the necessary agnatic ascendancy.7 While the demand for fur served to mark membership to the dominant class, the demand for slaves fulf illed many social functions. The textual sources allow us to understand that the Scandinavian supply did not feed the demand for young soldiers (Central Asia saw to that) but fed the demand for young women that were inserted in the reproductive cycle of Islamic society. The prosperity of Dar al-Islam allowed for that to be paid in silver.

The Social Space: Around the Actant Subject Analysis of the space of dirham hoards has delivered limited results despite interest in them, for it did not lead to an encompassing meaning effect that accounts for the process of acquiring dirhams far away, nor for their accumulation in the northern countries, nor for the duration of the phenomenon. In particular, it delivered no reason why the dynamics of dirham acquisition started, nor why it stopped. Neither exploration of the 7

The same practice is attested with the Ottoman sultans.

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presuppositions underlying the silver hoards, nor analysis of the spatial distribution of hoards, nor study of reconstructed routes has produced a dynamic hypothesis that would insert the commercial circulation into a syntax that would make sense. The question of why such a quantity of dirhams was amassed in Scandinavia remains undetermined. In mathematics, Kurt Gödel has shown that the determination of undetermined utterances, formulated in the framework of a given mathematical construction, passes through the conception of a more complex construction. In the new construction, utterances that were formerly undecidable become decidable. Nevertheless, the new construction produces its own undecidable utterances. The chain is not finite but thought progresses. In the early stages of Greimassian semiotics (Sémantique Structurale and Du Sens), analyses started with a semantic micro-universe that was given a priori by external criteria. This was followed by the technique of syntactic development of condensed elements, where the relationship of presupposition promoted by Louis Hjelmslev played a crucial role. This method regulates the extension of the micro-universe in the manner of Gödel’s theorem. Modelling my study upon such procedures, I propose to enlarge the analysed domain and to shift attention to the social groups who operated in the physical space and manipulated the implied objects. This is what we call social space. A Syntactic Perspective for the Analysed Semantic Universe The subject actants presupposed by the Scandinavian dirham hoards are manifested by two collective actors (Greimas 1970b, 1973; Greimas and Courtés 1979), distant in space, that we conventionally call the Scandinavians on one side and Dar al-Islam on the other. In the restored economic interaction, the actor Dar al-Islam fulf ils a relatively limited role, formulating a demand for furs and slaves, offering dirhams as the counterpart. The merchants of Dar al-Islam did not go to Scandinavia or to the Balto-Pontic isthmus to obtain the valued objects they desired there. Rather, their sailors were seen ploughing the sea to India and China, or their caravans crossing the steppes to Central Asia. On the contrary, the Scandinavians made the trip to Dar al-Islam, thus manifesting their want, as displacement is a figurative expression of desire. In the end, the Scandinavians amassed silver dirhams at home, while no trace remains of what they sold in Baghdad or Tashkent. In brief, the narrative perspective of the semantic micro-universe analysed is Scandinavian, oriented by the action of the more dynamical subject.

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The Scandinavians Who Make the Social Space Chronicles written in Scandinavia during the eighth century are notably absent. Two source types allow reconstruction of an idea of the Scandinavians in the period under consideration: narratives transmitted in writing that describe them out of their homeland; and archaeological remains excavated in the Scandinavian space, that testify in a nonverbal manner about their past way of life. I shall use objects, considered as traces of action, to rebuild a syntactic image of the Scandinavian social space, thus joining the cohort of archaeologists and anthropologists who try to describe the ancient Scandinavian society. The Scandinavians Out of Their Homeland Texts preserved in the West use the name Vikings to designate the Scandinavians who reached western regions, while Arabic and Byzantine texts designate them as Rus’. Various hypotheses have been formulated to explain the etymology of Rus’. The most plausible one relates it to verb Rhodz that means to row in Old Norse (Jansson 1997:13). This derivation reflects the Scandinavian navigation technique when they moved upstream on waterways.8 In use, the name Rus’ designated the Scandinavian population settled in the east as well as the space in which it was settled, that is, a region encompassing today’s Russia, Ukraine and Bulgaria. The name Rus’ occurs in a runic inscription in Turinge (Södermaland in Sweden) (Jansson 1997:13), where the text evokes a man who died in action in the East in Rus’9. In all cases where the term Rus’ is used, the designated society is not agrarian, but mobile, warrior and trader. It seems possible to connect the term Viking to another Old Norse radical, akin to Old English and Old Frisian, that designated the change of rowing teams. There is a semantic proximity between rowing and change rowing teams, both terms referring to one navigation technique, and both denominations designating similar if not identical populations. In the north-west Atlantic and North Sea, Vikings plundered Anglo-Saxon England, Carolingian Francia, Visigothic Aquitaine. They colonised the Orkney and Faroe Islands, Greenland and Iceland. They settled in what 8 One of the two Scandinavian boats found underground in Salme, Estonia, had oars but no mast. It is dated to the mid-eighth century: cf. Peets, Jüri et al (2012); Price, T. Douglas et al (2016). 9 More than twenty lapidary inscriptions mention Ingvar’s expeditions, the far-away traveller who went to the land of Islam (Jansson 1997: 13).

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became Normandy. But no text tells of comparable things happening in the East (Baltic Sea and Balto-Pontic isthmus), where the Rus’ seem to have developed cities devoted to trade and to have amassed silver. Western tradition calls this period the Viking Age, conventionally delimited by the raid on Lindisfarne in Northumbria in 793 CE and by the battle of Hastings in 1066 CE (Bill 2019). We should extend the period because of new findings in the eastern Baltic (two collective Scandinavian tombs containing funerary boats, in Salme-Estonia (Peets 2012; Price 2016), dated around 750 CE) as we have extended the space examined, and include events that happened between the middle of the eighth and the end of the eleventh centuries. In Europe, polities were in full transformation. The Carolingian state started its expansion towards the southwest (Aquitaine, Biscayne, Catalunya), then towards the east (Saxony, Thuringia, Carinthia) and south (Lombardy, Croatia), before fragmenting and transforming its inner mechanisms into a feudal system. It is on the western maritime fringes of this empire that the incursions known as the Viking raids operated. Carolingian Francia may have appeared more populated to the Scandinavians than their own lands, with agricultural fields already allocated. The Franks who held the country were the last who arrived with the migrations that followed the collapse of the Roman empire. When the Scandinavians arrived, there was no more room to settle newcomers. They sailed up rivers until they reached Burgundy, but they did not settle there and did not leave necropolises attesting to a prolonged stay. They ultimately settled in Normandy, marking a rupture in their activity. Silver hoards attributable to Vikings in these occidental regions are rare. In the East, the waterways of the Balto-Pontic isthmus were not used by Scandinavians to raid against the eastern Carolingian lands. The Rus’ left both Bohemia and the Carpathians untouched; their movement towards Dar al-Islam had a dominant commercial character. A fraction of the Rus’ who reached the Black Sea enrolled in the service of Byzantium, which needed more fighters. In this mercenary role where they sold warrior service instead of objects and goods, they are known under the name Varangians, mentioned in Byzantine texts (cf. De administrando imperio by Emperor Konstantinos Porphyrogennetos [Constantin Porphyrogénète 1967]) and in runic inscriptions perpetuating their memory in Scandinavia. For the period between the eighth and tenth centuries, archaeological finds suggest that the Balto-Pontic isthmus was lightly populated, politically less structured than the Carolingian lands. A dispersed sedentary peasantry lived there (heir to the campaniform culture that produced ceramics and tumuli attributed to Sopka culture [Jansson 1997: 30]) as did mobile populations

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who engaged in movement that exceeded that associated with transhumance. Various Slavic tribes migrated from the Black Sea towards the Baltic Sea and Pomerania (Ulriksen 2006), where there were already settled Baltic populations. Some Scandinavians settled in this wide expanse where density was low: the necropolises of proto-cities (Jansson 1997, Hedenstierna-Jonson 2006, 2009) in the Balto-Pontic isthmus attest to a polyethnic population, where Scandinavian artefacts occur. Along the rivers, some elite individuals were inhumated in funerary boats, in a Scandinavian manner (Stalsberg 2001).10 While a fraction of the local population may have adopted Scandinavian manners, the Scandinavians adopted the Asiatic composite bow, brought back to Birka in Sweden (Hedenstierna-Jonson 2009b). In other words, the people that Arabic and Byzantine sources designated as Rus’ were apparently a population resulting from the settlement of Scandinavians in the East, from their acculturation and their integration among former populations who merged with them in new cities (Jansson 1997: 10). While we find weapons in tombs, the proto-cities were not overfortified. Nevertheless, military activity coexisted with commercial activities. Ibn Khordadhbeh wrote around 840 CE that the Rus’ navigated on the Caspian Sea for their trade, Al-Mas’udi said around 950 CE that they navigated there in order to raid and plunder, and that they controlled navigation on the Azov Sea. Ibn Rustat said around 900 that the Rus’ sold slaves to the Volga Bulgars, implying that buyers were not exclusively Arab, and that local intermediaries were inserted between the distant partners.11 When the Bulgars recorded in writing the history of the formation of their independent state during the eleventh century, they said that the Slavic population was organised by Rus’ warriors who formed their cadres. Arabic authors did not pay attention to the transformations of Rus’ society (Christianisation, formation of states), while these questions occupy a central place in the Russian Primary Chronicle, where the Scandinavians are presented as a group invited by the Slavic population to reign over them and administer justice. The Scandinavians in Their Homeland The great contrast between behaviours credited to Scandinavians in the east and west of the Frankish territorial mass is based upon a perspective 10 Ibn Fadlan describes a Rus’ burial on the Volga, whose particulars are strongly reminiscent of Scandinavian tales. 11 Forming a syntagmatic chain of collective actors.

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supposing the Frankish states: the Scandinavian activity is related to this mass. But this view is not in conformity with the Scandinavian perspective privileged by the examination of dirham hoards and economic interaction with Dar al- Islam. We should therefore reconsider things, reconstruct the perspective of Scandinavian populations in the peninsula that bears their name today. Methodological Remarks on the Description of Social Space Our knowledge of Scandinavian society depends upon our sources, that is, texts and archaeological traces (cf. Jansson 1997; Hedenstierna-Jonson 2006, 2009; Ling, Earle and Kristiansen 2018). Excavations of settlements and funerary tumuli deliver direct testimonies: these are original sources about material culture. Dirham hoards are such archaeological data, their analysis allows us to reconstruct activities and immaterial values. This information is completed by Nordic poems and narratives written down between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, but probably composed between the ninth and tenth centuries. They inform us about the period in question, even if we must make room for possible changes between composition and notation. I will try to summarise a perspective for all this. If we are to articulate a description of this society, the sheer extent of physical and social spaces requires recourse to four descriptive isotopies identified by Dumézil (1968), Benveniste (1967) and Mann (1986): political, religious, military, economic. These isotopies characterise the social structures and their underlying values. This will permit distinguishing between direct relationships between individuals, and mediated relations that privilege certain objects between people. For the analysis, we are drawn to adopt a point of view that relates to the Scandinavian society. When the point of view refers to this society alone, it can be called internal; when it relates also to other societies, we say it is external. I will start with an attempt to build an internal perspective, then, recognising its static limitations, I shall propose a dynamic external perspective. The Scandinavians as a Society with a Maritime Mode of Production Three authors have recently proposed characterising Scandinavian society by its mode of production (Ling, Earle and Kristiansen 2018). This concept, used in political economics in accordance with a cursory outline by Karl

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Marx, establishes a relationship between power relations and the economic relations that generate them. For the Scandinavian society, Ling, Earle and Kristiansen have proposed a maritime mode of production, which Marx had not considered. In this mode, the economy and power relations would be based on maritime raids, commercial travels and slave trade.12 Many publications13 confirm this hypothesis and converge to describe Scandinavian society as a maritime culture practicing war and trade. In the maritime mode of production, the ship and its crew form a production unit, which makes it an expeditionary mode of production. The mobile band (Norse lid) functioned like an integral unit (Greimas 1970) for the duration of an expedition; it was disbanded on return, and formed again for another season or campaign. Crew chiefs were competitors within elites, except when an expedition placed many ships under the command of a single great chief, accepted for the duration of the expedition. The primacy of chiefs had a temporary character. This model resembles, in maritime terms, the model drawn up by Duby (1973, 1979, 1996) for the pre-feudal bands on land in the early Middle Ages who led expeditions uniting men personally tied to a battle chief, roaming across a territory in order to pick up a tribute that was hard to distinguish from booty. To the extent that such a territory was regularly visited, the predatory bands formed a warrior elite extracting its resources from a dominated population. Among the elite, relations were formed from man to man, presupposing confidence in cooperation, defiance in competition. Elite members exchanged gifts and counter-gifts (Mauss 1924) thus extracted, which sealed and reinforced alliances. Mobile men transported their relational system with them. It is this set of manners and customs that we call tributary regime here, and the Scandinavians practiced a maritime variety of it. The maritime mode of production has a syntactic character: it defines a narrative programme for the acquisition of objects far away by a collective actor (Greimas 1970b, 1973). Following from this definition are the forms of the actor subject of expedition, of his valued objects, and of his modes of action. The relationship between subjects is mediated in part by the relationship to the valued object, which is initially collective and integral for the expedition, 12 The maritime mode of production is attested among the Haida in North America, and in the Trobriand, Solomon and Tonga Islands of Southeast Asia. These populations have been the object of extensive ethnological studies. Cf. Ling, Earle and Kristiansen 2018. 13 On this aspect, cf. Barrett (2010); Baug et al. (2019); Cooijmans (2020); Gautier and Malbos (2009); Jesch (2001); Larsson (2007); Ljunkvist (2018); Stylegar (2004); Ulriksen (2008, 2010); Wamers (2002); Westerdahl (1994, 1996, 1998, 2006, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016); Wickler (2004).

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then becomes individual and partitive at the moment of partition between participants.14 In quite recent times, historians have often neglected the economic aspect of the Scandinavian maritime society. But building a seaworthy ship and arming it necessitated a considerable investment in materials and in workmanship. The sail, which was woven manually, took as much work as the hull, and was made by women. Moreover, an expedition needed the accumulation of food provisions for the trip. Every expedition supposed an investment, and few chiefs were able to provide it. Henceforth, dirham hoards appear in a productive role: they insured the financing of new units of production, that is, a ship, its armament, a faraway expedition. The silver hoard liberated a war chief from the worry of finding means to finance his enterprise. Naval armaments did not depend on land; they had the mobility of men. This places silver hoards at the very centre of the maritime mode of production. They ensured the mastery of the means of production. The hoards scattered along shores and riverbanks represent as many projects as possible to raise a future expedition. In the nineteenth century, this process would have been described in terms of capital, investment and yield. But in the eighth or ninth century, the perspective was different. The yield anticipated on each expedition was not conceived in capital growth terms. Raid booty, or trade benefits, served to acquire prestige (merit, value) in a competitive, fluid society: a chief progressed (or regressed) among other chiefs on the basis of what he brought back from his expeditions. Benveniste (1967) says that, in the ancient Indo-European languages, the terms that designated the value of a man at the same time designated his physical value (his sale as a slave, his redemption him from servitude) and his moral value (his merit). The trade of men and the acquisition of a social position between men pertained to the same semantic universe. There is a transition from the value of the acquired object to the value of the acquiring subject. Booty was not acquired for itself, but for something that was not itself, that is, for political status. This makes this an eminently semiotic mechanism. Such a model supposes that the result of an expedition was made public. A banquet upon return and dispersal of the crew ensured this, each member taking away his acquired part and his narrative. The existence of dirham hoards suggests that the chief’s part, that part of the shipowner of expedition, was superior to the role of crew members. What was hidden in the ground was not of commercial benefit or the result of 14 The situation is like that of an inheritance. Cf. Hammad (2017).

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passionate avarice, but represented the capacity to raise a new expedition in the future. It was his competence as an expedition chief in a maritime mode of production. This model combines with the navigating Scandinavians voyage, war, and trade, manifesting them in relationship with encountered contexts. The same crew would have been able to plunder one day and trade the next, without experiencing a contradiction, for the values system accepted a kind of kinship between these two modes of acquisition. It depended on the force and wealth of the partner encountered. The complex semantic categories signalled by Benveniste can be identif ied in the archaic vocabulary of Indo-European buying. This model is compatible with both forms of Scandinavian behaviour abroad, pirates on one hand, traders on the other. One single complex category is recognisable to characterise the actantial role of the subject: navigator-warrior-trader. The navigator fulfils the part of a stable nucleus. The complex category warrior-trader (military and economic isotopies) is manifested by a dominant warrior sememe in the West, but by a dominant economic sememe in the East.15 From a formal point of view, this model of the Scandinavian social space installs a single collective actor credited with a complex system of values. An entire society would function in the same manner, common qualities overdetermining differences between individuals and fractions. A pragmatic set of attributes characterises a group by its actions. There is no need to suppose that the Scandinavians had cognitive perception of this, or that they raised it to the status of collective identity. As interesting as it may be, this model does not answer all our questions. In particular, no find dirhams have been found being dispersed from the rare port cities. If silver dirhams served to pay a large number of naval carpenters and sail weavers, we should find dirhams or silver in the houses of those people. But this is not the case. Archaeological excavations draw the picture of a non-monetary society.16 Local exchanges were made without money, as they had been made for millennia before the adoption of money. The problem is that this situation coexists with the presence of hundreds of thousands of silver coins hoarded in the ground. The contrast is powerful, it needs an explanation, but the model of a maritime expeditionary society does not account for it. 15 For complex semantic categories exhibiting a dominant sememe. see Viggo Brøndal (1943). 16 As in European society at that time. Cf. Latouche (1970), Spufford (1988), Graham-Campbell, Sindbaek and Williams (2011).

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A Dimorphic Scandinavian Social Space: Maritime and Agrarian In the ninth century, Scandinavian fleets operating in expeditions to the east and to the west navigated by sail and oar. If we consider their sheer numbers (chronicles mention fleets gathering many hundreds of ships plundering the coasts of Francia; in 826 the Dane Harald Klak went up the Rhine with a hundred sail ships for his encounter with Louis the Pious in Ingelheim), we realise that they would have needed immense herds of sheep and countless spinners and weavers to make their sails (Stylegar 2016), not to mention tree felling for ship building and tar for caulking. It follows from this that a maritime economy is not thinkable without a complementary agrarian economy, and that the maritime mode of production cannot alone monopolise the Scandinavian social space. A model with a single collective actor is insufficient. It is necessary to rethink it in relation to the existence of another collective actor who extracts resources from earth. Readers unfamiliar with semiotics may check two papers published by A.J. Greimas (1970b, 1973) and the dictionary published by Greimas and Courtés (1979) for the concept of collective actor. Suffice it here to recall that collective actor designates a class of figurative subjects accomplishing one same action. The expeditionary regime supposes a political power that does not rely on land control but on relations defined in a mobile space. Society could move in its totality, change its physical space while maintaining the structures of its social space. The change that occurred in Normandy, where the Scandinavians acquired land and founded a political entity, was followed (or accompanied) by similar changes elsewhere. Its recurrence in Ireland and Iceland requires us to consider a transformation that seized Scandinavian society wholesale, establishing the primacy of power relations mediated by land (Wickham 1994), while the ancient power relations were mediated by mobile wealth. In other words, the Scandinavians went from a society whose dominant features were mobile, navigator and warrior-like, favouring mobile goods, to a sedentary society, which was military and peasant, favouring productive land. This shift did not happen at once; it took two or three centuries, in different ways in different regions. During this longue durée, we must suppose the coexistence, in one physical space and one social space, of two forms for the acquisition of goods, an expeditionary maritime form and an agrarian land-based form. Scandinavian society must have been dimorphic for a non-negligible period of time. In other words, the Scandinavian social space should not be conceived as being occupied by a single collective actor (called Scandinavian society), but by two differentiated

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collective actors, rival and complementary, acting differently and functioning along contrasting values. Together, they formed the society. With regard to the economic isotopy, the agrarian mode of acquisition is opposable to the maritime mode of acquisition. Archaeology (cf. Herschend and Frands 2009; Poulsen, Bjørn and Sindbaek, Søren Michael 2011; Iversen, Frode and Petersson, Håkan 2016) has unearthed farms settled at half-height, between hilltops free of occupation and lakes or inundated bogs, attesting to the existence of an agriculture that went through a number of crises (depopulation or displacement of farms (Stylegar 2016)) and transformations (introduction of manuring). In particular, it is estimated that there were nearly 4,000 farms in the fertile region of Lake Mälaren in today’s Sweden.17 Pollen analyses (Stylegar 2016; Ulriksen, Schultz and Mortensen 2020) confirm the continuity of agriculture in the longue durée, and the dominant role accorded to livestock (reindeer, cattle, sheep, horses). Deforestation traces testify to the expansion of agrarian economy. Sites of stone quarries, iron extraction and transformation, complete and consolidate a mode of acquisition that extracted most of the resources from the land. Among the human settlements uncovered by archaeology, we f ind farms, hamlets, villages, but very few cities: these were rare, and devoted to maritime trade. Archaeology records a deficit in necropolises (Herschend 2009) by comparison with the total population that may be calculated on the basis of settlements, which means that not all people had the right to a permanent tomb. Some monumental inhumations suggest that there were elites able to mobilise a large workforce. Other inhumations allow us to suppose the existence of slaves (numerous in Iceland, where they were imported from Ireland, as revealed by genomic analyses). These facts attest to a strong inequality between the elites and those who did not belong to that group. The size of tumuli and the wealth of funerary offerings point to an undeniable rivalry among elites (Herschend 2009). It follows that the social structures of the group that extracted resources from the land were competitive, comparable to those of the maritime group, and that a landed expeditionary practice was probably present. We suppose that both collective actors had the same tributary economic regime, relations among elite members being built upon gifts and counter-gifts (Polanyi 1944; Mauss 1924). Isotopic analyses of teeth found in inhumations allow us to conclude that elites had a highly meat-based dietary regime (Bukkemoen 2016; Gansum 17 See in particular, Price, Peets, Allmae, Maldre and Oras (2016), supplementary material online, Antiquity 90.

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2016; Herschend 2009), while others ate more fish and seafood. These results are based on small numbers and do not allow us to conclude that the agrarian mode of acquisition prevailed over the maritime mode of acquisition, but they make us ask the question about the relationship between the land and sea at regional level. The indentation of the coast, the deep penetration of fjords inland, the large number of islands, lakes and waterways (Norway is just the Nordvegr or maritime route towards the north, previously used during the Bronze Age for the trade in whetstones, chlorite vases and basalt querns [Baug et al. 2019]) force us to consider the interdependence between the land and the sea, and the interconnection of land roads and waterways. This geography prepared the Scandinavians to cross the Balto-Pontic isthmus by its waterways. A Polymorphic Scandinavian Social Space: Partition of Maritime and Agrarian Collective Actors The dimorphic model of Scandinavian social space appears to be more satisfying than a single maritime collective actor model, as it integrates the maritime one and pairs it with a symmetrical actor extracting its resources from the land. Nonetheless, the dimorphic model manifests the same defect as the preceding one: it does not account for the start of the acquisition far away of dirhams, nor for its end. Moreover, it draws a static intemporal image of social space, even if individuals are born, act and die: they do nothing more than reproduce the two constituent collective actors. Lastly, the dimorphic model poses a new problem: that of the deferred domination of the land collective actor who ended up controlling the maritime collective actor after a period of rivalry between the two. This model has the necessary qualities of a solution but is not sufficient. There is a need for a more complex perspective, another point of view in order to stand back and consider the Scandinavian space in its interaction with its external environment. During four centuries at the beginning of the common era, the Scandinavian space had been a far periphery of the Roman empire (to which it provided mercenary warriors); in the eighth century, it became the periphery of a new centre, the group of Frankish states, first Merovingian then Carolingian. In spite of their upheavals, these states maintained a coherence that made them distinct from their environment (Riché 1983). Dirham hoards prove that the Scandinavian periphery had a relationship with another centre, farther and larger: Dar al-Islam. They also had a relationship with a third centre located between the first two: the Byzantine empire. In brief, to give a continental perspective, the Scandinavians of the northern periphery

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stood in relationship with three southern centres. These differentiated relations had an effect on the inner structures of the Scandinavian society, which we must explore. Let us consider the Scandinavian geographic space and the distribution of objects brought back from afar, as retrieved by archaeology. A cartographic representation reveals two statistical tendencies: dirham hoards are concentrated along the Scandinavian shores of the Baltic Sea18 (map in Figure 10.2), while there are no such hoards on the Atlantic shores of Norway. Instead of dirhams, the tombs and hoards of the Atlantic shores contain objects from Ireland, Scotland, England and Francia (Heen-Pettersen 2019). Considering what navigators brought home, a conclusion imposes itself: the navigators who went eastward were distinct from the navigators who headed west.19 Given that the maritime collective actor is constructed on the basis of its actions (sailing in order to bring back valued objects), we must make a distinction between two maritime collective actors with different paths and divergent actions, characterised by commercial dominance for the one and predatory dominance for the other. The difference in their behaviour necessitates an explanation that differs from the hypothesis outlined above: we should rather recognise them as two distinct narrative programmes. If the objects brought back differ between the east and west coasts of the Scandinavian peninsulas, what do we find between those coasts at the southern margin?20 In that area, a stricture of the Cimbrian peninsula (cf. Pliny the Elder), the Jutland21 region, is narrow and was in contact with the Frankish states (Figures 10.4 and 10.5). The most notable archaeological finding there is not a dispersion of hoards dug into the ground, but a group of defensive structures totalling 32 km in length, erected in earthworks (certain sectors have a nucleus of large pebbles, other sectors have a brick facing) and collectively called Dannevirke (Tummuscheit and Witte 2018, 2019), which may be translated as ‘Work of the Danes’. These extensive walls, mentioned in the Royal Frankish Annals (Scholz 1970) for the year 808, are still visible today in the landscape, on the German side of today’s frontier. Extending between the North Sea (west) and the Baltic Sea (east), the defensive barrier benefited from the presence of lands inundated by the river Treene towards the west and of the indentation of Shlei fjord towards the east, which shortened the length of the construction. Inscribed in a 18 19 20 21

See in particular Kilger 2008. See notes on Scandinavian sea routes in the Baltic in Price, T. Douglas et al. 2016. The northern border is relatively inactive because of the dominant artic climate. Or country of the Jutes.

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Figure 10.4 Map of Jutland peninsula constriction with position of Danevirke sections (after Tummuscheit and Witte 2019)

Image copyright: © Aarhus University Press

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Figure 10.5 Map of Danevirke segments with the positions of Hedeby and Shlesvig cities (after Tummuscheit and Witte 2019)

Image copyright: © Aarhus University Press

constriction of territory between two seas, the Dannevirke is reminiscent of Hadrian’s Wall running through the north of England, and is technically reminiscent of the linear earth levees erected by the Anglo-Saxons in England, the most famous being Offa’s Dyke. Near the south-eastern coast of Jutland, north of Danevirke, there are two short sections of earth levees, one in Olderdige (dated 31 CE), the other in Æ Vold (dated around 150 CE) (Tummuscheit & Witte 2019). The presence of a ditch in front of a levee that is sometimes strengthened with a palisade, or a wall unambiguously points the front of all Danevirke constructions to the south: it protects Jutland against an incursion of potential southern forces. It is interesting to note that the older ramparts erected in Olderdige and Æ Vold were oriented northwards, protecting the local population (Angles) against attacks from the north. While the Kovirket section of Danevirke was erected in a single campaign by Harald Blatand22 between 968 and 986 CE, the principal section called Hovedvolden involved six phases of construction and modification between the eighth and twelfth centuries. Phase two, consisting of an increase in the height of the previous construction, with turf clods containing burnt heath, was erected in front of the rampart built during the first phase, over a previous ditch. The burnt materials have been carbon dated: it belongs to the articulation period between the fifth and sixth centuries, that is, the Migration Period. The Danevirke is not unique in its category, but belongs to a class of military constructions whose basic function is in no doubt. In its position 22 Different writings are common for this name. In English he is called Harald Bluetooth.

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on the Jutland peninsula, it is inscribed as a frontier, that is, a frontline between two rival military powers (Hammad 2004). But we are far from Hadrian’s Wall and the Roman imperial organisation. It is not possible to suppose a political power comparable to the Roman empire to the north of Danevirke, one that determined its construction, nor even one comparable to the Frankish kings who ended up designating Charlemagne emperor of the West in the year 800. Nonetheless, we must suppose a political project for this military construction: the will of an actor (individual or collective) ready for combat to defend a territory behind the defensive wall, who partially delegated the task of forbidding or retarding the passage of undesirable groups to this wall, to gain time and gather a force able to respond to the menace. Excavations between 2010 and 2014 found clear traces of a crossing gate (five to six metres wide) traversing the rampart, dating to the eighth century at least. A north-south highway went through the passage, the ancient main road of Jutland (Hærvejen or army road), whose origins date back to the Bronze Age. This equipment presupposes the existence of an authority who controlled passage, allowing or refusing it. The wall structure channelled circulation flows towards a controllable passage point. In brief, the Danevirke presupposes a collective actor controlling the territory north of the barrier, controlling the land passage through an obligatory gate. Control was exerted over persons and objects, with the possibility of levying a passage fee, taking things from the military isotopy to economic isotopy. The segmentary defensive construction does not allow us to conclude anything about the depth of territory controlled or its area. Nevertheless, the volume of displaced earth (digging ditches and increasing the height of levees), the volume of stones carted from afar to erect the fieldstone nucleus, and the volume of fired bricks for the face of Valdemar’s Wall (late twelfth century), allow us to estimate the power of the collective actor controlling the works. The evolution of the barrier reflects the evolution of the controlling power and the extent that was controlled: the improvement in steps (in height, in width, in solid facing) manifests increasingly significant expenditure, which allows us to conclude that the controlled territory to the north became more and more extensive. In the ninth century, the English chronicler Orosius recorded the voyage of Ohthere from Norwegian Hålogaland down to the Baltic. When the ship passed Skagerrak and Kattegat sounds, which separating today’s Norway and Sweden from Denmark, Ohthere said that both shores of the maritime strait belonged to Denemearce: a single political

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power extended its control over territories (Sindbaek 2008) that no longer belong to the modern-day kingdom of Denmark. If the master of Danevirke did not extend his control over the totality of Scandinavian physical space, the remaining extent still pertained to the agrarian collective actor described in the dimorphic model. It follows that the ancient land-based collective actor was divided into two parts: one part that continued to exist as before, and another established in Jutland and leaning back against the Danevirke, that started extending its control over other lands, the operation having a marked military character. In short, the Scandinavian physical and social spaces were partitioned into four parts: two maritime collective actors, two land collective actors. The collective actor presupposed by the Danevirke manifested dynamic polemical behaviour affecting the three others. Each one of these collective actors may have been manifested by various political or regional groups identifiable by a name in the chronicles or in the epic tradition. I will not attempt to identify historical figures; that pertains to a validation phase for these hypotheses. My purpose here is to propose a syntactic scheme that can claim to have an explanatory value. Relations Between the Four Scandinavian Collective Actors We have little textual information about the structure of the paradigm that distinguishes between the four collective actors characterised by their action. While the maritime collective actors present in the East and in the West (precursors of a Sweden and a Norway that were not yet constituted) seem to make use of the exterior waterways out of Scandinavia without mutual conflict, the land actors were in conflict for the division of the Scandinavian space to the extent that it consists of dry land. Over time, the master of Danevirke began to manifest an expansionist character. The relationship between maritime and land actors remains to be clarified by the interpretation of archaeological indices, following the method of spatial semiotics applied here. When the Frankish annals evoke the master of Danevirke, they qualify him as king, in a way parallel to the masters of contemporary Frankish political entities.23 We know little about such a kingship. In Anglo-Saxon England, there may have been two hundred to three hundred kings at the same time according to certain texts. Considering the territorial division of such powers, English historians have adopted the expression petty kings 23 There was a variable number of Francs kings. See Riché 1983.

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when they speak of these potentates. This reflects the fragmentation of regional social space in many collective actors, where power may have been concentrated in the hands of an individual credited with a dominant military character, while we ignore everything about the political, religious or economic organisation of power. At the end of various evolutions, the holders of such power in Europe adopted variants of the Frankish form of feudal kingship in scattered order between the twelfth and thirteenth century. The lack of precision of our knowledge about eighth- or ninthcentury Scandinavia invites us to adopt a neutral expression like the master of Danevirke. There is no evidence that any opposing concentration of power challenged the master of Danevirke in the Scandinavian peninsula. On the contrary, archaeology has uncovered many durable human settlements (large farms with hierarchical buildings) interpreted as local elite residences, and temporary occupation settlements, organised in a circle around a court, which have been interpreted as places of periodic meetings for assemblies called things, referring to assemblies of that name that are mentioned in epic poetry recorded during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. These assemblies are said to have enjoyed judiciary powers, and their competence would have covered territories accepting a particular law associated with a group. The collective actors of these organisations would not concentrate power in the hands of a king. The relationship between elites and thing-like assemblies remains undetermined in the information that is available, but historians agree that a tributary economy, accompanied by gifts and counter-gifts among elites (Polanyi 1944; Mauss 1924), regulated relationships. The longue durée of power recognised as belonging to the successive masters of Danevirke, as well as the military and economic means they used for the iterative improvement of the barrier that serves to identify them, encourage us to suppose that these masters had adopted the politicaleconomic model of their Frankish neighbours, and that a feudal regime began to be implemented in Scandinavia, through which land was granted to lords in exchange for military services rendered to the overlord. The feudal model imposed itself to the extent that Scandinavian society was poorly monetarised, and that exchanges were made in kind, including military services and retribution for this in the form of land grants. From this point on, the opposition between the master of Danevirke and the agrarian actor of the rest of Scandinavia was not reduced to opposition between a centralised power and a non-centralised power (political criterion), it was translated in economic terms to an opposition between a power using land to mediate power relations (feudality), and powers that were circulating

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mobile goods (gifts, counter-gifts, tributes) to express political relations. In brief, the opposition boils down to a new feudal regime extending its remit at the expense of a tributary regime, or a regime whose form was imported against an anterior local regime. Privileging land, the feudal regime favoured sedentariness; privileging mobile goods, the tributary regime is in accord with an expeditionary economy. The Royal Frankish Annals (Sholz 1970) say that the Danish king Godfred (master of Danevirke) in 808 destroyed a Slavic port on the Baltic called Reric and transferred the merchants who were settled there to the port of Hedeby. In the tenth century, a semi-circular rampart was built around Hedeby, while the Danevirke section called Forbindenlsvolden was erected to connect the rampart of Hedeby to the main section of Danevirke. The population transfer to Hedeby and the military fortification of the port, separated by one and half centuries, attest to the masters of Danevirke’s long-standing interest in Hedeby and its maritime economic activity. This also means that the masters of Danevirke extended their hegemonic designs from the land towards the maritime, and that they were, from that moment on, in conflictual relation with the eastern maritime collective actor. Recent archaeological advances allow us to reconstruct a key episode of the conflict that set the masters of Danevirke against the western maritime collective actor. Dendrochronology applied to the large funerary ships covered by the tumuli of Storhaug and Gronhaug on Karmoy island (Bill 2019) (Rogaland in today’s Norway), and to the funerary ships in Oseberg and Gokstad tumuli in Vestfold (Oslo fjord) (Bill and Daly 2012; Bonde and Christensen 1993; Bonde and Stylegar 2016; Cannell, Bill and Macphail 2020; Gansum 2016), have permitted the determination of the inhumation date and the effraction date of these large monuments, that are said to be ‘royal’ because of their dimensions and the volume of materials used.24 The curves drawn upon the annual growth circles of wood determine dates with a probability akin to certitude. Moreover, they allow us to say that these ships were built with oak and beech trees25 grown in the region of Karmoy. The ship in the funerary tumulus of Storhaug was inhumated in 779 CE, which makes it the most ancient monument of this type26 in Norway. The ship in Gronhaug was inhumated in 790–795 CE. The erection of these 24 Their builders had more money and means than their contemporary neighbours. 25 Beech trees do not grow spontaneously at this latitude and they were probably introduced to Norway by humans. Only two exploitation areas are known in the country. 26 The Salme funerary boats (750 AD) in Estonia are smaller and there is no trace of mounds that would have covered them.

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tumuli on high terraces in the island of Karmoy (formerly called Kormt) made them visible from afar and established a relation with the port centre of power in Avaldsnes (Skre 2020) that commanded the sheltered passage of the ancient maritime route Nordvegr that went beyond the Arctic Circle (Baug et al. 2019). The tumuli are interpreted as monuments asserting the legitimacy of the group holding power in Avaldsnes. The inhumation in the Oseberg tumulus was dated by the felling of trees serving to build the funerary chamber on the ship: that happened in 834, towards the end of summer or the beginning of autumn (season indicated by the last growth rings of a tree). The inhumation of Gokstad is dated around 895-903 by the wood of the funerary chamber. The consecution of inhumation dates in Storhaug and Gronhaug on the one hand and in Oseberg and Gokstad on the other, together with the common origin of the wood of which the ships are made, give rise to the hypothesis of regional expansion of a maritime power, starting from Avaldsnes in south-west Norway, to take control of the strategic Vestfold zone on Oslo f jord, which commanded the Skagerrak-Kattegat sound between today’s Denmark and the Scandinavian peninsula. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that the funerary tumuli of Oseberg, Gokstad and Gronhaug were subjected to major public break-ins between 939 and 954 (Bill and Daly 2012), accompanied by plunder and dispersion of the skeletons inhumated therein. These robberies are interpreted as part of twists and turns in the conflict that set the masters of Danevirke against the masters of Avaldsnes and Vestfold when the masters of Danevirke embarked upon taking control of south Norway. Harald Gormson, also known as Bluetooth, would have commanded these effractions.27 On an engraved stone erected in Jelling (Jesch 2013), Harald Gormson boasted that he had reunited all of Denmark under his command, and of having made all Danes Christians. In brief, the masters of Danevirke were in conflictual relations with the three other collective actors identified in Scandinavia: the agrarian collective actor and the eastern and western maritime collective actors. It is this general framework that shall serve as the basis for the dynamic hypothesis that is able to account for what happened in the Scandinavian space. 27 Harald Bluetooth had the funerary mound of his father Gorm opened in Jelling. However, the care taken in opening the funerary room and the transfer of the skeleton to another tomb under the new church make this opening a respectful action and not a malevolent break-in. Harald Bluetooth did not deal with the tomb of his father as he dealt with the tombs of his enemies.

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Polemics Between Scandinavian Collective Actors and the Quest for Dirhams Relations between the four Scandinavian collective actors identified by thematic roles were not symmetrical. One actor, the master of Danevirke, is distinguished by his driving character. He took the initiative, the others reacted, and their reactions differ. I am sketching logico-narrative interactions here in order to draw the broad outlines of a history that I do not aim to write in detail, because the reconstruction proposed here is no more than a syntactic hypothesis built upon archaeological evidence. It should be validated or rejected by confrontation with other data. Nonetheless, it has the merit of providing an explanation for the start of the movement of acquiring dirhams, and for the extinction of that movement after more than two centuries of activity. The Scandinavian narrative development did not deploy in a quick process that juxtaposed an after and a before in extemporaneous succession, but deployed as a discontinuous durative process that started with an inchoative phase and concluded with a terminative phase. In the initial phase, a military actor built a defensive linear barrier in several segments, returned many times to its multilinear work over four centuries in order to strengthen it by augmenting its thickness, its height, its composition and the direction it faced. The growth of the barrier attests to the growth of the actor’s resources, and of its territory: it extended its control at the expense of members of the agrarian collective actor, then at the expense of maritime collective actors (eastern and western). They disturbed the former regional situation, which appeared in contrast as a lost equilibrium (perspective of losing actors). The model of the southern Frankish neighbour is not foreign to the transformation that started in what became Denmark (Wamers 2002). Texts mention the presence of Cimbrians, Angles, Jutes, Danes … in this space. These names cannot be identified in the material objects of archaeology, but the adoption of the name Denmark for the country in the ninth century privileged the Danes, like the Merovingian and Carolingian construction privileged the Franks: the people called Franks had integrated, absorbed or subjected other populations. Behind the Franks stands the figure of the Roman Catholic church, sending missionaries to convert the Scandinavians and attract them towards its model. Its interest notwithstanding, this process pertaining to the religious isotopy escapes the spatial and archaeological approach adopted here, unless we attend to the history of the construction of churched and monasteries, the founding of bishoprics, and the transformation of cemeteries. But this would carry us too far from our initial goal.

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The territorial expansion of the actor master of Danevirke was accompanied by a change of the internal structure in the nascent state, where a feudal regime replaced the tributary regime. The rekindled conflict between collective actors does not resemble a conflict between social classes, like those revealed elsewhere by Marxist analyses. In Scandinavia, the conflict opposed two forms of domination, between two elite groups who promoted different economic-political models: the feudal regime on one side (it took shape in the Frankish states), and a tributary regime on the other (it formerly ruled the Scandinavian regions and other places). The collective actors who were opposed to the master of Danevirke were reacting to two potential changes: a project to impose a new superior authority upon them, and another project to change their economic-political regime (which suited them). Two distinct refusals were at hand. This translated into three different reactions by the collective actors that were exposed to reduction. These were three concomitant dynamic processes, that were more or less coherent with each other, for the Scandinavian social space was not homogeneous. The agrarian collective actor, who controlled the northern Scandinavian lands that still escaped the control of the master of Danevirke, had no unitarian political identity, and his adhesion to the tributary regime was not inconsistent with a political fragmentation that poses difficulties for any attempt at description today. The major identifier of this actor is its exposure to the southern expansionism and resistance against it. Evidence of conflict is not difficult to find. In spite of rivalries among local lords, they agreed to continue the ancient tributary regime and to refuse the domination of the master of Danevirke. This did not stop the territorial advances of the latter. Instead of crediting the southern success to any bravery or individual superiority proper to its elites, we can, without risk, ascribe it to the relative efficiency of the feudal regime that allowed the concentration of many forces in the hands of the holder of a unitary project, while the opposing forces were dispersed. The major advantage of the feudal regime, in a non-monetary economy, was its capacity to mobilise military forces by grants of land, with no need for a centralised administration of taxes that were difficult to collect. The eastern maritime collective actor could escape the attempts at control by land via sea. Nevertheless, the control of port cities, that started with Hedeby (transfer of merchants from Reric to Hedeby, fortification of Hedeby, migration from Hedeby into Schlesvig port, already selected as an episcopal see), and the control of related taxes, allowed control of the contact between maritime trade and land. The reaction of the maritime actor was not to in

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engage military combat with the master of Danevirke, but to reinforce the tributary regime in the space that still escaped that master, by the injection of large quantities of dirhams, whose silver fed the slow circulation of gifts and counter-gifts made of large silver amounts, strengthening the ties between the elites in position (Hardh 2008). In brief, the basic narrative programme of the oriental maritime collective actor was to preserve the tributary regime in Scandinavia, as it had been before. The dirham quest was only a narrative programme of usage (a sub-programme) inscribed into the context of that basic programme. This explains why the Scandinavians went seeking dirhams by trade in Baghdad, and later in Tashkent when Central Asia replaced the Iraqi source. They also went seeking silver in Constantinople, where they traded their military services. One of their band leaders, Harald Sigurdarson (also known as Hardrada or ‘the Pitiless’), returned with his Byzantine cargo to try to reconquer a kingship in Norway. He met with failure when he faced the master of Danevirke. Within the tributary regime, silver dirhams did not circulate one by one in exchange for other valued objects, as would have been the case in a monetary economy, and which would have manifested considerable velocity, dispersing the coins through social and physical spaces. Archaeology does not find traces of such a dispersion. It finds dirhams only in large lots, considerable collections, corresponding to circulation on ceremonial occasions that determined their slow velocity (Hardh 2001, 2008; Kilger 2008). This is why these coins are found in groups and dispersed. The remarkable quantity of dirhams retrieved in Scandinavia attests to the efforts expended by the eastern maritime actors to collect them and bring them back. This also testifies to the energy expended in order to preserve and continue the tributary regime that served as an economic-political reference. We may conclude from this that they were satisfied with it. While we have now determined what lay at the origin of the acquisition and grouping of dirhams into large collections, we must still determine what stopped their circulation. Before this, we must first finish the description of the actorial dynamics launched by the expansion of the masters of Danevirke. The western maritime collective actor did not behave like his eastern counterpart. He did not bring back objects grouped into lots to Scandinavia and inject them into the circuit of gifts and counter-gifts in the tributary regime. Prizes plundered in the west did not significantly characterise their process.28 What was characteristic of this collective actor was its activity in 28 The enormous amount of money collected by the Danegeld in England appears to have melted as snow in the sun: no archaeological trace of it can be found anywhere.

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lands encountered elsewhere: its members tried to settle there and acquire mastery of those lands. This was attempted many times, with various forms of success attesting to a lack of coordination. These attempts had a common denominator: their authors left lands on which the master of Danevirke had set his eyes and they went to settle elsewhere. They opposed the seizure of their land by an opponent more than that they expressed attachment to a tributary regime. They accepted various political regimes on the lands where they settled beyond the sea. They implicitly admitted that the master of Danevirke was too powerful to resist, that they were not able to stop him, and that they had a better chance to find a place in the sun elsewhere. In in so doing, they furthered the migration of Scandinavians to other countries. Iceland is said to be a foundation created by the migration of people from western Scandinavian coasts, a population that refused a feudal project in what has become Norway. The Icelandic population lived from fishing, livestock rearing and raiding: the maritime mode of production was transferred to Iceland. An assembly representing the colonists was constituted in 930 as well as unified law: if the relationship to the land of the island was foundational, the juridical isotopy was important at the creation of a state. In Normandy, what started by forced settlement in Basse Seine was transformed in 911 by Charles the Simple, king of France, into an autonomous vassal county. The land granted became the foundation of political power and replaced the tributary regime with a feudal regime. The Normans were invited to organise themselves following the model of Frankish aristocracy, with which they were allowed to unite by marriage. It is from Normandy that the parties who were responsible for the conquest of England (1066 CE) and the conquest of Sicily (1030 CE) departed, this latter operation being declared to be as the service of the pope of Rome. During the latter half of the eleventh century, Bohemond of Hauteville attempted a conquest of the Balkans (Comnena 1969), and Tancred founded the County of Edesse in Anatolia. These late creations manifest the same logic: acquire lands in order to implant a feudal regime there, where power relations would have been founded on the control of rent-producing land. This was accompanied by Christianisation and by the installation, in addition to the warrior aristocracy, of another dominant group which levied tax in the name of the church (Wickham 1994, 2005). All this did not happen all at once, and the transition took time: one century elapsed between the constitution of a county in Normandy and the conquest of Sicily. While things were changing in one place, they continued as before in another. While some men departed on distant maritime

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expeditions, others ploughed fields and raised livestock. The change appears clear only after a while. End of the Dirham Quest and of Dirham Hoarding in Scandinavia The archaeological record of Scandinavian space after the long transformation that occupies us here is a quantity of dirham hoards found in the ground. This raises a question: why did the hoard owners not come back to pick them up, given that there is nothing in the hoards or in their context to indicate that they could be offerings that were not intended to be retrieved? There is only one possible answer: the hoards were not retrieved because the subjects who put them in the ground were unable to retrieve them. The hoarders had been eliminated before they could do so. Had they rallied to the new political masters and adopted the new manner of doing things, they would have survived, retrieved their hoard and exploited it in order to better their situation. That did not happen. In other words, the activity of the oriental maritime collective actor stopped when there were no more chiefs with the capacity for mounting a distant expedition. Combat ceased due to a dearth of combatants. The elimination of men who advocated the tributary regime stopped the circulation of silver symbolic exchanges. The dirhams hoarded in the ground, waiting to become a deferred gift, stayed there until they were struck by deep ploughshares that brought them to light by chance. The last datable hoards are found on the island of Gotland. In this territory separated from the main Scandinavian peninsula and from the feudal state that was installing itself there the ancient maritime ideology was still able to thrive for a while before being eliminated in its turn. The density of hoard distribution is the highest in Scandinavia here, and it did not diminish before the end of tenth century. The process ended in the eleventh. The end of Scandinavian dirham hoarding must not be attributed to the drying up of Samanid mines, as has been supposed by some numismatists. If the Scandinavian demand had continued, it would have found other silver sources elsewhere, like al-Andalus or al-Maghreb. The real explanation lies in the Scandinavia itself: silver was no longer useful to obtain glory and social status. Land had replaced silver as modal object invested with the competence to mediate the relationship to power. The creation of Scandinavian states centralised power and instated a hierarchy among elite members. A concerted policy of space control, resting on the building of fortifications controlling circulation near the locations of the elites’ periodical meetings where the gift exchanges of the tributary regime

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were practiced (Ulriksen, Schultz and Mortensen 2020), was implemented to prevent the operation of the tributary regime. There was no more room for rivalries between equal expedition chiefs, looking for the proof of their value in long expeditions. Rivalry among equals, expressing autonomous individual volitions, was replaced by hierarchy and heteronomous duties. The resources of the maritime mode of acquisition were replaced by the rent from land allocated along the lines of feudal hierarchy. Other transformations accompanied this central fact. The creation of Scandinavian states (Denmark, Sweden, Norway) following the model of Frankish states discouraged trade with Dar al-Islam and broke the fiduciary contact with it. The Christianisation of Scandinavians established fiduciary relations with the already Christianised Frankish states. Piracy plundering the coasts of Francia stopped. This reconstruction of this process, from a Scandinavian perspective, accounts for the start of the process of acquiring and hoarding dirhams, and for the end of this process. The quest for dirhams played its part in the resistance against Frankish influence and Christianisation, in a polycentric political world. The explanation for the enigma of 500,000 dirhams in Scandinavia lies not in the hoards themselves, but in the transformations of the society that amassed them.

By Way of Conclusion The initial question was how to account for the formation of dirham hoards in Scandinavia. The aim was to reconstruct the mechanisms that started the economic movement transferring dirhams towards the northern seas, and those that put an end to it. The hypothesis that we have constructed appears plausible. While the scenario may not have been demonstrated with concrete data, it remains persuasive, providing a possible framework for the transformation of a Scandinavian society that was in parallel contact with the Frankish world on one side and with Dar al-Islam on the other. The Scandinavians ended up by accepting the Frankish model and withdrew into their northern lands, sealing the end of long expeditions and of commercial exchange with the lands of Dar al-Islam. The silver of which the dirhams were made, which was at the origin of our questions, was displaced from the focal centre of interest when its acquisition and hoarding appeared to be inscribed in larger processes, affecting the values of Scandinavian society in the long term. Silver was not appreciated for itself, in a perspective that would assign it intrinsic

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value superior to the value inscribed in other objects, but in an extrinsic perspective that inscribed a modal value in it, in a network encompassing a system. The value ascribed to silver came from outside, from society and from the operations it facilitated. In the tributary Scandinavian society, it played the role fulfilled by land in the Frankish feudal regime, which was held in place by the Ancien Régime until the French Revolution. It was not until the Industrial Revolution that land was replaced by factories as a major determining factor in human power relations. A new mutation is occurring today, as factories no longer determine these power relations. Some questions that were still open at the beginning of this analysis have been answered. Other unanswered questions have appeared, in particular that of the territorial boundaries between the new states of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, but this is a marginal issue compared to the initial question centred on silver hoards. Recent genetic research has examined the ethnic composition of the populations engaged in these processes: the skeletons placed in two funerary ships excavated in Salme in Estonia (Margaryan 2019) point to groups that lived in Sweden; the populations of Gotland island included members of Baltic origin or more distant places In short, the Scandinavians engaged in the collection of silver dirhams do not form a biologically homogeneous ethnical group, but rather incorporated men united by an economic-political activity, and an implicit ideology. Another new question is the incidence of the creaming off of silver (without violence) from the lands of Dar al-Islam in the process analysed here. The chronicles allude to many times that silver was in demand. Shortage of coinage is at the source of various little explored problems in Islamic history. This remains to be done. For semioticians of space, this study raises questions on a continental scale. We are far removed from the level of personal interactions (Hammad 1987, 1989) where syntactic analysis started in this domain. The new scale implies unheard-of semiotic problems (Hammad 2018b), in particular the construction of a paradigm of four collective actors that stand in a polemical relationship to each other within a society, and the question of identification of a syntagmatic chain of collective actors for the passage through the waterways of the Balto-Pontic isthmus (transfer of valued objects from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea and back). The question of tributary and feudal regimes are similarly scale-dependent, two complex semantic categories pertaining to the economic-political isotopy. The widening of space and duration has permitted the construction of a semantic micro-universe encompassing the major transformation of the Scandinavian society, enabling us to answer the question initially posed. This illustrates the efficiency of

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the semiotic method, which is able to process a large quantity of historical data (economic, numismatic, anthropological and political) to produce a semantic summary that accounts for the behaviour of an entire society towards its lands and silver metal. I take note of the fact that a change of scale has been key to the formulation of the explanatory hypothesis: as long as the analysis remained at the level of hoards and individual hoarding subjects, the questions remained undecidable and unanswered. The shift to the level of collective actors, which is necessitated by geographic groups of archaeological objects, opened the way to a solution. While the programmes of individual actors appeared unclear, it has proven possible to define the programmes of collective actors. At the conclusion of our analytical process, the group of hoards and maritime routes appear to be a collection of nonverbal utterances uttered many times in space and in time, while the analysis performed on the higherlevel scale regards the appearance of a nonverbal enunciation involving Scandinavian society in relation with distant centres of influence. This entire analysis, in which presupposition has played a major role, remains a hypothetical construction that ought to be validated by comparison with archaeological and historical data. It should be possible to verify whether historical figures and attested events in the area correspond with the broad lines of the narrative scheme proposed. Validation remains beyond the scope of this study, already quite long, that aimed to interpret the extensive presence of dirhams in Scandinavia.

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About the author Manar Hammad is a Research Professor of Semiotics with a profound interest in archaeologies, as his archaeological activity in Palmira and numerous publications on the subject attest. He was co-director of a DEAA programme in architectural theory at the National School of Architecture of Paris-La Villette (ENSAPLV). He taught communication theory and the analysis of non-verbal communication at the University of Montreal and the University of Quebec in Montreal, and French-Arabic and English-Arabic technical translation at the Higher School of Interpreters and Translators (University of Paris III). As Research Director of Groupe 107 (Paris) from 1972 to 1976, he conducted research in the anthropology of architecture. He conducted research in the framework of the Semio-Linguistic Research Group directed by Algirdas Julien Greimas at the Practical School for Advanced Studies in Social Sciences in Paris. He is the founder of Dar Hammad, a research centre in Aleppo, Syria, entrusted to the French Institute of the Near East (IFPO), and which is dedicated to scientific research on northern Syria, while promoting cultural exchanges with Syrian researchers and intellectuals. He is author of numerous monographs such as Sémiotiser l’espace: Décrypter architecture et archéologie. Essais sémiotiques (2015) and Leggere lo spazio, comprendere l’architettura Meltemi (2003).

Index Actantial role 14, 20, 40, 263, 285. Actant 40, 56, 60, 67, 214, 215, 216, 258, 277, 278. Addressee 14, 17, 18, 21, 24, 56, 60, 61, 145, 148, 165, 174, 175, 178, 204, 213, 222, 237, 245, 246, 248, 263. Addresser 14, 17, 21, 24, 41, 42, 47, 50, 51, 56, 60, 61, 62, 67, 145, 165, 166, 169, 175, 176, 177, 178, 211, 213, 216, 237, 238, 241, 245, 246, 248, 259, 263, 274. Aesthetic discourse 21, 93, 94. Aestheticisation 196 Agentivity 106 Anti-heritage 104, 134. Anti-subject 40, 260, 261, 263. AppRecuerdos 25, 26, 231, 232, 233, 234, 235, 236, 237, 238, 239, 240, 241, 242, 243, 244, 245, 246, 247, 248, 249, 250, 251, 252, 253. Architectural utterance 118, 121, 129. Archive 13, 23, 24, 33, 44, 71, 94, 143, 157, 163, 164, 167, 168, 171, 174, 177, 180, 211, 212, 216, 217, 232, 233, 237, 238, 239, 241, 245, 252. Argentina 24, 25, 163, 164, 171, 175, 176, 178, 180, 181, 207, 208, 209, 217, 219, 228, 229. Asemanticisation 189. Aspectualisation 213, 214, 215, 218. Audio-visual archive 23, 164. Auricularisation 214. Authenticity 48, 51, 246. Axiology 21, 126, 132, 225. Axis Power 43, 183. Baltic Sea 256, 257, 266, 276, 280, 281, 289, 303, 311. Bracketed heritage 132. Bricolage 61, 195. Chile 25, 26, 180, 181, 228, 231, 232, 233, 235, 237, 238, 239, 242, 253. Cinematic ethical gaze 210 Cognitive component 146, 263. Collective enunciation 23, 164, 177, 245. Collective memory 12, 31, 32, 34, 48, 52, 143, 157, 211, 241, 260. Competence 24, 34, 61, 66, 138, 144, 146, 148, 151, 197, 215, 219, 222, 235, 239, 271, 285, 294, 301. Concentration camp 12, 31, 32, 35, 45, 46, 49, 154, 213. Conditions of representability 209. Connotation 70, 107, 121, 125, 158. Content 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 34, 59, 60, 95, 144, 145, 147, 148, 159, 170, 189, 197, 219, 233, 234, 236, 242, 247, 251, 259, 260, 262, 264, 265, 268. Contested heritage 16, 22, 101, 103, 132. Controversial memory 81, 142.

Cordoba Museum 24. Counter-monument 25, 70, 132, 207, 208, 210, 213, 216, 226, 227, 229, Cultural memory 11, 12, 19, 57, 107, 213, 228. Collective memory 12, 31, 32, 34, 48, 52, 143, 157, 211, 241, 260. Damnatio memoriae 112, 142. Dark heritage 103. Débrayage 109, 110, 111, 115, 121, 125, 128, 132. Degradation 128. Denotation 107. Desaparecidos 169, 171, 173, 207, 216, 225. Dirhams 26, 255, 256, 257, 258, 259, 260, 261, 263, 264, 265, 266, 267, 268, 269, 270, 272, 273, 274, 277, 278, 285, 288, 289, 297, 299, 301, 302, 303, 304, 308, 309, 310. Dirty War 24, 163, 164, 208, 209. Discourse 18, 21, 34, 38, 44, 45, 46, 47, 50, 51, 56, 66, 70, 72, 81, 91, 92, 93, 94, 97, 104, 108, 109, 119, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 121, 122, 132, 134, 144, 145, 148, 151, 165, 173, 175, 176, 178, 193, 194, 200, 202, 203, 209, 210, 211, 214, 238, 244, 246, 247, 248, 251, 274. Dispositif 200, 202, 219 Economic space 27, 255, 258, 272. Embrayage 110, 111, 115, 132. Empirical user 13, 15, 55, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 69, 72, 73, 74, 75, 251. Enunciatee 108, 115, 122, 147. Enunciation 11, 13, 17, 18, 20, 22, 23, 24, 27, 56, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 74, 92, 96, 101, 102, 103, 106, 108, 109, 110, 111, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 120, 121, 122, 124, 125, 126, 128, 129, 130, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 145, 147, 151, 163, 164, 165, 166, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 212, 213, 214, 215, 222, 226, 227, 231, 232, 234, 238, 244, 245, 246, 248, 250, 304. Enunciational débrayage 110, 115, 121, 125, 131. Enunciational mechanism 124. Enunciative débrayage 110, 121. Enunciative level 203. Enunciative strategy 179 Enunciator 11, 18, 92, 108, 121, 122, 129, 147, 200, 201, 204, 213, 222, 233, 238, 246. ESMA-Space for Memory and for the Promotion and Defence of Human Rights 25, 207, 208. Ethical gaze 210, 225. Exemplar memory 177. Experiential narratives 237. Expression 13, 14, 16, 34, 60, 62, 68, 73, 74, 82, 145, 148, 151, 166, 190, 197, 214, 215, 247, 257, 263, Factual vs semiotic knowledge 234.

316  Fascist heritage 87, 96, 102, 114, 122, 127, 129. Fascist ideology 67, 114, 115, 124, 135. Fascist monuments 16, 17, 76, 82, 106, 113, 136. Fascist symbols 82, 112, 127. Foibe 43, 45, 49, 52. Forgetting 33, 35, 42, 57, 58, 77, 133. Foro italico of Palermo 24, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 192, 193, 197, 198, 199. Fossoli 20, 28, 31, 32, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52. Frozen memories 55, 56, 58, 69, 72, 73, 76. Hidden memories 168. Holocaust 13, 22, 42, 44, 45, 46, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 141, 150, 151, 152, 154, 156. 158, Holocaust Memorial 141. Hypotext 73 Ideological architecture 119, 122, 126. Ideological competition 92, 93. Ideological discourse 81, 91. Ideology 21, 58, 66, 67, 68, 82, 91, 101, 109, 112, 114, 115, 121, 124, 135, 190, 301, 303, 309. Imaginary 66, 98, 205, 212, 248. Indexical enunciation 166, 179. Indexicality 213, 245, 246. Intentio operis 63, 84. Interlocutory subject 85. Interpretation 13, 15, 19, 20, 22, 32, 33, 41, 55, 60, 63, 64, 68, 74, 77, 84, 85, 104, 109, 115, 118, 129, 131, 141, 142, 144, 146, 149, 159, 179, 185, 194, 207, 222, 228, 232, 243, 244, 248, 251, 255, 256, 257, 259, 263, 293, 308, 310. Invisibility strategy 164, 178. Isotopy 74, 223, 234, 240, 258, 261, 263, 282, 285, 287, 292, 297, 300, 303, Italian colonialist past 20, 55, 70. Italian Fascism 13. Jewish Museum 22, 141, 148, 156, 160. Landscape of memory 25, 28, 207, 215, 226. Lieu de mémoire 19, 20, 32, 33, 35, 38, 39, 41, 42, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51. Literal memory 177. Madres de Plaza de Mayo 169. Manipulation 17, 21, 56, 67, 146, 165, 177, 239. Mediascape 211. Milieu de mémoire 19, 32, 33, 35, 49. Minor memories 232, 247. Mnemotopes 142. Mnestic function 33, 34. Model Reader 15, 55, 59, 60, 61, 62, 75, 76, 85, 102, 108, 109, 243, 244, 251. Model User 15, 23, 62, 63, 64, 66, 68, 74, 75, 109, 115, 251. Montage 214, 217, 219, 220, 223, 225, 226. Monumental aggression 82. Monumental memories 167. Morphology 14, 15, 16. Narcotisation 16, 20, 96, 120. Narratability 209.

Reading Memory Sites through Signs

Narrativity 11, 13, 17, 19, 20, 31, 32, 36, 29, 40, 41, 51, 238, 239. Nazism 42, 105, 149. Non-verbal enunciation 27. Nostalgia 188, 239. Oblique enunciation 203, 204, 205. Oblivion 69, 96, 113, 142, 187, 236. Ocularisation 214, 215, 220. Palimpsest 65, 75, 77, 96, 113, 142, 251. Palimpstestual memory 133. Passionate discourse 148. Pedestrian enunciations 250. Performance 17, 18, 73, 119, 125, 126, 145, 218, 239, 247, 252. Perpetrator heritage 103. Perpetrator 23, 46, 178, 208. Physical space 27, 34, 74, 242, 245, 255, 257, 258, 264, 265, 271, 278, 286, 293. Phonic materiality 247. Polyphonic narratives 76. Polysensorial experience 251. Post-conflict monuments 132. Post-dictatorial narratives 25, 227. Post-dictatorship testimonial cinema 210. Practical valorisation 189, 196. El Predio 25, 2017, 208, 210, 211, 213, 21,5, 216, 217, 219, 220, 221, 222, 224, 225, 226. Prosthetic memory 211. Public memory 47, 49, 50, 76, 180, 212, 228, 236, 247. Punctum 239, 240. Quoted heritage 132. Re-mediation 27 Reception 58, 59, 75, 243, 244, 248. Reconciliation 25, 103, 208, 227, 237. Restoration 22, 88, 101, 102, 103, 106, 111, 116, 117, 122, 123, 126, 131, 164, 167, 209. Second World War 24, 42, 43, 66, 69, 86, 112, 142, 183, 184, 185. Semantic Presupposition 257, 260. Semantic value 259. Semiosis 16, 18, 19, 58, 148. Semiosphere 13, 16, 22, 28, 144, 180, 238. Semiotic square 24, 134, 183, 184, 191, 204, 236. Semisymbolism 202. Social space 27, 255, 257, 258, 260, 265, 277, 279, 282, 285, 286, 288, 294, 298. Sound landscape 251, 252. Space for memory 23, 25, 163, 164, 209, 218. Space of memory 11, 20, 24, 26, 32, 36, 208, 209, 210, 211, 219, 225. Space of representation 34. Spatial resemantisation 16. Spatial semiotics 27, 257, 293. Spatialisation of trauma 142. Structural semantic analysis 13 Subjects of enunciation 96, 108, 125, 134. Symbol 68, 74, 81, 86, 90, 94, 118, 142, 156, 174, 193, 245.

Index

Syncretic semiotics 144, 145. Tabula Rasa 25, 207, 208, 210, 211, 213, 220, 221, 222, 224, 225, 226. Terrain vague 24, 183, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 191, 197, 203, 204, 205. Testimony 117, 127, 158, 177, 180, 210, 211, 222. Thematic roles 40, 297. Traces 11, 12, 18, 19, 23, 27, 46, 50, 103, 105, 107, 108, 115, 116, 121, 126, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 171, 173, 176, 177, 178, 179, 213, 214, 222, 244, 246, 252, 261, 268, 269, 275, 279, 282, 287, 292, 299.

317 Transitional space 26, 235, 237, 248. Trauma site 23, 207, 208, 209, 210, 212, 218. Troubled materiality 113. Uncomfortable heritage 102, 132. Urban enunciation 201. Urban landscape 26, 106, 158, 232, 236, 247, 253. Utopian valorisation 189. Virtual spaces 26, 244. Visual semiotics 58, 120.



Index of Names

Al-Istakhri, Ibrahim bin Muhammad 270, 304. Al-Mas’Udi, Abu-l-Hasan Ali bin alHusayn 270, 281, 304. Al-Muqaddasi, Muhammad 270, 304. Alać, Morana 61, 76. Allmäe, Raili 287, 310. Althusser, Louis 115, 121, 136. Angelucci, Malcom 131, 132, 136. Andermann, Jens 209, 213, 221, 224, 226, 227. Arenillas, María Guadalupe 210, 223, 227. Armenio, Enzo 214, 227. Arrigoni, Gabi 32, 48, 51. Arthurs, Joshua 105, 106, 136. Ashworth, Gregory. J. 82, 98, 103, 104, 105, 139. Assmann, Aleida 142, 160. Assmann, Jan 179, 234. Bădescu, Gruia 57, 78. Barrett, James 271, 283, 304. Barría, Mauricio 232, 233, 236, 237, 238, 253. Barthes, Roland 91, 107, 161, 224, 239, 253. Bartolini, Flaminia 66, 76, 105, 129, 131, 132, 133, 136. Baug, Irene 265, 283, 288, 296, 305. Bellentani, Federico 58, 76, 82, 97, 98, 115, 127, 136. Ben-Ghiat, Ruth 113, 136, 138. Benjamin, Walter 160, 212, 227. Benveniste, Émile 102, 108, 109, 116, 136, 173, 179, 244, 253, 276, 282, 284, 295, 305. Beyaert-Geslin, Anne 142. Bhabha, Homi Kharshedji 205. Bill, Jan 280. 295, 296, 305. Billiani, Francesca 11, 136. Boldrini, Laura 106. Bolin, Sture 170, 173, 305. Bond, Lucy 213, 227. Bonde, Niels 295, 305. Braudel, Fernand 258, 305. Brodsky, Marcelo 209, 227. Brøndal, Viggo 285, 305. Bronwen, Martin 136. Buelens, Gert 213, 227. Bukkemoen, Grete Bjorkan 287, 305. Bustamante, Javiera Danilo 233, 235, 247, 253, 253. Calabrese, Laura 38, 51. Cannell, Rebecca J.S. 295, 305. Carruthers, Mary 168, 180. Carter, Nick 82, 98, 105, 136. Caruth, Cathy 212, 227. Casetti, Francesco 213, 219, 227. Cassani Simonetti, Matteo 42, 51, 52. Castelletti, Laura 88.

Castro, Valeska Paulina Navea 236, 247, 252, 253. Cattelan, Maurizio 117, 118, 133. Cavicchioli, Sandra 37, 51. Cento Bull, Anna 129, 131, 132, 133, 136. Cervelli, Pierluigi 77, 111, 124, 136, 160, 185, 205. Chalcraft, Jasper 66, 76. Chatenet, Ludovic 160. Christensen, Arne Emil 295, 305. Clarke, David 129, 131, 132, 133, 136. Comnena, Anna 300, 305. Connerton, Paul 57, 76. Constantin Porphyrogénète 280, 305. Cooijmans, Christian 283, 305. Corrain, Lucia 70, 76, 137. Courtés, Joseph 40, 52, 102, 108, 109, 110, 120, 137, 184, 205, 278, 286, 306. Craps, Stef 213, 227. Crenzel, Emilio 208, 228. da Silva Catela, Ludmila 167, 180, 208, 228. Daly, Aoife 295, 296, 305. Dazzi, Arturo 81, 82, 83, 86, 88, 89, 94, 95, 98. de Boüard, Michel 273, 305. de Certeau, Michel 16, 28, 31, 32, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 41, 47, 48, 51, 59, 249, 250, 253. de Saussure, Ferdinand 63, 64, 250. de Solà Morales, Ignasi 185, 205. Del Boca, Angelo 65, 76. Deleuze, Gilles 212, 220, 226, 228. Delizia, Francesco 42, 52. Demaria, Cristina 25, 61, 76, 102, 174, 176, 178, 180, 207, 209, 228. Dillmann, François-Xavier 271, 310. Duby, Georges 283, 305. Dumézil, Georges 282, 305. Durrant, Samuel 213, 227. Dusi, Nicola Maria 72, 73, 76. Dutton, Paul Edward 271, 309. Eaglestone, Robert 213. Earle, Timothy 282, 283, 309. Eco, Umberto 15, 16, 20, 21, 28, 32, 33, 34, 52, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 76, 77, 82, 84, 91, 92, 94, 98, 102, 103, 107, 108, 109, 115, 120, 121, 136, 148, 160, 213, 216, 228, 234, 235, 236, 243, 253. Eisenman, Peter 22, 23, 141, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160. Elsaesser, Thomas 213, 228. Erll, Astrid 57, 77. Ernesti, Giulio 111, 137. Eugeni, Ruggero 212, 228. Fabbri, Paolo 65, 76, 77, 78, 135, 137, 160. Fakhoury, Mahmoud 274, 305. Faulkes, Anthony 306, 310. Fedrigolli, Bruno 87.

320  Feierstein, Daniel 229. Findlay, Ronald 306. Floch, Jean-Marie 189, 205. Fontanille, Jacques 147, 160, 256, 306. Forty, Adrian 57, 77. Foucault, Michel 103, 137, 146, 160. Fournial, Étienne 264, 306. Franzinetti, Guido 43, 52. Frickman, Jonas 137. Galani, Areti 32, 46, 51. Galante, Diego 167, 180. Gansum, Terje 287, 295, 306. Gaudreault, André 228. Gautier, Alban 283, 306. Genette, Gérard 72, 77. Geninasca, Jacques 160. Gentile, Emilio 82, 98, 111, 135 Gentile, Giovanni 112, 115. Geraghty, Niall 217, 220, 221, 228. Giannantonio, Raffaele 120, 137. Ginzburg, Carlo 179, 180. Gordon, Avery 224, 228. Gordon, Robert 44, 52. Graham-Campbell, James 285, 306, 307. Grass Kleiner, Milena 99, 180, 181, 228. Gravano, Viviana 65, 77. Graziani, Rodolfo 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 78. Grechi, Giulia 65, 77. Greimas, Algirdas Julien 31, 32, 40, 41, 52, 58, 67, 77, 102, 107, 108, 109, 110, 114, 116, 120, 137, 184, 194, 205, 256, 278, 283, 286, 306, 313. Gruszczynski, Jacek 306. Guerin, Frances 213, 228. Halbwachs, Maurice 32, 33, 34, 35, 52. Hallas, Roger 213, 228. Hammad, Manar 13, 26, 27, 61, 62, 77, 102, 107, 137, 145, 146, 160, 225, 257, 260, 292, 303, 306, 307. Hardh, Birgitta 299, 307. Hedenstierna-Jonson, Charlotte 265, 270, 271, 272, 281, 282, 307. Heen-Pettersen, Aina Margrethe 289, 307. Heldal, Tom 305. Herr, Alexis 42, 43, 52. Herschend, Frands 287, 288, 307. Hjelmslev, Louis 13, 28, 107, 278. Hökerberg, Håkan 82, 98, 111, 137. Humbert, Benoît 270, 308. Ibn Fadlan 273, 281, 308. Ibn Khordadhbeh, Abu’l-Qasim ibn Ubaydallah Abdallah 281, 308. Ibn Rusteh, Abu Ali Ahmad bin Umar 276, 308. Ingvardson, Gitte 265, 308. Isnenghi, Mario 31, 52. Iversen, Frode 287, 305, 308. Jakobson, Roman 85, 98. Jankowiak, Marek 308. Jansen, Øystein James 305.

Reading Memory Sites through Signs

Jansson, Ingmar 270, 272, 279, 280. 281, 282, 308. Jesch, Judith 283, 296, 308. Jones, Philip D. 271, 309. Jonsson, Kenneth 264, 277, 308. Jost, François 2014, 228. Joyce, James 15, 73, 244. Kaelin, Alexis C. 309. Kerschbamer, Stefano 132, 136. Khawwam, Salahuddin 274, 305. Kilger, Christoph 266, 267, 289, 299, 308. Kovalev, Roman K. 270, 308, 309. Kristiansen, Kristian 282, 283, 309. Lakoff, George 96, 98. Lancioni, Tarcisio 220, 228. Landsberg, Alison 221, 228. Larsson, Gunilla 283, 308, 309. Latouche, Robert 285, 309. Le Goff, Jacques 104, 137. 105, 127, 137. Leech, Patrick Kallis, Aristotle 111, 137. Lefebvre, Henri 34, 52. Lévi-Strauss, Claude 13, 28, 195, 205. Levi, Neil 82, 98. Levi, Primo 20, 47. Libeskind, Daniel 14, 22, 141, 148, 149, 151, 153, 156, 157, 158, 159. Ling, Johan 282, 283, 309. Ljunkvist, John 283, 309. Lombardi-Diop, Cristina 65, 77. Lorusso, Annamaria 12, 17, 21, 57, 70, 77, 102, 180, 181, 209, 228. Lotman, Jurij 12, 16, 19, 28, 57, 58, 73, 78, 107, 137, 144, 160, 180, 238, 253. Lõugas, Lembi 310. Luppi, Marzia 42, 52. Lynch, Kevin 58, 78. Macdonald, Sharon 82, 98, 101, 103, 104, 105, 109, 113, 137. Malone, Hannah 82, 96, 98, 106, 137. Macphail, Richard 295, 305. Malbos, Lucie 283, 306. Maldre, Liina 287, 310. Manetti, Giovanni 108, 116, 137. Mann, Michael 271, 282, 309. Margaryan, Ashot 303, 309. Marin, Louis 109, 138, 200, 205. Marotta, Antonello 156, 160. Marrone, Gianfranco 15, 24, 62, 78, 109, 138, 183, 184, 205, 216, 217, 228, 236. Martin, Simon 82, 98, 105, 109, 136. Mauss, Marcel 283, 287, 294, 310. Mayewski, Paul 271, 309. Mazzucchelli, Francesco 13, 17, 18, 22, 24, 59, 78, 103, 106, 113, 138, 178, 180, 244. McCormick, Michael 271, 276, 309. Merrill, Sam 103, 138. Migliore, Tiziana 103, 138. Minuz, Andrea 215, 228.

Index of Names

Mira, Roberta 42, 51, 52. Mirzoeff, Nicholas 213, 228. Mohen, Jean-Pierre 271, 310. Montanelli, Indro 70, 71, 71, 73, 74, 75, 82. Morrisson, Cécile 310. Mortensen, Morten F. 287, 302, 312. Mussolini, Benito 66, 68, 71, 83, 106, 111, 130, 131, 138, 194. Myhre, Bjorn 310. Myrberg, Nanouschka 259, 310. Nanni, Antonio 82, 98, 115, 127, 136. Nichols, Bill 210, 225, 228, 229. Nicoloso, Paolo 111, 138. Noonan, Thomas S. 259, 267, 269, 273, 310. Nora, Pierre 19, 20, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 41, 42, 48, 50, 52, 66, 86, 159, 160, 192, 193, 199. O’Rourke, Kevin 306. Okala, Françoise 160. Oras, Ester 287, 310. Paladino, Mimmo 90, 91, 93, 94. Panico, Mario 12, 16, 20, 21, 58, 75, 76, 78, 97, 102, 105, 117, 118, 129, 131, 138, 176, 213, 243. Panosetti, Daniela 116, 138. Paolucci, Claudio 102, 108, 135, 138. Pascetta, Pierpaolo 120, 138. Pasotti, Flavio 89. Pavlaković, Vjeran 57, 78. Peets, Jüri 279, 280, 287, 310. Peirce, Charles Sanders 58, 60, 78, 179, 180, 181, 245. Pennacchi, Antonio 135, 138. Pennacchietti, Laura 112, 136. Perel, Jonathan 25, 2017, 208, 210, 211, 215, 216, 220, 221, 222, 223, 226, 227, 228, 229. Perkins, Richard 306, 310. Petersson, Håkan 287, 305, 308 Pezzini, Isabella 13, 14, 17, 22, 23, 76, 77, 78, 105, 138, 144, 160, 205, 211. Pinochet, Augusto 26, 231, 232, 233, 235, 237, 238, 240, 243, 248. Pintarelli, Flavio 129, 130, 138. Pirazzoli, Elena 113, 138. Polanyi, Karl 287, 294, 310. Popper, Karl 258, 310. Poulsen, Bjørn 287, 310. Price, T. Douglas 279, 280, 287, 289, 310. Propp, Vladimir 41, 52. Radstone, Susannah 212, 229. Reiersen, Hakon 310. Remm, Tiit 59, 62, 78. Riché, Pierre 288, 293, 310. Ricœur, Paul 23, 143, 160. Rigney, Ann 61, 78. Ringham, Felizitas 109, 136. Robecchi, Franco 87, 98. Robles, Miguel 180. Rodriguez Amieva, José Manuel 180. Rosedahl, Else 271, 310.

321 Romeo, Cristina 65, 77. Rosenfeld, Gavriel D. 105, 138. Rossi, Paolo 33, 52, Rota, Italo 24, 185, 188, 191, 192, 193, 194, 197, 199, 202, 203, 204. Rothberg, Michael 82, 98. Saage, Ragnar 310. Sacchi, Livio 148, 149, 150, 161. Salerno, Daniele 12, 16, 19, 20, 22, 32, 42, 49, 51, 52, 59, 102, 176, 180, 213, 249. Salvo, Simona 122, 123, 138. Savoini, Sandra 99, 180, 181, 228. Scego, Igiaba 65, 78, 126. Schmidt, Leo 103, 138. Scholz, Bernhard Walter 289, 310. Schultz, Maja K. 287, 302, 312. Sciannamea, Lucino 120, 138. Scorer, James 221, 229. Sedda, Franciscu 65, 78, 185, 205. Sharman Adam 180, 181. Sindbaek, Søren Michael 285, 287, 293, 306, 310. Skre, Dagfinn 276, 296, 305, 307, 308, 311. Smith, Adam 273, 274, 311. Smith, Laurajane 104, 138. Soragni, Ugo 129, 139. Sozzi, Paola 13, 18, 22, 23, 103, 116, 139, 178, 181, 208, 244, 245. Spaziante, Lucio 214, 229. Spufford, Peter Stalsberg, Anne 281, 311. Stylegar, Frans-Arne H. 283, 286, 287, 295, 305, 311. Sudjic, Deyan 111, 139. Taddia, Irma 65, 78. Tamassia, Patrizia 42, 52. Thordemann, Bengt 311. Todorov, Tzvetan 177, 181. Tummuscheit, Astrid 289, 290, 291, 311. Tunbridge, John E. 82, 98, 139. Ugolini, Andrea 42, 52. Ulriksen, Jens 281, 283, 287, 302, 311, 312. Verlinden, Charles 275, 276, 312. Violi, Patrizia 13, 25, 26, 56, 62, 78, 81, 96, 98, 102, 103, 129, 131, 139, 142, 161, 164, 176, 177, 178, 181, 209, 212, 229, 246, 254. Wagner-Pacifici, Robin 181. Wamers, Egon 283, 297, 312. Westerdahl, Christer 283, 311, 312. Wickham, Christopher 264, 265, 273, 276, 286, 300, 312. Wickler, Stephen 283, 312. Williams, Gareth 285, 306, 307. Winnicott, Donald 235, 254. Witte, Frauke 289, 290, 291, 311. Wollentz, Gustav 103, 139. Xoplaki, Elena 312. Yates, Frances 32, 33, 34, 52. Young, James 213, 227, 229,

Zambelli, Matteo 161. Zevi, Adachiara 161.