Iconophobia, literally the fear of religious images, usually occurs in proportion to the powers attributed to them by their believers. In the worst cases, these fears have led to, or coincide with, a cycle of violence that may involve the actual destruction of images (iconoclasm) and of human life. Semiotics helps interpret the interconnectedness of these seemingly separate events. Most iconoclasm involves confusion between the image or sign (such as a statue) and its referent (the actual subject), and a re-encoding (...) of the signified (the meanings assigned to the sign). This article explores four case studies. In the aftermath of iconoclasm, fragments and ruins can be trans-valued as relics, and thus inspire hatred of the perpetrator and sympathy for the group whose sacred precincts have been violated. Or, broken statues may be preserved by a re-encoding as `art'. Yet not only do historical models warn of recurring conditions in which violence may be perpetrated against people and objects, but the more recent examples indicate that even great works of art that capitalist society deems world treasures cannot be taken out of the currency of iconoclastic exchange. (shrink)

Voces de Carnaval: ritualidad festiva, resignificación cultural y mercantilismo, surge del interés de compartir experiencias de la ritualidad festiva en varias latitudes, especialmente latinoamericanas, para generar nuevos sentidos de encuentro cultural. Este espacio plural, motivado desde la Red Colombia Festiva junto con el Instituto de Estudios en Comunicación y Cultura de la Universidad Nacional de Colombia sede Bogotá, varias universidades públicas, la Universidad Politécnica Salesiana de Quito, a través de la carrera de Antropología, el grupo de investigación Filosofía de la (...) Educación GIFE y la editorial Abya-Yala, abrieron la puerta a esta polifonía de reflexiones analíticas y críticas que se decantan en este libro. El lector encontrará pensamientos diversos que re-crean la fiesta desde los cuerpos individuales y colectivos y sus formas de entender y sentir la ritualidad heredada, pero a la vez mediada por las necesidades emergentes de relacionarse y participar del goce y disfrute de la libertad como principal desinhibidor de colectivos sociales que reclaman su derecho a expresar lo que les es limitado, a través de las formas prohibidas fuera de la esfera ceremonial. (shrink)

This paper proposes a general analysis of the structure and imagery of the Salmacis epigram, a late Hellenistic verse inscription recently found in Bodrum which relates the foundation of Halicarnassus and lists the achievements of the city's authors. Focusing on the first part of the poem, I argue that the epigram can be seen to trace a complex symbolic map of the city in space and time. On a first level of reference the poem's episodes of foundation are consistently represented (...) as the aitia of ritual events. Superimposed on the catalogue of foundation episodes is a catalogue of the ritual events that commemorated them, and our epigram uses this level of reference to ground its portrait of Halicarnassus in the contemporary ritual life of the polis. In this way the poem is able to locate the city in the space of cult and to inscribe the linear time of primordial origins in the recurrent present of ritual practice. On a complementary level of reference, finally, the different episodes of foundation also function as so many statements of kinship—every founder effectively ties the city to another region and another people. As a parallel to the local space of ritual, then, the combination of these statements of kinship is made to locate the city in the wider space of ethnic geography. Behind a seemingly simple catalogic form, the Salmacis epigram actually combines two levels of reference to achieve a significant and multifaceted representation of a late Hellenistic city's cultural memory. (shrink)

Recent decades have seen a considerable and progressive increase in historical claims. Within the context of colonialism criticism, but also outside this sphere, numerous politicians, collectives and intellectuals have emerged to denounce certain acts of the past, demanding recognition and repentance that would compensate for these past affronts. In this article we will analyze one of these cases: the demand for an apology from Spain and the Vatican by the President of Mexico, López Obrador. Taking as a guide the debate (...) around the ethical problem of non-identity, we will see what ethical and metaphysical assumptions serve as the basis for these claims. We will also assess whether the claims of the so-called «historical victims» are consistent and ethically acceptable. (shrink)

This article argues for a robust notion of collective identity which is not reduced to a psychological conception of identity. In the first part, the debate on the concept of identity raised by several authors is taken up critically with the intention of defending a strong sociological conception of identity which by definition is a collective identity. The basic assumption is that collective identities are narrative constructions which permit the control of the boundaries of a network of actors. This theory (...) is then applied to the case of Europe, showing how identity markers are used to control the boundaries of a common space of communication. These markers are bound to stories which those within such a space of communication share. Stories that hold in their narrative structures social relations provide projects of control. National identities are based on strong and exclusive stories. Europeanization (among other parallel processes at the global level) opens this space of boundary constructions and offers opportunities for national as well as sub-national as well as transnational stories competing with each other to shape European identity projects. The EU — this is the hypothesis — provides a case in which different sites offer competing opportunities to continue old stories, to start new stories or to import old stories from other sites, thus creating a narrative network on top of the network of social relations that bind the people in Europe together. European identity is therefore to be conceived as a narrative network embedded in an emerging network of social relations among the people living in Europe. (shrink)

. This article inquires into the social function of guilt, especially collective guilt, and the implications thereof for collective violence and collective memory. The focus is on the relationship between collective violence and collective memory in countries that have experienced cultural trauma, defined as a dramatic loss of identity and meaning, a tear in the social fabric. Analyzing the dynamics—the mechanisms and processes—of remembering and forgetting such trauma, I argue that the idea of collective guilt is essential for making sense (...) of collective violence and collective memory. Specifically, I show that collective violence requires collective action; that collective action produces collective guilt; that collective violence generates perceptions—and misperceptions—of collective guilt; and that collective memory is formed, deformed, and transformed by perceptions—and misperceptions—of collective guilt. The article uses illustrative data from a variety of cases to illuminate these dynamics. It concludes by explaining why understanding these dynamics is imperative for responding to historic injustice in the twenty‐first century.Flash‐backs falsify the Past:they forgetthe remembering Present. (shrink)

The relationship between memory and history, which has preoccupied historiography and the philosophy of history since the middle of the nineteenth century, took a particular course in France at the end of the millennium. The forms this relationship took in this particular context have been the subject of heated debate around whether the reconstruction of the past should bear the sign of a moral imperative or, on the contrary, it should be kept away from any moral conditioning. To address this (...) question and underline its particular relevance to the present, I will revisit a significant debate, based around Paul Ricoeur’s interpretation of the duty of memory developed in his book Memory, History, Forgetting. I will do this by means of a three-step approach. First, a short introduction will provide several guidelines for understanding the issues at stake in the debate in which Ricoeur was caught and explanations regarding the significance of the main notions around which the discussions took place, i.e., the duty and work of memory. Second, I will identify how historical debates, political decisions and civic concerns about the past gradually coagulated into two different “camps” in France during the 1980s and 1990s, i.e., the advocates of memory against those of history, foreshadowing the emergence of a historiographical crisis, the stakes of which I will analyse in detail. Finally, I will show how Ricoeur’s solution to this debate, i.e., an incomplete dialectic between the duty and the work of memory, developed on the horizon of justice, continues to have relevance for the present, being an innovative form of “defatalizing” the past. (shrink)

Education about catastrophes often begins with, and at times even focuses on, passing down catastrophe memories. For this education, catastrophe memories that are unique to the survivors must be translated carefully to ensure that they can be understood by successors who may not have experienced a catastrophe themselves. This study elaborates on the structure of the translation of these memories between the survivors and successors. It also focuses on the educational significance of the practical application of such translations. Section 1 (...) describes the purpose of this study while Section 2 examines the reasons for the emphasis on passing down survivors’ memories in catastrophe education. Section 3 focuses on telling-listening exchanges while passing down these memories and examines the structure and characteristics of such exchanges. It was identified that it is imperative that these exchanges should communicate the experience that cannot be translated in words or is incommensurable. If both, the survivors and successors, are truthful to the incommensurability, and if they both dare to experience it, they will be able to find the potential and possibilities to transform human lives and societies while weaving together the narratives of catastrophe memories that would be transformed and generated endlessly. (shrink)