Beyond Public Memory. Scars and Subversions of State-Sanctioned Monuments

Bridging together the spatial turn in history and semiotics of culture, this chapter focuses on the contestation of monuments and memorials as a form of communicative dynamic. Inspired by the wave of protest following the Black Lives Matter movements of 2020, it analyses the contestation to statues and plaques as supposedly the most stable physical supports of public memory. Taking as a case study two memorials to Italian historical figures, iconic of different cultural models of remembrance – the liberal journalist Indro Montanelli (1909–2001) and the anti-mafia activist Peppino Impastato (1948–78) – the chapter shows how scars and subversions of state-sanctioned monuments are in fact paradigmatic of the instability of public memory, which reveals the dialogical, dynamic communicative nature of spatial configuration set in stone, metal and plastic. Indeed, in approaching these objects of study, the chapter starts from an understanding of public sites as spaces that encompass both state-sanctioned memory narratives and the corresponding silences of histories that underpin such narratives.