Destruction and Oblivion as Critical (Motivating) Factors in Heritage: Monuments as Places of Absence

Abstract

A good number of authors and theorists dealing with heritage and memory claim that organized oblivion is largely present in the society, so one might conclude accordingly that every society consciously forgets. The carriers or executors of this project of oblivion often seek to erase the entire memory of an “enemy” by destroying heritage, thus seeking to force those who have inherited and preserved it to forget it. In this article, I have sought to point out that historical artefacts are part of the process of social oblivion, which also raises the following question or topic: can history be constructed and reconstructed from the history of amnesia, rather than the history of memory? The process of “facing loss, that is destruction” is still in its infancy as a heritage practice and policy, and often limited to acknowledging the problem rather than responding to it. The salvage paradigm that permeates the heritage discourse is fundamentally based on a system that implies, at the same time, the sacrifice and loss of less valuable cultural achievements in order to protect and conserve the more valued ones. These questions and dilemmas are fundamentally political and boil down to the decision which stories/objects to preserve, celebrate and remember, and which to forget. Illustrating the concepts of destruction and oblivion on the examples of devastated Zadar, Split’s Peristyle, the Old Bridge in Mostar, and finally the anti-fascist monuments, I have sought to indicate and establish that places of absence can also be places of memory, and that heritage is performative in its nature. Historical buildings are not meaningful and significant inherently, in themselves, but become significant only when they are socially construed through a performative act.