Two monuments by Sreten Stojanović: Continuity in discontinuity

Abstract

The sensitive nature of monuments, their dependence on the fuctuating network of social mediators (state, party, media) and in particular their tendency toward historical and political exploitation, has meant that monuments have become objects of disciplining rather than subjects that discipline the memory and stand as material evidence of "continuity in discontinuity". Here, on the example of two monuments by the same author, Sreten Stojanović - the monument King Peter from 1928, and the monument The Combat from 1949, which originated within two distinct politicohistorical contexts and within two different ideological frameworks - we will discuss the dynamics of the culture of memory and the culture of forgetting, in other words, the ways in which cultures, regimes and classes transfer knowledge about the past, use it, reorganize it, but also repress, forget and transform it.