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Free keywords:
Collective memory; affect; monumentality; post-imperialism; Croatia
Abstract:
How might scholars of public memory approach the protean relationship amongimperial legacies, nationalized collective memories and urban space from an‘off-center’perspective? In this essay, I pursue this question in relation to amonument whose political biography traverses, and troubles, the distinctionbetween imperial and national times, sentiments, and polities. The statue inquestion is that of Ban Josip Jelačić, a nineteenth Centuryfigure who wasboth a loyal servant of the Habsburg Empire and a personification of nascentCroatian and South Slavic national aspirations. Jelačić’s monument waserected in Zagreb’s central square in 1866, only seven years following hisdeath; in the heady political context of the Dual Monarchy, his apotheosis asafigure of regional rebellion caused consternation on the part of theHungarian authorities. Nor did the statue’s controversy end with theHabsburgs. Following World War II, Jelačić’s embodiment of Croat nationalpride proved anathema to Yugoslav socialist federalism, and the monumentwas dismantled in 1947, only to be re-erected following the disintegration ofYugoslavia and Croatian independence in 1991. Accordingly, the statue ofJelačićis a privileged material medium of and for nationalist memory inCroatia, even as it also conjures ghosts of the city’s and state’s imperial andsocialist pasts. I theorize this play of hegemonic and repressed collectivememories through the concepts of public affect and mana, especially inrelation to several recent public events that centred on the statue: thememorial to Bosnian-Croat general Slobodan Praljak, who committed suicideduring proceedings of the International Criminal Tribunal for the FormerYugoslavia in November 2017, and the celebration of Croatia’s achievementsin the 2018 World Cup.
