Informace o publikaci
"Everyone Got Something, but not within the City Walls." Post-Socialist Revisions of Toponymy in Košice between Neutralization, Representation and Ignorance
| Autoři | |
|---|---|
| Rok publikování | 2016 |
| Druh | Kapitola v knize |
| Fakulta / Pracoviště MU | |
| Citace | |
| Popis | This study analyses post-socialist revision of toponymy in the East Slovak city Košice and reviews the shifts in meaning brought about about to the symbolic landscape. The review of Košice urban mnemoscape between 1990-1992 offers interesting insights into early post-socialist politics of memory in a mid-sized, non-capital city with rich multi-lingual heritage and complicated political history. Departing from the premise that the collapse of socialist ideological regimentation of collective memory opened ground for ambitions and claims to representation of various hitherto suppressed narratives and groups, this article identifies both the main principles guiding the toponymic review, as well as some of the questions left unanswered by its results. Analyses of revolutionary reassessments of street-names often confine themselves to an analytical reading of meanings inscribed in the city-text, neglecting the potential conflicts or institutional specifics that influenced their development. Stepping beyond the static perspective of semiotic analysis, re-naming of streets is conceptualized here as a specific mnemonic practice which calls for closer analysis of the authorship and the readership involved in the production of a city-text. Based on newspaper reporting, historical maps, fragments of correspondence and interviews, two phases of renaming are reconstructed, which help to understand the manifest principles as well as the inconsistent results of the review process in Košice. After the leitmotifs are discussed on exemplary cases, two recent controversies are sketched to suggest that despite appearances the post-socialist toponymic review may be far from final. |