Monument to the Victims of All Wars and the Issues of Contemporary Public Sculptures and Monuments in Slovenia

Authors

  • Beti Žerovc Filozofska fakulteta, Univerza v Ljubljani

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.51663/pnz.60.1.09

Keywords:

Monument to the Victims of All Wars, public sculpture, art and social responsibility, historical revisionism, collective memory

Abstract

            The text discusses some of the contemporary issues of erecting public sculptures and monuments in Slovenia. It focuses on the Monument to the Victims of All Wars, which was inaugurated in the center of Ljubljana in the summer of 2017. The monument and events around it are presented as an example of a predicament in which inadequate behavior of different stakeholders in the long-term process of monument formation produces numerous social disagreements and, finally, a problematic monument.

            The article problematizes historic revisionism in relation to the Second World War, which acts through the monument and through the processes associated with it. It is questioning how and why such a large state monument is created, even though there is no professional consensus that monuments actually operate therapeutically on traumatized and post-conflict societies, as well as there is no consensus that Slovenians are such a society at the moment. The monument is often referred to as a monument of reconciliation, although there is no consensus on the necessity of reconciliation, let alone about what this reconcilliation actually means and what should its elements be.

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Published

2020-06-02

Issue

Section

Articles