Cultures Of Memory

Writing about psychological trauma, cultural history, and literary theory in the year 2011 requires conceptual precision. It seems that the field of literary and media studies is finally in the process of substantially revising a powerful paradigm of cultural trauma analysis that has been with us since the early 1990s. As we have tried to show on other occasions, this deconstructive tradition of cultural interpretation embraced trauma on an abstract, metaphorical level as a theoretical vantage point offering insights into the opportunities and limits of human self-reflexivity. But its protagonists displayed little interdisciplinary curiosity about the suffering of actual trauma victims and the knowledge of people treating them. Moreover, they held an apodictically negative view of the cultural effects of narrativizing traumatic experiences-which is an essential element of therapy-and were also otherwise uninterested in the complex empirical interplay of violence, trauma, and media experiences. As a result, some scholars developed ambiguous ontologizing statements claiming for instance that trauma is »always already inscribed in (any) memory« and that any conscious representation of trauma is essentially »inadequate« because »trauma is the inaccessible truth of remembering«. Viewed from this perspective, disciplines like philosophy and history supposedly simply »make us forget about the traumatic flipside of all memory« (Weinberg 1999, 204-206; cf. Weilnbçck 2007c; 2008b). 1 By aestheticizing and valorizing trauma in such a fashion, the paradigm has raised a lot of questions about the empirical foundations and ethical implications of its analyses, especially concerning the representation of actual victims of violence (cf. Weilnbçck 2008a; Kansteiner/ Weilnbçck 2008; Kansteiner 2004). 1 The deconstructive trauma paradigm was certainly originally launched with the best of intentions seeking to develop new critical perspectives on contemporary culture. But the philosophical reflections often evolved into rather vague-and from an interdisciplinary point of view even counterproductive-aesthetic and aestheticizing speculations. Consider for example Manfred Weinberg's emphatic quote of Friedrich Kittler in the former's 1999 essay on trauma, psychoanalysis and cultural interpretation: »In the forgetting of the word ›forget‹ the expressed concurs with the expression. And the delirium of this concurrence is the truth« (Weinberg 1999, 203).

The project "Erased Memory: Visual reconstruction of the Disappeared Architectural Heritage of Novi Sad" deals with the research of the architectural heritage of Novi Sad, primarily those objects that have been permanently deleted from the city map and which do not exist for various reasons: demolished, burned, abandoned, as well as with those that have changed their primary purpose and are therefore out of focus. The object of the research are objects of culture, sacral and other objects that were of great symbolic and cultural significance. Due to their importance, the buildings of the Civic Hall (Građanska dvorana) on Trifković Square, the Dunđerski Theater in the courtyard of the Vojvodina Hotel, the Armenian Church, Odeon and Korzo cinemas and the first building of Matica srpska on the main square were selected.

Memorial and Memory Spaces as Memory Interfaces: The Case of
Gallipoli Peninsula Fabrication of memory maintains its existence as
one of the most prominent determinants in the making and conservation process of national identity. This process changes in time according to
the changes in the space. Memorials and memory spaces are interfaces, which reveal how remembrance and forgetting practices of national
memory are fabricated. The purpose of this article, which focuses on the memorials and memory spaces of Dardanelle Wars in Gallipoli Peninsula, is to explore the distinctive components within these memory related designs. The article, which adopted its research methodology based on participatory observation, semi-structured interviews and literature review, suggests that there are two main memorial and memory space approaches in Gallipoli Peninsula: Interactive and Conductive Interfaces of Memory.

The paper analyzes the attitudes of Serbian citizens towards the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, expressed during the period of gradual stabilization of the capitalist order. The analysis is based on the data collected in 2012 on a representative sample of population in Serbia, within a project of the Institute for Sociological Research of the University of Belgrade – Faculty of Philosophy. Research findings showed that, in the period of accelerated transformation of society, positive opinion about socialist Yugoslavia was very pronounced among Serbian citizens. However, there are statistically
significant differences in the level of agreement with pro-Yugoslav attitudes among different social groups, as respondents’ age, social class and value orientations are identified as important factors.

U radu se analiziraju stavovi građana Srbije prema Socijalističkoj Federativnoj Republici Jugoslaviji, iskazani u periodu postepene stabilizacije kapitalističkog poretka. Analiza se temelji na podacima prikupljenim 2012. godine na reprezentativnom uzorku stanovništva Srbije, u okviru projekta Instituta za sociološka istraživanja Filozofskog fakulteta Univerziteta u Beogradu. Nalazi istraživanja su pokazali da je u periodu ubrzane transformacije društva pozitivno mišljenje o socijalističkoj Jugoslaviji veoma prisutno među građanima Srbije. Ipak, postoje statistički značajne razlike u stepenu prihvatanja projugoslovenskih stavova među različitim društvenim grupama, pri čemu se kao važni faktori izdvajaju starost, klasno-slojna pripadnost i vrednosne orijentacije ispitanika.