Matters of Revolution: Urban Spaces and Symbolic Politics in Berlin and Warsaw After 1989 Bartmanski Dominik
Symbols matter, and especially those present in public spaces, but how do they exert influence and maintain a hold over us? Why do such materialities count even in the intensely digitalized culture?…
Specifikacia Matters of Revolution: Urban Spaces and Symbolic Politics in Berlin and Warsaw After 1989 Bartmanski Dominik
Symbols matter, and especially those present in public spaces, but how do they exert influence and maintain a hold over us? Why do such materialities count even in the intensely digitalized culture? This book considers the importance of urban symbols to political revolutions, examining manifold reasons for which social movements necessitate the affirmation or destruction of various material icons and public monuments. What explains variability of life cycles of certain classes of symbols? Why do some of them seem more potent than others? Why do people exhibit nostalgic attachments to some symbols of the controversial past and vehemently oppose others? What nourishes and threatens the social life of icons? Through comparative analyses of major iconic processes following the epochal revolution of 1989 in Berlin and Warsaw, the book argues that revolutionary action needs objects and