Forum for Modern Language Studies - current issue

Introduction

Niven, B. — 2008-04-18

The Valley of the Fallen: Tales from the Crypt

Hite, K. — 2008-04-18

This article focuses on Spain's Valley of the Fallen, the brainchild of dictator Francisco Franco (1939–1975) and the country's largest monument. I argue that, while the monument glorifies General Franco's personal legacy, it also represents a dramatic effort to re-assert a Christian-military nationalist Spain as a model to the world. The article also suggests that the monument calls on Spaniards to struggle not only with the meanings of Franco's defeat of a progressive republic, but also with the country's relationships to its Christian imperial past, to northern Africa and Muslim immigrants to the country, to Fortress Europe, and to current debates about empire and occupation.

The Limits of National Memory: Anti-Fascism, the Holocaust and the Fosse Ardeatine Memorial in 1990s Italy

Clifford, R. — 2008-04-18

This article uses the memorial to the 1944 Fosse Ardeatine massacre in Rome as a case study that demonstrates how the symbolic function of memorials can alter over time. Focusing on the changing meanings of the monument in a post-Cold War context, it examines how, during the 1990s, the memorial was transformed from a central, national symbol of the Italian anti-fascist Resistance to one which evoked the Holocaust. It argues that this shift in meaning recast the monument – and the massacre itself – as a site and an event at the margins of national history and memory.

Commemorating World War II in Northern Greece: Controversy and Reconsideration

Katsaridou, I., Kontogiorgi, A. — 2008-04-18

This article seeks to examine the World War II memorials that were commissioned by the Greek state and other public institutions in Komotini, a city in Western Thrace, as well as their ambiguous reception during the last three decades. It focuses particularly on "The Sword", a memorial that was erected during the years of the Greek military dictatorship (1967–1974) to honour the victims of World War II who gave their lives for their country. It sheds light on the process behind the creation of "The Sword", analysing also its artistic style and visual references in connection with the historical conditions of its creation. The article also considers the recent dispute surrounding the function and aesthetics of the monument, and alternative forms of memorialisation erected in the area in the last decade.

A Norwegian Grey Zone: Knut Rod, Victor Lind and "The Crucial Year, 1942"

Burch, S. — 2008-04-18

This article uses Primo Levi's concept of "the grey zone" to explore Knut Rød's involvement in the transfer of 532 Norwegian Jews from Oslo to Auschwitz in 1942. Rød, the police chief in charge of the operation, was subsequently exonerated of any crime on the grounds that he had simultaneously used his position to help members of Milorg – the Norwegian Resistance. The legal and moral basis of this verdict has been questioned by the artist Victor Lind in a series of artworks, including his "countermonument" The Perpetrator (2005).

Post-Soviet Remembrance of the Holocaust and National Memories of the Second World War in Russia, Ukraine and Lithuania

Rohdewald, S. — 2008-04-18

This article compares changes in remembrance of the Holocaust and the Second World War in three successor states of the Soviet Union – Russia, Ukraine and Lithuania – belonging to different historical regions of Eastern Europe. The contribution argues that despite important distinctions, in all three states the new practices of remembrance are developing in similar ways: while the Holocaust is remembered, memory of it often remains marginalised or is appropriated for particular ends.

The Afterlife of Communist Statuary: Hungary's Szoborpark and Lithuania's Grutas Park

Williams, P. — 2008-04-18

Following the "Autumn of Nations" revolutions in 1989–1991, cities throughout Eastern Europe were presented with a problem: what to do with their communist-inspired sculptures. Working with the idea that their continued presence in situ was unacceptable, but that their destruction would forgo the opportunity to teach others about the style and content of the political ideology, two key sites – Hungary's Szoborpark ("Statue Park") and Lithuania's Grutas Park – emerged as a novel response. This article argues that these privately-run semi-rural parks, which contain almost comically condensed collections of sculptures and monuments, only semi-effectively demonstrate the current irrelevance of communism.

Beauty, Utility and Christian Civilisation: War Memorials and the Church of England, 1940-47

Webster, P. — 2008-04-18

This article examines responses of the institutional Church of England to the issue of memorials to the Second World War. It explores the debates concerning the relationship between beauty, utility and the notion of "Christian civilisation", particularly with regard to the reconstruction of bombed churches. It argues that debates among interested clergy and others within the wider cultural "establishment" over the future form of memorials was more lively than has often been supposed hitherto.

The German Countermonument: Conceptual Indeterminacies and the Retheorisation of the Arts of Vicarious Memory

Crownshaw, R. — 2008-04-18

This article examines trends in the conceptualisation of German countermonumental architecture that associate monumentality and fascism. The countermonument has been conceptualised as the appropriate form by which to memorialise the Holocaust, given its self-disruptive dynamic and inability to impose a monumental version of the past. However, following recent critiques of memory studies and German architectural discourse, this article argues that the prevailing conceptualisation of the countermonument engenders an ironic slippage from, to use Gillian Rose's terms, the "representation of fascism" to the "fascism of representation".