City as a Locus of Collective Memory. Streets, Monuments and Human Rights

Abstract

Major events, important historic and contemporary figures are vital for the creation of national identity, and thus often become immortalised in public spaces in the form of streets and monuments – places of memory. But what happens when these places are reminders of a corrupt memory, a past that many would rather forget? Should they be removed, as if the people and the events they commemorate never existed, never took place, or should they be kept as sites of conscience, present-day reminders of a painful past? What may be their new role in the cityscape? And, ultimately, who has the right to be remembered, and who has the right to be forgotten within a city’s network? The purpose of this paper is to answer these questions on the basis of the recent changes in post-communist and post-colonial countries, using these investigations to ponder the question of the right to memory.