Abstract:
Since
the last century, cities have become, more and more often, targets of acts of
war, terrorism and political violence. The recently coined notion of “urbicide”
has been used by many scholars (Bogdanovic, Coward, Graham, Shaw) to refer to
such deliberate actions of destruction against the city's inhabited space. But
what happens inside the city when war and terror are over?
My
seminar will explore the role of reconstruction strategies in the processes of transformation
which characterize the cities in post-conflict periods. In particular I will
focus on architectonic restoration and reconstructions of damaged buildings,
seen as practices of re-writing the palimpsest of the city that can determine
in which way (and if) the past should be remembered. Semiotics (Greimas,
Lotman, Eco) – with its attention to social meanings and its narrative
conception of the meaning organisation – will be used as a tool to explain and
analyse the way in which social meanings of a place are shared and change.
The
proposed case study is Mostar and its post-conflict transformation and reconstruction.
Bio-statement:
Francesco Mazzucchelli holds a PhD from the
University of Bologna (Italy) and is a Research Fellow in the Department of
Philosophy and Disciplines of Communication of the University of Bologna of the
same university. He is also currently a Fellow at NIAS (Netherlands Institute
for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences in Wassenaar), where
he contributes to the research project “Terrorscapes: Transnational Memories of
Violence in Europe”. He is the author of the book
Urbicidio. Il senso dei luoghi tra distruzioni e ricostruzioni in ex
Jugoslavia, Bologna: Bononia University Press, 2010.
